Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 4

[324] against a rainy day than for present need, for they remained unopened in his closet. Or, if not unopened, their contents were frequently very slightly diminished, for my father carried his immediatism into medicine: it was instant relief he sought, and he was impatient of gradual recovery. A few doses determined him. In May, 1836, he wrote to my mother from Providence, of¹ being about to visit a botanical doctor, ‘having more willingness to try a new medicine than faith in its efficacy.’ ‘It may do me good,’ he added; ‘it certainly will not if I do not try it.’ There was in this experimenting a trace of both the Yankee and the reformer, and I class it with my father's fondness for labor-saving inventions, which he indulged, in a spirit of domestic benevolence, as freely as his means would permit.

The name of gentleman, like that of Christian, is sadly abused; but if my father did not deserve to bear both the one and the other, there is no reason why the world should cherish either. The root of gentlemanliness, as of Christianity, is in the preferment of others to self, and I cannot believe that any human being ever lived in whom this affection was more innate, more constant, or more gracious, than in this ‘infidel of a most degraded class.’ There² was no creature wearing God's image to whom he had to condescend, none before whom he felt abashed because of wealth or station. A simple dignity, free from self-consciousness, marked his carriage in any society—and abroad he was received with respect by all classes. At home, he saved his wife and the one maid-of-all-work the heavier burdens of lifting and carrying, taking water and wood to the upper stories of the house, attending to the furnace till his children could relieve him, and the like. Had he a guest, he would black his shoes for him with the same readiness that he would show him about the city. In short, he performed as a part of his religion those menial services which Calhoun, in a famous conversation³ with J. Q. Adams, drew the line at, as impossible for