months. I never have been better
treated than by the Doctor; I liked him and the family, and they seemed
to think well of me.

While living with Dr. Dengy, I had, for the first time, the great
privilege of seeing that true friend of the slave, William Lloyd
Garrison, who came into the neighborhood, accompanied by Frederick
Douglass. They were holding anti-slavery meetings. I shall never forget
the impression that Garrison's glowing words made upon me. I had
formerly known Mr. Douglass as a slave in Maryland; I was therefore not
prepared for the progress he then showed,--neither for his free-spoken
and manly language against slavery. I listened with the intense
satisfaction that only a refugee could feel, when hearing, embodied in
earnest, well-chosen, and strong speech, his own crude ideas of freedom,
and his own hearty censure of the man-stealer. I believed, I knew, every
word he said was true. It was the whole truth,--nothing kept back,--no
trifling with human rights, no trading in the blood of the slave
extenuated, nothing against the slaveholder said in malice. I have never
listened to words from the lips of mortal man which were more acceptable
to me; and although privileged since then to hear many able and good men
speak on slavery, no doctrine has seemed to me so pure, so unworldly, as
his. I may here say, and without offence, I trust, that, since that
time, I have had a long experience of Garrisonian Abolitionists, and
have always found them men and women with hearts in their bodies. They
are, indeed and in truth, the poor slave's friend. To shelter him, to
feed and clothe him, to help him on to freedom, I have ever found them
ready; and I should be wanting in gratitude, if I neglected this
opportunity--the only one I may ever have--to say thus much of them, and
to declare for myself and for the many colored men in this free country
whom I know they have aided in their journey to freedom, our humble
confidence in them. Yes, the good spirit with which he is imbued
constrained William Lloyd Garrison to plead for the dumb; and for his
earnest pleadings all these years, I say, God bless him! By agitation,
by example, by suffering, men and women of like spirit have been led to
adopt his views, as the great necessity, and to carry them out into
actions. They, too, have my heartfelt gratitude. They, like Gideon's
band, though few, will yet rout the enemy Slavery, make him flee his own
camp, and eventually fall upon his