Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/191

Rh From the time I spoke at the Worcester Convention, 1850, until I left for Kansas, October, 1854, I responded to frequent calls from town and neighborhood committees and lyceums — in the county and adjoining territory of New Hampshire and Massachusetts as well as Vermont, to lecture or join in debate with men and women, the women voting me their time, on the subject of woman's legal and political equality. In these neighborhood lyceums, ministers and deacons and their wives and daughters took part. Generally wives were appointed in opposition to their husbands, and from their rich and varied experience did excellent execution. In order to secure opposition, I used to let the negative open and close, other wise the debate was sure to be tame or no debate at all. In ell my experience it was the same; the "affirmative" had the merit and the argument.

The clergy often spoke — always when present — and in the negative, if it was their first hearing; and without a single exception they faced the audience at the close with a cordial endorsement of the cause. Said one such: "TI told you, ladies and gentlemen, that I had given little attention to the subject, and you see that I told the truth. Mrs. Nichols has made out her case, and let her and the women laboring like her, persevere, and woman will gain her rights." "Let your wife go all she can," said one of these converts to Mr. Nichols, "she is breaking down prejudices and making friends for your paper. Your political opponents have represented her as a masculine brawler for rights, and those who have never met her know no better. I went to hear her, full of misgivings that it might be so."

In the Winter of 1852 I went as often as twice a week — late and returned early  — from six to twenty miles. I was sent for where there was no railroad. I often heard of "ready-made pants," and once of a "rail," but the greater the opposition, the greater the victory.

On a clear, cold morning of January, 1852, I found myself some six miles from home at a station on the Vermont side of the Massachusetts State line, on my way to Templeton, Mass., whither I had been invited by a Lyceum Committee to lecture upon the subject of "Woman's Rights." I had scarcely settled myself in the rear of the saloon for a restful, careless two hours' ride, when two men entered the car. In the younger man I recognized the sheriff of our county. Having given a searching glance around the car, the older man, with a significant nod to his companion, laid his hand upon the saloon door an instant, and every person in the car had risen to his feet,