For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

MR. EDITOR:—How pervasive, influential, almost omnipotent, is American prejudice against a colored man! How it enters every cranny and crevice of American society! In the college, the law school and the theological seminary, it stands like a frowning monster. In politics, religion, literature and the arts, its lighting influence blasts and deadens every beautiful and inviting prospect.—Indeed, in all the diocese ramifications of American life, it is to be found as a hellish genius, breathing out death and destruction to every colored person who aspires to manhood and its dignities. It knows no favorite among us. It lays its bloody clutches upon us all—upon the educated and refined among us as well as upon the ignorant and degraded. Truly, a colored person might be a very Socrates, Demosthenes, Euripides, possessing all the excellencies of a thorough education, and a deep and comprehensive reading, with all the culture and refinement of the most finished and elegant modern society, and yet he cannot escape the foul effects of this fell power. It breathes upon all his aspirations an influence more deadly than the exhalations of the Upas. How we are well-nigh compelled to adopt the language of the sacred bard, when he said: "But I am a worm, and no man—a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me, laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lips; they shake the hand."

This train of reflection has been suggested to me by a fact which recently came to my knowledge. In an adjoining town, (North Amherst,) there is a Temperance Association known as the "Ark." It seem to be the desire of many of the members, and these among the most prominent and active of them, that John Mercer Langston should become a member of this Association. Accordingly, after a conversation with him in regard to the Constitution and the general character of the "Ark," without his knowledge, one of the most influential and respected members introduced a motion after the usual manner, to this effect, that J. M. Langston is a proper person to become a member of Ark No. 9. When the proposition was made, it was at once unanimously adopted. At a subsequent meeting of the "Ark," however, it was reconsidered. But after a very spirited debate, it was again sustained by a vote of thirty-six to seventeen.

In this Association there are some of the right sort of men and women—some who understand how to look at a man in some other way than through the medium of his skin—some who can see worth and excellence in a black man as well as in a white one.—This statement you will find fully confirmed in reading the following essay, read before the "Ark," at one of its weekly meetings, by Mr. James Frisbie, a truehearted anti-slavery man as well as a devoted temperance man.