Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/262

Rh a few words years afterward, on a railroad car or in a stage-coach, where it was too dark to recognize faces, would at once exclaim unhesitatingly, "That is Lucy Stone!"

Old people who remember those early lect- ures say that she had a wonderful eloquence. There were no tricks of oratory, but the trans- parent sincerity, simplicity, and intense earn- estness of the speaker, adcled to a singular per- sonal magnetism and an utter forgetfulness of self, swayed those great audiences as the wind bends a field of grab's. (3ften mobs would listen to her when they howled down every other speaker. At one woman's rights meeting in New York the mob made such a clamor that it was impossible for any sj^eaker to be heard. One after another tried it, only to have his or 'her voice drowned forthwith by hoots and howls. 'illiam Henry Channing advised Lu- cretia Mott, who was presiding, to atljourn the meeting. Mrs. Mott answ ered, " W hen the hour fixed for adjournment comes, I will ad- journ the meeting, not before." At last Lucy was introduced. The mob became as quiet as a congregation of church-goers: but, as soon as the next speaker began, the howling recom- menced, and it continued to the end. At the close of the meeting, when the speakers went into the dressing-room to get their hats and cloaks, the mob surged in and surroundefl them ; and Lucy, who was brimming over with indignation, began to reproach them for their behavior. "Oh, come," they answered, "you needn't say anything : we kept still for you!"

At an anti-slavery meeting held on Cape Cod, in a grove, in the open air, a platform had been erected for the speakers, and a crowd assembletl, but a crowd so menacing in aspect and with so evitlent an intention of- violence that the speakers one by one came down from the stand and slipped quietly away, till none were left but Stephen Foster and I^ucy Stone. She said, "You had better run, Stephen: they are coming." He answered, " But who will take care of you?" At that moment the mob made a rush for the platform, and a big man sprang up on it, grasping a club. She turned to him and said without hesitation, " This gen- tleman will take care of me." He declareil that he would. He tucked her under one arm, and, holding his club with the other, marched her out through the crowd, who were roughly handling Mr. Foster and such of the other speakers as they had been able to catch. Her representations finally so prevailed upon him that he mounted her on a stump, and stood by her with his club while she addressed the mob. They were so moved by her speech that they not only desisted from further violence, but took up a collection of twenty dollars to pay Stephen Foster for his coat, which they hail torn in two from top to bottom.

When she began to lecture, she would not charge an admission fee, partly because she was anxious that as many people as possible should hear and be converted, and she feared that an admission fee might keep some away, and partly from something of the Quaker feeling that it was wrong to take pay for preaching the gospel. She economized in every way. When she stayed in Boston, she used to put up at a lodging-house on H:inover Street, where they gave her meals for twelve and a half cents and lodging for six and a quarter cents, on condi- tion of her sleeping in the garret with the daugh- ters of the house, three in a bed.

Once, when she was in great need of a new cloak, she came to Salem, Mass., where she was? to lecture, and found that the Hutchinson family of singers were to give a concert the same evening. They proposed to her to unite the entertainments and divide the proceeds. She consented, and bought a cloak with the money. She was also badly in want of other clothing. Her frienils assured her that the autliences would be just as large despite an admission fee. She tried it, and, finding that the audiences continued to be as large as the halls would hold, she continued to charge a door fee, and was no longer reduced to such straits.

She had three lectures, on "The Social and Industrial Disabilities of Women," "The Legal and Political Disabilities of Women," and "The Religious Disabilities of Women." In the early fifties she gave these three lectures at Louisville, Ky., to innnen.se auiliences, thereby clearing six hundred dollars, and was invited to stay and give another on temperance.