I will now describe the leader of the mob—­Henry C. Hibbard.  I will do it in short.  This man is a clumsy-fisted, double jointed, burly-headed personage, about six feet in height, with a countenance commingling in expression the utmost ferocity and cunning.  Hibbard is not a fool—­but a knave.  He is essentially a low bred man, and vulgar to the heart’s core.

Some idea of the calibre of the man may be had in the fact that in his published Article in defense of the mob, he makes use of such expressions as “g’hals,” “g’halhood” and the like.

He has great perseverance of character as is evinced in the fact that though I was several days behind the time at which I was expected to arrive in Fulton, he or his deputies never failed to be daily at the Cars so as to watch my arrival, and thus be in season with the onslaught.

This man set himself up, and was indeed so received by the Elder and Mrs. King as their friend, counsellor, and adviser.  A confirmation this, of what I have already said about the commingling of the “respectable” and the base.  His mobocratic movements, however, it is but just to say, were unknown to the Elder and his wife until after the onslaught had been made.  Mrs. King however did not deprecate the mob until its history had become somewhat unpopular, by reason of many of the “respectable” men becoming ashamed at last that they had been found in such company as Hibbard’s.  And even the Elder himself, though he deprecated the mob, still characterized it as the “just indignation of the public.”

Hibbard, I have already said, published a written defence of the mob.  The article was headed “The Mary Rescue.”—­and a most remarkable document it was—­remarkable, however, only for its intense vulgarity, its absurd contradictions, and its ridiculous attempts at piety and poetry.

Me, he describes as the “Professor of Charms” and “Charming Professor,” once—­the “tawney charmer.”

Hibbard’s article is not by me; and, if it were, its defilement is such that I could not be tempted to give it at length.  Laughable and lamentable as the article is in the main, I still thank Hibbard for some portions of it, and especially for that one which substantiates the charge which I have brought against the “respectable men of Fulton.”  Thus ends the mob.

CHAPTER V.

DARK DAYS.

Reader, I am now to describe the events of the two weeks which followed the Fulton onslaught; and I can assure you that language has yet to be invented in which to write in its fullness what, when the children of certain parents shall look back fifty years hence, they will regard as the darkest deeds recorded in the history of their ancestors.

Diabolical as was the mob, yet the shameful and outrageous persecution to which Miss King was subjected during those memorable weeks, at the hands of her relatives and the Fulton Community, sinks it (the mob) into utter significance.  How the human beings who so outraged an inoffensive young lady can dare call themselves christians, is to me a mystery which I, at least, shall never be able wholly to explain.