gence on the
score of never having spoken in a public hall before, we had to press
forward to the front benches to catch the modulated tones, and men who
came clumping in with heavy boots in the course of the lecture were
severely hushed down by stern-visaged females among the audience.

Disclaiming connexion with any society, Praxagora still adopted the
first person plural in speaking of the doctrines and intentions of the
down-trodden females. "We" felt so and so; "we" intended to do this or
that; and certainly her cause gained by the element of mystery thus
introduced, as well as by her own undoubted power of dealing with the
subject. When the "we" is seen to refer to the brazen-voiced ladies
aforesaid, and a few of the opposite sex who appear to have changed
natures with the gentle ones they champion, that plural pronoun is the
reverse of imposing, but the "we" of Praxagora introduced an element of
awe, if only on the omne ignotum pro magnifico principle. In the most
forcible way she went through the stock objections against giving women
the franchise, and knocked them down one by one like so many ninepins.
That coveted boon of a vote she proved to be at the basis of all the
regeneration of women. She claimed that woman should have her share in
making the laws by which she was governed, and denied the popular
assertion that in so doing she would quit her proper sphere. In fact, we
all went with her up to a certain point, and most of the audience beyond
that point. For myself I confess I felt disheartened when, having dealt
in the most consummate way with other aspects of the subject, she came
to the religious phase, and begging the question that the Bible and
religion discountenanced woman's rights, commenced what sounded to me
like a furious attack on each.

Now I happen to know--what perhaps those who look from another
standpoint do not know--that this aggressive attitude assumed so
unnecessarily by the advocates of woman's rights is calculated to keep
back the cause more than anything else; and matter and manner had been
so much the reverse of hostile up to the moment she plunged
incontinently into the religious question, that it quite took me by
surprise. I have known scores of people who, when they came under
vigorous protest to hear Miss Emily Faithfull on the same fertile
subject, went away converted because they found no iconoclasm of this
kind in her teaching. They came to scoff and stopped, not indeed to