thing and cares for nothing but its
own selfish, quiet enjoyment, I shall rejoice with joy
unspeakable. My strong hands have tilled the fields; and in my
early childhood have harnessed the horse, and brought the wood to
the door; have led him to the blacksmith's shop to be shod. These
are things I do not often tell in public. I have braved public
opinion; I have tilled my garden; I have brought myself up from
fainting weakness occasioned by accident and broken bones. I have
taken care of myself, supported myself, and asked nothing from
the world; I find my womanhood not one bit degraded. (Applause).
A thousand times in the last years, in this struggle for bread,
have I been asked, "Why don't you let your sons support you?" My
answer is, "My six sons have their own duties. My six boys have
their own labors. God gives me strength to earn my own bread, and
I will do it as long as I can." (Applause). That is what I want
to teach the womanhood of the country. I did not mean to talk so
long; but I assure you I talk in earnest. If I sometimes, by a
slip of the tongue, make some little mistake--for I have not been
educated in the schools, (a log cabin schoolhouse in the
wilderness gave me all I have)--you will excuse me, for I mean no
injustice to any one. And if to-night it will not crowd some
better woman or man from the platform, I shall be glad to speak
to you again.

Mrs. MOTT.--The argument that has been made that women do not
want to vote is like that which we had to meet in the early days
of the Anti-Slavery enterprise, that the slaves did not want to
be free. I remember that in one of our earliest Woman's Rights
Conventions, in Syracuse, a resolution was offered to the effect
that as the assertion that the slave did not want his freedom,
and would not take it if offered to him, only proved the depth of
his degradation, so the assertion that woman had all the rights
she wanted only gave evidence how far the influence of the law
and customs, and the perverted application of the Scriptures, had
encircled and crushed her. This was fifteen or twenty years ago.
Times are altered since. In the temperance reformation, and in
the great reformatory movements of our age, woman's powers have
been called into action. They are beginning to see that another