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Higher Education of Women now stands firm as the Pyramids.
The idea of woman suffrage had long been repugnant to our mother.
The demand for it seemed unreasonable; she was inclined to laugh both at the cause and its advocates; yet when, in November, 1868, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson asked her to give her name to a call for a meeting in behalf of woman suffrage she did not refuse.
It would be “a liberal and friendly meeting,” the Colonel said, “without bitterness or extravagance.”
On the day of the meeting she “strayed into Horticultural Hall” in her “rainy-day suit, with no idea of taking any active part in the proceedings.”
Indeed, she had hoped to remain unnoticed, until summoned by an urgent message to join those who sat upon the platform; reluctantly she obeyed the summons.
With this simple action the old order changed for her. On the platform were gathered the woman suffrage leaders, some of whom she already knew: William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, James Freeman Clarke; veteran captains of Reform, her husband's old companions-in-arms.
Looking in their steadfast faces, she felt that she belonged with them; that she must help to draw the car of progress, not drag like a brake on its wheel.
Beside these were some unknown to her. She saw now for the first time the sweet face of Lucy Stone, heard the silver voice which was to be dear to her through many years.
“Here stood the true woman, pure, noble, great-hearted, with the light of her good ”
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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