Every door was shut to him. If he was born under circumstances that
admitted him to the best society, he was the black sheep of the family.
If he aspired by fidelity, industry, and genius, to good society, he was
debarred. "An Abolitionist" was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any
young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of
age. It was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was
enough to expel a man from Church communion, if he insisted on praying
in the prayer-meeting for the liberation of the slaves. The Church was
dumb in the North, not in the West. The great publishing societies that
were sustained by the contributions of the Churches were absolutely
dumb.
"WHO IS THIS FELLOW?"
It was at the beginning of this Egyptian era in America that the young
aristocrat of Boston appeared. His blood came through the best colonial
families. He was an aristocrat by descent and by nature; a noble one,
but a thorough aristocrat. All his life and power assumed that guise. He
was noble; he was full of kindness to inferiors; he was willing to be,
and do, and suffer for them; but he was never of them, nor equaled
himself to them. He was always above them, and his gifts of love were
always the gifts of a prince to his subjects. All his life long he
resented every attack on his person and on his honor, as a noble
aristocrat would. When they poured the filth of their imaginations upon
him, he cared no more for it than the eagle cares what the fly is
thinking about him away down under the cloud.
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