Some idea of his mode of address and quickness in retort at that day will appear from extracts from his speech at the annual meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and two incidents that occurred at this meeting. Mr. Beecher answered the Scriptural argument for the return of fugitives, based on the return of Onesimus, in this manner: “There are two ways of sending fugitives back into slavery. One is the way Paul sent back the slave Onesimus. Now, if people will adopt that way I will not object. In the first place, he instructed him in Christianity and led him to become a Christian; then he wrote a letter and sent it by Onesimus himself. Now, I should like to see Marshal ——— or Marshal somebody else, of this city, send back a slave in this way. In the first place, the marshal would take him and teach him the catechism, and pray with him, and convert him, and then write a letter to his master telling him to receive him as a brother beloved; and then the slave goes of his own free will to his master, and walks into the house, and, with his broad, black, beaming face, says: ‘How d’ye do, my brother? and how d’ye do, my sister?’” The broad, beaming face which he himself wore as he described this scene and personated this character was irresistibly comical, and nothing more was heard in that quarter of Paul’s return of fugitives. It was in this speech that, in describing the situation of the slave, he says: “They are married and separated in the South until perhaps they have twenty wives.” [A voice: “There are men in New York City who have twenty wives.”] “I am sorry for them,” he answered at once. “I go for their immediate emancipation!” He read extracts from the law as laid down by some of the able members of the Southern bench in South Carolina and Louisiana, to show that slaves are mere goods and chattels. “The slave,” he exclaimed, “is made just good enough to be a good slave and no more. It is a penitentiary offence to teach him more.” Here a person among a group in one corner of the gallery exclaimed: “It’s a lie!” “Well, whether it’s a penitentiary offence or not, I shall not argue with the gentleman in the corner, as doubtless he has been there and ought to know.”