was hereditary.  Some men, who rise above their original position, either in character or fortune, endeavor to conceal their early history.  Others obtrude it upon all occasions, in order to magnify themselves by a contrast between what they have been and what they are.  But he did neither the one nor the other.  The subject did not occupy his thoughts.  He spoke of having been a tailor, whenever it came naturally in his way, but never for the sake of doing so.  His having been born in a hen-house was a mere external accident in his eyes; and in the same light he regarded the fact that Victoria was born in a palace.  What was the spiritual condition of the two at any given age, was the only thing that seemed to him of real importance.

His steadfastness in maintaining moral principles, “however unpopular those principles might be,” was severely tried in the autumn of 1838.  At a late hour in the night, two colored men came to his house, and one introduced the other as a stranger in the city, who had need of a lodging.  Friend Hopper of course conjectured that he might be a fugitive slave; and this conjecture was confirmed the next morning.  The stranger was a mulatto, about twenty-two years old, and called himself Thomas Hughes.  According to his own account, he was the son of a wealthy planter in Virginia, who sold his mother with himself and his twin sister when they were eleven months old.  His mother and sister were subsequently sold, but he could never ascertain where they were sent.  When he was about thirteen, he was purchased by the son of his first master.  Being hardly dealt with by this relative, he one day remonstrated with him for treating his own brother with so much severity.  This was, of course, deemed a great piece of insolence in a bondman, and he was punished by being sold to a speculator, carried off hand-cuffed, with his feet tied under the horse’s belly, and finally shipped for Louisiana with a coffle of five hundred slaves.  He was bought by a gambler, who took him to Louisville, Kentucky.  When he had lived there three years, his master, having lost large sums of money, told him he should be obliged to sell him.  Thomas had meanwhile ascertained that his father had removed to Kentucky, and was still a very wealthy man.  He obtained permission to go and see him, with the hope that he would purchase him and set him free.  Accordingly, he called upon him, and told him that he was Thomas, the son of his slave Rachel, who had always assured him that he was his father.  The rich planter did not deny poor Rachel’s assertion, but in answer to her son’s inquiries, he plainly manifested that he neither knew nor cared who had bought her, or to what part of the country she had been sent.  Thomas represented his own miserable condition, in being sold from one to another, and subject to the will of whoever happened to be his owner.  He intreated his father to purchase him, with a view to manumission; but himself and his proposition were