ound
inspiration in its earnest editorials which so often upheld the ideals
which she felt were important. She found thought-provoking news in the
full and favorable report of the national woman's rights convention
held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. Better informed now
through her antislavery friends about this new movement for woman's
rights, she was ready to consider it seriously and she read all the
stirring speeches, noting the caliber of the men and women taking
part. Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, and Lucretia Mott were there, as
well as Lucy Stone, that appealing young woman of whose eloquence on
the antislavery platform Susan had heard so much, and Abby Kelley
Foster, whose appointment to office in the American Antislavery
Society had precipitated a split in the ranks on the "woman question."

* * * * *

A year later, when Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen spoke at
antislavery meetings in Rochester, Susan had her first opportunity to
meet this fearless woman. Listening to Abby's speeches and watching
the play of emotion on her eager Irish face under the Quaker bonnet,
Susan wondered if she would ever have the courage to follow her
example. Like herself, Abby had started as a schoolteacher, but after
hearing Theodore Weld speak, had devoted herself to the antislavery
cause, traveling alone through the country to say her word against
slavery and facing not only the antagonism which abolition always
provoked, but the unreasoning prejudice against public speaking by
women, which was fanned into flame by the clergy. For listening to
Abby Kelley, men and women had been excommunicated. Mobs had jeered at
her and often pelted her with rotten eggs. She had married a
fellow-abolitionist, Stephen Foster, even more unrelenting than she.

Sensing Susan's interest in the antislavery cause and hoping to make
an active worker of her, Abby and Stephen suggested that she join them
on a week's tour, during which she marveled at Abby's ability to hold
the attention and meet the arguments of her unfriendly audiences and
wondered if she could ever be moved to such eloquence.

Not yet ready to join the ranks as a lecturer, she continued her
apprenticeship by attending antislavery meetings whenever possible and
traveled to Syracuse for the convention which the mob had driven out
of New York. Eager for more, she stopped over in Seneca Falls to hear
William Lloyd Garrison and th