On another occasion Professor Child was discoursing to his class on
oratory and mentioned the fact that Webster and Choate both came from
Dartmouth; that Wendell Phillips graduated at Harvard, but the university
had not seen much of him since. At the mention of Wendell Phillips some
of the boys from pro-slavery families began to sneer. Professor Child
raised himself up and said determinedly, "Wendell Phillips is as good an
orator as either of them!" He was chagrined, however, at Phillips's later
public course,--his support of Socialism and General Butler. Neither did
he like Phillips's Phi Beta Kappa oration, in which he advocated the
dagger and dynamite for tyrants. "A tyrant," said Professor Child, "is
what anyone chooses to imagine. My hired man may consider me a tyrant and
blow me up according to Mr. Phillips's principle." The assassins of
Garfield and McKinley evidently supposed that they were ridding the earth
of two of the worst tyrants that ever existed. Professor Child was
exceptionally liberal. He even supported Woman Suffrage for a time, but
he held Socialism in a kind of holy horror,--such as one feels of a
person who is always making blunders.

In 1878 Professor Child and some other political reformers were elected
to a Congressional convention and went with the hope of securing a
candidate who would represent the educated classes,--the incumbent at
that time being a shoe manufacturer. They argued and worked hard all day,
but without success. Late in the afternoon the shoe manufacturer, a
worthy man but very ignorant, who afterwards became governor of the
State, was renominated; and when it was proposed to make the nomination
unanimous Professor Child called out such an emphatic No that it seemed
to shake the whole assembly. Not content with this he entered a protest
next day in the Boston _Advertiser_. He was so much used up by the
exertion that he was unable to attend to his classes. Some years later he
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing his candidate, Theodore Lyman,