Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer, fiercer waxed the multitude; more and more frightful became the uproar.
The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists had broken loose at last and the deluge had come.

The mayor tossed upon the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also.
Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as powerless as the mayor and the police below.

Miss Mary S.Parker, the president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises.

She has called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some passages from the Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and Merciful One "for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and revilers." It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous.

But now the rioters have thrown themselves against the partition between the landing-place and the hall.