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- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- LETTER I
- LETTER II
- LETTER III
- LETTER IV
- LETTER V
- LETTER VI
- LETTER VII
- LETTER VIII
- LETTER IX
- LETTER X
- LETTER XI
- LETTER XII
- LETTER XIII
- LETTER XIV
- LETTER XV
- LETTER XVI
- LETTER XVII
- LETTER XVIII
- LETTER XIX
- LETTER XX
- LETTER XXI
- LETTER XXII
- LETTER XXIII
- LETTER XXIV
- LETTER XXV
- LETTER XXVI
- LETTER XXVII
- LETTER XXVIII
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Summary
In the afternoon of my first Sabbath at Baltimore I found, after much inquiry, a congregation of coloured people, who were some sort of Methodists. My wife and I were the only white people in the place. We were treated with great politeness, and put, not in a pew apart by ourselves, but in one of the best places they could find, in the very midst of the congregation. A serious-looking coloured man opened the service, with great propriety of manner and expression. He was the regular pastor. A black man, a stranger as I understood, preached. His text (he said) was, “Behold, I come quickly;” and they would find it in the Book of Revelation. But chapter and verse were not given, nor had he the Bible open in Revelation at all. I suspected that he could not read; and that suspicion was confirmed by the amount of nonsense which he soon uttered. At first his words were “few and far between,” uttered in a tone of voice scarcely audible. Soon, however, he worked both himself and his audience into a tremendous phrenzy. The burden of his song was- how John had lived to a very great age, in spite of all attempts to put him to death; how his enemies had at last decided to try the plan of throwing him into a “kittle of biling ile;” how God had said to him, “Never mind, John,-if they throw thee into that kittle, I'll go there with thee,-they shall bile me too;” how John was therefore taken up alive; and how his persecutors, baffled in all their efforts to despatch him, ultimately determined to throw their victim upon a desolate island, and leave him there to live or perish as he might.
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- American Scenes and Christian SlaveryA Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States, pp. 198 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009