aining for each other a
friendship of extraordinary strength.

"Mrs. Stanton is a fine writer, but a poor executant; Miss Anthony
is a thorough manager, but a poor writer. Both have large brains
and great hearts; neither has any selfish ambition for celebrity;
but each vies with the other in a noble enthusiasm for the cause to
which they are devoting their lives.

"Nevertheless, to describe them critically, I ought to say that,
opposites though they be, each does not so much supplement the
other's deficiencies as augment the other's eccentricities. Thus
they often stimulate each other's aggressiveness, and, at the same
time, diminish each other's discretion.

"But, whatever may be the imprudent utterances of the one or the
impolitic methods of the other, the animating motives of both are
evermore as white as the light. The good that they do is by design;
the harm by accident. These two women, sitting together in their
parlors, have, for the last thirty years, been diligent forgers of
all manner of projectiles, from fireworks to thunderbolts, and have
hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner
of educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies;
sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members,
more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims;
and, in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's
teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole
country. Nor will they, themselves deny the charge. In fact this
noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum, keeping up what
Daniel Webster called 'The rub-a-dub of agitation.'"

CHAPTER XII.

MY FIRST SPEECH BEFORE A LEGISLATURE.

Women had been willing so long to hold a subordinate position, both in
private and public affairs, that a gradually growing feeling of
rebellion among them quite exasperated the men, and their manifestations
of hostility in public meetings were often as ridiculous as humiliating.

True, those gentlemen were all quite willing that women should join
their societies and churches to do the drudgery; to work up the
enthusiasm in fairs and revivals, conventions and flag presentations; to
pay a dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being members
of their various organizations; to beg money for the Chu