Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/297

CHAPTER VI.

IMPRESSIONS ABROAD.

Danger to be averted—A refuge sought abroad—Voyage on the steamship Cambria—Refusal of first-class passage—Attractions of the forecastle-deck—Hutchinson family—Invited to make a speech—Southerners feel insulted—Captain threatens to put them in irons—Experiences abroad—Attentions received—Impressions of different members of Parliament and of other public men—Contrast with life in America—Kindness of friends—Their purchase of my person and the gift of the same to myself—My return.

AS I have before intimated, the publishing of my "Narrative" was regarded by my friends with mingled feelings of satisfaction and apprehension. They were glad to have the doubts and insinuations which the advocates and apologists of slavery had made against me proved to the world to be false, but they had many fears lest this very proof would endanger my safety, and make it necessary for me to leave a position which in a signal manner had opened before me, and one in which I had thus far been efficient in assisting to arouse the moral sentiment of the community against a system which had deprived me, in common with my fellow-slaves, of all the attributes of manhood.

I became myself painfully alive to the liability which surrounded me, and which might at any moment scatter all my proud hopes and return me to a doom worse than death. It was thus I was led to seek a refuge in monarchical England from the dangers of republican slavery. A rude, uncultivated fugitive slave, I was driven to that country to which American young gentlemen go to increase their stock of knowledge, to seek pleasure, and

(289)