le of the wind around that gable
end, the sifting of the snows through the hole in the window over
the pillow on our bed. While these things may appear very simple and
homely before this great audience, yet I mention them because in this
house I had a glimpse of the first great man I ever saw. It was far in
the country, far from the railroad, far from the city, yet into
that region there came occasionally a man or woman whose name is a
household word in the world. In those mountains of my boyhood there
was then an "underground railroad" running from Virginia to Canada.
It was called an "underground railroad," although it was a system
by which the escaped slaves from Virginia came into Delaware, from
Delaware into Philadelphia, then to New York, then to Springfield, and
from Springfield my father took the slaves by night to Worthington,
Mass., and they were sent on by St. Albans, over the Canada line into
liberty. This "underground railroad" system was composed of a chain of
men of whom my father was one link. One night my father drove up in
the dark, and my elder brother and I looked out to see who it was he
had! brought home with him. We supposed he had brought a slave whom he
was helping to escape. Oh, those dreary, dark days, when we were
in continual dread lest the United States Marshal should arrest my
father, throw him into prison for thus assisting these fugitive
slaves. The gloomy memory of those early years chills me now. But as
we gazed out that dark night, we saw that it was a white man with
father and who helped unhitch the horses and put them in the barn. In
the morning this white man sat at the breakfast table and my father
introduced him to us, saying: "Boys, this is Frederick Douglass, the
great colored orator," While I looked at him, giggling as boys will
do, Mr. Douglass turned to us and said, "Yes, boys, I am a colored
man; my mother was a colored woman and my father a white man," and
said he, "I have never seen my father, and I do not know much about
my mother. I remember her once when she interfered between me and the
overseer, who was whipping me, and she received the lash upon her
cheek and shoulder, and her blood ran across my face. I remember
washing her blood from my face and clothes." That story made a deep
impression on us boys, stamped indelibly on our memories. Frederick
Douglass is thus mentioned to illustrate the subject that I have come
to teach to-night. He frequently came to our house a