k, manly, decided manner
and carriage, would at once arrest the eye of a stranger, as it did
that of Bart, who knew that he saw a remarkable man. The head was
turned, so that the light fell upon the face, giving it strong light
and shadow in the Rembrandt style; and Bart studied and contemplated
it at great advantage.

He tried to reproduce the recent scene in the Ohio Senate, in which
Wade performed so conspicuous a part. It was in the worst of the
bad days of Northern subserviency to slavery, which now seem
almost phantasmagorical; when, at the command of the Kentucky State
Commissioners, the grovelling majority of the Ohio Legislature
prostrated the State abjectly in the dust beneath its feet, it was
demanded that no man of African blood should be permitted to remain in
the State unless some responsible white man should become bail for his
good conduct, and that he should never become a public charge.

The bill was about to be put on its final passage in the Senate, by a
majority made up of men so revoltingly servile, that even such infamy
failed to preserve their names. "Tin Pan" had decreed that a vote
should be taken before adjournment for the night, and the debate ran
into the deep hours. Gregg Powers, a tall, dark-haired, black-eyed,
black-browed young senator, from Akron, had just pronounced a fervent,
indignant, sarcastic and bitter phillipic against it, when, after
midnight, Wade arose, with angry brow and flashing eye. Argument and
logic were out of place; appeals to honor could not be comprehended
by men shameless by nature, abject by instinct, and infamous by habit,
and who cared nothing for the fame of their common State. Wade,
at white heat, turned on them a mingled torrent of sarcasm, scorn,
contempt, irony, scoffing, and derision, hot, seething, hissing,
blistering, and consuming. He then turned to the haughty and insolent
Commissioners of slavery, who were present, that the abasement of
the State might lack no mark or brand, and with an air haughtier and
prouder than their own, defied them. He declared himself their mortal
foe, and cast the gauntlet contemptuously into their faces. He told
them they would meet him again in the coming bitter days, and with
prodigious force, predicted the extirpation of slavery. Nobody called
him to order; nobody interrupted him; and when he closed his awful
phillipic, nobody tried to reply. The vote was taken, and the bill
passed into a law. And as Bart called up the