ve Theodore Weld explain to me;
long afterward, why he no longer attended suffrage meetings.

"Oh," he said, "why should I go? There hasn't been any one mobbed in
twenty years!"

The Ralph Waldo Emersons occasionally attended our meetings, and Mr.
Emerson, at first opposed to woman suffrage, became a convert to it
during the last years of his life--a fact his son and daughter omitted
to mention in his biography. After his death I gave two suffrage
lectures in Concord, and each time Mrs. Emerson paid for the hall. At
these lectures Louisa M. Alcott graced the assembly with her splendid,
wholesome presence, and on both occasions she was surrounded by a group
of boys. She frankly cared much more for boys than for girls, and boys
inevitably gravitated to her whenever she entered a place where they
were. When women were given school suffrage in Massachusetts, Miss
Alcott was the first woman to vote in Concord, and she went to the polls
accompanied by a group of her boys, all ardently "for the Cause." My
general impression of her was that of a fresh breeze blowing over wide
moors. She was as different as possible from exquisite little Mrs.
Emerson, who, in her daintiness and quiet charm, suggested an old New
England garden.

Of Abby May and Edna Cheney I retain a general impression of
"bagginess"--of loose jackets over loose waistbands, of escaping locks
of hair, of bodies seemingly one size from the neck down. Both women
were utterly indifferent to the details of their appearance, but they
were splendid workers and leading spirits in the New England Woman's
Club. It was said to be the trouble between Abby May and Kate Gannett
Wells, both of whom stood for the presidency of the club, that led to
the beginning of the anti-suffrage movement in Boston. Abby May was
elected president, and all the suffragists voted for her. Subsequently
Kate Gannett Wells began her anti-suffrage campaign. Mrs. Wells was the
first anti-suffragist I ever knew in this country. Before her there had
been Mrs. Dahlgren, wife of Admiral Dahlgren, and Mrs. William Tecumseh
Sherman. On one occasion Elizabeth Cady Stanton challenged Mrs. Dahlgren
to a debate on woman suffrage, and in the light of later events Mrs.
Dahlgren's reply is amusing. She declined the challenge, explaining that
for anti-suffragists to appear upon a public platform would be a
direct violation of the principle for which they stood--which was the
protection of female modesty! Recall