awned and swallowed him up."

The whole nation was wrought to fever heat.

Between the Northern pioneers and Southern chivalry the struggle was
long and fierce, even in far California. The drama culminated in the
shock of civil war. When the war was ended, and, after thirty-five
years of untiring, heroic conflict, Garrison was invited as the
nation's guest, by President Lincoln, to see the stars and stripes
unfurled once more above Fort Sumter, an emancipated slave delivered
the address of welcome, and his two daughters, no longer chattels in
appreciation presented Garrison with a beautiful wreath of flowers.

About this time Richard Cobden, another powerful friend of the
oppressed, died in London.

His father had died leaving nine children almost penniless. The boy
earned his living by watching a neighbor's sheep, but had no chance to
attend school until he was ten years old. He was sent to a
boarding-school, where he was abused, half starved, and allowed to
write home only once in three months. At fifteen he entered his
uncle's store in London as a clerk. He learned French by rising early
and studying while his companions slept. He was soon sent out in a gig
as a commercial traveler.

He called upon John Bright to enlist his aid in fighting the terrible
"Corn-Laws" which were taking bread from the poor and giving it to the
rich. He found Mr. Bright in great grief, for his wife was lying dead
in the house.

"There are thousands of homes in England at this moment," said Richard
Cobden, "where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Now,
when the first paroxysm of grief is passed, I would advise you to come
with me, and we will never rest until the Corn-Laws are repealed."
Cobden could no longer see the poor man's bread stopped at the
Custom-House and taxed for the benefit of the landlord and farmer, and
he threw his whole soul into this great reform. "This is not a party
question," said he, "for men of all parties are united upon it. It is
a pantry question,--a question between the working millions and the
aristocracy." They formed the "Anti-Corn-Law League," which, aided by
the Irish famine,--for it was hunger that at last ate through those
stone walls of protection,--secured the repeal of the law in 1846. Mr.
Bright said: "There is not in Great Britain a poor man's home that has
not a bigger, better, and cheaper loaf through Richard Cobden's labors."

John Bright himself was the son of a