Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County · Historic Monographs Collection
48 LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
gripsack and started for Canada. It was fortunate
for him that he left so soon as he did, for
immediately after his departure from Rochester
his home was surrounded by officers.' "
We take the liberty of quoting in this connection
for the information of the reader an incident
which occurred in the early acquaintance of Mr.
Douglass with Brown, related by a writer who
styles himself the " Rambler," in an article published
in a New England paper.
" In the spring of '57, just after the Dred Scott
decision of the Supreme Court, the Rambler (being
then a resident of Worcester, Mass., fondly
called by the citizens ' The Heart of the Commonwealth
') was getting up a lecture for Frederick
Douglass. He secured the then mayor of the
city to preside, it being the first time that the
mayor of an American city had presided at an
address of Mr. Douglass. The Rambler called
at the house of Hon. Eli Thayer, then member of
Congress from the ninth district, to ask him to
sit on the platform. Here he found a stranger,
a man of tall, gaunt form, with a face smooth
shaven, destitute of the full beard that later became
a part of history. The children were climbing
over his knees ; he said, ' The children always
come to me.' The Rambler was introduced to
John Brown of Ossawatomie. How little one
imagined then that, within less than three years,