“No,” said he.

“Have I not paid you as much as any other passenger through to Cincinnati?”

“Yes,” said he.

“Then I am sure that I have been insulted and imposed upon, on board of this boat, without any just cause whatever.”

“No one has misused you, for you ought to have known better than to have come to the table where there were white people.”

“Sir, did you not ask me to come to the table?”

“Yes, but I did not know that you was a colored man, when I asked you; and then it was better to insult one man than all the passengers on board of the boat.”

“Sir, I do not believe that there is a gentleman or lady on board of this boat who would have considered it an insult for me to have taken my breakfast, and you have imposed upon me by taking my money and promising to use me well, and then to insult me as you have.”

“I don’t want any of your jaw,” said he.

“Sir, with all due respect to your elevated station, you have imposed upon me in a way which is unbecoming a gentleman.  I have paid my money, and behaved myself as well as any other man, and I am determined that no man shall impose on me as you have, by deceiving me, without my letting the world know it.  I would rather a man should rob me of my money at midnight, than to take it in that way.”

I left this boat at the first stopping place, and took the next boat to Cincinnati.  On the last boat I had no cause to complain of my treatment.  When I arrived at Cincinnati, I published a statement of this affair in the Daily Herald.

The next day Mr. Doyle called on the editor in a great passion.—­“Here,” said he, “what does this mean.”

“What, sir?” said the editor quietly.

“Why, the stuff here, read it and see.”

“Read it yourself,” answered the editor.

“Well, I want to know if you sympathize with this nigger here.”

“Who, Mr. Bibb?  Why yes, I think he is a gentleman, and should be used as such.”

“Why this is all wrong—­all of it.”

“Put your finger on the place, and I will right it.”

“Well, he says that we took his money, when we paid part back.  And if you take his part, why I’ll have nothing to do with your paper.”

So ended his wrath.

In 1845, the anti-slavery friends of Michigan employed me to take the field as an anti-slavery Lecturer, in that State, during the Spring, Summer, and Fall, pledging themselves to restore to me my wife and child, if they were living, and could be reached by human agency, which may be seen by the following circular from the Signal of Liberty: