y and the lecture produced a great sensation.
Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked
to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her
future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same
committee the following winter.

It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,[83] Iowa, Kansas
and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied.
On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis,
in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large
and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a
majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women
of the nineteenth century--remarkable for the purity of her life, the
earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the
indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and
misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth--if she ever had any
bloom--hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and
philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the
beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the
platform as preachers of social impossibilities."

The metropolitan press generally acknowledged the necessity for such a
lecture and complimented Miss Anthony's courage in undertaking it, but
the country papers were greatly distressed, as a specimen extract will
show:

There is very little satisfaction in observing that Miss Anthony is
following in the wake of Anna Dickinson, in publicly lecturing upon
subjects that no modest woman ought, in respect for her sex, to
acknowledge that she is so familiar with. Miss D. expatiates upon
the "Social Evil," and Miss A. enlarges upon "Social
Purity"--topics that maidenly delicacy, we repeat, should refuse to
discuss. It would be suggestively coarse for a married woman to
deliberately select such questionable themes for a public
discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters
are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary
information--are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to
contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say analyze
it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous
details. The women's crusade against liquor effected nothing, for
the simple reason that women were out of their proper sphere in