Page:The black man - his antecedents, his genius, and his achievements (IA blackmanantecede00browrich).pdf/263

 saluted us with decorous dignity, and began to converse.

"It was difficult to forget that the man before us was not of our own race. The topics upon which he spoke were chiefly personal. He related some very amusing anecdotes of his relations with southern gentlemen. On one occasion he applied for a passage to Liverpool in a Philadelphia packet. Some southern gentlemen, unacquainted with Purvis, save as a man of negro blood, protested that he should not be received. Among these was a Mr. Hayne, a near relative of Hayne the orator.

"Purvis accordingly went to Liverpool by another vessel. He met Hayne and the southerners as they were about returning home, and took passage with them, passing for a white man. He gained their esteem, was cordially invited by each to visit him in the south, and no entertainment was complete without his joke and his presence. At a final dinner, given to the party by the captain of the vessel, Mr. Hayne, who had all along spoken violently of the negro race, publicly toasted Mr. Purvis, as the finest type of the Caucasian race he had ever met.

"Mr. Purvis rose to reply. 'I am not a Caucasian,' said he; 'I belong to the degraded tribe of Africans.'

"The feelings of the South Carolinians need not be described.

"Mr. Purvis has written a number of anti-slavery pamphlets, and is regarded, by rumor, as the president of the Underground Railroad. He has figured in many slave-rescue cases, some of which he relates with graphic manner of description.

"He is the heaviest tax-payer in the township, and