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360 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

street car, among the white passengers. All at once I heard the conductor, in an angry tone, order another colored man, who was modestly standing on the platform of the rear end of the car, to get off, and actually stopped the car to push him off, when I, from within, with all the emphasis I could throw into my voice, in imitation of my chivalrous friend Marshall of Kentucky, sung out, "Go on! let the gentleman alone; no one here objects to his riding!" Unhappily the fellow saw where the voice came from, and turned his wrathful attention to me, and said, "You shall get out also!" I told him I would do no such thing, and if he attempted to remove me by force he would do it a his peril. Whether the young man was afraid to tackle me, or did not wish to disturb the passengers, I do not know. At any rate he did not attempt to execute his threat, and I rode on in peace till I reached Chestnut street, when I got off and went about my business.

On my way down the Hudson river, from Albany to New York, at one time, on the steamer ''Alida," in company with some English ladies who had seen me in their own country received and treated as a gentleman, I ventured, like any other passenger, to go, at the call of the dinner bell, into the cabin and take a seat at the table: but I was forcibly taken from it and compelled to leave the cabin. My friends, who wished to enjoy a day's trip on the beautiful Hudson, left the table with me, and went to New York hungry and not a little indignant and disgusted at such barbarism. There were influential persons on board the "Alida," on this occasion, a word from whom might have spared me this indignity; but there was no Edward Marshall among them to defend the weak and rebuke the strong.

When Miss Sarah Jane Clarke, one of America's brilliant literary ladies, known to the world under the nom de plume of Grace Greenwood, was young, and as brave as she was beautiful, I encountered a similar experience to that on the "Alida'' on one of the Ohio river steamers; and that lady, being on board, arose from her seat at the table, expressed her disapprobation, and moved majestically away with her sister to the upper deck. Her conduct seemed to amaze the lookers on, but it filled me with grateful admiration.

When on my way to attend the great Free Soil Convention at Pittsburgh, in 1852, which nominated John P. Hale for President, and George W. Julian for Vice-President, the train stopped for dinner at Alliance, Ohio, and I attempted to enter the hotel with the other delegates, but was rudely repulsed, when many of them, learning of it, rose from the table, and denounced the outrage, and refused to finish their dinners.

In anticipation of our return, at the close of the Convention, Mr. Sam. Beck, the proprietor of the hotel, prepared dinner for three hundred guests.