eight hundred dollars in good pledges, of which two hundred and fifty
dollars were from Mr. Douglass and his relatives present. Then followed
an address on "Self Help," by a young man graduate, and another by a
young woman on "A New Picture," contrasting the present surroundings
with the time when she first entered the school in its beginnings under
Mr. Weaver, in a small log-house with one door and two windows. These
addresses would have done credit to many older institutions.

Mr. Douglass then followed with his incomparable lecture on "Self-Made
Men." One could but feel in seeing his magnificent physique and his
manly bearing as he proceeded, that he was a most notable example of his
subject, while to report his lecture, with its impromptu sallies of wit
and wisdom, would be almost impossible. He instanced many men as
illustrations and especially interested his audience with stories of
personal interviews with Lincoln, Seward, Greeley, Stanton, Grant and
others during and after the war.

But most thrilling was the story of a slave boy and his following him
from his early years, his learning to read and write, his conversion and
desire to become a preacher, praying for three or four years, every
morning, noon and night, that God would set him free, and how that his
prayers were not answered till he prayed with his heels. At about
seventeen years he ran away, reaching Massachusetts, where he publicly
told his story, till, hearing that the slave catchers were after him, he
fled to England, where he lectured till his English friends purchased
him from his late master for $750, when he returned to his native land
and worked in the anti-slavery cause till by the war every bondman was
free. He has since served his country as U.S. Minister to Hayti, U.S.
Marshal at Washington, and in other positions of trust, and also tried
to serve his race to the best of his ability. It needed not that he