er, which had been arranged for us at Chautauqua by Bishop Vincent
of the Methodist Church. The bishop was not a believer in suffrage, nor
was he one of my admirers. I had once aroused his ire by replying to
a sermon he had delivered on "God's Women," and by proving, to my own
satisfaction at least, that the women he thought were God's women had
done very little, whereas the work of the world had been done by those
he believed were not "God's Women." There was considerable interest,
therefore, in the Buckley-Shaw debate he had arranged; we all knew he
expected Dr. Buckley to wipe out that old score, and I was determined to
make it as difficult as possible for the distinguished gentleman to do
so. We held the debate on two succeeding days, I speaking one afternoon
and Dr. Buckley replying the following day. On the evening before I
spoke, however, Dr. Buckley made an indiscreet remark, which, blown
about Chautauqua on the light breeze of gossip, was generally regarded
as both unchivalrous and unfair.

As the hall in which we were to speak was enormous, he declared that one
of two things would certainly happen. Either I would scream in order to
be heard by my great audience, or I would be unable to make myself heard
at all. If I screamed it would be a powerful argument against women as
public speakers; if I could not be heard, it would be an even better
argument. In either case, he summed up, I was doomed to failure.
Following out this theory, he posted men in the extreme rear of the
great hall on the day of my lecture, to report to him whether my words
reached them, while he himself graciously occupied a front seat. Bishop
Vincent's antagonistic feeling was so strong, however, that though, as
the presiding officer of the occasion, he introduced me to the audience,
he did not wait to hear my speech, but immediately left the hall--and
this little slight added to the public's interest in the debate. It
was felt that the two gentlemen were not quite "playing fair," and the
champions of the Cause were especially enthusiastic in their efforts to
make up for these failures in courtesy. My friends turned out in force
to hear the lecture, and on the breast of every one of them flamed the
yellow bow that stood for suffrage, giving to the vast hall something of
the effect of a field of yellow tulips in full bloom.

When Dr. Buckley rose to reply the next day these friends were again
awaiting him with an equally jocund display of the