life, made frequent visits in our neighborhood at the house of Judge G. V. Sackett, a man of wealth and some political influence. One of the Senator's standing anecdotes at dinner to illustrate the purifying influence of woman at the polls, which he always told with great zest for my special benefit, was in regard to the manner his wife's sister exercised the right of suffrage.
"Mrs. Worden having the supervision of a farm near Auburn, was obliged to hire two or three men for its cultivation. It was her custom, having examined them as to their capacity to perform the required labor, their knowledge of tools, horses, cattle, gardening, and horticulture, to inquire as to their politics. She informed them that being a woman and a widow, and having no one to represent her, she must have Republicans to do her voting, to represent her political opinions, and it always so happened that the men who offered their services belonged to the Republican party.
"Some one remarked to her one day, 'Are you sure your men vote as they promise?' 'Yes,' she replied, 'I trust nothing to their discretion. I take them in my carriage within sight of the polls, put them in charge of some Republican who can be trusted. I see they have the right tickets, then I feel sure I am faithfully represented, and I know I am right in so doing. I have neither husband, father, nor son; am responsible for my own taxes; am amenable to all the laws of the State; must pay the penalty of my own crimes if I commit any; hence I have the right, according to the principles of our government, to representation, and so long as I am not permitted to vote in person, I have a right to do so by proxy, hence I hire men to vote my principles.'" Thus she disposed of the statesman and his seriocomic morality.
These two sisters, daughters of Judge Miller, an influential man of wealth and position, were women of culture and remarkable natural intelligence, and interested in all progressive ideas. They had rare common-sense and independence of character, great simplicity of manner, and were wholly indifferent to the little arts of the toilet.
I was often told by fashionable women that one great objection to the woman's rights movement was the publicity of the conventions; the immodesty of speaking from a platform; and the trial of seeing one's name in the papers. Several ladies made such remarks to me one day as a bevy of us were sitting together in one of the fashionable hotels in Newport. We were holding a Convention there at that time, and some of them had been present at one of the sessions. "Really," said I, "ladies, you surprise me; our Conventions are not as public as the ball-room where I saw you all dancing last night. As to modesty, it may be a question in many minds whether it is less modest to speak words of soberness and truth, plainly dressed with one's person decently covered on a platform, than gorgeously arrayed with bare arms and shoulders, to waltz in the arms of strange gentlemen.
"And as to the press, I noticed you all reading with evident satisfaction the personal compliments and full descriptions of your dresses at the last ball, in this morning's papers. I presume that any one of you would have felt slighted if your name had not been mentioned in the general description. When my name is mentioned, it is in connection with some great moral movement, as making a speech, or reading a resolution. Thus we all suffer or enjoy the same publicity, we are all alike ridiculed, wise men pity and ridicule you, fops and fools pity and ridicule me, you as the victims of folly and fashion, me as the representative of many of the disagreeable 'isms' of the age, as they choose to distinguish liberal opinions. It is amusing in analyzing prejudices to see on what slender foundations they rest," and the ladies around me were so completely cornered that no one attempted an answer.
I remember being at a party at Gov. Seward's one evening, when Mr. Burlingame and his Chinese delegation were among the guests. As soon as the dancing commenced, and young ladies and gentlemen locked in each other's arms, began to whirl in the giddy waltz, these Chinese gentlemen were so shocked that they covered their faces with their fans, occasionally peeping out each side and expressing their surprise to each other. They thought us the most immodest women on the face of the earth. Modesty and good taste are questions of latitude and education; the more people know, the more their ideas are expanded, by travel, experience, and observation; the less easily they are shocked. The narrowness and bigotry of women, are the result of their circumscribed sphere of thought and action.
Soon after Judge Hurlbut had published his work on "Human Rights," and I had addressed the Legislature the first time, we met at a dinner party in Albany; Mr. and Mrs. Seward were there. The Senator was very merry on that occasion, and made Judge Hurlbut and myself the target for all his ridicule on the woman's rights question, in which most of the company joined, so that we stood quite alone. Sure that we had the right on our side, and the arguments clearly defined in our own minds, and both being cool and self-possessed, and with wit and sarcasm quite equal to any of them, we fought the Senator inch by inch until he had a very narrow platform to stand on. Mrs. Seward maintained an unbroken silence, while those ladies who did open their lips were with the opposition, supposing, no doubt, that Mr. Seward represented his wife's opinions.
When the ladies withdrew from the table, my embarrassment may be easily imagined. Separated from the Judge, I should now be an hour with a bevy of ladies who evidently felt a repulsion to all my most cherished opinions. It was the first time I had met Mrs. Seward, and I did not then know the broad liberal tendencies of her mind. What a tide of disagreeable thoughts rushed through me in that short passage from the dining-room to the parlor; how gladly I would have glided out the front door, but that was impossible, so I made up my mind to stroll round as if self-absorbed and look at the books and paintings until the Judge appeared, as I took it for granted that after all I said at the table on the political, religious, and social equality of woman, not a lady would have anything to say to me.
Imagine then my surprise when the moment the parlor door was closed upon us, Mrs. Seward, approaching me most affectionately said, "Let me thank you for all the brave words you uttered at the dinner-table, and for your speech before the Legislature, that thrilled my soul as I read it over and over." I was filled with joy and astonishment. Recovering myself, I said, "Is it possible, Mrs. Seward, that you agree with me? Then why, when I was so hard pressed with foes on every side, did you not come to the defence? I supposed that all you ladies were hostile to every one of my ideas on this question!" "No, no!" said she, "I am with you thoroughly, but I am a born coward; there is nothing I dread more than Mr. Seward's ridicule. I would rather walk up to the cannon's mouth than encounter it." "I too am with you," "And I," said two or three others who had been silent at the table. I never had a more serious, heartfelt conversation than with these ladies. Mrs. Seward's spontaneity and earnestness had moved them all deeply, and when the Senator appeared the first word he said was, "Before we part I must confess that I was fairly vanquished by you and the Judge, on my own principles (for we had quoted some of his most radical utterances). You have the argument, but custom and prejudice are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic."
We had quite a magnetic circle of reformers in Central New York, that kept the missives flying. At Rochester, were William H. Ohanning, Frederick Douglass, the Anthonys, the Posts, the Hallowells, the Stebbins, some grand Quaker families in Farmington, and Waterloo; Mrs. Bloomer and her sprightly weekly called The Lily, at Seneca Falls; Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Worden, Mrs. Seward, at Auburn; Gerrit Smith's family at Peterboro; Beriah Green's at Whitesboro, with the Sedgwicks and Mays, and Matilda Joslyn Gage at Syracuse. Although Mrs. Gage was surrounded with a family of small children for years, yet she was always a student, an omnivorous reader and liberal thinker, and her pen was ever at work answering the attacks on the woman movement in the county and State journals. In the village of Manlius, where she lived some time after her marriage, she was the sole representative of this unpopular reform. When walking the street she would often hear some boy, shielded by a dry-goods box or a fence, cry out "woman's rights."
On one occasion, at a large evening party at Mr. Van Schaick's, the host read aloud a poem called Rufus Chubb, a burlesque on "strong-minded" women, ridiculing careers and conventions, and the many claims being made for larger freedom. Mrs. Gage, then quite young, was surprised and embarrassed. Every eye was fixed on her, as evidently the type of womanhood the author was portraying. As soon as the reader's voice died away, Mrs. Gage, with marked coolness
