, for in those days anti-slavery lecturers were tarred
and feathered, their homes burned, and many other indignities heaped
upon them. Throughout all this, Mrs. Mott never lost her serenity, and
never suffered bodily injury. On one occasion, the annual meeting of the
Anti-Slavery Society, in New York, was broken up by a mob, and some of
the speakers were roughly handled. Perceiving that some of the women
were badly frightened, Mrs. Mott asked her escort to look after them.

"But who will take care of you?" he asked.

"This man will," she said, and smilingly laid her hand upon the arm of
one of the leaders of the mob. "He will see me safe through."

The rioter stared down at her for a moment, his conflicting thoughts
betraying themselves upon his countenance, then his better nature
triumphed and he led her respectfully to a place of safety.

She seems to have possessed the power of charming any audience, and
carried her anti-slavery campaign even into Kentucky, where she
commanded respectful attention. She was one of the first to take up the
question of woman suffrage, and in 1848, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
a few others, called the first Woman's Suffrage Convention ever held in
this country. For fifty years she continued her public work, until she
grew to be one of the best known and best loved women in the country.
She lived to see the slave freed, and when she died, a great concourse
followed her body silently to the grave. As they stood there with bowed
heads, a low voice asked, "Will no one say anything?"

"Who can speak?" another voice responded, "The preacher is dead."

* * * * *

In this day of pitying and enlightened treatment of the insane, it is
difficult to realize the barbarities which they were called upon to
endure a century ago. They were regarded almost as wild beasts, were
kept chained in foul and loathsome places, fed with mouldy bread, filthy
water, and allowed to die the most miserable death. For everyone used to
believe that insanity was a mark of God's displeasure, and the outcast
from His heart became equally an outcast from the hearts of men. The
insane were regarded with fear and loathing, and it was not until the
beginning of the nineteenth century that such men as Dr. Channing began
to insist on the presence in human nature, even in its most degraded
condition, of grains of good.

It was from Dr. Channing that Dorothea Lynde Dix drank in this theory