ly as man
chooses for her.

Mrs. NORTON said that Mr. Douglass's remarks left her to defend
the Government from the inferred inability to grapple with the
two questions at once. It legislates upon many questions at one
and the same time, and it has the power to decide the woman
question and the negro question at one and the same time.
(Applause.)

Mrs. LUCY STONE:--Mrs. Stanton will, of course, advocate the
precedence for her sex, and Mr. Douglass will strive for the
first position for his, and both are perhaps right. If it be true
that the government derives its authority from the consent of the
governed, we, are safe in trusting that principle to the
uttermost. If one has a right to say that you can not read and
therefore can not vote, then it may be said that you are a woman
and therefore can not vote. We are lost if we turn away from the
middle principle and argue for one class. I was once a teacher
among fugitive slaves. There was one old man, and every tooth was
gone, his hair was white, and his face was full of wrinkles, yet,
day after day and hour after hour, he came up to the school-house
and tried with patience to learn to read, and by-and-by, when he
had spelled out the first few verses of the first chapter of the
Gospel of St. John, he said to me, "Now, I want to learn to
write." I tried to make him satisfied with what he had acquired,
but the old man said, "Mrs. Stone, somewhere in the wide world I
have a son; I have not heard from him in twenty years; if I
should hear from him, I want to write to him, so take hold of my
hand and teach me." I did, but before he had proceeded in many
lessons, the angels came and gathered him up and bore him to his
Father. Let no man speak of an educated suffrage. The gentleman
who addressed you claimed that the negroes had the first right to
the suffrage, and drew a picture which only his great word-power
can do. He again in Massachusetts, when it had cast a majority in
favor of Grant and negro suffrage, stood upon the platform and
said that woman had better wait for the negro; that is, that both
could not be carried, and that the negro had better be the one.
But I freely forgave him because he felt as he spoke. But woman
suffrage is more imperative than his own; and I want to remind
t