n the subject at the close of my lecture that I
was obliged to promise I would if I could remember to do so. After
speaking two hours, we returned to his house to tea, and he asked: 'Why
did you not tell the people why you believed you had a right to speak?'
I had entirely forgotten all about it until his question revived the
conversation we had on the road. Now I believe the Lord orders these
things so, driving out of my mind what I ought not to speak on. If the
time ever comes when this shall be a part of my public work, then I
shall not be able to forget it."

But to return to the meeting at Lynn. We are told that the men present
listened in amazement. They were spell-bound, and impatient of the
slightest noise which might cause the loss of a word from the speakers.
Another meeting was called for, and held the next evening. This was
crowded to excess, many going away unable to get even standing-room.

"At least one hundred," Angelina writes, "stood around the doors, and,
on the outside of each window, men stood with their heads above the
lowered sash. Very easy speaking indeed."

But now the opposers of abolitionism, and especially the clergy, began
to be alarmed. It amounted to very little that (to borrow the language
of one of the newspapers of the day) "two fanatical women, forgetful of
the obligations of a respected name, and indifferent to the feelings of
their most worthy kinsmen, the Barnwells and the Rhetts, should, by the
novelty of their course, draw to their meetings idle and curious
women." But it became a different matter when men, the intelligent,
respectable and cultivated citizens of every town, began to crowd to
hear them, even following them from one place to another, and giving
them loud and honest applause. Then they were adjudged immodest, and
their conduct denounced as unwomanly and demoralizing. Their devotion
to principle, the purity of their lives, the justice of the cause they
pleaded, the religious stand-point from which they spoke, all were
overlooked, and the pitiless scorn of Christian men and women of every
sect was poured down upon them. Nor should we wonder when we remember
that, at that time, the Puritan bounds of propriety still hedged in the
education and the training of New England women, and limited the views
of New England men. Even many of the abolitionists had first to hear
Sarah and Angelina Grimke to be convinced that there was nothing
unwomanly in a woman's raising her vo