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READER RESPONSES, 1881-93 1049

England as a "fugitive slave" and a lecturer on the subject of slavery, and who for
many years past has occupied an honourable position as a public man in the United
States, has lately been published in America and in this country. A more thrilling,
tragic, and romantic narrative has seldom been given to the world. The record is
brought down to the present year, and it thus includes not only a sketch of an indi-
vidual career of quite exceptional interest, but also of the course of a great national
movement and upheaval, abounding in heroic and terrible episodes, and in illustra-
tions, on a stupendous scale, of the awful penalties of national wrong-doing and of
the inexorable certainty with which the wheels of Divine Providence "grind small,"
although they may, as so often happens, "grind slowly." "Yes," we cannot but say to
ourselves as we read these pages, "the cry of the negro in America as certainly and
as truly went up into the cars of God as did the cry of the Israelites in Egypt; and the
sea of blood through which the slaves of the United States passed to freedom told of
the wrath of the Lord against the oppressor not less distinctly and emphatically than
did the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in that great catastrophe which called
forth Miriam's impassioned song of thanksgiving and of victory."

The child-life of Frederick Douglass. as described in his reminiscences, affords
pathetic pictures of sorrows and wrongs. such as. no doubt, millions of slave chil-
dren had to endure, but which, as we read of them now, seem as if they must have
belonged to a far-off age and to a country upon which the light of Christianity had
not dawned, instead of belonging, as they do, to our own time and to a social condi-
tion professedly, and indeed actually, penetrated by many Christian influences. He
was horn about the year 1817, on one of the great slave-holding plantations of the
Southern States. There were about a thousand slaves on the estate; and however
various the outward lot of these might be, from that of the sleek and pampered
household servants to that of the hard-driven, ill-fed, overtasked field labourers, all
alike were subject to the appalling degradation of being regarded and treated as
property and as such were just as absolutely at the disposal of their owner as the
cattle, horses, and dogs of the establishment.

Frederick Douglass's first recollections are of a cabin which served as a rough
shelter for himself and a number of other children, placed with him under the charge
of an old slave woman, whom he was taught to regard as his grandmother. His
mother was a "field hand," and it was only by a walk of many miles, after her day's
labour was done, that she was able to snatch an occasional visit to her little child.
Brief and rare as those interviews were, the child caught from them some glimpses
of a mother's heart, and the impression made was indelible. He recalls the image of
his mother still. and remembers her as "tall and finely proportioned, of dark, glossy
complexion, with regular features." and as having been "remarkably sedate and
dignified." She was the only slave of the district who could read, and her son's
impression, still fondly cherished, is that she was a woman richly endowed by
nature, and of tender maternal affections. Her visits, however, broke off abruptly,
and her child seems to haw learned, in some dimly remembered way, that death had