at times into no little embarrassment and difficulty. But since he was
always willing to work at the case, and to send his "pride on a
pilgrimage to Mecca," the embarrassment was not protracted, nor did the
difficulty prove insuperable.

The Congregational societies of Boston invited him in June to deliver
before them a Fourth of July address in the interest of the Colonization
Society. The exercises took place in Park Street Church. Ten days before
this event he was called upon to pay a bill of four dollars for failure
to appear at the May muster. Refusing to do so, he was thereupon
summoned to come into the Police Court on the glorious Fourth to show
cause why he ought not to pay the amercement. He was in a quandary. He
did not owe the money, but as he could not be in two places at the same
time, and, inasmuch as he wanted very much to deliver his address before
the Congregational Societies, and did not at all long to make the
acquaintance of his honor, the Police Court Judge, he determined to pay
the fine. But, alack and alas! he had "not a farthing" with which to
discharge him from his embarrassment. Fortunately, if he wanted money he
did not want friends. And one of these, Jacob Horton, of Newburyport,
who had married his "old friend and playmate, Harriet Farnham," came to
his rescue with the requisite amount.

On the day and place appointed Garrison appeared before the
Congregational Societies with an address, to the like of which, it is
safe to say, they had never before listened. It was the Fourth of July,
but the orator was in no holiday humor. There was not, in a single
sentence of the oration the slightest endeavor to be playful with his
audience. It was rather an eruption of human suffering, and of the
humanity of one man to man. What the Boston clergy saw that afternoon,
in the pulpit of Park Street Church, was the vision of a soul on fire.