A man who is born to social equality with the best of his community, and accustomed in his earlier years to its enjoyment, does not feel the sting of attempted exclusion, but is rather made pleasantly conscious of the _prestige_ which inspires the adverse effort and can look upon its bitterness in a spirit of lofty disdain.
Wendell Phillips, descended from a long line of distinguished ancestry, was amused rather than disconcerted by the strenuous but futile attempts to ostracize him for the maintenance of opinions which he lived to see his native city adopt and enforce.

But the feeling is far different in a man who has experienced only a galling sense of inferiority.

To such a one, advancing either in fortune or in fame, social prominence seems a necessity, without which other gifts constitute only the aggravations of life.
It was therefore with a sense of exaltation that Johnson beheld as applicants for his consideration and suppliants for his mercy many of those in the South who had never recognized him as a social equal.

A mind of true loftiness would not have been swayed by such a change of relative positions, but it was inevitable that a mind of Johnson's type, which if not ignoble was certainly not noble, should yield to its flattering and seductive influence.

In the present attitude of the leading men of the South towards him, he saw the one triumph which sweetened his life, the one requisite which had been needed to complete his happiness.