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344 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

encouragement should be given to any measures of coercion to keep them
there. The American people are bound if they are or can be bound to anything to keep the north gate of the South open to black and white and to all
the people. The time to assert a right Webster says is when it is called in
question. If it is attempted by force or fraud to compel the colored people to
stay there they should by all means go~go quickly and die if need be in the
attempt.... "

CHAPTER XVI.
"TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN."
Return to the "old master"---A last interview---Capt. Aulds admission. "Had I heen in your place.
I should have done as you did"--- Speech at Easton -- The old _jail there Invited to sail on
the revenue cutter "Guthrie"---Hon. John L. Thomas Visit to the old plantation Home of
Col. Lloyd---Hospitality---Gracious reception from Mrs. Buchanan A little girl's floral gift A
promise of a "good time coming"---Speech at Harpers Ferry. Decoration day. 1881 Storer
College---Hon. A. J. Hunter.

The leading incidents to which it is my purpose to call attention and make
prominent in the present chapter will I think address the imagination of the
reader with peculiar and poetic forc and might well enough be dramatized
for the stage. They certainly afford another striking illusttation of the trite
saying, that "truth is stranger than fiction."

The first of these events occurrred four years ago when after a period
of more than forty years. I visited and had an interview with Captain Thomas Auld at St. Michaels Talbot Count Maryland. It will be remem-
bered by those who have followed the thread of my story, that St. Michaels
was at one time the place of my home, and the scene of my saddest
experience of slave life: and that I left there. or. rather, was compelled to leave there becauses it was believed that I had written passes for several
slaves to enable them to escape from slavery and that prominent slavehold-
era in that neighborhood had. for this alleged offense. threatened to shoot me
on sight and to prevent the execution of this threat. my master had sent me
to Baltimore.
My return, therefore to this place in peace among the same people was
strange enough of itself but that I should, when there be formally invited by
Capt. Thomas Auld then over eighty years old to come to the side of his
dying bed evidentally with a view to a friendly talk over our past relations.