When our regiment was encamped in Faneuil Hall at Boston before embarking for the war in 1863, Mr. Wendell Phillips sent an invitation to the officers of the regiment to visit his home.  But when we reached his house we found that he had been called to Worcester suddenly to make a speech.  But we found his wife there in her rolling chair, for she was a permanent invalid.  Our evening was spent very pleasantly, but I said to her:  “Are you not very lonesome when Mr. Phillips is away so much?” “Yes,” she said, “I am very lonesome; he is father, mother, brother, sister, husband and child to me,” and said she, “he cares for me with the tenderness of a mother; he waits upon me, he takes me out, and brings me in; he dresses me, and it now seems so strange that he is not by my side.  If it were not for him, I should die, but he says that as soon as the slaves are free that he will come back and be the same husband he was before.”  The officers standing around me smiled as they heard of his promise to retire, but said she, “Oh, yes, he will do as he promised.”  When the war was over and the slaves were free, and he had scolded General Grant all he wished, he did do as he promised, and did retire.  He sold his house in the city and bought one in Waverly, Massachusetts.  He did prove the exception and went back to the private life that he had promised himself and his wife.  Every Sunday morning as I drove by his home I could see him swinging on his gate.  It was a double gate over the driveway, and he would pull that gate far in, get on it and then swing way out over the side-walk and then in again.  Well, he used to swing on that gate every Sunday morning, and my family wondered why it was that he always did it on that particular morning.  One Sunday morning when I drove by, I found Mr. Phillips swinging on his gate over the side-walk, and I said, “Mr. Phillips, my family wish me to ask you why you swing on this gate every Sunday morning.”  Mr. Phillips, who had a very deep sense of humour, stepped off the gate, stood back, and assuming a dignified, ministerial air, “I am requested to discourse to-day upon the text ‘Why I swing upon this gate on Sunday morning,’ and I will, therefore, divide my text into two heads.”  I quickly told him that I must get to church some time that day.  “Then,” said he, with a smile, “just one word more:  Why do I swing on a gate?  Because the first time I saw my wife she was swinging on the gate, and the second time I saw her, we kissed each other over the top of the gate, and when I swing it reminds me of other happy days long gone by.  That, sir, is the reason I swing upon this gate.”  Then his humor all disappeared and he said:  “I really swing upon this gate on Sunday morning because I think the next thing to the love of God is love of man for a true woman—­as you cannot say you love God and hate your brother, neither can you say you love God unless you have first loved a human being, and I swing on this gate on Sunday morning because to me it is next to life’s highest worship.”  And then, in a majestic manner, he said, “Conwell, all within this gate is PARADISE and all without it MARTYRDOM.”  In that wonderful sentence, which I feel sure I recall accurately, he uttered the most glorious expression that could ever come from uninspired lips.