ce to think and act for themselves, I shall not trouble myself
about the false imputations that may be cast upon me.

[Autograph: Amelia Bloomer]

Mrs. Bloomer wore the costume eight years, but very few held out
one-fourth of that time. With the exception of Gerrit Smith, all the
prominent men, Garrison, Phillips, Channing, May, were bitterly opposed
to the short dress and tried to dissuade the women from wearing it by
every argument in their power. The costume, however, was adopted as a
matter of principle, and for it they suffered a martyrdom which would
have made burning at the stake seem comfortable. It requires far more
heroism to bear jibes and jeers for one's personal appearance than for
one's opinions. No pen can describe what these women endured for the
two or three years in which they tried to establish this principle,
through such sacrifices as only a woman can understand. So long as they
were upheld by the belief that they were giving strength to the cause
they loved, they bravely submitted to the persecution, but when they
realized that they were injuring instead of helping it, endurance
reached its limit. Mrs. Stanton was the first to capitulate, and as she
had tried to induce the others to wear the costume so she endeavored to
persuade them to abandon it. She wrote to Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone:
"I know what you must suffer in consenting to bow again to the tyranny
of fashion, but I know also what you suffer among fashionable people in
wearing the short dress; and so, not for the sake of the cause, nor for
any sake but your own, take it off! We put it on for greater freedom,
but what is physical freedom compared with mental bondage?" In agony of
spirit as to whether the cause was helped or hindered by wearing it,
and ready to put aside all personal feeling in the matter, Miss Anthony
appealed to Lucy Stone, who answered:

Now, Susan, it is all fudge for anybody to pretend that a cause
which deserves to live is impeded by the length of your skirt. I
know, from having tried through half the Union, that audiences
listen and assent just as well to one who speaks truth in a short
as in a long dress; but I am annoyed to death by people who
recognize me by my clothes, and when I travel get a seat by me and
bore me for a whole day with the stupidest stuff in the world. Then
again, when I go to each new city a horde of boys pursue me and
destroy all comfort. I have bought