TILTON replied that of course Miss Anthony was speaking in
pleasantry when she thus ingeniously pretended not to know his
opinion. This pretense was only a piece of strategy to compel him
to make a speech. Both she and he had lately been co-workers in a
local association for just such a purpose as to-day's enterprise
meditated--"The New York Equal Rights Association," of which he
had had the honor to be president, and Miss Anthony to be
secretary--an association which both its secretary and its
president were only too glad to see superseded by a larger and
more general movement. The apple tree bears more blossoms which
fall off than come to fruit. Our local association was the
necessary first blossom which had to be blown away by the wind.
No--he would rather say it was a blossom which had ripened to-day
into golden fruit. And now, said he, in this consecrated house,
at this sunset hour, amid these falling shadows, with a president
in the chair whose well-spent life has been crowned with every
virtue, let us make a covenant with each other such as was made
by the original members of the American Anti-Slavery Society--a
mutual pledge of diligent and earnest labor, not for the
abolition of chattel slavery, but for the political rights of all
classes, without regard to color or sex. Are we only a handful?
We are more than formed the Anti-Slavery Society--which grew into
a force that shook the nation. Who knows but that to-night we are
laying the corner-stone of an equally grand movement? Let us,
therefore, catch at this moment the cheering pretoken of the
prophecy that declares, "At evening time there shall be light!"

A motion was made to adjourn, when the President, Lucretia Mott, made
a few closing remarks, showing that all great achievements in the
progress of the race must be slow, and were ever wrought out by the
few, in isolation and ridicule--but, said she, let us remember in our
trials and discouragements, that if our lives are true, we walk with
angels--the great and good who have gone before us, and God is our
Father. As she uttered her few parting words of benediction, the
fading sunlight through the stained windows, fell upon her pure face,
a celestial glory seemed about her, and a sweet and peaceful influence
pervaded every heart. And all responded to Theodore Tilton when he
said, "this