Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

Many of the buildings along the line of the procession were decorated with festoons, banners, and appropriate mottoes, such as, “Welcome, freedom's defender;” “Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God;” “Massachusetts loves, honors, will sustain and defend, her noble Sumner.”

At one point in the route, a large company of elegantly-dressed young ladies with bouquets and waving handkerchiefs bade him welcome. A vast concourse of people awaited him in front of the Capitol, where he was received on a platform erected for the purpose, and presented in an eloquent speech by Prof. F. D. Huntington to Gov. Henry J. Gardner and his staff.

To words of generous welcome extended to him by the governor, he made a touching and appropriate reply, in the course of which he said, “My soul overflows, especially to the young men of Boston, out of whose hearts, as from an exuberant fountain, this broad hospitality took its rise.” In referring to his colleague, Mr. Wilson, he said, “It is my special happiness to recognize his unfailing sympathies for myself, and his manly assumption of all ”