One Sunday afternoon in 1881, I gave a temperance talk at Franconia, N. H. In the audience, as I afterward learned, were Mr. George W. Cable and his wife and daughter. It pleased me not a little to hear him say that, going home from the meeting, this bright young girl, after a long reverie, said to her mother, "I intend to be a total abstainer always after this, and sometime a temperance talker with a white ribbon on my breast."

For one I have not been greatly encouraged by the applause or commendation of my auditors-indeed, have said an hundred times that if I judged by their lack of demonstration I would immediately quit the field, but one pure girl's approbation thus unconventionally expressed, helped me onward more than the genial man and great author who took the trouble to report it will ever know-unless, as is unlikely, he reads these grateful lines.

Among other exceptionally gifted Southerners whose names I string as pearls on the rosary of friendship, are Sallie F. Chapin, author of "Fitzhugh St. Clair: the Rebel Boy of South Carolina"; Georgia Hulse McLeod, of Baltimore, Fannie Casseday Duncan, the Louisville journalist, and her saintly sister Jennie ; Mrs. James Leech, who carried off the parliamentary prize at the Chautauqua Examination; Col. George W. Bain and family, of Lexington; Mrs. Jenny Morton, the poetess of Frankfort, Ky.; Mrs. Lide Meriwether, of Tennessee, who wrote, "She Sails by the Stars"; Laura C. Holloway, the popular author, now of Brooklyn, N. Y.; Rev. Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, who declined to be a bishop, and who wrote "Our Brother in Black"; Judge East, whom I call "the Abe Lincoln of Tennessee "; Sam Jones, the out-yankee-ing Yankee of the South; Judge Watson, of Mississippi, once a Confederate Senator and always a Virginia gentleman of the old school; Dr. Charles Marshall, of Vicksburg, Judge Tourgee, of North Carolina, and Mrs. H. B. Kells, the white ribbon editor of Mississippi.

The South is moving steadily up toward its rightful place as one born to the purple of literary power, and that its women are in the van of the march to the throne-room of this highest aristocracy, gives their Northern sisters special encouragement and pleasure.

The first woman I ever heard speak was the first woman I ever had a chance to hear. Her name was Abby Kelley Foster; she was refined, inspired, but so far ahead of her age that she was a potion too strong for the mental digestion of the average man. She was a woman speaking in public and that was not to be tolerated. She spoke against the then cherished institution of slavery and for that she was to be mobbed: In the International Council at Washington, in 1888, I heard some of her former associates say that she went to church one Sunday in a certain town where she had spoken the night before, and the minister took as his text, "That woman Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess," and rained oratorical fire and brimstone on the poor little reformer throughout the morning service. Let us remember this, for there are those who are abused nowadays by shortsighted mortals whose children will be very likely to build the sepulchers of those whom their fathers traduced.

I was a little girl when I heard Abby Kelley, for it was before we left Oberlin, so that my impressions are not as definite as I could wish.

The next one was a woman whose name I do not recall. I think she was a spiritualist, and she spoke in a little out-of-theway hall in Milwaukee, when I was a student there in 1857. I had to coax my Aunt Sarah for some time before she would consent to let me go, but she finally did so as a concession to what she called my 66 everlasting curiosity," sending me in charge of a city friend. The woman was perched in some queer fashion midway between the floor and ceiling. I think she had short hair. I know she looked very queer and very pitiful, and I felt sorry, for my intuitions told me that a woman ought to be at least

570

The Peerless Anna Dickinson.

as good a speaker as a man, and quite as popular. Nothing of all she said remains with me, except one sentence, which I half believe is fragment from some poet: "I love to think about a central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation."

The next woman I heard was Anna Dickinson in the handsome Crosby Opera House, Chicago, during the war. The auditorium was packed; the stage occupied by the most distinguished gentlemen of the city, no ladies being allowed on its select precincts save one, a young woman hardly past twenty, who came forward with poised, elastic tread, took her seat modestly and smiled her thanks as thunders of applause woke the echoes of the great pavilion. Her dark, curly hair was flung back from her handsome brow, her gray eyes, of which a gifted man had said, "They make one believe in immortality," glanced around upon us with a look of inspiration. What she said I do not know, but it set vibrating within my spirit the sacred chord of patriotism, for Anna Dickinson was queen of patriots. Going home that night I could not sleep, for I heard as clearly as I had done in the audience the cadence of that wondrous voice, its courage, its martial ring, and its unmeasured pathos. Beyond all men and women to whom I have yet listened, Anna Dickinson has been to me an inspiration. In 1875 I met her first when I was President of the Chicago W. C. T. U. and she came to the city to lecture. Her agent wished her to speak in Evanston, and I think I never had more pleasure than in using my influence to secure our church for her and entertaining her in my own home. According to her custom, she refrained from eating till the lecture had been delivered; then we had supper in our little diningroom and I sought to have it to her liking. We remained at the table until two o'clock at night, for we were all so much delighted with her conversation that my dear mother, for the first time, forgot her early hours and sat there until after midnight. We talked of things past, present, and to come. If we had known each other always we could not have had more abandon. My mother said to her, "What do you think of Christ?' She paused as if she had been smitten with a blow, then changed the subject skillfully, but made no answer. When I showed Anna to her room, she put her arm about me saying, "The question was so sudden that I hardly understood your grand old

