atform, yet he
was constantly interrupted by the audience. It was a novelty to hear
women speak, and the audience having assembled for that purpose,
preferred to listen to woman's pathetic statements of her wrongs, than
to the most gifted orators that men could boast. It was not until
after repeated requests for order from the president, and assurances
from several of the ladies that they would not speak until Mr. May had
finished his remarks, that quiet was restored.

It was at this Convention that Mary L. Booth[135] made her first
appearance on our platform, as one of the secretaries. One feature of
these meetings was the freedom and warm sympathy between the audience
and the platform. At the close of almost every speech, some one on the
floor asked questions, or stated some objections which were quickly
answered and refuted by the speakers in the most pleasant
conversational manner.

Mrs. Rose presented the wrongs of woman in her most happy manner,
demanding the ballot as the underlying power to protect all other
rights. Thomas Wentworth Higginson made an address especially adapted
to the fashionable audience. Many of the thoughtless ones whom idle
curiosity had led to the hall, must have felt like the woman of
Samaria (John iv. 29) at the well, when she reported that she had seen
a man who told her all the things that ever she had done, so nearly
did Mr. Higginson picture to them their thoughts and feelings, the
ennui of their daily lives. Lucy Stone, whom the papers now call Mrs.
Blackwell, arriving in the midst of the convention, was greeted with
long and repeated cheers, and spoke with her wonted simplicity and
earnestness. The resolutions covering all the different phases of the
movement were duly discussed through two entire days.

Antoinette Brown was called on as usual to meet the Bible argument. A
clergyman accused her of misapplying texts. He said Genesis iv. 7 did
not allude to Cain and Abel, and that the language in Genesis iii. 16,
as applied to Eve, did not mean the same thing. Miss Brown maintained
her position that the texts were the same in letter and spirit; and
that authority to all men over all women could be no more logically
inferred from the one, than authority to all elder brothers over the
younger could be from the other; and that there was no divine
authority granted in either case.

Miss Anthony announced that woman's rights tracts and papers were for
sale at the door, and urged all wh