But the prizes for public address his masters awarded Wendell were indications not only of rare personal ability; they symbolized wider recognition as well. “What first led me to observe him and fix him in my memory,” one Latin School classmate remembered, “was his elocution, and I began to look forward to declamation day with interest, mainly on his account.”23 By cultivating Wendell’s sense of self-reliance and self-discipline, John and Sarah Phillips had brought up a boy who was able to assume a public pose with natural grace and to arrest the attention of others with his flow of words.
