thousand delightful sensations. In his autobiography he describes this
dawn of liberty thus:

"A new world had opened up to me. I lived more in one day than in a
year of my slave life. I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den
of hungry lions. My chains were broken, and the victory brought me
unspeakable joy."

But one cannot live long on joy; and, while his chains were broken,
he was not beyond the echo of their clanking. He met on the streets,
within a few hours after his arrival in New York, a man of his own
color, who informed him that New York was full of Southerners at that
season of the year, and that slave-hunters and spies were numerous,
that old residents of the city were not safe, and that any recent
fugitive was in imminent danger. After this cheerful communication
Douglass's informant left him, evidently fearing that Douglass himself
might be a slave-hunting spy. There were negroes base enough to play
this role. In a sailor whom he encountered he found a friend. This
Good Samaritan took him home for the night, and accompanied him next
day to a Mr. David Ruggles, a colored man, the secretary of the New
York Vigilance Committee and an active antislavery worker. Mr. Ruggles
kept him concealed for several days, during which time the woman
Douglass loved, a free woman, came on from Baltimore; and they were
married. He had no money in his pocket, and nothing to depend upon but
his hands, which doubtless seemed to him quite a valuable possession,
as he knew they had brought in an income of several hundred dollars a
year to their former owner.

Douglass's new friends advised him to go to New Bedford,
Massachusetts, where whaling fleets were fitted out, and where he