As a public speaker he seemed superior
to Frederick Douglass. It was pleasing at those anti-slavery meetings
to see how completely intermingled were the whites and the coloured.
I had been invited in the evening to speak at the public meeting of the
Foreign Evangelical Society, and to take tea at Dr. Baird's house.
While I was there, Dr. Anderson, one of the Secretaries of the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and Mr. Merwin, called to
invite me to address the public meeting of that society on the Friday.
I promised to do so, if I should not previously have left for the West
Indies. The public meeting of Dr. Baird's society was held in the Dutch
Reformed Church, Dr. Hutton's, a magnificent Gothic building. Dr. De
Witt took the chair. The attendance was large and respectable. Dr.
Baird, as Secretary, having recently returned from Europe, where he had
conversed on the subject of his mission with fourteen crowned heads,
read a most interesting report. The writer had then to address the
meeting. After him three other gentlemen spoke. There was no
collection! Strange to say, that, with all their revivals, our friends
in America seem to be morbidly afraid of doing anything under the
influence of excitement.
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