was then an elegant, a brilliant young gentleman, well educated and
wealthy. He was so nearly white that he was generally taken to be so. I
first saw and heard him in our Antislavery Convention in Philadelphia.
I was attracted to him by his fervid eloquence, and was surprised at
the intimation, which fell from his lips, that he belonged to the
proscribed, disfranchised class. Away from the neighborhood of his
birth he might easily have passed as a white man. Indeed, I was told
he had travelled much in stage-coaches, and stopped days and weeks at
Saratoga and other fashionable summer resorts, and mingled, without
question, among the beaux and belles, regarded by the latter as one of
the most attractive of his sex. Robert Purvis, therefore, might have
removed to any part of our country, far distant from Philadelphia,
and have lived as one of the self-styled superior race. But, rather
than forsake his kindred, or try to conceal the secret of his birth,
he magnanimously chose to bear the unjust reproach, the cruel wrongs
of the colored people, although he has been more annoyed, chafed,
exasperated by them than any other one I have ever met with. Indeed, he
seems to have grown more impatient and irascible as the heavy burden of
his people has been lightened. Because all their rights have not been
accorded to them, he sometimes seems to deny that any of their rights
have been recognized. Because the _elective franchise_ is still meanly
withheld from them in some of the States, he will hardly acknowledge
that _slavery_ has been abolished throughout the land,--a glorious
triumph in the cause of humanity, which his own eloquence and pecuniary
contributions have helped to achieve. But we must make the largest
allowance for Mr. Purvis. No man of conscious power and high spirit,
who has not felt the gnawing, rasping, burning of a cruel stigma, can
conceive how hard it is to bear.