entering upon a deeply significant period. For the first time
women were going into industrial competition with men, and already
men were intensely resenting their presence. Around me I saw women
overworked and underpaid, doing men's work at half men's wages, not
because their work was inferior, but because they were women. Again,
too, I studied the obtrusive problems of the poor and of the women
of the streets; and, looking at the whole social situation from every
angle, I could find but one solution for women--the removal of the
stigma of disfranchisement. As man's equal before the law, woman could
demand her rights, asking favors from no one. With all my heart I joined
in the crusade of the men and women who were fighting for her. My real
work had begun.

Naturally, at this period, I frequently met the members of Boston's most
inspiring group--the Emersons and John Greenleaf Whittier, James Freeman
Clark, Reverend Minot Savage, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa,
Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Stephen Foster, Theodore Weld,
and the rest. Of them all, my favorite was Whittier. He had been present
at my graduation from the theological school, and now he often attended
our suffrage meetings. He was already an old man, nearing the end of
his life; and I recall him as singularly tall and thin, almost gaunt,
bending forward as he talked, and wearing an expression of great
serenity and benignity. I once told Susan B. Anthony that if I needed
help in a crowd of strangers that included her, I would immediately
turn to her, knowing from her face that, whatever I had done, she would
understand and assist me. I could have offered the same tribute to
Whittier. At our meetings he was like a vesper-bell chiming above a
battle-field. Garrison always became excited during our discussions, and
the others frequently did; but Whittier, in whose big heart the love
of his fellow-man burned as unquenchably as in any heart there, always
preserved his exquisite tranquillity.

Once, I remember, Stephen Foster insisted on having the word "tyranny"
put into a resolution, stating that women were deprived of suffrage by
the TYRANNY of men. Mr. Garrison objected, and the debate that followed
was the most exciting I have ever heard. The combatants actually had
to adjourn before they could calm down sufficiently to go on with
their meeting. Knowing the stimulating atmosphere to which he had grown
accustomed, I was not surprised to ha