Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest, and was actually going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose, and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant, and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. I _couldn’t_ understand it no way at all. It was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. And I _did_ start to tell him; but he shut me up and says: “Don’t you reckon I know what I’m about?” “Yes.” “Didn’t I say I’d steal him?” “Yes.” “Well, then.” That’s all he said and that’s all I said.... That the angel-minded Dr. Howe should have headed a vigilance committee was no more extraordinary than many other strange and terrible things in that epoch. Dr. Howe was perhaps by nature and early experience fitted to head such a committee; but nothing could be farther removed from such work than the twenty years of peaceful work in philanthropy which had followed his stormy youth; above all, he was no longer young. At forty-five a man cannot learn a new trade. Howe could not meet the world on a political basis or express himself through political agencies--whether through the constitutional vehicles of legislature, party, and public meeting--or through the improvised vehicles of vigilance committee and underground railroad. His activity in both of these fields was splendid, yet lame; it was the work of a man who only half understood his own function. In his own work, the only realities for him are metaphysical realities. But in politics, he has the mind of an ordinary man; his thought creeps from point to point, treats human institutions with respect, and subordinates itself to the opinions of other people. It is positively amazing to find Howe, the pioneer, the fire-brand--or rather the torch-bearer--in one department of thought, becoming a mere linkboy in another and nearly allied department. Howe’s incapacity for leadership in politics was first shown during the Freesoil movement. The “Coalition” which the Freesoilers made with the Democrats in Massachusetts, soon after Webster’s defection in 1850, was one of those political unions which are nowadays called “deals.” Persons of conflicting principles join together in order to defeat a common opponent, and, of course, to divide the offices. Some people object to such deals on the ground that there is always an element of betrayal, a lie, a debauchery of conscience somewhere and somehow involved in them.