Another voice chimes in with: "Do you love the
Temperance cause? Can you continue here and see all this
confusion prevailing around you? Why not withdraw, and then the
Convention will be quiet;" and all this in most mournful,
dolorous tones. I think if the man cries, I shall certainly cry
too.

But then a new interval of quiet occurs, and so I rise to get the
floor. I fancy myself in a melting mood enough to beg them, with
prayers and tears, to be just and righteous; but no, "this kind
goeth not out by prayer and fasting," and so I stand up again.
Directly Rev. John Chambers points his finger at me, and calls
aloud: "Shame on the woman! Shame on the woman!" Then I feel cool
and calm enough again, and sit down until his anger has way.
Again the "friends" gather around me, and there come more appeals
to me, while the public ear is filled with "points of order"; and
the two fall together, in a somewhat odd, but very pointed
contrast, somewhere in the center of my brain. "Do you think,"
says one, "that Christ would have done so?" spoken with a
somewhat negative emphasis. "I think He would," spoken with a
positive emphasis. "Do you love peace as well as Christ loved it,
and can you do thus?"

What answer I made I know not, but there came rushing over my
soul the words of Christ: "I came not to send peace, but a
sword." It seems almost to be spoken with an audible voice, and
it sways the spirit more than all things else. I remember that
Christ's doctrine was, "first pure, then peaceable;" that He,
too, was persecuted. So are my doctrines good; they ask only for
the simple rights of a delegate, only that which must be
recognized as just, by the impartial Father of the human race,
and by His holy Son. Then come these mock pleading tones again
upon my ear, and instinctively I think of the Judas kiss, and I
arise, turning away from them all, and feeling a power which may,
perhaps, never come to me again. There were angry men confronting
me, and I caught the flashing of defiant eyes; but above me, and
within me, and all around me, there was a spirit stronger than
they all. At that moment not the combined powers of earth and
hell could have tempted me to do otherwise than to stand firm.
Moral and physical cowardice were subdued, thanks to that