ocations more congenial to the sterner sex. Happily our domestic
institutions, by relieving women of the necessity to labor, protect
them in the sacred privacy of home."

In his ignorance of the subject, my friend had unwittingly resined the
bow. In bringing his "domestic institution" to the front, he had so
"mixed things," that in my showing of the legal disabilities of women,
of the _no_-right of the white wife and mother to herself, her
children, and her earnings, my audience could not fail to appreciate
the anomalous character of a "protection" so pathetically suggestive
of the legal level of the slave woman, to which man, in his greed of
wealth and power, had "crowded" both.

Some months later, at the breakfast-table of a Missouri River steamer,
a gentleman of St. Joseph recognized me, and reported my lectures to
ex-Governor Rollins, who was also on board, and asked an introduction.
After a long and pleasant discussion with the Governor, who entered at
once upon the subject, in its legal, political, and educational
aspects, it was agreed that I should lecture at my earliest
convenience in several of the principal towns of the State, the
capital included; the Governor himself proposing to communicate with
influential citizens to make the necessary arrangements.

An early compliance with my promise was prevented by the Kansas
movement for a constitutional convention; my connection with which
left me no leisure till late in the autumn, when I commenced my
proposed lecture course in Missouri by an appointment at Westport, by
arrangement of a gentleman of that place, whose acquaintance I had
made in my Kansas campaign. Arrived at the Westport hotel, where my
entertainment had been bespoken, I was taken by the landlady to her
own cosy sitting-room, and made pleasantly at home. Later in the day I
became aware of considerable excitement in the bar-room and street of
the town. The landlord held several hurried consultations with his
wife in the ante-room. My dinner was served in the private room, it
"being more pleasant," my hostess said, "than eating at the public
table with a lot of strange men." An hour after time, the gentleman
who was to call for myself and the landlady, announced an assembly of
a "dozen rude boys," and that in consequence of the news of John
Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry (of which I had not before heard), the
excitement was such that he could not persuade the ladies to come out.
With some hesitati