chusetts.

He and Ann talked this over at length--they had little else to do. They
excommunicated society, and Wendell Phillips became an outlaw, in the
same way that the James boys became outlaws--through accident, and not
through choice. Social disgrace is never sought, and obloquy is not a
thing to covet--these things may come, and usually they mean a
smother-blanket to all worldly success. But Ann and Wendell had their
love; and each had a bank-account, and then they had a pride that proved
a prophylactic 'gainst the clutch of oblivion.

On October Twelfth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven, the outlaws, Ann and
Wendell, were married. It was a quiet wedding--guests were not invited
because it was not pleasant to court cynical regrets, and kinsmen were
noticeable by their absence.

Proscription has its advantages--for one thing, it binds human hearts
like hoops of steel. Yet it was not necessary here, for there was no
waning of the honeymoon during that forty-odd years of married life.

But scarcely had the petals fallen from the orange-blossoms before an
event occurred that marked another milestone in the career of Phillips.

At Saint Louis, the Reverend E. P. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian clergyman,
had been mobbed and his printing-office sacked, because he had expressed
himself on the subject of slavery. Lovejoy then moved up to Alton,
Illinois, on the other side of the river, on free soil, and here he
sought to re-establish his newspaper.

But he was to benefit the cause in another way than by printing
editorials. The place was attacked, the presses broken into fragments,
the type flung into the Mississippi River, and Lovejoy was killed.

A tremor of horror ran through the North--it was not the question of
slavery--no, it was the right of free speech.

A meeting was called at Faneuil Hall to consider the matter and pass
fitting resolutions. There was something beautifully ironical in Boston
interesting herself concerning the doings of a mob a thousand miles
away, especially when Boston, herself, had done about the same thing
only two years before.

Boston preferred to forget--but somebody would not let her. Just who
called the meeting, no one seemed to know. The word "Abolition" was not
used on the placards--"free speech" was the shibboleth. The hall had
been leased, and the assembly was to occur in the forenoon. The
principal actors evidently anticipated serious trouble if the meeting
was at night.

The author