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Part Taken by Women in American History


slavery platform it will not do." She answered, "I know it, but 1 was a woman before I was an Abolitionist, and I must speak for the women." Accordingly, it was arranged that she should lecture for woman's rights on her own responsibility all the week and should lecture for the anti-slavery society on Saturday and Sunday nights. Her adventures during the next few years would fill a volume. She arranged her own meetings, putting her own handbills up with a little package of tacks which she carried and a stone, picked up in the street. Of course, woman's rights was still considered a subject for ridicule when not the object of violent attack. One minister in Maiden, Mass., being asked to give a notice of her meeting, did so, as follows: "I am asked to give notice that a hen will attempt to crow like a cock in the town hall at five o'clock to-morrow evening. Those who like such music will, of course, attend." At a meeting in Connecticut one cold night a pane of glass was removed from the church window and a hose inserted and Miss Stone was suddenly deluged from head to foot. She wrapped a shawl about her, however, and went on with her lecture. At an open air meeting in a grove on Cape Cod, where there were a number of speakers, the mob gathered with such threatening demonstration that all the speakers slipped away, till no one was left on the platform but Miss Stone and Stephen Foster. She said to him, "You had better go, Stephen, they are coming."

He answered, "Who will take care of you?" At that moment the mob made a rush and one of the ringleaders, a big man with a club, sprang up on the platform. Turning to him without a sign of fear she remarked in her sweet voice, "This gentleman will take care of me." And to the utter astonishment of the angry throng he tucked her under one arm and holding his club with the other, marched her through the crowd. He then mounted her upon a stump and stood by her