more campaigning in Pennsylvania she had to travel through the mining
districts, where her frank words were often ridiculed and she was
pelted with stones, rotten eggs, and other unpleasant missiles. But
she bore it all like a warrior, and made a remarkable record for
speeches in parts of the State where no man dared to go. Despite this
and the fact that the victorious party owed its success largely to the
young orator, the committee never paid her one cent for her
services--to their great discredit, probably having spent all their
campaign funds in some other less legitimate way and thinking they
could more easily defraud a girl than a more shrewd man.

Nothing daunted, she continued to speak wherever she could get a
hearing, and at last came an invitation to make an address in
Washington, D. C. Here indeed was a triumph! She hesitated long before
accepting the invitation, for it would be a trying ordeal, as among
her audience would be the President and many diplomats and high
government officials. But with sturdy courage she accepted, and as a
result faced, as she later said, the most brilliant audience ever
assembled to hear her speak. It was a unique sensation for the
dignitaries and men of mark to sit as listeners at the feet of this
slender girl, who was speaking on profound questions of the day; but
she made a deep impression, even on those who did not agree with her
opinions, and it was a proud moment of her life when at the close of
the meeting she met the President and his Cabinet. The Chief Executive
gladly granted her an interview for the following day, and like other
men of lesser rank, was carried out of himself as he watched the play
of expression, the light and shade on her mobile face, as they talked
together of the vital topics of the day.

Anna Dickinson was now an orator beyond a doubt; in fact, the only
_girl_ orator the country had ever known. More than that, she made use
of her eloquence, her magnetism, her flow of language, not for any
minor use, but in presenting to the public the great problems of her
day and in pleading for honor and justice, freedom and fullness of joy
for the individual, with such intensity of purpose as few men have
ever used in pleading a cause.

That she wrote and acted in a play dealing with one of the subjects
nearest her heart, and that she published a novel of the same kind,
added nothing to her fame. She was wholly an orator with an
instinctive knowledge of the w