Three Years in Europe: Places I Have Seen and People I Have MetBrown, William Wells
History
Three Years in Europe: Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met
Brown, William Wells
Great Britain -- Description and travel
"A great feature in our meeting to-night, is that we have beside us two
individuals, who, according to the immaculate laws of immaculate
Yankeedom, have been guilty of the tremendous crime of stealing
themselves. (Applause.) Mr. Craft, who sits beside me, has stolen his
good wife, and Mrs. Craft has stolen her worthy husband; and our
respected friend, Mr. Brown, has cast a covetous eye on his own person.
In the name of the Temperance reformers of Edinburgh--in the name of
universal Scotland, I would welcome these two victims of the white man's
pride, ambition, selfishness, and cupidity. I welcome them as our equals
in every respect. (Great applause.) What a humiliating thought it will
be, surely, for our American friends on the other side of the water,
when they hear (and we shall endeavour to let them hear) that the very
man whom they consider not worthy to sit in a third class carriage along
with a white man, and that too in a district of country where the very
aristocracy deal in cheap cheese--(great applause) traffic in tallow
candles, and spend their nights and days among raw hides and train
oil--(applause)--what a humbling thought it will be for them to know
that these very men in the centre of educated Scotland, in the midst of
educated Edinburgh, are thought fit to hold even the first rank upon our
aristocratic platform. Let us, then, my friends, lift our voices this
evening in one swelling chorus for the down-trodden slave. Let us
publish abroad the fact to the world, that the sympathies of Scotland
are with the bondsman everywhere. Let us unite our voices to cry, Down
with the iniquitous Slave Bill!--Down with the aristocracy of the
skin!--Perish forever the deepest-dyed, the hardest-hearted system of
abomination under heaven!--Perish the sum of all villanies! Perish
American slavery. (Great applause.)"
But I must leave the good and hospitable people of the Scottish Capital
for the present. I have taken an elaborate stock of notes, and may speak
of Edinburgh again.
I left William and Ellen Craft (the latter of whom has just come to
Edinburgh), and took the Glasgow train, and after a ride of two hours
through a beautiful country, with its winding hills on either side--its
fertile fields, luxuriant woods, and stately mansions lying around us,
arrived in the muddy, dirty, smoky, foggy city of Glasgow. As I had had
a standing invitation from a distinguished gentleman with whom I became
acquainted in London, to partake of his hospitality, should I ever visit
Glasgow, and again received a note while in Edinburgh renewing the
invitation, I proceeded to his residence at Partick, three miles from
Glasgow. This is one of the loveliest spots which I have yet seen. Our
mansion is on the side of Laurel Bank, a range of the Kilpatrick hills.
We have a view of the surrounding country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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