points, from week
to week, on this question. In issuing the first numbers of _The
Revolution_, the earliest words of good cheer came from Frances
Ellen Burr.[159]

The general rebellion among women against the old conditions of
society and the popular opinions as to their nature and destiny,
has been organized in each State in this Union by the sudden
awakening of some self-reliant woman, in whose soul had long
slumbered new ideas as to her rights and duties, growing out of
personal experiences or the distant echoes of onward steps in other
localities. In Connecticut this woman was Isabella Beecher Hooker,
who had scarcely dared to think, and much less to give shape in
words, to the thoughts that, like unwelcome ghosts, had haunted her
hours of solitude from year to year. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
describes a hero as one who does what others do but say; who says
what others do but think; and thinks what others do but dream. The
successive steps by which Mrs. Hooker's dreams at last took shape
in thoughts, words and actions, and brought her to the woman
suffrage platform, are well told by herself:

My mind had long been disturbed with the tangled problem of
social life, but it involved so many momentous questions that I
could not see where to begin nor what to do. I could only protest
in my heart, and leave the whole matter for God[160] to deal with
in his wisdom. Thus matters stood until the year 1861, when Anna
Dickinson, then a girl of nineteen, came to Hartford to speak in
behalf of the Republican party, particularly on its hostility to
the extension of slavery. I shall never forget the dismay--I know
not what else to call it--which I felt at the announcement of her
first speech in one of our public halls, lest harm should come to
the political cause that enlisted my sympathies, and anxiety
about the speaker, who would have to encounter so much adverse
criticism in our conservative and prejudiced city. It was
certainly a most startling occurrence, that here in my very home,
where there had been hardly a lisp in favor of the rights of
women, this girl should speak on political subjects, and that,
too, upon the invitation of the leaders of a great political
party. Here was a stride, not a mere step; and a stride almost to
final victory for the suppressed rights of women.

My husband and I, full of anxiety and appreh