23. Wendell Phillips's obituary of Mary Merrick Brooks (transcribed from the National Anti-Slavery Standard, July 11, 1868).
OBITUARY.
________
MRS. BROOKS
DIED, at Concord, Mass., Friday, June 26th, MRS. MARY M. BROOKS, widow of Hon. Nathan Brooks.
When, more than thirty years ago, I joined the Anti-Slavery movement, one of the first places I visited was Concord: Mrs. Brooks welcomed me to the old town. She was one—and a chief one—of half a dozen royal-minded women who represented the Anti-Slavery purpose of the place. The famous men who lived there turned then only a tolerant eye on the cause; standing themselves at a civil distance. In kindly deference to wife or friend they showed their faces, now and then, at Anti-Slavery meetings. Still it is but justice to say that it was the "continual coming" of those untiring women that "won or wearied" the noted names of Concord into sympathy with this great uprising for justice. If the town stands foremost among New England towns to-day—if its testimony has been earliest and most emphatic on many a great occasion—if, by THOREAU, it sent the first word of cheer to JOHN BROWN'S jail, and if, almost alone, it tolled the church bells when he was murdered—if in Burns and Sims days it drew all eyes to its fidelity; the parlors and vestry gatherings of those just endured women were the "upper chambers" of this Gospel. The debt which Stuart Mill is never weary of acknowledging to his noble wife is the same that the mind of Concord owes to Mrs. Brooks and her associates.
She was well-fitted for such a post. We call others self-sacrificing and devoted; but she and her associates lived for their reform ideas. Except the measureless tenderness which she kept for family and kindred, she gave all her heart to her ideas. These were her life. The Church, Literature, friendship, and daily life had no value for her save as they served these. Faultless in domestic duties, making her roof so truly a home, still no work was too hard, no duty too absorbing, no gathering too distant, no cross too heavy, for her courage. No matter how disheartening the prospect, she relaxed no jot or tittle of her effort. Not hopeful by constitution, she had a sublime faith that the right must triumph and that we were set to bring it about. In those tiresome years, more discouraging than the darkest ones, when common hearts feel weary and no labor seems to bring any result—her hand was ever ready, her purpose never relaxed. She saw the oak in the acorn. Sublimely patient of labor, with fathomless generosity that kept back nothing from the causes she loved and a catholic sympathy which embraced all progress, her heart went out to the whole circle of reform movements.
She had a woman's quickness in reading character, and was rarely at fault. Frank almost to bluntness, she never shrunk from speaking her whole thought; neither did her tenderness of affection ever confuse her judgment. In the emergency of a great crisis she could see and rebuke the short-comings of those she loved best.
No matter how keen the hate your good word had bred, you were sure of her sympathy. That door was always open to every new truth and every fresh protest—however inhospitably the common world might treat them. When grappling alone with some fresh difficulty she was one of the few whose judgment you longed to know, and whose generous construction you were sure of. For she was eminently loyal to those she had once accepted as friends. And she grew ever younger in faith and courage. Age made her neither timid nor inhospitable to new ideas.
Rejoicing with a full heart in all that the war had accomplished—mightily strengthened by such a triumph—she saw exactly where the war's work stopped and what remained to be achieved. Prodigal of effort and means to send bread and schools to the victim race, she repudiated the very name "Freedmen" and all the charity it claimed: setting herself, as of old, to secure for men and women their rights and leave them independent of any one's pity. One of the mothers in our Israel, we owe her inspiration, example, encouragement, assistance and counsel. How far her life sent its influence! I have been stirred by eloquence and thrilled by many a brave act behind which I saw clearly that half-score of earnest women—the heart of a famous circle whose brain has a wide realm.
Her life was a marked instance of how much decision of character effects. Not specially gifted in urging her views on others, she lived them into acceptance. While some sneered and others denounced, a few fretted and many tried to make the worse appear the better reason, her life said, with Luther, "Here I stand, I can do nothing different." In time sneer grew ashamed, misunderstanding appreciated, and the Church came over to her. Well done, good and faithful. Let us thank God that she was permitted to see so large fulfillment of her hopes; and in the history of this age, marvelous in moral and intellectual progress, let not the place such women fill be left unnoticed.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
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