"Put him out!"
Before Gerrit Smith could reach Evans with a gift of five dollars for the sick child which he still held in his arms the crowd had become a mob.
They hustled the labor leader into the street and told him to go back to hell where he came from.
Through it all John Brown sat on the platform with his blue-gray eyes fixed in space. He had seen, heard or realized nothing that had passed. His mind was brooding over the plains of Kansas.
CHAPTER XIII
It was October, 1854, before John Brown's three sons, Owen, Frederick and Salmon, left Ohio for their long journey to Kansas. In April, 1855, they crossed the Missouri river and entered the Territory.
John Brown decided to move his family once more to North Elba before going West. It was June before his people reached this negro settlement in Northern New York. He placed his wife and children in an unplastered, four-roomed house. Through its rough weatherboarding the winds and snows of winter would howl. It had been hurriedly thrown together by his son-in-law, Henry Thompson. Brown had never stayed on one of his little farms long enough to bring order out of chaos.
His restless spirit left him no peace. He was now in Boston, now in
Springfield, Massachusetts, now in New York, again in Ohio, or Illinois.
He was giving up the work in Ohio to follow his sons into Kansas. He had planned to move there two years before and abandoned the idea. He had at last fully determined to go.
On October the sixth, his party reached the family settlement at Osawatomie. With characteristic queerness the old man did not enter with his sons, Oliver, Jason and John, Jr., and their caravan. He stopped alone on the roadside two miles away until next day.