Above him was the image of his father and his own; around him were Hancock and the other Adams, and Washington, greatest of all.

Before him were the men and women of Boston, met to consider the wrongs done to a miserable negro slave.

The roof of the old Cradle of Liberty spanned over them all.

Forty years before, a young man and a Senator, he had taken the chair at a meeting called to consult on the wrong done to American seamen, violently impressed by the British from an American ship of war--the unlucky Chesapeake.

Now an old man, clothed with half a century of honors, he sits in the same Hall, to preside over a meeting to consider the outrage done to a single slave.