One morning in the summer of 1844, walking up Main-street in the city of Hartford, I was attracted by the movements of a group of some twenty-five or thirty men and women, in a small recess, or court, by the side of the old Centre Church. They appeared to be organized into an assembly, and a tall mulatto was addressing them. I drew near to listen. The speaker was recounting the oft-enacted history of a flight from slavery. With his eye upon the cold, but true north star, and his ear ever and anon bent to the ground, listening for the “blood-hound’s savage bay,” sure-footed and panting, the fugitive was before me! My attention had been arrested; I was profoundly interested. The audience was the American Anti-slavery Society, then just excluded from some of the public halls of the city, and fain to content themselves, after an apostolic sort, with the _next best_ accommodations. The orator was FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the most remarkable man of this country, and of this age; and--may I not dare to add--the almost complete fulfilment of my early dream! Since that day, through assiduous application, and a varied experience, he has continued to develop in the same wonderful ratio of improvement, which even then distinguished him as a prodigy in self-education. Unusually favored in personal appearance and address, full of generous impulse and delicate sensibility, exuberant in playful wit, or biting sarcasm, or stern denunciation, ever commanding in his moral attitude, earnest and impressive in manner, with a voice eminently sonorous and flexible, and gesture full of dramatic vivacity, I have many times seen large audiences swayed at his will; at one moment convulsed with laughter, and at the next, bathed in tears; now lured with admiration of the orator, and now with indignation at the oppressor, against whom he hurled his invective. But in my boyhood’s quasi-prophetic fancy of such a man and his inimitable success, I had not counted upon one antagonist, whose reality and potency, the observation of every day now forces painfully upon me. I mean the strange and unnatural _prejudice against mere color_, which is so all-prevalent in the American breast, as almost to nullify the influence of _such_ a man, _so_ pleading; while his dignity, his urbanity, his imperturbable serenity and good nature, his genuine purity and worth all fail, at times, to secure him from the grossest indignities, at the hands of the coarse and brutal. Nobody who knows him will be inclined to question our estimate of his character, but it still comports with the intelligence and refinement and piety of a large proportion of American society to label him “nigger,” and the name itself invites to safe contumely, and irresponsible violence. I have spoken of Frederick Douglass as an interesting man--a wonderful man. Look at him as he stands to-day before this nation; and then contemplate his history.