The whole colored race are preeminently inquiring, and possess a thirst and love for knowledge in the very highest degree. Fred. Douglass was a splendid specimen of this noble trait of character. Being now his own master, he literally devoured knowledge, and his splendid intellect expanded, flourished and grew on apace like the growth of vegetation in the tropics. He was no longer watched, or almost murdered, if he was found with a book in his hand! He was no longer the so-called "property" of a fellow calling himself his "owner," who robbed him of his week’s wages, and then pretended to make him a present of a quarter of his own money to treat himself with! Oh, dear me, no! No more of that for him! When this brave young man, this hero of twenty-one had done his day’s work, he came home to his beloved Anna at his cosy home in New Bedford, and after he had his supper, the way was clear for a grand time reading "The Liberator," which William Lloyd Garrison sent out every week, and that fired the warm, receptive mind and heart of young Fred., so that his fame as a brilliant conversationalist and a well-read man, spread rapidly throughout the town. He had been often listened to as an exhorter and unusually fervid speaker at the colored Methodist Church in the town, and all men with sharp eyes perceived that another star had risen in the intellectual heavens, and that some circumstance or other would bring him to the front some day. And it came to pass as they had prophesied! In New Bedford Mr. Douglass had attended several meetings in defence of the poor, oppressed slave; and there he had heard the most unmitigated denunciation of the whole infamous system of slavery. The eloquent, burning language of the speakers went home to his heart. In the summer of 1841, when Douglass was twenty-four years old, an anti-slavery convention was to be held at Nantucket, Massachusetts, a place not far from New Bedford, and the convention would be under the management of the famous William Lloyd Garrison, whose weekly paper, "The Liberator," Douglass had been devouring week by week with such unwonted avidity. He determined to take a little respite from his hard work in the brass foundry, and attend this gathering of anti-slavery people. There was a great assemblage of people at Nantucket. The fires of enthusiasm on behalf of the oppressed slave burned hot and high. In the midst of the vast audience here assembled, there was one Mr. Wm. C. Coffin, who had heard the eloquent and burning words of Frederick Douglass as he harangued the little audiences of the colored Methodist Church in New Bedford. Mr. Coffin sought out our unknown hero, and gave him such a vigorous invitation to speak that his hesitancy, and bashfulness, and backwardness were all entirely overcome, and Fred. Douglass, nothing daunted, now mounted the platform, and made such an oration as filled every thinking man and woman with astonishment. His simple, burning tale