tempts had been made to establish such, and had from one cause or another failed. These views I laid before my friends. The result was that nearly two thousand five hundred dollars were speedily raised toward my establishing such a paper as I had indicated. For this prompt and generous assistance, rendered upon my bare suggestion, without any personal effort on my part, I shall never cease to feel deeply grateful, and the thought of fulfilling the expectations of the dear friends who had given me this evidence of their confidence was an abiding inspiration for persevering exertion.
Proposing to leave England and turning my face toward America in the spring of 1847, I was painfully reminded of the kind of life which awaited me on my arrival. For the first time in the many months spent abroad I was met with proscription on account of my color. While in London I had purchased a ticket and secured a berth for returning home in the Cambria—the steamer in which I had come from thence—and paid therefor the round sum of forty pounds nineteen shillings sterling. This was first-cabin fare; but on going on board I found that the Liverpool agent had ordered my berth to be given to another, and forbidden my entering the saloon. It was rather hard, after having enjoyed for so long a time equal social privileges, after dining with persons of great literary, social, political, and religious eminence, and never, during the whole time, having met with a single word, look, or gesture which gave me the slightest reason to think my color was an offense to any body, now to be cooped up in the stern of the Cambria and denied the right to enter the saloon, lest my presence should disturb some democratic fellow-passenger. The reader can easily imagine what must have been my feelings under such an indignity.
This contemptible conduct met with stern rebuke from
