tion to the Hutchinson family
to sing at the convention, Asa wrote: "The time is coming, I hope, when
we can do something for the glorious cause which you are so nobly
advocating." John added: "It would rejoice my heart to be at the
convention and help along, with the one talent God has given me, the
greatest reform ever attempted by lovers of the human race." Miss
Anthony asked Mary L. Booth, at that time just beginning to attract
attention by her fine translations, to speak at the coming convention
and received this touching response:

The hope of yet aiding the cause is the polar star which guides all
my efforts. If it were possible I would do this directly, but the
fashion of the times has made me a dependant and home aid would
scarcely be extended to me in this. I am trying to make myself
independent. Fortune now promises favorable things. If I succeed,
count on me. All that I can do, I will, to rescue my sex from the
fetters which have chafed me so bitterly, from the evils of the
giant system which makes woman everywhere a satellite. I have drank
of the cup which is offered as the wine of woman's life, and have
found the draught frothy and unsatisfactory. Now am I willing, if
successful, to give all to purchase her a purer aliment. I have
faith enough in the cause to move mountains, but if I speak at
present I forfeit all claims on my home forever.

Lucy Stone when appealed to with the intimation that she was losing
interest in the work, replied: "Now that I occupy a legal position in
which I can not even draw in my own name the money I have earned or
give a valid receipt for it when it is drawn or make any contract, but
am rated with fools, minors and madmen, and can not sign a legal
document without being examined separately to see if it is by my own
free will, and even the right to my own name questioned, do you think
that, in the grip of such pincers, I am likely to grow remiss?... I am
not at all sanguine of the success of the convention. However much I
hope, or try to hope, the old doubt comes back. My only trust is in
your great, indomitable perseverance and your power of work."

That the answers were not always favorable and that the women
constantly found themselves between two fires, the following letters
will show. Horace Greeley, who heretofore had been so friendly, wrote:

The only reason why I can not publish your notices in our news
col