Thus we see in Daniel Payne a diamond in the rough, in the slave State of South Carolina, but by the predetermined will of God, brought to the free North and polished, as it were, by the hand of the jeweler. We see all the work that the great Creator had given him to do, and how well he did it, too. And what we have said of Payne could as well be said of thousands of others--men in whom the spirit of right and ambition dwells; men who ever forge to the front: men whom God helps, because He sees that they are also willing to help themselves.
[Illustration: _SOUTHERN CHIVALRY--ARGUMENT VERSUS CLUB'S._]
We next come to the far-famed and highly-celebrated Frederick Douglass, renowned over all the earth wherever honest worth is appreciated and valued by the civilized sons and daughters of Adam. The name of "Fred. Douglass," as he is affectionately called, stands out in alto-relief with that of John Bunyan, George Washington, and some few others who carry fame and goodness with them at one and the same time. Nobody seems to be jealous of them nor envy them, for their fame is far beyond the reach of jealousy or envy. It would be a difficult thing to find a village, valley or an isle of any ocean on the face of the globe where the familiar endearing name of Fred. Douglass has not been heard. The children growing up at their mothers' knees have learned to lisp it as a name to be revered; and when they grow up to man's estate, nothing will content them until they have read the life of the famous Fred. Douglass.
The opinion, or rather the belief, has prevailed in America that Fred. Douglass was the son of a white father and colored mother, and that white father has been supposed to have been his owner. But in the history of his own life and times, published a few years ago, Douglass positively affirms that both his parents were colored, and for my own part I believe that to be the truth. As men like Fred. Douglass are very few and far between, the wish among many of the anti-slavery school, at least, seems to have been father to the thought that so clever a man could never have been the offspring of colored parents, but that his father, at least, must have been white. Not so, by any means! Fred. himself makes it quite plain that his father and mother were both colored, and he tells us all about it in his usual modest way.
