Clotel - William Wells Brown (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

remedy by the establishment of Manual Labour Schools in Canada for fugitive slaves. A public meeting, attended by between 3,000 and 4,000 persons, was held on the 6th of January 1851, in the City Hall, Glasgow, which was presided over by Alexander Hastie, Esq., M.P., at which resolutions were unanimously passed, approving of Mr. Brown’s scheme; which scheme, however, never received that amount of support which would have enabled him to bring it into practice; and the plan at present only remains as an evidence of its author’s ingenuity and desire for the elevation of his oppressed and injured race. Mr. Brown subsequently made, through the columns of the Times, a proposition for the emigration of American fugitive slaves, under fair and honourable terms, from Canada to the West Indies, where there is a great lack of that labour which they are so capable of undertaking. These efforts all show the willingness of this fugitive slave to aid those of his race. Last year Mr. Brown published his Three Years in Europe; or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met. And his literary abilities may be partly judged of from the following commendations of that ably written work:

“The extraordinary excitement produced by Uncle Tom’s Cabin will, we hope, prepare the public of Great Britain and America for this lively book of travels by a real fugitive slave. Though he never had a day’s schooling in his life, he has produced a literary work not unworthy of a highly educated gentleman. Our readers will find in these letters much instruction, not a little entertainment, and the beatings of a manly heart, on behalf of a downtrodden race, with which they will not fail to sympathise.” —⁠The Eclectic.

“When he writes on the wrongs of his race, or the events of his own career, he is always interesting or amusing.” —⁠The Athenæum.

“The appearance of this book is too remarkable a literary event to pass without a notice. At the moment when attention in this country is directed to the state of the coloured people in America, the book appears with additional advantage; if nothing else were attained by its publication, it is well to have another proof of the capability of the Negro intellect. Altogether Mr. Brown has written a pleasing and amusing volume. Contrasted with the caricature and bombast of his white countrymen, Mr. Willis’s description of ‘People he has met,’ a comparison suggested by the similarity of the title, it is both in intellect and in style a superior performance, and we are glad to bear this testimony to the literary merit of a work by a negro author.” —⁠The Literary Gazette.

“That a man who was a slave for the first twenty years of his life, and who has never had a day’s schooling, should produce such a book as this, cannot but astonish those who speak disparagingly of the African race.” —⁠The Weekly News and Chronicle.

“This remarkable book of a remarkable man cannot fail to add to the practical protests already entered in Britain against the absolute bondage of 3,000,000 of our fellow creatures. The impression of a self-educated son of slavery here set forth, must hasten the period when the senseless and impious denial of common claims to a common humanity, on the score of colour, shall be scouted with scorn in every civilised and Christian country. And when this shall be attained, among the means of destruction of the hideous abomination, his compatriots will remember with respect and gratitude the doings and sayings of William Wells Brown. The volume consists of a sufficient variety of scenes, persons, arguments, inferences, speculations, and opinions, to satisfy and amuse the most exigeant of those who read pour se desennuyer; while those who look deeper into things, and view with anxious hope the progress of nations and of mankind, will feel that the good cause of humanity and freedom, of Christianity, enlightenment, and brotherhood, cannot fail to be served by such a book as this.” —⁠Morning Advertiser.

“He writes with ease and ability, and his intelligent observations upon the great question to which he has devoted and is devoting his life, will be read with interest, and will command influence and respect.” —⁠Daily News.

Mr. Brown is most assiduous in his studies even at the present time. The following extract from his writings will show how he spends most of his leisure hours:

“It was eight o’clock before I reached my lodgings. Although fatigued by the day’s exertions, I again resumed the reading of Roscoe’s Leo X, and had nearly finished seventy-three pages, when the clock on St. Martin’s Church apprised me that it was two. He who escapes from slavery at the age of twenty years without any education, as did the writer of this letter, must read when others are asleep, if he would catch up with the rest of the world. ‘To be wise,’ says Pope, ‘is but to know how little can be known.’ The true searcher after truth and knowledge is always like a child; although gaining strength from year to year, he still ‘learns to labour and to wait.’ The field of labour is ever expanding before him, reminding him that he has yet more to learn; teaching him that he is nothing more than a child in knowledge, and inviting him onward with a thousand varied charms. The son may take possession of the father’s goods at his death, but he cannot inherit with the property the father’s cultivated mind. He may put on the father’s old coat, but that is all; the immortal mind of the first wearer has gone to the tomb. Property may be bequeathed but knowledge cannot. Then let him who would be useful in his generation be up and doing. Like the Chinese student who learned perseverance from the woman whom he saw trying to rub a crowbar into a needle, so should we take the experience of the past to lighten our feet