king and I
even more rarely stopped laughing.

XV. CONVENTION INCIDENTS

From 1887 to 1914 we had a suffrage convention every year, and I
attended each of them. In preceding chapters I have mentioned various
convention episodes of more or less importance. Now, looking back
over them all as I near the end of these reminiscences, I recall a few
additional incidents which had a bearing on later events. There was,
for example, the much-discussed attack on suffrage during the Atlanta
convention of 1895, by a prominent clergyman of that city whose name I
mercifully withhold. On the Sunday preceding our arrival this gentleman
preached a sermon warning every one to keep away from our meetings, as
our effort was not to secure the franchise for women, but to encourage
the intermarriage of the black and white races. Incidentally he declared
that the suffragists were trying to break up the homes of America
and degrade the morals of women, and that we were all infidels and
blasphemers. He ended with a personal attack on me, saying that on the
previous Sunday I had preached in the Epworth Memorial Methodist Church
of Cleveland, Ohio, a sermon which was of so blasphemous a nature that
nothing could purify the church after it except to burn it down.

As usual at our conventions, I had been announced to preach the sermon
at our Sunday conference, and I need hardly point out that the reverend
gentleman's charge created a deep public interest in this effort. I
had already selected a text, but I immediately changed my plans and
announced that I would repeat the sermon I had delivered in Cleveland
and which the Atlanta minister considered so blasphemous. The
announcement brought out an audience which filled the Opera House and
called for a squad of police officers to keep in order the street crowd
that could not secure entrance. The assemblage had naturally expected
that I would make some reply to the clergyman's attack, but I made no
reference whatever to him. I merely repeated, with emphasis, the sermon
I had delivered in Cleveland.

At the conclusion of the service one of the trustees of my reverend
critic's church came and apologized for his pastor. He had a high regard
for him, the trustee said, but in this instance there could be no doubt
in the mind of any one who had heard both sermons that of the two mine
was the tolerant, the reverent, and the Christian one. The attack made
many friends for us, first because of its injus