a settlement of fourteen families from the vicinity of
my home; among them a lady from my native town; we had been girls
together. "We know all about Mrs. N.," said one. "We take the
_Tribune_, and friends at home send us her paper." So the good Father
had sent vouchers for His agent at large. But this was not all. I had
a pleasant reserve for the evening. I had recognized in the deacon, a
friend from whom I had parted twenty-one years before in Western New
York. In the generous confidence of youthful enthusiasm we had
enlisted in the cold-water army; together pledged ourselves to fight
the liquor interest to the death. And here my old friend, whose debut
on the Temperance platform I had aided and cheered, had talked a full
hour to prevent me from being heard! Was I indignant? Was I grieved?
Nay! It was not a personal matter. Time's graver had made us strange
to each other. His name and voice had revealed him to me; but the name
I bore was not that by which he had known me. Besides, I remembered
that twenty-one years before, I could not have been persuaded to hear
a woman speak on any public occasion, and I had nothing to
forgive,--my friend had only stood still where I had left him. Such,
suppressing his name, was the story I told my audience on that
evening. And with his puzzled and kindly face intently regarding me, I
assured my hearers that I had not a doubt of his whole-souled and
manly support in my present work. Nor was I disappointed.

Next morning, (Sabbath) I listened to a scholarly sermon on infidel
issues and innovations from the chairman of the "business meeting" of
the previous afternoon, he having stayed away from my lecture to
prepare it. In the evening, after the temperance lecture of my
Illinois friend, I improved the opportunity of a call from the
audience, the Rev. Chairman being present, to meet certain points of
the sermon, personal to myself and the advocates of rights for women,
closing with a brief confession of my faith in Christ's rule of love
and duty as impressing every human being into the service of a common
humanity--the right to serve being commensurate with the obligation,
as of God and not of man.

One week later, another business meeting was held in the same house,
and in its published proceedings was a resolution introduced by the
Rev. Chairman, endorsing Mrs. Nichols, and inviting her "to be present
and speak" at a County Convention appointed for a subsequent day. Not
long after