She was the wife of Wendell Phillips, the noted
Anti-Slavery lecturer.
"My wife made me an Abolitionist," said Phillips. How the work was
done is not without its romantic interest.
It was several years before he made his meteoric appearance before the
public as a platform talker, and while yet a law student, that
Phillips met the lady in question. The interview, as described by one
of the parties, certainly had its comical aspect. "I talked
Abolitionism to him all the time we were together," said Mrs.
Phillips, as she afterwards related the affair. Phillips listened, and
that he was not surfeited nor disgusted appears from the fact that he
went again and again for that sort of entertainment.
When Phillips asked for her hand, as the story goes, she asked him if
he was fully persuaded to be a friend of the slave, leaving him to
infer that their union was otherwise impossible.
"My life shall attest the sincerity of my conversion," was his gallant
reply.
CHAPTER XIV
MOBS
In his _Recollections_, the Rev. Samuel T. May, who was one of the
most faithful and zealous of the Anti-Slavery pioneers, and belonged
to that band of devoted workers who were known as Abolition lecturers,
tells of his experience in delivering an Anti-Slavery address in the
sober New England city of Haverhill.
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