fashionable life? A wardrobe that newspaper
correspondents may report? Fine equipages, furniture, and
entertainments? These things have had small part in my thoughts.

As I take account of my long life, I become well aware of its failures.
What may I chronicle as its successes? It was a great distinction for me
when the foremost philanthropist of the age chose me for his wife. It
was a great success for me when, having been born and bred in New York
city, I found myself able to enter into the intellectual life of Boston,
and to appreciate the "high thinking" of its choice spirits. I have sat
at the feet of the masters of literature, art, and science, and have
been graciously admitted into their fellowship. I have been the chosen
poet of several high festivals, to wit, the celebration of Bryant's
sixtieth birthday, the commemoration of the centenary of his birth, and
the unveiling of the statue of Columbus in Central Park, New York, in
the Columbian year, so called. I have been the founder of a club of
young girls, which has exercised a salutary influence upon the growing
womanhood of my adopted city, and has won for itself an honorable place
in the community, serving also as a model for similar associations in
other cities. I have been for many years the president of the New
England Woman's Club, and of the Association for the Advancement of
Women. I have been heard at the great Prison Congress in England, at
Mrs. Butler's convention _de moralite publique_ in Geneva, Switzerland,
and at more than one convention in Paris. I have been welcomed in
Faneuil Hall, when I have stood there to rehearse the merits of public
men, and later, to plead the cause of oppressed Greece and murdered
Armenia. I have written one poem which, although composed in the stress
and strain of the civil war, is now sung South and North by the
champions of a free government. I have been accounted worthy to listen
and to speak at the Boston Radical Club and at the Concord School of
Philosophy. I have been exalted to occupy the pulpit of my own dear
church and that of others, without regard to denominational limits.
Lastly and chiefly, I have had the honor of pleading for the slave when
he was a slave, of helping to initiate the woman's movement in many
States of the Union, and of standing with the illustrious champions of
justice and freedom, for woman suffrage, when to do so was a thankless
office, involving public ridicule and private avoidance.