But he was to have a potent ally in Wendell Phillips, the explanation of
whose career is in his birth gifts. One of his ancestors was a Cambridge
graduate, who rebelled against the tyranny of Charles, and exchanged
wealth and position for a New England wilderness. It was one of his
forefathers who was the first mayor of Boston. Another founded Phillips
Exeter Academy. Wendell Phillips himself began his career at the moment
when Madison's State Papers had won him the presidency, when John Adams
was the glory of the city, when Channing was the light of the pulpit,
and Lyman Beecher was the idol of orthodox Boston. He was in his early
teens when he waited four hours on a Boston wharf to see Lafayette's
boat come in. He was thirteen when he heard Daniel Webster's oration on
Adams and Jefferson. He was sixteen when he entered Harvard College, and
formed his lifelong friendship with his roommate, John Lothrop Motley.
He studied law with Charles Sumner, in the office of Judge Story, a
legal star of the first magnitude. He was counted one of the handsomest
youths in Boston. There was nothing too bright or too hard for Wendell
Phillips to aspire to, or hope for. At the critical moment, when he had
to decide upon his future career, ambition sang to him, as to every
noble youth. George William Curtis represents Phillips as sometimes
forecasting the future, as he saw himself "succeeding Ames, and Otis and
Webster, rising from the bar to the Legislature, from the Legislature to
the Senate, from the Senate--who knows whither? He was already the idol
of society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion of the eloquent
refinement and the conservatism of Massachusetts. The delight of social
ease, the refined enjoyment of taste and letters and art, opulence,
leisure, professional distinction, gratified ambition, all offered
bribes to the young student." The measure of his manhood is in the way
he thrust aside all honours and emoluments that stood in the path of
duty. Only he who knows what he renounces gains the true blessing of