fter that and my
mother often said to him, "Mr. Douglass, you will work yourself to
death," but he replied that until the slaves were free, and that would
be very soon, he must devote his life to them. But after that, said
he, "I will retire to Rochester, New York, where I have some land and
will build a house." He told us how many rooms it would have, what
decorations would be there, but when the war had been over several
years, he came to the house again and my father asked him about the
house in Rochester. "Well," he said, "I have not built that one yet,
but I have my plans for it. I have some work yet to do; I must take
care of the freedmen in the South, and look after their financial
prosperity, then I will build my cottage." You all remember that he
never built his house, but suddenly went on into the unknown of the
greatest work of his life.

I remember that in 1852, my father came with another man who was put
for the night into the northwest bedroom--this is the room where those
New Englanders always put their friends, because, perhaps, pneumonia
comes there first--that awful, cold, dismal, northwest bedroom.
Thinking a favorite uncle had come, I went to the door early in the
morning. The door was shut--one of those doors which, if you lift
the latch, the door immediately swings open. I lifted the latch and
prepared to leap in to awaken my uncle and astonish him by my early
morning greeting. But when the door swung back, I glanced toward the
bed. The astonishment chills me at this moment, for in that bed was
not my uncle; but a giant, whose toes stood up at the foot-board,
and whose long hair was spread out over the pillow and his long gray
whiskers lay on the bed clothes, and oh, that snore--it sounded like
some steam horn. That giant figure frightened me and I rushed out
into the kitchen and said, "Mother, who is that strange man in the
northwest bed room?" and she said, "Why, that is John Brown." I had
never seen John Brown before, although my father had been with him
in the wool business in Springfield. I had heard some strange things
about John Brown, and the figure of the man made them seem doubly
terrible. I hid beside my mother, where I said I would stay until the
man was through his breakfast, but father came out and demanded that
the boys should come in, and he set me right under the wing of that
awful giant. But when John Brown saw us coming in so timidly, he
turned to us with a smile so benign and b