Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/374

Rh addressing the Glastonbury town meeting in the little red-brick town-house of that place—a building that will always hereafter be connected with the names of Abby and Julia Smith. Several years after, wishing to address them again, she was refused entrance there, so she and Julia addressed the people from an ox-cart that stood in front. This was after their continued warfare against "taxation without representation" had aroused the opposition of their townsmen, but that first speech in 1873 was the beginning of their fame. Abby sent it to me for publication in the Times of this city, but the editor not having room for it sent it to the Courant, which gave it a place in its columns, thus (unwittingly) setting a ball in motion that ran all round the country, and even over the ocean. The simplicity and uniqueness of the story of "Abby Smith and her cows," gave a boom to the cause of woman suffrage as welcome as it was unexpected. The Glastonbury mails were more heavily laden than ever before in the history of this hitherto unknown town, for letters came pouring in from all quarters to the sisters. The fame did not rest entirely on Abby and her cows; Julia and her Bible came in for an important share, and the newspaper articles in regard to them were a remarkable blending of cows and Biblical lore, dairy products and Greek and Hebrew. Many of the articles were wide of the facts, being written with a view to make a bright and readable column. For instance, a Chicago paper got up a highly colored article in which it said that Abby Smith's mother—Hannah Hickok—was such an intense student that her father had a glass cage made for her to study in. The only vestage of truth in this story was that, lacking our modern facilities for heating, Mr. Hickok had an extra amount of glass put into the south side of his daughter's room that the sun might give it a little more heat in cold weather. Hannah Hickok seems to have had a mental equipment much above that of the average woman of that day; she had a taste for literature, and was something of a linguist, and wrote, moreover, at different times, quite an amount of readable verse. She had a taste for mathematics, and also for astronomy, and made for her own use an almanac, for these were not so plenty then as now; she could, on awakening, tell any hour of the night by the position of the stars. Evidently Hannah Hickok Smith was not an ordinary woman; and it is quite as evident that her daughters were equally original, though in a different direction. Women who have translated the Bible are not to be met with every day—nor men either, for that matter, but Julia Smith not only did this, but translated it five times,—twice from the Hebrew, twice from the Greek, and once from the Latin; and thirty years later, or after the age of eighty, published the translation; and then, to crown the list of marvels, married at the age of eighty-five.

One point more, and the one nearest my heart. You ask me about my "dear friend Mrs. Buckingham." I can give no details of her suffrage work, but her heart was in it, and her name should be handed down in your History. She was at one time chairman of the executive committee of our State association, and she would, if she had thought it necessary, have spent of her little income to the last cent to help along the cause. She made public addresses and wrote many suffrage articles and letters that