But amid labors so strenuous and uninterrupted the leader found opportunity to woo and win “a fair ladye.”  She was a daughter of a veteran Abolitionist, George Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn., who with his sons George W. and Henry E. Benson, were among the stanchest of the reformer’s followers and supporters.  The young wife, before her marriage, was not less devoted to the cause than they.  She was in closest sympathy with her husband’s anti-slavery interests and purposes.  Never had husband found wife better fitted to his needs, and the needs of his life work.  So that it might be truly said that Garrison even when he went a-wooing forgot not his cause and that when he took a wife, he made at the same time a grand contribution to its ultimate triumph.

How did Helen Eliza Garrison serve the great cause?  One who knew shall tell.  He has told it in his own unequaled way.  “That home,” he says, “was a great help.  Her husband’s word and pen scattered his purpose far and wide; but the comrades that his ideas brought to his side her welcome melted into friends.  No matter how various and discordant they were in many things—­no matter how much there was to bear and overlook—­her patience and her thanks for their sympathy in the great idea were always sufficient for the work also....  In that group of remarkable men and women which the anti-slavery movement drew together, she had her own niche—­which no one else could have filled so perfectly or unconsciously as she did....  She forgot, omitted nothing.  How much we all owe her!” These were words spoken by a friend, whose name will appear later on in this story; words spoken by him at the close of her beautiful life, as she lay dead in her coffin.

And here is another account of her written by the husband on the first anniversary of their marriage:  “I did not marry her,” he confides to her brother George, “expecting that she would assume a prominent station in the anti-slavery cause, but for domestic quietude and happiness.  So completely absorbed am I in that cause, that it was undoubtedly wise in me to select as a partner one who, while her benevolent feelings were in union with mine, was less immediately and entirely connected with it.  I knew she was naturally diffident, and distrustful of her own ability to do all that her heart might prompt.  She is one of those who prefer to toil unseen—­to give by stealth—­and to sacrifice in seclusion.  By her unwearied attention to my wants, her sympathetic regards, her perfect equanimity of mind, and her sweet and endearing manners; she is no trifling support to Abolitionism, inasmuch as she lightens my labors, and enables me to find exquisite delight in the family circle, as an offset to public adversity.”

And here is a lovely bit of self-revelation made to her betrothed several months before they were wedded.  “I am aware of the responsibility that will devolve upon me,” she writes, “and how much my example will be copied among that class you have so long labored to elevate and enlighten.  I have been considering how the colored people think of dress, and how much of their profits are expended for useless ornaments that foolishly tend to make a show and parade.  As much stress will, of course, be laid on Garrison’s wife by that class, it behooves me to be very circumspect in all things, when called upon to fill so important a station.”