ension, but full,
too, of determination to stand by one who so bravely shook off
her trammels, went to hear this new Joan of Arc, and in a few
minutes after she began we found ourselves, with the rest of the
large audience, entranced by her eloquence. At the close of the
meeting we went with many others to be introduced and give her
the right hand of fellowship. She came home with us for the
night, and after the family retired she and I communed together,
heart to heart, as mother and daughter, and from this sweet,
grand soul, born to the freedom denied to all women except those
known as Quakers, I learned to trust as never before the
teachings of the inner light, and to know whence came to them the
recognition of equal rights with their brethren in the public
assembly.

It was she who brought me to the knowledge of Mrs. John Stuart
Mill, and her remarkable paper on "The Enfranchisement of Women,"
in _The Westminster Review_. She told me, too, of Susan B.
Anthony, a fearless defender of true liberty and woman's right of
public speech; but I allowed an old and ignorant prejudice
against her and Mrs. Stanton to remain until the year 1864, when,
going South to nurse a young soldier who was wounded in the war,
I met Mrs. Caroline Severance from Boston, who was residing in
South Carolina, where her husband was in the service of the
government, who confirmed what Miss Dickinson had told me of Miss
Anthony, and unfolded to me the whole philosophy of the woman
suffrage movement.

She afterwards invited me to her home near Boston, where I joined
Mr. Garrison and others in issuing a call for a convention, which
I attended, and aided in the formation of the New England Woman
Suffrage Association. At this meeting, which I will not attempt
to describe, I met Paulina Wright Davis, whose mere presence upon
the platform, with her beautiful white hair and her remarkable
dignity and elegance, was a most potent argument in favor of
woman's participation in public affairs. I sought an introduction
to her, and confessing my prejudice against Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony, whom I had never yet seen, she urged me to meet them as
guests at her home in Providence; and a few weeks later, under
the grand old trees of her husband's almost ducal estate, we went