Want renders
most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age,
absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent
inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon
any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee
that the young recusant could never be starved into silence or
conformity to popular standards. And with this stern, sad lesson
treasured up in his heart, Garrison graduated from another room in the
school-house of experience. All the discoveries of the young journalist
were not of this grim character. He made another discovery altogether
different, a real gem of its kind. The drag-net of a newspaper catches
all sorts of poets and poetry, good, bad, and indifferent--oftener the
bad and indifferent, rarely the good. The drag-net of the _Free Press_
was no exception to this rule; but, one day, it fetched up from the
depths of the hard commonplaces of our New England town life a genuine
pearl. We will let Mr. Garrison tell the story in his own way:
"Going up-stairs to my office, one day, I observed a letter
lying near the door, to my address; which, on opening, I found
to contain an original piece of poetry for my paper, the _Free
Press_. The ink was very pale, the handwriting very small; and,
having at that time a horror of newspaper original poetry--which
has rather increased than diminished with the lapse of time--my
first impulse was to tear it in pieces, without reading it; the
chances of rejection, after its perusal, being as ninety-nine to
one; .
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