great measure he separated himself from men, and carried on his work alone. In spite of his magnificent moral strength and the fact that all the men who came close to him, after the anti-slavery movement fully fired him, at once recognized his power, he never had above twenty-two men attached to his cause and person! Here was the sifting process of Gideon carried farther than Gideon carried it. The thing which we ordinarily call ambition should, first of all, have sent him on his revolutionary way earlier; and after that it should have put into him at least something of the craft which wins crowds.
In Springfield, Brown either fell in with, or else assembled, a circle of ciolored men, part of them refugees from slavery, and others presumably the bright Northern mulattoes who were eager to do what they could for the freedom of their brothers in the South, though apparently they could not bring
