her
petition before the House." "When," added Judge T., "you can use your
privilege to present the whole subject of Woman's Rights. Come, and I
will stick by you like a brother." I went. The resolution of
invitation was adopted with a single dissenting vote, and that from
the Chairman of the Educational Committee, who unwittingly made the
vote unanimous by the unfortunate exclamation, "If the lady wants to
make herself ridiculous, let her come and make herself as ridiculous
as possible and as soon as possible, but I don't believe in this
scramble for the breeches!"

In concluding my plea before the House (in which I had cited the
statutes and decisions of courts, showing that the husband owned even
the wife's clothing), I thanked the House for its resolution, and
referred to the concluding remark of the Chairman of the Educational
Committee, and said that though I "had earned the dress I wore, my
husband owned it--not of his own will, but by a law adopted by
bachelors and other women's husbands," and added: "I will not appeal
to the gallantry of this House, but to its manliness, if such a taunt
does not come with an ill grace from gentlemen who have legislated our
skirts into their possession? And will it not be quite time enough for
them to taunt us with being after their wardrobes, when they shall
have restored to us the legal right to our own?"

With a bow I turned from the Speaker's stand, when the profound hush
of as fine an audience as earnest woman ever addressed, was broken by
the muffled thunder of stamping feet, and the low, deep hum of pent-up
feeling loosed suddenly from restraint. A crowd of ladies from the
galleries, who had come only at the urgent personal appeal of Judge
Thompson, who had spent the day calling from house to house, and who a
few months before had utterly failed to persuade them to attend a
course of physiological lectures from Mrs. Mariana Johnson, on account
of her having once presided over a Woman's Rights Convention, these
women met me at the foot of the Speaker's desk, exclaiming with
earnest expressions of sympathy: "We did not know before what Woman's
Rights were, Mrs. Nichols, but we are for Woman's Rights."

Said Mrs. Thompson to me upon our return to her home: "I broke out in
a cold perspiration when your voice failed and you leaned your head on
your hand."[23] "I thought you were going to fail," continued Mrs.
Thompson. "Yes," said the Judge, "I was very doubtful how it woul