In 1835 the Boston mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of the American Abolitionists, through the streets with a rope round his neck; and his life was only saved from their fury through the stratagem of the Mayor, who committed him to gaol as a disturber of the peace. In 1841 the feeling against the Abolitionists was a little less violent; but “anti-slavery opinions were at that time in deep disrepute in the United States; they were ‘vulgar,’ and those who held them were not noticed in society, and were insulted and injured as often as possible by genteeler people and more complaisant republicans.” It was a matter of great astonishment to the polite world of Boston that the English aristocrat made no secret of the fact that he shared the opinions of the despised and hated Abolitionists. In 1828 Garrison was a poor lad, working for his living as a printer; he determined to devote himself to the gigantic task of freeing his country from the curse of slavery. He began to print with his own hands and publish an anti-slavery paper called the _Liberator_. He wandered up and down the United States as an anti-slavery lecturer; by and by a few friends began to gather round him, and those who shared his principles and his enthusiasm gradually made themselves known to him. In 1833, being then twenty-eight years old, he received a letter from a young Quaker lady, Miss Prudence Crandall, who asked his advice under the following circumstances: Two years previously she had bought a large house at Canterbury, in the State of Connecticut, and had started there a boarding-school for girls. She had flourished beyond her expectations, and had every prospect of forming a highly successful school. She wrote to Garrison and asked his advice about changing her white scholars for coloured ones. She says in her letter, very simply, not giving herself any airs of martyrdom, “I have been for some months past determined, if possible, during the remainder of my life to benefit the people of colour.” Under these quiet words lay a firmness of purpose that would have supported her to the stake if need were. She did not, on that occasion, tell Garrison that she had already admitted to her classes, not as a boarder, but as a day scholar, a very respectable young negro woman, whose family she knew well as members of the church which she herself attended. By this action she had given great offence to the “genteel” inhabitants of Canterbury. The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the town told her that if she retained “that coloured girl” the school would be ruined. Prudence replied, that though the school might be ruined she would not turn her scholar out. She soon discovered that many of her pupils would leave, not to return, if the coloured girl were retained, but this did not shake her resolution. She began to consider whether it would not be possible to have a school for coloured girls only; and upon this point, not saying anything of her own