Washington D.C. June 16. 1879

Hon: A. G. Riddle

My dear Sir,

I am very much obliged to you for an elegant bound volume of your Story of Bart Rigeley. An earlier acknowledgment would have been perhaps much more graceful if not more grateful on my part. I am sure however, you will excuse my tardiness when I tell you I wanted to read the Book before thanking you for it. Well I have now read the Book and can thank you intelligently. It is an interesting and entertaining volume. It is a vivid picture of life on the Reserve as it existed at the time of which you write. I caught some pleasant glimpses of that life on my first visit to the Reserve thirty five years ago—and can easily recognize the fidelity of the picture as given in Bart Rigeley. There is not only much to please but much to instruct in this Book. Since it contains flashes of light on some of the profoundest problems with which the human mind has been called upon to grapple. The Book is entirely

American and answers well the demand for a purely American Story. It could not have been writen by any other than an American hand and brain nor by any one not thoroughly embued with the life and Spirit of the Western Reserve as exhibited forty or fify years ago. One may almost see the deep forests & hear the rippling brooks, the lovely sounds, and feel the deep Solicitude of that Section as they read your Book. I shall retain in my memory many of the characters you describe. They are individual and striking and about as easily made so for us a part of our Society through life as Some of those in the stories of Dickens. If you had chosen to be what Mr Cameron, calls one of [these?] "Literary Fellows," you might have Served your day and generation about as well as you have as a lawyer.

Your description of the hunt for Julia Markham while lost in the woods, is a master piece in its way and affected me very deeply. Every reader will mingle in that generous human uprising, and [swing?] with the multitude through darkness, cold and storm in search for the [Collo?] girl

But I did not take up my pen to tell you what is in the Book, nor how much I liked it, nor to praise its perfections, nor to point out its imperfections nor to tell where and how it might have been disproved—but to thank you for the present and for the pleasure I have experienced in Reading the Bart Rigeley story, and this I most sincerely do—I shall read the hunt for Miss Markham again, and also your [Advent?] into Jefferson—

With great Respect yours truly

Fred^k. Douglass