If you choose to make it a personal matter, and
go to every trustee, you can have it." He meanwhile undertook, with Mr.
Hall, to put new placards over the old ones, notifying men quietly that
the meeting was to be held here, and distributed thousands and tens of
thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I
went to the trustees man by man. The majority of the trustees very
cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to
decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship. "You
and I will break, if you don't give me this permission." And they
signed. So the meeting glided from the Graham Institute to this house. A
great audience assembled. We had detectives in disguise, and every
arrangement made to handle the subject in a practical form if the crowd
should undertake to molest us. The Rev. Dr. R.S. Storrs consented to
come and pray, for Mr. Wendell Phillips was by marriage a near and
intimate friend and relation of his. The reporters were here; when were
they ever not?
Mr. Phillips began his lecture, and, you may depend upon it, by this
time the lion was in him, and he went careering on. Hie views were
extreme; he made them extravagant. I remember at one point--for he was a
man without bluster, serene, self-poised, never disturbed in the
least--he made an affirmation that was very bitter, and the cry arose
over the whole congregation. He stood still, with a cold, bitter smile
in his eye, and waited till they subsided, when he repeated it with more
emphasis.
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