Gradually Douglass’ work reclaimed him. Nothing had been neglected at the office. Helen Pitts was now a Senior Clerk there. Everyone had cooperated in seeing that the work went on. His unfailing courtesy had endeared him to the whole staff. He stopped in several times during winter for tea with Miss Amelia. The little old lady, grown very frail, kept a special biscuit “put by” for him. Jack Haley came in once and joined them. He kept Douglass talking quite late, for even after all these years Jack recalled the first long nights of his own loneliness. Then the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, and Frederick Douglass leaped into the fray. He called a protest mass meeting at Lincoln Hall. “If it is a bill for social equality,” Douglass said, opening the meeting, “so is the Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men have equal rights; so is the Sermon on the Mount; so is the golden rule that commands us to do to others as we would that others should do to us; so is the teaching of the Apostle that of one blood God has made all nations to dwell on the face of the earth; so is the Constitution of the United States, and so are the laws and the customs of every civilized country in the world; for nowhere, outside of the United States, is any man denied civil rights on account of his color.” He stood silent until the applause had died away, and introduced “the defender of the rights of men.” The speech Robert Ingersoll made comes down to us as one of the great legal defenses of all time. The voice was the voice of Robert Ingersoll, but as Douglass listened he heard the clear call of Daniel O’Connell, the fervent passion of Theodore Parker, the dauntless courage of William Lloyd Garrison. Sparks “flashing from each to each!” So Frederick Douglass spoke the following winter when Wendell Phillips died. All Boston tried to crowd into Faneuil Hall for the memorial to this great “friend of man.” Douglass was chosen to deliver the address. “He is not dead as long as one man lives who loves his fellow-men, who strives for justice, and whose heart beats to the tread of marching feet.” * * * * * In the spring the women, gathered in their Sixteenth National Suffrage Convention, paid tribute to Wendell Phillips, and Douglass heard Miss Helen Pitts speak briefly. When he rose he made his “co-worker and former townswoman” a pretty compliment. The women on the platform smiled their approval at Helen. In the summer Douglass went out on a speaking tour. The 1884 election was approaching, and throughout the country voices were questioning the party in power. Bloody crimes and outrages in the South, betrayal of all the principles and ideals of Abraham Lincoln, had not won over the Southern white vote. Negroes in the North--in some doubtful states their votes were important--began to leave “Lincoln’s Party.”