e stay his hand, but struck again and again the
prostrate and now insensible form of Mr. Sumner with a fragment of the
stick.

In the midst of this frightful scene where were the overturned desk,
pieces of the broken stick, scattered writing materials, and the
blood-stained carpet, lay that noble figure unconscious alike of pain and
of his enemies, and of the awful horror of it all. There he lay in the
senate chamber of the Republic with blood on his head and face and
clothing, with blood, now martyr's blood, running from many wounds and
sinking into the floor. Oh! the pity of it, but the sacrificial grandeur
of it also! He was presently succored by Henry Wilson and other faithful
friends, and borne to a sofa in the lobby of the Senate where doctors
dressed his wounds, and thence he was carried to his lodgings. There
suffering, bewildered, almost speechless, he spent the first night of the
tragedy and of his long years of martyrdom.

On the wings of that tragedy Sumner rose to an enduring place in the
pantheon of the nation. His life became thenceforth associated with the
weal of States, his fate with the fortunes of a great people. The toast
of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table at the banquet of the Massachusetts
Medical Society about this time gave eloquent expression to the general
concern: "To the Surgeons of the City of Washington: God grant them
wisdom! for they are dressing the wounds of a mighty empire, and of
uncounted generations." The mad act of Brooks had done for Sumner what
similar madness had done for similar victims--magnified immensely his
influence secured forever his position as an imposing, historic figure.
Ah! it was indeed the old, wonderful story. The miracle of miracles was
again performed, the good man's blood had turned into the seed-corn of his
cause.

No need to retell the tale of his long and harrowing fight for health.
There were two sprains of the spine, besides the terrible blows on the
head. From land to land, during four years, he passed, pursuing "the
phantom of a cup that comes and goes." As a last resort he submitted
himself to the treatment by fire, to the torture of the Moxa, which Dr.
Brown-Sequard pronounced "the greatest suffering that can be inflicted on
mortal man." His empty chair, Massachusetts, great mother and nurse of
heroes (God give her ever in her need and the Country's such another son)
would not fill. Vacant it glared, voicing as no lips could utter her
eloquent