Oberlin was a station on the "underground railway," a town of strong anti-slavery sympathies, and many fugitive slaves settled there. A school was started to teach them to read, and Lucy was asked to take charge of it. The colored men, fresh from slavery and densely ignorant, still felt it beneath their dignity to be taught by a woman. Without letting her know this, the committee took her to the school and introduced her to them as their teacher, thinking they would not like to express their objections in her presence. But there was a murmur of dissatisfaction, and presently a tall man, very black, stood up and said he had nothing against Miss Stone personally, but he was free to confess that he did not like the idea of being taught by a woman. She persuaded them that it would be for their advantage to learn from anybody who could teach them to read; and her dusky pupils soon became much attached to her. When the Ladies' Boarding Hall took fire, during her temporary absence, many members of her colored class rushed to the fire, bent on saving her effects. She was told on her return that a whole string of colored men had arrived upon the scene one after another, each demanding breathlessly, "Where is Miss Stone's trunk?"
Her first public speech was made during her college course. The colored people got up a celebration of the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, and invited her to be one of the speakers. The president of the college and some of the professors were also invited. She gave her address among the rest, and thought nothing of it. The next day she was summoned before the Ladies' Board (a sort of advisory board, composed of the professors' wives, who supervised the young women of the college). They represented to her that it was unwomanly and unscriptural for her to speak in public. The president's wife said: "Did you not feel yourself very much out of place up there on the platform among all those men? Were you not embarrassed and frightened?" "Why, no, Mrs. Mahan," she answered. "'Those men' were President Mahan and my professors, whom I meet every day in the class-room. I was not afraid of them at all!" She was allowed to go, with an admonition. She was repeatedly called before the Ladies' Board to answer for some departure from custom, but she always defended herself with modesty and firmness, and she generally came off victorious.
She was always ready to lend a helping hand to any fellow-student who needed it. She darned the young men's stockings, mended their clothes, and gave them sisterly sympathy and good counsel. Old men still living speak with gratitude of her defending them from ridicule and taking them comfortingly under her wing when they were uncouth country boys, new to the college and its ways. Many yellow old letters from her classmates, both men and women, testify to the deep impression her character made upon them, and the respect and warm affection that she inspired.
She was small and slender, with gray eyes, a lovely rosy complexion, and dark brown hair. Her fine health made her always look younger than her age. When between thirty and forty, she was sometimes taken for a girl of eighteen.
While Lucy was at Oberlin, a beautiful and gifted girl, named Antoinette Brown, entered the college, with the purpose, up to that time unprecedented for a woman, of studying theology and becoming a minister. In the stage-coach on her way to Oberlin she was cautioned against a singular and dangerous young woman named Lucy Stone, whose radical ideas were the talk of the college. In spite of this warning, Antoinette and Lucy contracted a friendship which was cemented in later life by their marrying brothers. These two girls and a few of the others wished to practise themselves in discussion, and asked leave to speak in the college debates. These debates were a regular part of the course, and the young women were required to attend them, in order to furnish an audience for the young men, but were not allowed themselves to take part. After a good deal of hesitation, permission was given for the girls to have one debate. They acquitted themselves finely; but the faculty felt that any public speaking by women was unscriptural and improper, and they refused to let it be continued. The young women then determined to have a debating society of their
