I saw it in that old stone house, surrounded with its
beautiful garden, at Belleville, on the banks of the Passaic. I saw
it in that busy, bright, and cheery palace of true education at
Eagleswood, New Jersey. I have seen it here, in this Mecca of the wise.
Well done! Oh, well done!"
Mr. Wright was followed by Robert F. Walcutt, Lucy Stone, and Wendell
Phillips.
"The women of to-day," said Lucy Stone, "owe more than they will ever
know to the high courage, the rare insight, and fidelity to principle
of this woman, by whose suffering easy paths have been made for them.
Her example was a bugle-call to all other women. Who can tell how many
have been quickened in a great life purpose by the heroism and
self-forgetting devotion of her whose voice we shall never hear again,
but who, 'being dead, yet speaketh.'"
The remarks of Wendell Phillips were peculiarly affecting, and were
spoken with a tenderness which, for once at least, disproved the
assertion that his eloquence was wanting in pathos.
"Friends," he said, "this life carries us back to the first chapter of
that great movement with which her name is associated,--to 1835, '36,
'37, '38, when our cities roared with riot, when William Lloyd
Garrison was dragged through the streets, when Dresser was mobbed in
Nashville, and Macintosh burned in St. Louis. At that time, the hatred
toward abolitionists was so bitter and merciless that the friends of
Lovejoy left his grave long time unmarked; and at last ventured to
put, with his name, on his tombstone, only this piteous entreaty: _Jam
Parce Sepulto_, 'Spare him now in his grave.'
"As Friend Wright has said, we were but a handful, and our words beat
against the stony public as powerless as if against the north wind. We
got no sympathy from most northern men: their consciences were seared
as with a hot iron. At this time a young woman came from the proudest
State in the slave-holding section. She came to lay on the altar of
this despised cause, this seemingly hopeless crusade, both family and
friends, the best social position, a high place in the church, genius,
and many gifts. No man at this day can know the gratitude we felt for
this help from such an unexpected source. After this[9] came James G.
Birney from the South, and many able and influential men and women
joined us. At last John Brown laid his life, the crowning sacrifice,
on the altar of the cause. But no man who remembers 1837 and its
lowering clouds will
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