Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/558

550 my speech, but at parting, gave me a friendly grip, and added that if Robert E. Lee were alive and present, he knew he would give me his hand also.

This man, by his frequent interruptions, added much to the interest of the occasion, approving and condemning my sentiments as they were uttered. I only regret that he did not undertake a formal reply to my speech, but this, though invited, he declined to do. It would have given me an opportunity of fortifying certain positions in my address which were perhaps insufficiently defended. Upon the whole, taking the visit to Capt. Auld, to Easton with its old jail, to the home of my old master at Col. Lloyd's, and this visit to Harper's Ferry, with all their associations, they fulfill the expectation created at the beginning of this chapter.