in fact, before Anna had even
mentioned her success as a speaker to her mother--while she was out
one day two gentlemen called at the house and inquired if Miss Anna
Dickinson lived there. Her mother's cheeks paled with fright, for she
feared Anna had been doing some unconventional thing which the
strangers had come to report. When they said they had heard her speak
at a public meeting and were so much pleased with her speech that they
had come to find out something about her home surroundings, Mrs.
Dickinson's brow cleared, and, leading them into the house, she spent
a pleasant half-hour with them, and was secretly delighted with their
comments on her daughter's first appearance in public. When Anna came
home Mrs. Dickinson took her to task for not telling her about such a
great event, and was surprised to see the real diffidence which the
girl showed when she was questioned about the meetings and her
speeches. A few days later Doctor Longshore called with her brother,
Elwood, and with their flattering assurances that her daughter was a
born speaker, and that she had already made some valuable points on a
vital subject, Mrs. Dickinson began to feel that all her worry over
Anna's turbulent childhood and restless girlhood had not been in vain,
that she was born to do great things, and from that time she took a
genuine pride in all the achievements of the young girl who came so
rapidly into public notice.

The Longshores took Anna into their hearts and home at once, and many
of her happiest hours were spent with them. "We felt toward her,"
Doctor Longshore said, "as if she were our own child. We were the
first strangers to show an interest in her welfare and future plans,
and she returned our friendship with confidence and love." She was
always so buoyant, so full of vitality and gayety, that her visits
were eagerly anticipated, and for hours at a time she would entertain
her new friends with vivid and droll accounts of her experiences at
home and in school and of her attempts to make money. And as she had
won her way into the hearts of her audience, at those first meetings,
so now she kept the Longshores enthralled, making them laugh at one
moment and cry at another. One night she had a horrible dream to
relate.

"I had been reading an account of the horrors of the slave system at
its worst," she said. "After going to bed, I was long in falling
asleep. Finally I slept and dreamed that I was a slave girl, and, oh,
the