but that was impossible, so I made up my mind to
stroll round as if self-absorbed and look at the books and paintings
until the Judge appeared, as I took it for granted that after all I
said at the table on the political, religious, and social equality of
woman, not a lady would have anything to say to me.

Imagine then my surprise when the moment the parlor door was closed
upon us, Mrs. Seward, approaching me most affectionately said, "Let me
thank you for all the brave words you uttered at the dinner-table, and
for your speech before the Legislature, that thrilled my soul as I
read it over and over." I was filled with joy and astonishment.
Recovering myself, I said, "Is it possible, Mrs. Seward, that you
agree with me? Then why, when I was so hard pressed with foes on every
side, did you not come to the defence? I supposed that all you ladies
were hostile to every one of my ideas on this question!" "No, no!"
said she, "I am with you thoroughly, but I am a born coward; there is
nothing I dread more than Mr. Seward's ridicule. I would rather walk
up to the cannon's mouth than encounter it." "I too am with you," "And
I," said two or three others who had been silent at the table. I never
had a more serious, heartfelt conversation than with these ladies.
Mrs. Seward's spontaneity and earnestness had moved them all deeply,
and when the Senator appeared the first word he said was, "Before we
part I must confess that I was fairly vanquished by you and the Judge,
on my own principles (for we had quoted some of his most radical
utterances). You have the argument, but custom and prejudice are
against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic."

We had quite a magnetic circle of reformers in Central New York, that
kept the missives flying. At Rochester, were William H. Ohanning,
Frederick Douglass, the Anthonys, the Posts, the Hallowells, the
Stebbins, some grand Quaker families in Farmington, and Waterloo; Mrs.
Bloomer and her sprightly weekly called _The Lily_, at Seneca Falls;
Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Worden, Mrs. Seward, at Auburn; Gerrit Smith's
family at Peterboro; Beriah Green's at Whitesboro, with the Sedgwicks
and Mays, and Matilda Joslyn Gage at Syracuse. Although Mrs. Gage was
surrounded with a family of small children for years, yet she was
always a student, an omnivorous reader and liberal thinker, and her
pen was ever at work answering the attacks on the woman movement in
the county and State journals. In the villag