Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/259

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MARGARET R. CHAPPELLSMITH.
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would not, as these lecturers said, remove or mitigate the misery that always abounds in rich England.

"I am not, and never was, fond of a public life; I yielded to the request of friends, who said that I ought to say to the public what I was in the habit of saying in my father's shop. William Cobbett's intimate friends requested me, and Robert Owen urged me, to lecture; and after I commenced, invitation after invitation came, and so I went on; but at last my husband and myself commenced bookselling, and soon I was compelled to decline all other invitations to lecture."

We are not told when or why the Chappellsmiths came to America, nor whether they have ever lived anywhere in the New World save in Indiana; but we can guess that after the breaking up of "the English Brook Farm," as Conway appropriately names the community at Broughton, these enthusiastic believers in a possible and successful Socialism would naturally look