s, which were all in favor of the enfranchisement of
women.

I was once sent to Concord by the Massachusetts society to hold a
meeting. The churches were closed against suffrage speakers and
there was not money enough to pay for a hall. Mrs. Ralph Waldo
Emerson heard the meeting was to be given up, and she sent a
message to the lady having the work in charge, saying: "Shall it
be said that here in Concord, where the Revolutionary war began,
there is no place to speak for the freedom of women? Get the best
hall in town and I will pay for it." So on that occasion and on
another Mrs. Emerson paid for the hall and sent a kind word to
the meeting, declaring herself in favor of the suffrage for
women, and stating that her husband's views and her own were
identical on this question. She had the New England trait of
being a good wife, a good mother and a good housekeeper, and Mr.
Emerson's home was a restful and blessed place. We sometimes
forget the wives of great men in thinking of the greatness of
their husbands, but Mrs. Emerson was as great in her way as Mr.
Emerson in his, and no more faithful friend to woman and to
woman's advancement ever has lived among us.[90]

A word as to the Rev. Anna Oliver, the first woman to enter the
theological department of Boston University. She was much beloved
by her class. She was a devoted Christian, eminently orthodox,
and a very good worker in all lines of religious effort. After
Miss Oliver graduated she was ambitious to become ordained, as
all women ought to be who desire to preach the gospel; and so
after I had graduated from the theological school, the year
following, we both applied to the conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church for admission. Miss Oliver's name beginning with
O and mine with S, her case was presented first. She was denied
ordination by Bishop Andrews. Our claims were carried to the
general conference in Cincinnati, and the Methodist Episcopal
Church denied ordination to the women whom it had graduated in
its schools and upon whom it had conferred the degree of bachelor
of divinity. It not only did this, but it made a step backwards;
it took from us the licenses to preach which had been granted to
Miss Oliver for four years and to myself for eight years.

But Miss Oliver was