He once wrote a young man, who had asked him about public speaking: "I think practice with all kinds of audiences the best of teachers. Think out your subject carefully. Read all you can relative to the themes you touch. Fill your mind; and then talk simply and naturally. Forget altogether that you are to make a speech or are making one.... Remember to talk up to an audience, not down to it. The commonest audience can relish the best thing you can say if you say it properly. Be simple, be earnest."
"He faced his audience," says Curtis, "with a tranquil mien, and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion. It was simply colloquy—a gentleman conversing. Unconsciously and surely the ear and heart were charmed.
"How was it done? Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raphael? The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstasy, of the sunset's glory—that is the secret of genius and of eloquence."
Phillips's habit in travelling was to carry a large shawl, which he always spread between the sheets of his bed in the various hotels, to prevent a cold; an example to other speakers. His supper before an address was usually, it is said, three raw eggs and a cup of tea.
Mr. Phillips had already moved his home from 26 Essex Street, in the spring of 1881, to No. 37 Common Street, not far away, as his home had to be torn down for the widening of the street. It was a severe trial to both, but it did not remain their earthly home for long.
Mr. Phillips made his last public address at the unveiling of Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau at the "Old South" Church, Boston, Dec. 26, 1883.
His wife was seriously ill through January, and he watched most devotedly by her bedside. On the 26th of the month he was taken ill with angina pectoris. He felt that the end was near. He said, "I have no fear of death. I have long foreseen it. My only regret is for poor Ann. I had hoped to close her eyes before mine were shut." To a friend who spoke to him of his always expressed belief in the divinity of Christ, though many of his friends were Unitarian, he said, quoting the words of an eminent Semitic scholar: "I find the whole history of humanity before him and after him points to him, and finds in him its centre and its solution. His whole conduct, his deeds, his words, have a supernatural character, being altogether inexplicable from human relations and human means. I feel that here there is something more than man."
"Then you have no doubt about a future life?" said the friend.
"I am as sure of it as I am that there will be a to-morrow," was the reply.
On Saturday evening, Feb. 2, 1884, at fifteen minutes past six, he closed his eyes calmly and quietly forever.