his character has, at
last, come in the line of my business; otherwise I should have probably
remained in ignorance of many important facts and opinions I now
understand and appreciate."

While all this was going on publicly, an equally trying experience was
progressing, day by day, behind the scenes. Miss Anthony had been
instrumental in helping a much abused mother, with her child, to escape
from a husband who had immured her in an insane asylum. The wife
belonged to one of the first families of New York, her brother being a
United States senator, and the husband, also, a man of position; a large
circle of friends and acquaintances was interested in the result. Though
she was incarcerated in an insane asylum for eighteen months, yet
members of her own family again and again testified that she was not
insane. Miss Anthony, knowing that she was not, and believing fully that
the unhappy mother was the victim of a conspiracy, would not reveal her
hiding place.

Knowing the confidence Miss Anthony felt in the wisdom of Mr. Garrison
and Mr. Phillips, they were implored to use their influence with her to
give up the fugitives. Letters and telegrams, persuasions, arguments,
and warnings from Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips, and the Senator on the one
side, and from Lydia Mott, Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, and Abby Hopper
Gibbons, on the other, poured in upon her, day after day; but Miss
Anthony remained immovable, although she knew that she was defying and
violating the law and might be arrested any moment on the platform. We
had known so many aggravated cases of this kind that, in daily counsel,
we resolved that this woman should not be recaptured if it were possible
to prevent it. To us it looked as imperative a duty to shield a sane
mother, who had been torn from a family of little children and doomed to
the companionship of lunatics, and to aid her in fleeing to a place of
safety, as to help a fugitive from slavery to Canada. In both cases an
unjust law was violated; in both cases the supposed owners of the
victims were defied; hence, in point of law and morals, the act was the
same in both cases. The result proved the wisdom of Miss Anthony's
decision, as all with whom Mrs. P. came in contact for years afterward,
expressed the opinion that she was, and always had been, perfectly sane.
Could the dark secrets of insane asylums be brought to light we should
be shocked to know the great number of rebellious wives, sisters, and
daug