been through the pressure of injustice,
and that the screws had been turned on me that I might do something to
right the great wrong which forbade a married woman to own property. So,
instead of spending my strength quarreling with the hand, I would strike
for the heart of that great tyranny.

I borrowed books from Judge Wilkins, took legal advice from Colonel
Black, studied the laws under which I lived, and began a series of
letters in the _Journal_ on the subject of a married woman's right to
hold property. I said nothing of my own affairs and confined myself to
general principles, until a man in East Liberty furnished me an
illustration, and with it I made the cheeks of men burn with anger and
shame.

The case was that of a young German merchant who married the daughter of
a wealthy farmer. Her father gave her a handsome outfit in clothes and
furniture. She became ill soon after marriage, her sister took her place
as housekeeper and nursed her till she died, after bequeathing the
clothes and furniture to the sister; but the sorrowing husband held fast
to the property and proposed to turn it into money. The father wanted it
as souvenirs of his lost child, and tried to purchase of him, but the
husband raised the price until purchase was impossible, when he
advertised the goods for sale at vendue. The father was an old citizen,
highly respected, and so great contempt and indignation was felt, that
at the vendue no one would bid against him, so the husband's father came
forward and ran up the price of the articles. When her riding dress, hat
and whip were held up, there was a general cry of shame. The incident
came just in time for my purpose, so I turned every man's scorn against
himself, said to them:

"Gentlemen, these are your laws! Your English ancestors made them! Your
fathers brought them across the water and planted them here, where they
flourish like a green bay tree. You robbed that wife of her right to
devise her own property--that husband is simply your agent."

Lucretia Mott and Mary A. Grew, of Philadelphia, labored assiduously for
the same object, and in the session of '47 and '48, the legislature of
Pennsylvania secured to married women the right to hold property.

Soon after the passage of the bill, William A. Stokes said to me: "We
hold you responsible for that law, and I tell you now, you will live to
rue the day when you opened such a Pandora's box in your native state,
and cast such an apple of