On arrival by the train, Mr. Sumner drove at once to Barnum’s Hotel, where he entered his name in the open book. Taking a walk before dark in the principal street, he was recognized by excited persons, whose manner and language went beyond any ordinary occasion.[142] Early in the evening he called on a family friend, with whom he took tea, surrounded by her children. Leaving her house about nine o’clock, he walked slowly back to the hotel. When descending Fayette Street by its side, he could not but observe an enormous assemblage of people, with very little apparent government, in the open square at the foot of the street. Entering the private door, which was at some distance from the riotous crowd, he came upon a gentleman, who, addressing him by name, expressed surprise at seeing him there, saying, “That mob in the square is after you. Their leaders have been to the hotel and demanded you. They were told that you were out,--that nobody knew where you were, and that you had probably left town”; and he wound up by insisting that it was not safe for Mr. Sumner to continue at the hotel, or anywhere in town, if his place of stopping were known. Without reply to this notice, Mr. Sumner walked down the long corridor of the hotel, and, turning into the office, asked for his key. At once Mr. Barnum, with one of his assistants, took him into a small back room, where they explained the condition of things, narrated the visit of the leaders, and the answer they were able to give, by which the mob were turned aside; but this temporary relief left them still anxious, especially if Mr. Sumner’s return should be suspected, and therefore they must request him to leave the hotel; and this was enforced by saying that his longer stay was perilous to the hotel as well as to himself, and that he must find shelter somewhere else. Mr. Sumner, while declaring his sincere regret that he should be the innocent occasion of peril to the hotel, said that there was nowhere else for him to go,--that he had no right to carry peril to the house of a friend,--that it was impossible for him to do this,--that he had come to the hotel as a traveller, and he must claim his rights, believing that in so large a structure there was more safety than in a private house, even if there were any such where he could go. The interview ended in conducting him to a chamber on a long entry of the third story, where all the rooms were alike, when, after saying that nobody in the hotel but themselves would know where he was, they left him alone. From the window which opened on the street at the side of the hotel, he could see the swaying multitude, and hear their voices. In the gray of the morning he left for the Philadelphia Railroad.[143]