The First Gun for Home Protection.

571 mother's meaning. What do I think of Christ? " And then for several minutes she spoke of him with an eloquence and tenderness that I have never heard excelled and rarely equaled in the pulpit.

Later on I saw her many times, for she spent weeks at the Palmer House writing her plays. The National Temperance Society had a great convention in Farwell Hall during her stay. I remember Vice-president Wilson spoke and other distinguished men and women, among them all who were leaders of the National W. C. T. U. I had prevailed on Anna to be present at one of these meetings when the question of equal suffrage was to be debated. Miss Lavina Goodell, a lawyer from Madison, Wis., daughter of William Goodell the noted antislavery reformer, moved, at my suggestion, that Miss Anna Dickinson be invited. to speak, and at once the house manifested both excitement and applause. The friends of the pending resolution wanted her help, the foes dreaded her voice. But the motion prevailed by a large majority, and as she came along the aisle and ascended the platform, I could think of nothing except Joan of Arc. Indeed I suppose she has reminded everybody of that great character more than any other woman could. As she stood there in the prime and plenitude of her magnificent powers, simply attired in a tasteful walking suit of gray, her great eyes flashing, her eloquent lips tremulous at the thought of what was pending, she was a figure long to be remembered. Often as I have heard her speak, it seems to me that day crowned all. It was not so much her words, as I read them in cold type when the meeting was reported, but it was the mighty spirit that moved upon the hearts and consciences of those who heard. She seemed an avenging angel as she depicted the injustice that fastens saloons upon this nation, and gives women in the home no remedy and no redress, although they and their children must endure its awful cruelty and shame. Our resolutions carried and that was the first gun of the ever thickening campaign, in the midst of which we now are, and whose final result will be woman regnant in the state, an outlawed liquor traffic and a protected home.

How earnestly I pleaded with Anna Dickinson to come with us in the temperance work! Sometimes she seemed half persuaded, but the brilliant friends around her were patrons of the drama; she felt her power, and I am one of those who believe she

was entitled by her gifts to make a magnificent success upon the stage. Earnest and tender were the letters I sent her and eloquent of hope the bouquets of flowers. Indeed, for some months I was conscious that my spirit was polarized toward this splendid specimen of womanhood. When she was writing her last book "A Paying Investment," I saw her almost daily. She said to me, with her inimitable smile, showing me the chapter in which a capital argument was made in favor of the temperance work, 'See, Missy, I wrote that for you."

One evening I took Elizabeth Comstock, the dear old Quaker philanthropist with me to the hotel, and we made a combined assault upon Anna to devote her gifts to the temperance reform. She took a hand of each in her strong, warm palms, and said, "Kind hands, gentle hands, and sisterly, fitted to the deeds you do, and to the burdens that you carry. Go your own sweet way and do your work, but leave me to do mine in my own fashion. Your souls are calm and steadfast, while mine is wild and stormy. Let me go my way!" Her voice trembled and tears were in her eyes. After that I knew the case was hopeless, but my love and prayers have followed her all the years, and I have been grieved, as words may not relate, in all the griefs and losses that have come to her.

Everybody agrees that our present queen of the platform is Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, than whom no American woman has a better record for patriotism and philanthropy. We women of a later time were fortunate in having for forerunners the two remarkably endowed women I have named, and we should be forever grateful to that statesman-like speaker and chief-reformer, Susan B. Anthony; to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the philosopher, and Lucy Stone, the heroic pioneer, who still earlier bore the brunt of battle for us, and whose names millions of loyal hearts will cherish. As a speaker, Julia Ward Howe has a rare niche of her own among the most cultured women of her century, and surely our gratitude to her will not be less, who has laid fame and fortune on the altar of a sacred cause in circles the most difficult to reach and win. The platform is already a conquered field for woman; so is the pulpit in all senses save the sacerdotal, and here our progress is steady and sure. God bless the generous-hearted men who from the first have fought valiantly for the