Garrison had not only found a true poet, but a true friend as well, in the Quaker lad, John Greenleaf Whittier.  The friendship which sprang up between the two was to last during the lifetime of the former.  Neither of them in those days of small things could have possibly by any flight of the imagination foreseen how their two lives, moving in parallel lines, would run deep their shining furrows through one of the greatest chapters of human history.  But I am anticipating, and that is a vice of which no good storyteller ought to be guilty.  So, then, let me incontinently return from this excursion and pursue the even tenor of my tale.

Garrison had stepped down from his elevated position as the publisher and editor of the Free Press.  He was without work, and, being penniless, it behooved him to find some means of support.  With the instinct of the bright New England boy, he determined to seek his fortunes in Boston.  If his honesty and independence put him at a disadvantage, as publisher and editor, in the struggle for existence, he had still his trade as a compositor to fall back upon As a journeyman printer he would earn his bread, and preserve the integrity of an upright spirit.  And so without a murmur, and with cheerfulness and persistency, he hunted for weeks on the streets of Boston for a chance to set types.  This hunting for a job in a strange city was discouraging enough.  Twice before had he visited the place, which was to be his future home.  Once when on his way to Baltimore to see his mother, and once afterward when on a sort of pleasure tramp with three companions.  But the slight knowledge which he was able to obtain of the town and its inhabitants under these circumstances did not now help him, when from office to office he went in quest of something to do.  After many failures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, an opportunity to practice his trade.  Business was dull, which kept our journeyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at another printing office we find him setting types for a living during the year 1827.  The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was not ashamed to work, neither was he afraid of hard work.  During this year, he found time to take a hand in a little practical politics.  There was in July, 1827, a caucus of the Federal party to nominate a successor to Daniel Webster in the House of Representatives.  Young Garrison attended this caucus, and made havoc of its cut and dried programme, by moving the nomination of Harrison Gray Otis, instead of the candidate, a Mr. Benjamin Gorham, agreed upon by the leaders.  Harrison Gray Otis was one of Garrison’s early and particular idols.  He was, perhaps, the one Massachusetts politician whom the young Federalist had placed on a pedestal.  And so on this occasion he went into the caucus with a written speech in his hat, eulogistic of his favorite.  He had meant to have the speech at his tongue’s end, and to get it off as if on the spur of the moment.