Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/259

 find on the boisterous ocean, or somewhere beyond it, that freedom which the laws of America denied me

there. How different from the stern and desperate spirit of defiance with which I had seen those shores fade from my sight, was the tender sentiment, rising almost to hope, with which I again saw spreading out before me that same land, emerging from the waters; cruel land of bondage as it had been to me, but where yet I might — O kind Heaven that I might! — regain a long-lost wife and child!

As we landed at the wharf and made our way into the town, we found it in a state of great confusion. A vast crowd, mostly of well-dressed people, was collected about a building which I afterwards understood to be the City Hall; and just as we approached it, an unfortunate person, with a rope about his neck, was dragged, apparently from some neighboring house or by-way, into the middle of the street. The shout was raised, Hang him! Hang him! and the gentlemen in fine broadcloth, in whose hands he was, seemed quite ready to do the bidding of the mob, and to be looking round as if for some lamp post or other convenience for that purpose. Making our way with great difficulty to an adjoining street, we found it completely choked up with a well-dressed crowd, through which, amid jeers and insults, a few women, holding each other's hands, slowly made their way, retreating apparently from a neighboring building, and for some reason or other, evidently objects of very great indignation.

On reaching my hotel, called, I think, the Tremont House, I anxiously inquired into the occasion of all this tumult. The landlord informed me, that it had all been caused by the obstinacy of the women whom I had seen in the streets. In spite of the remonstrances of the citizens, as expressed at a great public meeting lately held, in which all the leading merchants and lawyers had participated, these obstinate females had persisted in meeting to pray for and to plot the abolition of slavery; and what was still more