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348

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

place. This visit was made interesting to me, by the fact that forty-five years before I had, in company with Henry and John Harris, been dragged to Easton behind horses with my hands tied, put in jail, and offered for sale, for the offense of intending to run away from slavery.

It may easily be seen that this visit, after this lapse of time, brought with it feelings and reflections such as only unusual circumstances can awaken. There stood the old jail, with its white-washed walls and iron gratings, as when in my youth I heard its heavy locks and bolts clank behind me.

Strange too, Mr. Joseph Graham, who was then Sheriff of the County, and who locked me in this gloomy place, was still living, though verging towards eighty, and was one of the gentlemen who now gave me a warm and friendly welcome, and was among my hearers when I delivered my address at the Court House. There too in the same old place stood Sol. Lowe's Hotel, where once the slave traders were wont to congregate, and where I now took up my abode and was treated with a hospitality and consideration undreamed of as possible by me in the olden time.

When one has advanced far in the journey of Iife. when he has seen and traveled over much of this great world, and has had many and strange experiences of shadow and sunshine, when long distances of time and space have come between him and his point of departure, it is natural that his thoughts should return to the place of his beginning, and that he should be seized with a strong desire to revisit the scenes of his early recollection, and live over in memory the incidents of his childhood. At least such for several years had been my thoughts and feeling in respect of Col. Lloyd's plantation on Wye River, Talbot County, Maryland; for I had never been there since I left it, when eight years old, in 1825.

While slavery continued, of course this very natural desire could not be safely gratified; for my presence among slaves was dangerous to the public peace, and could no more be tolerated than could a wolf among sheep. or fire in a magazine. But now that the results of the war had changed all this. I had for several years determined to return to my old home upon the first opportunity. Speaking of this desire of mine last winter, to Hon. John L. Thomas, the efficient collector at the port of Baltimore, and a leading Republican of the State of Maryland, he urged me very much to go. and added that he often took a trip to the eastern shore in his Revenue Cutter, "Guthrie." (otherwise known in time of war as the "Ewing,") and would be much pleased to have me accompany him on one of these trips. I expressed some doubt as to how such a visit would be received by the present Col. Edward Lloyd. now proprietor of the old place, and grandson of Governor Ed. Lloyd whom 1

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