ised for the
first speech, and took my place on the platform, when a column of
well-dressed ladies, very fashionable and precise, marched in,
two and two, and spread themselves in a half circle in front of
the platform, and requested leave to be heard.

Our President asked me to suspend my reading, to which I
assented, and she--a beautiful, graceful lady--bowed them her
assent. Forthwith they proceeded to inform us, that they were
delegated by a meeting of Dayton ladies to come hither and read
to us a remonstrance against "the unseemly and unchristian
position" we had assumed in calling conventions, and taking our
places upon the platform, and seeking notoriety by making
ourselves conspicuous before men. They proceeded to shake the
dust from their own skirts of the whole thing. They discussed
wisely the disgraceful conduct of Antoinette L. Brown at the
World's Temperance Convention, as reported to them by Hon. Samuel
Carey, with more of the same sort, which I beg to be excused from
trying to recall to mind, or to repeat. When their mission was
ended, in due form they filed out of the low dark door, descended
the stair-way, and disappeared from our sight.

When we had recovered our equilibrium after such a knock-down
surprise, Mrs. Bateman requested me to proceed. I rose, and
asked leave to change my written speech for one not from my pen,
but from my heart.

The protest of the Dayton "Mrs. Grundys" had been well larded
with Scripture, so I added: "Out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaketh," and never before, possibly never since, have
I had greater liberty in relieving my mind, as the Quakers would
say. I had been at New York and had boarded with Antoinette L.
Brown, so I knew whereof I was bearing testimony, when I assured
my hearers that Samuel Carey had certainly been lying--under a
mistake. I gave my testimony, not cringingly, but as one who
knew, and drew a comparison between Antoinette L. Brown, modestly
but firmly standing her ground as a delegate from her society,
with politicians and clergymen crying, "Shame on the woman," and
stamping and clamoring till the dust on the carpet of the
platform enveloped them in a cloud. Meanwhile, her best friends,
William H. Channing, William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson,
We