and the husband a man of position, a large
circle of friends and acquaintances were interested in the result.
Though she was incarcerated in an insane asylum for eighteen months,
yet members of her own family again and again testified that she was
not insane. Miss Anthony knowing that she was not, and believing fully
that the unhappy mother was the victim of a conspiracy, would not
reveal her hiding-place.

Knowing the confidence Miss Anthony felt in the wisdom of Mr. Garrison
and Mr. Phillips, they were implored to use their influence with her
to give up the fugitives. Letters and telegrams, persuasions,
arguments, warnings, from Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips, the Senator, on
the one side, and from Lydia Mott, Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, Abby
Hopper Gibbons, on the other, poured in upon her day after day, but
Miss Anthony remained immovable, although she knew she was defying
authority and violating law, and that she might be arrested any moment
on the platform. We had known so many aggravated cases of this kind,
that in daily counsel we resolved that this woman should not be
recaptured if it was possible to prevent it. To us it looked as
imperative a duty to shield a sane mother who had been torn from a
family of little children and doomed to the companionship of lunatics,
and to aid her in fleeing to a place of safety, as to help a fugitive
from slavery to Canada. In both cases an unjust law was violated; in
both cases the supposed owners of the victims were defied, hence, in
point of law and morals, the act was the same in both cases. The
result proved the wisdom of Miss Anthony's decision, as all with whom
Mrs. P. came in contact for years afterward, expressed the opinion
that she was perfectly sane and always had been. Could the dark
secrets of these insane asylums be brought to light, we should be
shocked to know the countless number of rebellious wives, sisters, and
daughters that are thus annually sacrificed to false customs and
conventionalisms, and barbarous laws made by men for women.

Quite an agitation occurred in 1852, on woman's costume. In demanding
a place in the world of work, the unfitness of her dress seemed to
some, an insurmountable obstacle. How can you, it was said, ever
compete with man for equal place and pay, with garments of such frail
fabrics and so cumbrously fashioned, and how can you ever hope to
enjoy the same health and vigor with man, so long as the waist is
pressed into the smallest comp