ime I found myself half way up towards the rostrum in the midst of
that thickly standing audience. Such was my first sight and impression
of one of the world's great orators, and beyond comparison the greatest
man of the race yet produced on this continent.

His splendid physique, so often admired, was well in keeping with the
strength and grasp of his masterly mind. Without the privilege of a
day's instruction in the schoolroom, he acquired a fund of useful
knowledge that would put to shame the meager attainments of many a
college graduate. His speeches and writing are models of a pure English
style, and are characterized by simplicity, clearness, directness,
force, and elegance.

Many of the interesting facts and incidents in the life of this great
man are already well known--his escape from slavery, his arrival in the
North, his early marriage, his settling down to work at his trade in New
Bedford, his first speech in an anti-slavery convention, that drew
attention to his wonderful powers of oratory, and led to his employment
by the Anti-slavery Bureau to lecture through the North on the most
unpopular question that up to that time had been presented to the
American people, his rise as an orator, his trip to England and its
magical effects on the English people, his return to this country, and
the purchase of his freedom, to relieve him of the apprehension of being
seized and taken back into slavery, his editorship of the North Star,
his services to the government during the war in the raising of troops,
his securing of pay for the black soldiers equal to that of the whites,
the editorship immediately after the war of the New National Era, his
popularity as a lyceum lecturer, his mission to San Domingo under Grant,
his marshalship of the District of Columbia under Hayes, his ministry to
Santo Domingo. These are some of the experiences which came into that
eventful life.

If I were asked to sum up in a word what made Frederick Douglass great,
I should say a noble purpose, fixed and unchangeable, a purpose to
render to mankind the largest possible service. Verily he has served us
well, faithfully, unselfishly, and now, full of years and full of
honors, loaded with such distinctions as this poor world has to give, he
dies, dies as he lived, a brave, strong, good man. No more shall we
behold that manly form. No more shall we listen to those eloquent lips
upon which for over fifty years so many thousands have hung with