one of all
others whose approbation I most desired, whose disapproval I most
feared. I knew he condemned the whole movement, and was deeply grieved
at the active part I had taken. Hence I was fully aware that I was about
to address a wholly unsympathetic audience. However, I began, with a
dogged determination to give all the power I could to my manuscript, and
not to be discouraged or turned from my purpose by any tender appeals or
adverse criticisms. I described the widow in the first hours of her
grief, subject to the intrusions of the coarse minions of the law,
taking inventory of the household goods, of the old armchair in which
her loved one had breathed his last, of the old clock in the corner that
told the hour he passed away. I threw all the pathos I could into my
voice and language at this point, and, to my intense satisfaction, I saw
tears filling my father's eyes. I cannot express the exultation I felt,
thinking that now he would see, with my eyes, the injustice women
suffered under the laws he understood so well.

Feeling that I had touched his heart I went on with renewed confidence,
and, when I had finished, I saw he was thoroughly magnetized. With
beating heart I waited for him to break the silence. He was evidently
deeply pondering over all he had heard, and did not speak for a long
time. I believed I had opened to him a new world of thought. He had
listened long to the complaints of women, but from the lips of his own
daughter they had come with a deeper pathos and power. At last, turning
abruptly, he said: "Surely you have had a happy, comfortable life, with
all your wants and needs supplied; and yet that speech fills me with
self-reproach; for one might naturally ask, how can a young woman,
tenderly brought up, who has had no bitter personal experience, feel so
keenly the wrongs of her sex? Where did you learn this lesson?" "I
learned it here," I replied, "in your office, when a child, listening to
the complaints women made to you. They who have sympathy and imagination
to make the sorrows of others their own can readily learn all the hard
lessons of life from the experience of others." "Well, well!" he said,
"you have made your points clear and strong; but I think I can find you
even more cruel laws than those you have quoted." He suggested some
improvements in my speech, looked up other laws, and it was one o'clock
in the morning before we kissed each other good-night. How he felt on
the question a