breaking down prejudices and making friends for your paper. Your
political opponents have represented her as a masculine brawler for
rights, and those who have never met her know no better. I went to
hear her, full of misgivings that it might be so."

In the winter of 1852 I went as often as twice a week--late P.M. and
returned early A.M.--from six to twenty miles. I was sent for where
there was no railroad. I often heard of "ready-made pants," and once
of a "rail," but the greater the opposition, the greater the victory.

On a clear, cold morning of January, 1852, I found myself some six
miles from home at a station on the Vermont side of the Massachusetts
State line, on my way to Templeton, Mass., whither I had been invited
by a Lyceum Committee to lecture upon the subject of "Woman's Rights."
I had scarcely settled myself in the rear of the saloon for a restful,
careless two hours' ride, when two men entered the car. In the younger
man I recognized the sheriff of our county. Having given a searching
glance around the ear, the older man, with a significant nod to his
companion, laid his hand upon the saloon door an instant, and every
person in the car had risen to his feet, electrified by the wail of a
"Rachel mourning for her children." "O, father! she's _my_ child!
_she's my child!_" I reached the door, which was guarded by the
sheriff, in a condition of mental exaltation (or concentration), which
to this day reflects itself at the recollection of that agonizing cry
of the beautiful young mother, set upon by the myrmidons of the law
whose base inhumanity shames the brute! "Who is it?" "What is it?"
"What does it all mean?" were the anxious queries put up on all sides.
I answered: "It means, my friends, that a woman has no legal right to
her own babies; that the law-makers of this _Christian country_ (!)
have given the custody of the babies to the father, drunken or sober,
and he may send the sheriff--as in this case--to arrest and rob her of
her little ones! You have heard sneers at 'Woman's Rights.' This is
one of the rights--a mother's right to the care and custody of her
helpless little ones!"

From that excited crowd--all young men and grown boys, I being the
only woman among them--rose thick and fast--"_They've no business with
the woman's babies!_" "_Pitch 'em overboard!_" "_I'll help._" "_Good
for you; so'll I!_" "All aboard." (The conductor had come upon the
scene). "_All aboard._" "Wait a minute till he