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358 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Sunday morning came, and in due season the hour for meeting. I had arranged a good supply of work for the day. I was to speak four times: at ten o'clock A.M., at one P.M., at five, and again at half-past seven in the evening.

When meeting time came, Mr. Hilles brought his fine phaeton to the door, assisted his wife in, and, although there were two vacant seats in his carriage, there was no room in it for me. On driving off from his door, he merely said, addressing me, "You can find your way to the town hall, I suppose?" "I suppose I can,'' I replied, and started along behind his carriage on the dusty road toward the village. I found the hall, and was very glad to see in my small audience the face of good Mrs. Hilles. Her husband was not there, but had gone to his church. There was no one to introduce me, and I proceeded with my discourse without introduction. I held my audience till twelve o'clock--noon--and then took the usual recess of Sunday meetings in country towns, to allow the people to take their lunch. No one invited me to lunch, so I remained in the town hall till the audience assembled again, when I spoke till nearly three o'clock, when the people again dispersed and left me as before. By this time I began to be hungry, and seeing a small hotel near, I went into it, and offered to buy a meal; but I was told "they did not entertain niggers there." I went back to the old town hall hungry and chilled, for an infant "New England northeaster" was beginning to chill the air, and a drizzling rain to fall. I saw that my movements were being observed, from the comfortable homes around, with apparently something of the feeling that children might experience in seeing a bear prowling about town. There was a grave-yard near the town hall, and attracted thither. I felt some relief in contemplating the resting places of the dead, where there was an end to all distinctions between rich and poor, white and colored, high and low.

While thus meditating on the vanities of the world and my own loneliness and destitution, and recalling the sublime pathos of the saying of Jesus. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,'' I was approached rather hesitatingly by a gentleman, who inquired my name. "My name is Douglass." I replied. "You do not seem to have any place to stay while in town." I told him I had not. "Well," said he, "I am no abolitionist, but if you will go with me I will take care of you." I thanked him, and turned with him towards his fine residence. On the way I asked him his name. "Moses Norris,'' he said. "What! Hon. Moses Norris?" I asked. "Yes," he answered. I did not for a moment know what to do, for I had read that this same man had literally dragged the Reverend George Storrs from the pulpit, for preaching abolitionism. I, how-