When
asked about it, they said they would not hear a woman preacher, for
women priests were not allowed in their church. Then she asked that
they would come together and consider whether they would have a
meeting. This seemed fair, and they came. She explained to them
that she did not intend to hold a church service; that, as they were
leaving their old homes and seeking new ones in her country, she
wanted to talk with them in such a way as would help them in the land
of strangers. And then, if they would listen,--they were all the time
listening very eagerly,--she would give an outline of what she had
intended to say, if the meeting had been held. At the close, when all
had departed, it dawned upon some of the quicker-witted ones that they
"had got the preachment from the woman preacher, after all."

The steamer arrived at the close of a twenty-nine days' voyage, and,
after a brief rest, Mrs. Mott began again her public work. She spoke
before the legislatures of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. She
called on President Tyler, and he talked with her cordially and freely
about the slave. In Kentucky, says one of the leading papers, "For an
hour and a half she enchained an ordinarily restless audience--many
were standing--to a degree never surpassed here by the most popular
orators. She said some things that were far from palatable, but said
them with an air of sincerity that commanded respect and attention."

Mrs. Mott was deeply interested in other questions besides
slavery,--suffrage for women, total abstinence, and national
differences settled by arbitration instead of war. Years before, when
she began to teach school, and found that while girls paid the same
tuition as boys, "when they became teachers, women received only half
as much as men for their services," she says: "The injustice of this
distinction was so apparent, that I early resolved to claim for myself
all that an impartial Creator had bestowed."

In 1848, Mrs. Mott, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and some others,
called the first Woman's Suffrage Convention in this country, at
Seneca Falls, N.Y. There was much ridicule,--we had not learned, forty
years ago, to treat with courtesy those whose opinions are different
from our own,--but the sweet Quaker preacher went serenely forward, as
though all the world were on her side. When she conversed with those
who differed, she listened so courteously to objections, and stated
her own views so delicately an