[339] audience. They wept freely—they clustered around me in throngs, each one eager to receive the pressure of my hand and implore Heaven's choicest blessings upon my head. You cannot imagine the scene, and my pen is wholly inadequate to describe it. As I stood before them, and reflected it might be the last time I should behold them on earth, . . . I could not but feel a strong depression of mind. . . . It is the lowness of their estate, in the estimation of the world, which exalts them in my eyes. It is the distance which separates them from the blessings and privileges of society, which brings them so closely to my affections.1 It is the unmerited scorn, reproach and persecution of their persons, by those whose complexion is colored like my own, that command for them my sympathy and respect. It is the fewness of their friends, and the great number of their enemies, that induce me to stand forth in their defence, and enable me, I trust, to exhibit to the world the purity of my motives. . . . On Sabbath evening, I delivered an address to a large and2 attentive audience of white people in Brooklyn, where I have long been regarded as a terrible monster. I am happy to learn that the effects of the address are most salutary. This evening, I bid farewell to the colored inhabitants of3 Hartford, in their meeting-house. To-morrow I start for New Haven, in which place I shall4 stay two or three days, in order to have my portrait taken and engraved upon steel. This I do reluctantly; but my friends are imperious, and I must gratify them. This sticking up one's face in print-shops, to be the ‘observed of all observers,’ is hardly consistent with genuine modesty, but I can in no other way get rid of the importunities of those who would pluck out their eyes to give me.
Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn to W. L. Garrison, in Boston.
New Haven, March 29, 1833.5 I am desirous to have you sit to my brother for a portrait before you leave for England. I suppose you will have but little time for such a purpose, but if you can be here but one or two days he can get the likeness and finish the painting afterwards. He is now painting a portrait of Ashmun6 for the
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