though the press shouted it at him from every corner, and though
the Mount Vernon Street conclave agreed with the press; yet he
could not plead ignorance, and even in the heat of the conflict,
he never cared to defend the coalition. Boy as he was, he knew
enough to know that something was wrong, but his only interest
was the election. Day after day, the General Court balloted; and
the boy haunted the gallery, following the roll-call, and
wondered what Caleb Cushing meant by calling Mr. Sumner a
"one-eyed abolitionist." Truly the difference in meaning with the
phrase "one-ideaed abolitionist," which was Mr. Cushing's actual
expression, is not very great, but neither the one nor the other
seemed to describe Mr. Sumner to the boy, who never could have
made the error of classing Garrison and Sumner together, or
mistaking Caleb Cushing's relation to either. Temper ran high at
that moment, while Sumner every day missed his election by only
one or two votes. At last, April 24, 1851, standing among the
silent crowd in the gallery, Henry heard the vote announced which
gave Sumner the needed number. Slipping under the arms of the
bystanders, he ran home as hard as he could, and burst into the
dining-room where Mr. Sumner was seated at table with the family.
He enjoyed the glory of telling Sumner that he was elected; it
was probably the proudest moment in the life of either.

The next day, when the boy went to school, he noticed numbers
of boys and men in the streets wearing black crepe on their arm.
He knew few Free Soil boys in Boston; his acquaintances were what
he called pro-slavery; so he thought proper to tie a bit of white
silk ribbon round his own arm by way of showing that his friend
Mr. Sumner was not wholly alone. This little piece of bravado
passed unnoticed; no one even cuffed his ears; but in later life