aken on a venture, and shrinkingly sensitive in regard to her
inability to aid her mother more lavishly, there was need of quick
action. Alone in a boarding-house room, Anna reviewed her resources
and the material she had on hand for a new and more taking lecture.

"I have it!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet, and taking up a pad
and pencil she hastily began to write a lecture in which she used the
material gained in her hospital experience. She called it "Hospital
Life." When she gave it on that night at Concord with a heavy heart it
proved to be the pivot on which her success as a lecturer swung to its
greatest height. As she drew her vivid pictures of the hospital
experience and horrors of war and slavery she melted her audience to
tears by her impassioned delivery. The secretary of the New Hampshire
Central Committee was in the audience and was enchanted as he heard
the young speaker for the first time. At the close of the lecture he
said to a friend:

"If we can get this girl to make that speech all through New
Hampshire, we can carry the Republican ticket in this State in the
coming election."

So impressed was he with Anna's powers of persuasion that he decided
to invite her to become a campaign speaker on his own responsibility,
if the State Committee did not think well of the idea. But that
committee was only too glad to adopt any plan to aid their cause. Anna
Dickinson, then only eighteen years old, was invited to become part of
the State machinery, to work on the side which appealed to her sense
of justice. Elated, excited, and enthusiastic, she accepted the offer
and began to speak early in March. What a work that was for the young
and inexperienced girl! In the month before election, twenty times she
stood before great throngs of eager persons and spoke, rousing great
enthusiasm by her eloquent appeals in the name of reason and fair
play.

Slight, pretty, and without any of the tricks of the professional
political speaker, her march through the State was a succession of
triumphs which ended in a Republican victory, and, though many of her
enemies called her "ignorant and illogical" as well as "noisy" in mind
and spirit, the adverse criticism was of no consequence in comparison
to the praise and success which far outweighed it.

The member in the first district, having no faith that a woman could
influence politics, sent word to the secretary, "Don't send that woman
down here to defeat my election."