For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe
was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at
break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it
with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race
for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street
to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less
swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that
the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by
a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob
pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals
of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of
the _Liberator_, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical
phrase but by the skin of his teeth.
Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell;
and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary
cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious
friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully
accosted thus: "You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot
ask you to spend the night with me." That night in his prison cell, and
on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and
long:
"When peace within the bosom reigns,
And conscience gives th' approving voice;
Though bound the human form in chains.
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