able action; we
received it, however, most probably from tongue or pen. For impressible
youth such biography should be as easy of access as possible.

It has been said that "a man's noblest mistake is to be born before his
time." This will not apply to Frederick Douglass. His "Life and Times"
should be in the front rank of selection for blessing and inspiration. A
blessing for the high moral of its teaching; an inspiration for the
poorest boy; that he need not "beg the world's pardon for having been
born," but by fostering courage and consecration of purpose "he may rank
the peer of any man."

Frederick Douglass, born a slave, hampered by all the depressing
influences of that institution; by indomitable energy and devotion;
seizing with an avidity that knew no obstacle every opportunity,
cultivated a mind and developed a character that will be a bright page
in the history of noble and beneficent achievements.

For the conditions that confronted him and the anti-slavery crusade,
have been well and eloquently portrayed by the late George William
Curtis. That how terribly earnest was the anti-slavery agitation this
generation little knows. To understand is to recall the situation of the
country. Slavery sat supreme in the White House and made laws at the
capitol. Courts of Justice were its ministers, and legislators its
lackeys. It silenced the preacher in the pulpit; it muzzled the editor
at his desk, and the professor in his lecture-room. It sat a price on
the heads of peaceful citizens; robbed the mails, and denounced the
vital principles of the declaration of independence as treason. In the
States where the law did not tolerate slavery, slavery ruled the club
and drawing room, the factory and the office, swaggered at the dinner
table, and scourged with scorn a cowardly society. It tore the golden
rule from the school books, and from the prayer books the pictured
benignity of Christ. It prohibited schools in the free States for the
hated race; hunted women who taught children to read, and forbade a free
people to communicate with their representatives.

It was under such conditions so pungently and truthfully stated that
Douglass appeared as a small star on the horizon of a clouded firmament;
rose in intellectual brilliancy, mental power and a noble generosity.
For his devotion was not only to the freedom of the slave with which he
was identified, but for liberty and the betterment of humanity
everywhere, regardless