Again I said yes, and the door closed and he was gone. Often as I had seen Phillips on the platform it seemed to me I had never seen him till then. A clear, strong, dry north light came in at the windows and illuminated his face and figure. He had the bearing of a man to whom authority and sweetness of nature belonged in like degree. He has been called a thousand times the Apollo of the platform. An Apollo he was not except in graceful dignity and demeanour. It his masculine beauty appeared to derive from Greece, it had become Græco-Roman, and finally borrowed its blonde colouring from some Scandinavian Balder.
So careless was he of mere conventionality that while he stood in the doorway, or just inside, the soft light grey felt hat he wore, since known as a Homburg hat, remained on his head. When I reminded him of it long after, he said with a laugh:
"Well, you did not ask me to sit down."
"No, you gave me no time."
I mention it because, with his hat on and his hand on the door, his manner and bearing were of a grave courtesy like none other. And in this transitory attitude, just on the wing, there was a serene leisureliness as if to hurry were unknown to him. His eye took in everything in these ten seconds. There was not a word beyond what I have repeated; a purely business call to make an appointment. But I knew when he had gone that another influence had come into my life, stronger for the time than all others.
I went in the evening, as I had been bidden, to the little house in Essex Street where Phillips chose to live, as if to measure the breadth of the gulf that he had put between himself and the world into which he had been born; a world of easy circumstances if not wealth, and bound together by a hundred social ties nearly all of which he had broken. Phillips had what at that time would be called wealth, for which he had other uses than mere expense on comfort. A narrow door opened into a narrow hall out of which climbed narrow stairs, with a narrow landing half-way up where the stairs turned, and at the top a still narrower passage to the door of the parlour. Inside, the same impression of restricted space; a room perhaps sixteen feet by fourteen, and plainly furnished; a worn carpet on the floor, a large shabby sofa at the end nearest the door opposite the fire-place. Phillips was sitting on the sofa. He rose and held out his hand: "It's very good of you to come. I am afraid I was abrupt this morning." Then he plunged almost at once into the situation, with a forecast of what he thought likely to happen. "Not much, if anything, till the meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in January. That, I dare say, they will try to break up. Lincoln has been elected President and Andrew Governor. You know what I think of Lincoln. But Andrew I know well, and I do not believe mob law will be allowed to rule while Andrew is Governor." He had already described Andrew in Tremont Temple: "For the first time within my memory we have got a man for Governor of Massachusetts, a frank, true, whole-souled, honest MAN." Alas! Andrew was to disappoint him bitterly in this one matter of free speech, though in no other.
"But you are to speak in another fortnight at the Music Hall," I said. "Do you think they will let you alone then?"
"Why," said Phillips, "that's on a Sunday"; as if that would matter to men whose passions, interests, animosities, all led them to silence the orator whom they thought, honestly enough from their point of view, a public danger. He asked me if I had heard anything. I had not, but when Phillips told me he was going to speak on "Mobs and Education" I answered, "But that's a challenge."
"They can take it as they like," he replied, quite softly and coolly, adding: "If you hear anything perhaps you'll let me know."