in by experiment how
much or how little of my individual persuasion is in accordance with the
normal direction of human experience.

In the days of which I now write, it was borne in upon me (as the
Friends say) that I had much to say to my day and generation which could
not and should not be communicated in rhyme, or even in rhythm.

I once spoke to Parker of my wish to be heard, to commend my own
thoughts with my own voice. He found this not only natural, but also in
accordance with the spirit of the age, which, he said, "called for the
living presence and the living utterance." I did not act at once, or
even very soon, upon this prompting; the difficulties to be overcome
were many. My husband was himself averse to public appearances. Women
speakers were few in those days, and were frowned upon by general
society. He would have been doubly sensitive to such undesirable
publicity on my account. Meantime, the exigencies of the time were
calling one woman after another to the platform. Lucy Stone devoted the
first years of her eloquence to anti-slavery and the temperance reform.
Anna Dickinson achieved a sudden and brilliant popularity. I did not
dream of trying my strength with theirs, but I began to weave together
certain essays which might be read to an invited audience in private
parlors. I then commissioned certain of my friends to invite certain of
their friends to my house for an appointed evening, and began, with some
trepidation, my course of parlor lectures. We were residing, at this
time, in the house in Chestnut Street which was afterwards made famous
by the sittings of the Radical Club. The parlors were very roomy, and
were well filled by those who came to hear me. Among them was my
neighbor, Rev. Dr. Lothrop, who, in speaking of these occasions at a
later day, once said, "I think that they were the best meetings that I
ever knew. The conversation that followed the readings was started on a
high plane." This conversation was only informal talk among those who
had been listeners. My topics, so far as I can recall them, were as
follows: "How _not_ to teach Ethics;" "Doubt and Belief, the Two Feet of
the Mind;" "Moral Triangulation, or the Third Party;" "Duality of
Character;" "The Fact Accomplished." My audience consisted largely of my
society friends, but was by no means limited to them. The elder Agassiz,
Dr. Lothrop, E. P. Whipple, James Freeman Clarke, and William R. Alger
attended all my readings. After