ith indignation and grown moist with
pity before thousands of audiences. They are radiant with mirth
now, beaming as a child's, and with graceful abandon she throws
herself into a chair and begins a ripple of gay talk. The two
pretty assistants come in and look at her with loving eyes; we all
cluster around while she wittily recounts her recent lecturing
experience. As the little lady keeps up her merry talk, I think
over these three representative women. The white-haired, comely
matron sitting there hand-in-hand with her daughter, intellectual,
large-hearted, high-souled--a mother of men; the grave, energetic
old maid--an executive power; the glorious girl, who, without a
thought of self, demands in eloquent tones justice and liberty for
all, and prophesies like an oracle of old.

May we not hope that America's coming woman will combine these
salient qualities, and with all the powers of mind, soul and heart
vivified and developed in a liberal atmosphere, prove herself the
noblest creature in the world? And so I leave them there--the
pleasant group--faithful in their work, happy in their hopes.

On May 14, 1868, the American Equal Rights Association held its second
anniversary in Cooper Institute. Mrs. Stanton, who had a wholesome
dread of anything disagreeable, was determined not to go, but Miss
Anthony declared that to stay away would be showing the "white feather"
and that, as their enemies had been many weeks working up a sentiment
against them, their presence would prove they had nothing to fear. When
the convention assembled, Lucretia Mott, the president, being absent on
account of the recent death of her husband, Colonel Higginson said to
Miss Anthony: "Now we want everything pleasant and peaceable here, do
we not?" "Certainly," she replied. "Well then, we must have Lucy Stone
open this meeting." "Why so," asked Miss Anthony, "when Mrs. Stanton is
first vice-president? It would be not only an insult to her but a
direct violation of parliamentary usage. I shall never consent to it."
Finding that, nevertheless, there was a scheme to carry out this plan,
she put Mrs. Stanton on the alert and, as the officers filed on the
platform, gave her a gentle push to the front, whereupon she opened the
convention with the utmost suavity.

It was here that these pioneers of the movement for woman suffrage had
the humiliation of hearing Frederick Douglass ann