Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/84

 paigning. In 1859, on the occasion of his very last visit before the Harper's Ferry raid,—when, in fact, he was starting for that final desperate adventure,—Brown was leaving Mr. Stearns's house. He paused near the door, bent down, and drew something from his boot-leg. "I shall very likely never return, Mr. Stearns," he said, "and I wish to give you a little personal memento of myself." He handed out a remarkably fine bowie-knife which he gave to Mr. Stearns, at the same time telling its story; this knife is still in Mrs. Stearns's possession; it is a large, beautiful, and well-balanced blade, broad, yet tapering neatly to a sharp point; it is of English make. It had been bought. Brown said, by a subscription, for Jefferson Buford, and, when that Southern chieftain had been discomfited in Kansas and his band scattered, he had passed it on to the Virginian Clay Pate, with the injunction that it was to be used in taking the