From Frederick Douglass' Paper.

FROM OUR CINCINNATI CORRESPONDENT.

DEAR SIR:—I had the pleasure last evening
of listening a second time to Mrs. Webb, in her
beautiful character as a Shakespearian reader.
She read, in Wiswell's new Hall, the Maniac,
the School for Scandal, from the Twelfth Night,
Hamlet's Soliloquy, an Irish Dialogue, the title
of which I did not learn, and Uncle Tom—poor old Uncle Tom, as dramatized by Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. She is as good a "Paddy" as ever lived, and if she would be
take herself to the stage, her fame in a twelve
month would only be equalled by the Julia
Dean Haynes, and the Florences of our day.
Her voice is clear, sonorous, and as sweet as a
garden of flowers; and the smile which ever
plays over her expressive face, when love and
joy is excited, is enough to cause a fellow to
pay fifty cents to see if not to hear her. Indeed
she possesses a great versatility of talent, and
no where is it seen so well as in her incompara
ble representation of the drama of Uncle Tom.
Now she personates "Master George," now Le
gree, the "Border Ruffian," or nigger trader, now
Eva, the dear little soul who seems to have
been an heiress of Heaven, now Sambo and
Quimbo, and Dinah, the genuine "darkies," now
Tom, with his broken dialect, his emaciated
countenance, his plaintive voice,—Tom, the
best man (since the days of our Saviour) that
ever walked or breathed upon the earth, and I
sometimes question after all whether he is not
a myth.

And last, though not least of all, that very
odd, very eccentric, child of nature, Topsy, who
on a certain occasion, "Laws! I's nothin but a
nigger, no ways." The last scene was peculiar
ly effecting and sublime, and I shall never for
get the impress it made upon my soul. Tom is
represented as dying, from the cruelty of his
oppressor, and the angel Eva in trying to put
in him the light, but he dies, and as the curtain
fell, and the gentle artiste retired from the plat
form, not a few around me were baptized in
tears.

In the School for Scandal and Uncle Tom,
she excels, and I doubt whether there be an ac
tress on the American stage that can surpass
her in their rendition of those two characters.

Her readings differ from Miss Logan and Mrs.
McCready in this particular: they are very
chaste and refined, especially Miss Logan, and
seem better adapted to the refined scholar and
the well-bred gentleman. Mrs. Webb, while
she violates no rule of the schools, enters into
the letter and spirit of the author, and while
she reads, you fancy that the author himself is
before you. But Mrs. Webb is a colored wo
man, and this is a crime in America. Our anti
slavery friends have not purged themselves of
the miserable prejudices of caste in Cincinnati,
and will not give encouragement to enterprises
among colored people, however laudable or
praiseworthy they may be. This is much to be
regretted, but it is nevertheless a fact, a fixed
fact. I counted to hear her
on the first evening, (exclusive of the musicians
and the press) and or on the
last, and the remainder of the audience was
made up of the colored elite, and the fashionable
dead heads and of our city.

No justifiable excuse can be given for this
cold treatment from those who claim to be our
especial friends and well wishers. Mrs. Webb
had been well spoken of by the Eastern press,
and was advertised in all our dailies at least one
week prior to her Reading, and posters pla
carded on every corner of the street, but she
did not draw the , alias the Repub
licans of this city. I might regard it as a blun
der, but they have treated us so before, and un
less a Saul of Tarsus gets in among them, they
will treat us so again.

Professor George B. Vashon lectured before
the Colored Men's Library Association, on the
past, present, and future prospects of Hayti,
but they would not come out, neither would
they come to hear Dr. Pennington, nor the
talented and eloquent Wm. H. Day. Perhaps
this may be all right enough in the main, but
what encouragement has a colored person to
rise above a boot black, a dish washer, or a
waiter. Indeed the prejudice against the free
people of color in the North, when they essay
to be the equals of the whites, .

In Baltimore the Black Swan met with a
warm reception from slaveholders; in Cincinnati,
Mrs. Webb, the accomplished artiste, met with
the cold shoulder from the . But
why complain?

Yours,

G.

CINCINNATI, April 9th, 1856.