eting:--"It gave Miss Grimke the opportunity to speak to the best
culture and character of Massachusetts; and the profound impression
then made on a class not often found in our meetings was never wholly
lost. It was not only the testimony of one most competent to speak,
but it was the profound religious experience of one who had broken out
of the charmed circle, and whose intense earnestness melted all
opposition. The converts she made needed no after-training. It was
when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience
that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect
and lasting impression her words were making."

We have not Angelina's account of this meeting, but referring to it in
a letter to Sarah Douglass, she says: "My heart never quailed before,
but it almost died within me at that tremendous hour."

But one hearing did not satisfy her, and the committee needed no
urging to grant her another. At the second meeting, the hall was
literally packed, and hundreds went away unable to obtain seats. When
she arose to speak, there was some hissing from the doorways, but the
most profound silence reigned through the crowd within. Angelina first
stood in front of the Speaker's desk, then she was requested to occupy
the Secretary's desk on one side, and soon after, that she might be
seen as well as heard, she was invited to stand in the Speaker's
place. And from that conspicuous position she spoke over two hours
without the least interruption. She says to Sarah Douglass:--

"What the effect of these meetings is to be, I know not, nor do I feel
that _I_ have anything to do with it. This I know, that the chairman
was in tears almost the whole time I was speaking," and she adds: "We
abolition women are turning the world upside down, for during the
whole meeting there was sister seated up in the Speaker's chair of
state."

These meetings were followed by the six evening lectures at the Odeon,
to which reference has already been made. Sarah delivered the first
lecture, taking for her subject the history of the country in
reference to slavery. She spoke for two hours, fearlessly, as she
always did, and though she says Garrison told her he trembled with
apprehension, the audience of fifteen hundred people listened
respectfully and attentively, frequently applauding the utterance of
some strongly expressed truth, and showing no excitement even under
the rebukes she administered to Edward E