resolution was defeated, a large majority taking the ground that women, being members of the society, were entitled to all the rights, privileges, and duties pertaining to membership. In May, 1839, the question again came up, this time at the annual meeting of the American Anti-slavery Society, in New York. An exciting discussion followed the appointment of Miss Kelley to a committee, the question being decided as before. The next year it was settled, once for all, that in the American Anti-slavery Society and its auxiliaries throughout the country the women should take part as freely as the men in all the work of the public meetings, even to the point of presiding on important occasions."
It was in 1839 that Miss Kelley's recognized career as a lecturer began. She had already been baptized with the terrible flame of persecution in the solitary Connecticut campaign, and whatever of abuse and vilification now assailed her she could bear with comparative equanimity, supported by the strong band of brave and loyal souls who had pledged to the cause of the slave their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. From this time till her marriage, in 1845, Miss Kelley devoted herself untiringly to anti-slavery work. She spoke in conventions not only, but guide long trips through remote country districts, speaking in churches, whenever they could be obtained; when not, in school-houses. Sometimes arrangements were made by the society's agent; but she often had to be her own agent, learning from her last host who in the surrounding towns would help her to get up meetings, and who would receive her at their houses, for she had no money to pay hotel bills. For many years she received no salary, her travelling expenses only being paid by the society, and her most pressing needs for clothing being supplied by her friends. Many annising anecdotes might be related of these lecture tours. She, like Dickens, was given her choice of "corn bread and common doin's" or "white bread and chicken fixin's." In the new settlements of the West, where the kitchen sink or the well was the common bath-room for the family, and a single dish (sometimes the iron skillet) served each in turn as a wash-basin, her hostesses discovered that an occult connection existed between a woman lecturer and a pan of water—a luxury which Miss Kelley always insisted upon having in her room. In those days of pork and bacon it was extremely difficult to get suitable food, but eggs and potatoes could usually be obtained. Travelling was a terrible undertaking. At first no railroads, then only a few between the larger cities, stage-coaches or wagons, and roads of every degree of muddiness or roughness, with the corduroy road of logs as the extreme of torture—these were the only means of conveyance for the pioneers of the anti-slavery cause.
About the time that Abby Kelley became known to the public, another lecturer appeared on the anti-slavery platform, one who excited more animosity, if less ridicule, than she. This was Stephen S. Foster, who out-Garrisoned even the famous leader. In his ability to portray in vivid and terrible language the sin of the stat-holder and the wickedness of the church and clergy in lending countenance to the system, he was without a rival. No meeting was dull where he spoke. Indeed, a mob was the not improbable outcome, before which Mr. Foster never quailed. A non-resistant, he carried always with him two invaluable weapons — a piercing eye, with which he transfixed his assailants, and a wonderful magnetic power, which enabled him to hold an audience, though they writhed under his terrible denunciations. But he was sometimes roughly handled, and several times received serious injuries.
This brave martyr spirit was the mate for whom destiny had preserved Abby Kelley from her many youthful admirers. Marriage had never attracted her; for marriage, at that time, meant the absolute submission of the wife, her entire loss of identity. To such a union such a woman could never consent. But when this wooer came there was a difference. The great principle of human freedom which he applied to the black slave he applied also to the white woman, who was a subject, if not a chattel. He had the same great cause at heart as Miss Kelley. Like her, he had labored without money and without price, had given up his profession and his creed for the slave. Mar-
