THE GREELEY CAMPAIGN -1872 163 



Syracuse, a friend and associate of Emerson, Garrison, \/ 

 Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and one of the noblest, truest, and 

 most beautiful characters I have ever known. 



Having seen the end of slavery, and being about eighty 

 years of age, he felt deeply that his work was done, and 

 thenceforward declared that he was happy in the idea 

 that his life on this planet was soon to end. I have never 

 seen, save in the case of the Hicksite Quaker at Ann 

 Arbor, referred to elsewhere, such a living faith in the 

 reality of another world. Again and again Mr. May said 

 to me in the most cheerful way imaginable, ' ' I am as much 

 convinced of the existence of a future state as of these 

 scenes about me, and, to tell you the truth, now that my 

 work here is ended, I am becoming very curious to know 

 what the next stage of existence is like." On the after- 

 noon of the 1st of July I paid him a visit, found him much 

 wearied by a troublesome chronic complaint, but con- 

 tented, cheerful, peaceful as ever. 



Above him as he lay in his bed was a portrait which I 

 had formerly seen in his parlor. Thereby hung a curious 

 tale. Years before, at the very beginning of Mr. May's 

 career, he had been a teacher in the town of Canterbury, 

 Connecticut, when Miss Prudence Crandall was persecuted, 

 arrested, and imprisoned for teaching colored children. 

 Mr. May had taken up her case earnestly, and, with the aid 

 of Mr. Lafayette Foster, afterward president of the United 

 States Senate, had fought it out until the enemies of Miss 

 Crandall were beaten. As a memorial of this activity of 

 his, Mr. May received this large, well painted portrait of 

 Miss Crandall, and it was one of his most valued pos- 

 sessions. 



On the afternoon referred to, after talking about vari- 

 ous other matters most cheerfully, and after I had told 

 him that we could not spare him yet, that we needed him at 

 least ten years longer, he laughingly said, " Can't you 

 compromise on one year?" "No," I said, "nothing less 

 than ten years." Thereupon he laughed pleasantly, called 

 his daughter, Mrs. Wilkinson, and said, "Remember; 



