His eloquence was a flight of arrows, sentence after sentence
polished, and most of them burning. He slung them one after the other,
and where they struck they slew. Always elegant, always awful. I think
his scorn is and was as fine as I ever knew it in any human being. He
had that sublime sanctuary in his pride that made him almost insensitive
to what would by other men be considered obloquy. It was as if he said
every day in himself: "I am not what they are firing at. I am not there,
and I am not that. It is not against me. I am infinitely superior to
what they think me to be. They do not know me." It was quiet and
unpretentious, but it was there. Conscience and pride were the two
concurrent elements of his nature.
THE MOB-BEATEN HERO TRIUMPHANT.
He lived to see the slave emancipated, but not by moral means. He lived
to see the sword cut the fetter. After this had taken place, he was too
young to retire, though too old to gather laurels of literature or to
seek professional honors. The impulse of humanity was not at all abated.
His soul still flowed on for the great under-masses of mankind, though,
like the Nile, it split up into scores of mouths, and not all of them
were navigable. After a long and stormy life his sun went down in glory.
All the English-speaking people on the globe have written among the
names that shall never die the name of that scoffed, detested,
mob-beaten, persecuted wretch--Wendell Phillips.
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