Frederick Douglass and the Falling Stars
I LEFT Baltimore for St. Michaels in the month of March, 1833. I know the year because it was the one succeeding the first cholera in Baltimore, and was the year also of that strange phenomenon, when the heavens seemed about to part with its starry train. I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with bright descending messengers from the sky. It was about day-break when I saw this sublime scene. I was not without the suggestion at the moment, that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of man; and in my then state of mind, I was prepared to hail him as my friend and deliverer. I had read, that the “stars shall fall from heaven;” and they were now falling. I was suffering much in my mind. It did seem that every time the young tendrils of my affection became attached, they were rudely broken by some unnatural outside power; and I was beginning to look away to heaven for the rest denied me on earth.—Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, p. 186.