liness, order, the love of the
beautiful and artistic, all faded away in the struggle to accomplish
what was absolutely necessary from hour to hour. Now I understood, as I
never had before, how women could sit down and rest in the midst of
general disorder. Housekeeping, under such conditions, was impossible,
so I packed our clothes, locked up the house, and went to that harbor of
safety, home, as I did ever after in stress of weather.

I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to
contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's
best development if in contact, the chief part of her life, with
servants and children. Fourier's phalansterie community life and
co-operative households had a new significance for me. Emerson says, "A
healthy discontent is the first step to progress." The general
discontent I felt with woman's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper,
physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic conditions into which
everything fell without her constant supervision, and the wearied,
anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a strong feeling
that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of
society in general, and of women in particular. My experience at the
World's Anti-slavery Convention, all I had read of the legal status of
women, and the oppression I saw everywhere, together swept across my
soul, intensified now by many personal experiences. It seemed as if all
the elements had conspired to impel me to some onward step. I could not
see what to do or where to begin--my only thought was a public meeting
for protest and discussion.

In this tempest-tossed condition of mind I received an invitation to
spend the day with Lucretia Mott, at Richard Hunt's, in Waterloo. There
I met several members of different families of Friends, earnest,
thoughtful women. I poured out, that day, the torrent of my
long-accumulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I
stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party, to do and dare
anything. My discontent, according to Emerson, must have been healthy,
for it moved us all to prompt action, and we decided, then and there, to
call a "Woman's Rights Convention." We wrote the call that evening and
published it in the _Seneca County Courier_ the next day, the 14th of
July, 1848, giving only five days' notice, as the convention was to be
held on the 19th and 20th. The call was inserted without sign