t the earnest and repeated
solicitations of its delegates whom I met at the "Whole World's
Temperance Convention," held in New York City in September, and who
were commissioned by the League to employ speakers to canvass the
State; the object being to procure the enactment of a "Maine Law" by
the next Legislature. These delegates had counseled, among others,
with Horace Greeley, who advised my employment, curiosity to hear a
woman promising to call out larger audiences and more votes for
temperance candidates in the pending election.

I, at first, declined to make the engagement, on the ground that I
could not be spared from my newspaper duties; but to escape further
importunity, finally consented to "ask my husband at home," and report
at New York, where one of the gentlemen would await my answer, and
myself, if I decided to accept their proposition. My husband's
cheerful, "Go, wife, you will be doing just the work you love, and
enjoying a journey which you have not means otherwise to undertake,"
and a notice from Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler, that she would join us in the
trip with a view to arranging for physiological lectures at eligible
points in the State, decided me to go. Mrs. F.'s company was not only
a social acquisition, but a happy insurance against pot-house witlings
on the alert to impale upon the world's dread laugh, any woman who, to
accomplish some public good, should venture for a space to cut loose
from the marital "buttons" and go out into the world alone!

In making the engagement, I had taken it for granted, that the right
and propriety of woman's public advocacy of temperance was a settled
question in the field to which I was invited. But arrived at
Milwaukee, I found that the popular prejudice against women as public
speakers, and especially the advocacy of Woman's Rights, with which I
had for years been identified, had been stirred to its most disgusting
depths by a reverend gentleman who had preceded us, and who had for
years been a salaried "agent at large," of the New York State
Temperance Society. A highly respectable minority of the Executive
Committee of the League endorsed the action of their delegation, but
were overruled by a numerical majority, and I found myself in the
position of agent "at large," while the reverend traducer secured his
engagement in my place.

This turn of affairs, embarrassing at first, proved in the end
providential--a timely clearance for a more congenial craft--since