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Show Wendell Phillips HAD Wendell Phillips lived until today'he M would have been ninety-eight years old. M He won a great- name in his lifetime, but M it seems like a long time since he died. It Is M twenty-five years since he passed away; but. he M then had won his great name. And yet it lacks fl two years of a hundred since he was born. That M proves that an ordinary life Is long enough in M which to accomplish something if a mortal works M and has genius. Phillips surely had genius. He H was one of that great circle of New Englanders , JjL M which gave a special radiance to their section J' M between the first and last quarter of the last. ' M century. Among them all he was acknowledged fl the foremost orator. On the platform he could M sway men as the tempest sways .the forest. He f fl was a born fanatic. He grew up In BoatanV """B graduated from Harvard and studied law". 'But j wM he would not practice his profession. The con- M stitution made property in slaves as sacred as M any other form of property, hence ho , would M never .take . an . oath, to support that constitu 1 tion. Boston had large and Intimate relations ( wM H ! with the Southern states, and naturally aboli- H tlonlsts were unpopular In that city. One day H I. Phillips saw on of these abused and the germ H i, in his soul burst at once Into full life, and ho H n made his first abolition speech. It was tipped II with fire and thenceforth for thirty year? he ; demanded freedom for the slave. ' When the war finally came, he like Sumner and Greeley was impatient, Impatient at Lincoln, ; impatient at Grant, though the one was stag- M gerlng under such burdens as no President had B 1 over before been called upon to bear, and the B other was wrestling with the problem of how B ; to conquer a people with the mightiest revolu- B: tion and the bravest armies pitted against him B1! '., that the world had ever seen. B . When peace finally came Phillips would have B awakened another war to cut restitution assun- B der with the sword. He was an impractical Bj fanatic. The last years of his life were spent B as are those of the toothless lion. He could Hlj roar sometimes, but as a rule he contented hlm- H; self with giving forth dissatisfied growls. H j But in his prime he was eloquence incarnate, H; nnd sometimes he had a presence that was H ' startling. Hear this! "Solomon's Temple they 't tell us had the best system of lightning rods HJ ever invented he anticipated Franklin. Do you H ' suppose if Solomon lived now he would stop H J at lightning conductors? No, ho would have H telegraphs without wires, able to send mes- H, i sages "both ways at the same timfe and where H only he who sent and he who received should H1 know what the messages were." H Of the New England Puritans he said: "What Hi the Puritans gave the world was not thought H but action. Europe had Ideas but she was let- H ting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,' like the H cat In the adage. The Pilgrims with native pluck H launched out Into the deep sea. Men, who had H called themselves thinkers, had been creeping M along the Mediterranean, from headland to head- H land, in their timidity. The Pilgrims launched Hl boldly out in the Atlantic and trusted God. That Hi Is the claim they have upon posterity." H Of Plymouth Rock he said: "The rock un- K derlies all America, it only crop3 out here. It Bj has cropped out a great many UmeB in our his- B tory. You may recognize it always. Old Put- B nam stood upon it at Bunker Hill, when ho said B to the Yankee boys, 'Don't fire until you seo B the whites of their eyes.' Ingraham had it B for ballast when he put his little sloop between B two Austrian frigates and threatened to blow B them out of the water if they did not respect B the broad eagle of the United States in the case B of Kosztn. Jefferson had It for a writing desk B when he drafted the Declaration of Indepen- B dence, and the Statute of Religious Liberty for B Virginia. Lovejoy rested his musket upon 1 It when they would not let him print at Alton B and he said, 'Death or Free Speech.'" B And again: "The Puritans believed that Insti- H tutlons were mado for man. Europe established B a civilization, which like Greece, mado the state B everything. The man was made for the institu- B tlons, the man was made for the clothes. The Puritans said, 'Now, let us go out and make clothes for the man, let us make Institutions for men!' That is the radical principle, it seems to me, which runs through , 1 their liberty. Down through all the weary years of colonial 'history to the period ,of the Revolution, the Puritan pulse beat In unquaillng, never-faltering allegiance to the principle of the sacredness of man. Let us hold on to it, It is to be our salvation." sal-vation." Wihen God became tired of the institution ot slavery and began to set the stage and call the acts of the great tragedy, the dissolving view of which at its close was to picture the death of slavery and the rising sun of a higher liberty for the United States, Wendell Phillips was one of the first star actors that was called. |