that I would rather have it written upon the humble stone that shall mark the spot where I shall repose when life's labors are done, 'He did what he could to break the fetters of the slave,' than to have it recorded that he filled the highest station of honor in the gift of his countrymen."

With that single aim before him, he now returned to study at the Stafford (N. H.) Academy, laboring at his books with the same untiring industry that he had displayed in earning money for his education. Study meant business to him. His school life was unfortunately cut short by the failure of the man to whom he had intrusted his hard earnings, and he returned to Natick and began the manufacture of shoes on a capital of twelve dollars. He continued at the business ten years, employing at length over one hundred persons in his business. During all this time he never forgot his one purpose, but, by reading and the constant study of public questions, he pressed steadily towards the goal he had set.

When elected to the Legislature of Massachusetts, first as representative, and then as state senator, he stoutly and successfully battled for the removal of the unjust statutes that discriminated against the people of color in his Commonwealth. On the third day of February, 1846, he delivered before that body, when a member of the House, one of the ablest speeches ever made against slavery. In it, he frankly avowed, "I am an abolitionist, and have been a member of an abolition society for nearly ten years. I am proud of the name of abolitionist. I glory in it. I am willing to bear my full share of the odium that may now or hereafter be heaped upon it. I had far rather be one of the humblest in that little band which rallies around the glorious standard of emancipation than to have been the favorite marshal of Napoleon, and have led the Old Guard over a hundred fields of glory and renown." It took an uncommonly brave man to declare such sentiments, even in the state of Massachusetts, at a time when Methodist ministers were expelled from their conference and from their churches in that Commonwealth for simply attending an abolition meeting.

But this man, who, as a homeless and penniless youth, had entered the state but thirteen years before, had this for his political creed, "My voice and my vote shall ever be given for the equality of all the children of men, before the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and of the United States."

In 1855, when forty-three years old, he was elected United States senator from Massachusetts to succeed Edward Everett, who had resigned, and at once he took his place by the side of his famous colleague, Charles Sumner, at a time when the halls of Congress were ringing with the fierce invectives, threats of personal violence, and oaths of fearful import, hurled by the men of the South against all who dared question the right of the demand of slavery to rule the land. Five years before, they had, by the passage of the fugitive-slave act, made the North one vast slave hunting field. But a year before they had compelled Massachusetts to give up the poor fugitive, Anthony Burns, and now, by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, their victory seemed complete; for had not a senator from Indiana publicly boasted in the Senate chamber, that in his free state they now imposed a fine upon the white man who even ventured to give employment to a free black man? Yet, in his first speech in the Senate, Henry Wilson boldly bore to these men this message as from the North: "We mean, sir, to place in the councils of the nation, men, who, in the words of Jefferson, 'have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every kind of oppression of the mind and body of man.'" And when the same year, in a notable political gathering, a delegate from Virginia, with pistol in hand, approached him and denounced him as the leader of the Anti-Slavery party, he replied to him that his "threats had no terror for freemen"; that he was then and there ready to meet "argument with argument, scorn with scorn, and, if need be, blow with blow; for God had given him an arm ready and able to protect his head." It was time that champions of slavery in the South should realize the fact, "that the past was theirs, the future ours."

Those were the days of border ruffianism, when hundreds

of defenseless men and women and children were wantonly murdered in Kansas and elsewhere, by the defenders and propagators of slavery, for daring peacefully to resist their attempt to make of Kansas, contrary to the wishes of its people, and of the statutes, a slave state. But how bravely, mercilessly, because truthfully, Mr. Wilson exposed the weakness of the president who did not prevent those murders and outrages, and the fawning sycophancy of the politicians of the North who apologized for them, and how heroically he denounced to their faces the defenders of those crimes, and of the crimes of human slavery, in the Senate chamber, when one of their number, Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, had made his dastardly and murderous assault in the Senate upon Charles Sumner.

Let the files of the "Congressional Globe" show his intense patriotism, his broad statesmanship, both before and during the progress of the civil war, and after its close, all of which is too well known to be here repeated. Massachusetts kept this man of single aim as her senator until he saw the liberation of millions of bondmen, and had witnessed the destruction of the most gigantic conspiracy against human progress that the centuries had known; and then when General Grant was elected president of the United States, in 1872, she gave him to preside as vice-president of the country over the legislative body where, for nearly a score of years, he had been the bravest, most patriotic, most hard working, and incorruptible member. So scrupulous had he been not to make his exalted position a means of worldly gain, that when this Natick cobbler, the sworn friend of the oppressed, whose one question as to measures or acts was ever, "Is it right, will it do good?" came to be inaugurated as vice-president of his country, he was obliged to borrow of his fellow senator, Charles Sumner, one hundred dollars to meet the necessary expense of the occasion. By his energy, his ability, and uprightness, he has shown to the poorest and humblest boy in the land that there are no barriers which can prevent his success if he enters upon his career with right principles and single aim.

It was said of William Wilberforce at his death, that "he had gone to God with the shackles of eight hundred thousand West India slaves in his hands," but Henry Wilson, the poor bond boy, had been one of the chief agents in breaking the shackles from four and a half millions. That purpose formed at the slave-pen in Washington was well carried out, not indeed as he had expected, but as God willed it.

Climbing the Ladder of Success.

JOHN C. DUEBER, President Hampden Watch Co., Canton, Ohio.

HAT famous English prime minister, George Canning, who, with Lord Brougham, was accounted the most famous political orator of the time, was born of poor parents. When but a year old, his father died, and the mother to earn her living became an actress. The wandering life of the mother worked disaster to her bright boy. He began to be dissipated when but a lad and would soon have gone to ruin if Moody, the actor, had not persuaded the boy's uncle, a man of property, to take him and educate him. The uncle consented on condition that he should abandon his waywardness, and at twelve years of age he was sent to Eton school. Here he took for his motto, "I must work if I would win," and applied himself with such diligence to his studies as to become the first scholar in his class, both in the schoolroom and in the debating society.

At eighteen he entered Oxford College, and, refusing to engage in the athletic sports of the school, he gave himself wholly to his studies, having, as he told a friend, a seat in the House of Commons in view. Graduating with high honors, he entered Parliament when but twenty-three years of age as an adherent and firm supporter of that eminent statesman, William Pitt. He became one of his secretaries and rose at length to be premier of the realm. He aimed at the top and by energy and application won renown and very early reached the goal he had set for himself.

At that same University of Oxford, fifty years before Canning's time, a poor lad had come like him thirsting for knowl