In Wendell Phillips, at last, the scornful world met its match, for he was fully capable of meeting scorn with superior scorn, and retorting on contempt with contempt, and he stood as high above the fear of man that bringeth a snare, as any of the most unworldly of his Puritan grandfathers. The little band of Abolitionists that gathered around him and Garrison, men and women, were every one of them heroes. They were of the old revolutionary stock of Boston, and every way worthy of their lineage, and there was need enough it should be so, for the struggle was no inconsiderable one--it was for life and death. Cast out of society, looked on as the off-scouring of the earth, hemmed in everywhere with slanders, often alienated from friends once the dearest and most admiring, laboring almost alone with an incessant and exhausting zeal, some of more delicate organization sunk under the trial, and may be said to have given their lives to the cause. Wendell Phillips speaks of them feelingly in one of his later speeches, delivered on the anniversary of the Boston Mob: "Many of those who met in this hall at that time are gone. They died as Whittier well says-- 'Their brave hearts breaking slow, But self-forgetful to the last, In words of cheer and bugle glow, Their breath upon the darkness past.' "In those days, as we gathered around their graves, and resolved that the narrower the circle became the closer we would draw together, we envied the dead their rest. Men ceased to slander them in that sanctuary; and as we looked forward to the desolate vista of calamity and trial before us, and thought of the temptations which beset us on either side, from worldly prosperity which a slight sacrifice of principle might secure, or social ease so close at hand, by only a little turning aside, we almost envied the dead the quiet sleep to which we left them--the harvest reaped, and the seal set beyond the power of change." The career of Phillips in those days was often amid threats of personal violence. Assassination, the favorite argument of slavery, was held up before him, and the recent death of Lovejoy showed that the threat was not an empty one. At home, his house, in turn with that of other leading abolitionists, was threatened with incendiary violence, notwithstanding it was the shelter of an invalid wife, whose frail life often seemed to hang on a thread. From that shaded and secluded invalid chamber, however, came no weak prayers or faltering purposes, for a braver, higher heart was never given to human being than the one that beat there. In the darkest and most dangerous hours, from that sick room came words of hope and cheer and inspiration, prompt ever to bid him go where the cause called for him, and strengthening him by buoyant fearlessness and high religious trust. Such women are a true inspiration to men.