Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/581

Rh mothers to teach them better. But I tell you that some men in New York, knowing that they can hear the word of God from a woman, as well as from a man, have called her to be their pastor, and she is to be ordained in this month. Some of you reporters said she was a Unitarian, but it is not so; she is among the most orthodox, and so is her church.

We have caused woman's right to address an audience to be more fully recognized than before. I once addressed an assemblage of men, and did so without giving previous notice, because I feared the opposition of prejudice. A lady who was among the audience said to me afterward, "How could you do it? My blood ran cold when I saw you up there among those men!" "Why," I asked, "are they bad men?" "Oh, no! my own husband is one of them; but to see a woman mixing among men in promiscuous meetings, it was horrible!" That was six or seven years ago last fall; and that self-same woman, in Columbus, Ohio, was chosen to preside over a temperance meeting of men and women; yes, and she took the chair without the least objection! In Chicago, a woman is cashier of a bank; and the men gave her a majority of three hundred votes over her man-competitor. In another State, a woman is register of deeds. Women can be editors; two sit behind me, Paulina W. Davis and Mrs. Nichols. Thus we have an accumulation of facts to support our claims and our arguments.

The Woman's Rights Convention was somewhat disturbed last evening by persons whose ideas of the rights of free speech are these: two thousand people assemble to hear a given public question discussed under distinct announcement that certain persons whose general views are well known, are to speak throughout the evening. At least nineteen-twentieths come to hear those announced speakers, and will be bitterly disappointed if the opportunity be not afforded them. But one-twentieth have bought tickets and taken seats on purpose to prevent the hearing of those speakers, by hissing, yelling, and stamping, and all manner of unseemly interruptions. Under such circumstances, which should prevail; the right of the speakers to be heard and the great body of the audience to hear them according to the announcement, or the will of the disturbers who choose to say that nineteen out of twenty shall not have what they have paid for, and what the promised speakers are most willing to give them?

To state the case exactly as it is, precludes the necessity of arguing it. We rejoice to say that the will of the great majority prevailed, and that the discussion which was marked in its earlier days by occasional tumult was closed in good order, and amid hushed and gratified attention. We ought, perhaps, to return thanks to the disturbers for so stirring the souls of the speakers that their words came gushing forth from their lips with exceeding fluency and power. We certainly never before heard Antoinette Brown, Mrs. Rose, and Lucy Stone speak with such power and unction as last night. It was never before so transparent that a hiss or a blackguard yell was the only answer that the case admitted of, and when Lucy Stone closed the discussion with some pungent, yet pathetic remarks on the sort