hands of passing friends, she remarked to her husband, "I wonder if father has heard of my speech this morning, and if he will forgive me for thus publicly differing with him?" The query was soon answered. As he caught the first glimpse of his daughter he stepped down, and, pressing her hand affectionately, kissed her on either cheek.
The next evening the great Quaker statesman was heard by the admiring thousands who could crowd into Victoria Hall, while thousands, equally desirous to hear, failed to get tickets of admission. It was a magnificent sight, and altogether a most impressive gathering of the people. Miss Anthony, with her friends, sat in the gallery opposite the great platform, where they had a fine view of the whole audience. When John Bright, escorted by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, took his seat, the immense crowd rose, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and, with the wildest enthusiasm, gave cheer after cheer in honor of the great leader. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in his introductory remarks, facetiously alluded to the resolution adopted by the Conference as somewhat in advance of the ideas of the speaker of the evening. The house broke into roars of laughter, while the Father of Liberalism, perfectly convulsed, joined in the general merriment.
But when at length his time to speak had come, and Mr. Bright went over the many steps of progress that had been taken by the Liberal party, he cunningly dodged the question of the emancipation of the women of England. He skipped round the agitation of 1867, and John Stuart Mill's amendment presented at that time in the House of Commons; the extension of the municipal suffrage in 1869; the participation of women in the establishment of national schools under the law of 1870, both as voters and members of school boards; the Married Women's Property Bill of 1882; the large and increasing vote for the extension of Parliamentary suffrage in the House of Commons, and the adoption of the resolution by that great Conference the day before. All these successive steps toward woman's emancipation he carefully remembered to forget.
While in London Miss Anthony and I attended several enthusiastic reform meetings. We heard Bradlaugh address his constituency on that memorable day at Trafalgar Square, at the opening of Parliament, when violence was anticipated and the Parliament Houses were surrounded by immense crowds, with the military and police in large numbers, to maintain order. We heard Michael Davitt and Miss Helen Taylor at a great meeting in Exeter Hall; the former on home rule for Ireland, and the latter on the nationalization of land. The facts and figures given in these two lectures, as to the abject poverty of the people and the cruel system by which every inch of land had been grabbed by their oppressors, were indeed appalling. A few days before sailing we made our last visit to Ernestine L. Rose, and found our noble coadjutor, though in delicate health, pleasantly situated in the heart of London, as deeply interested as ever in the struggles of the hour.
A great discomfort, in all English homes, is the inadequate system of heating. A moderate fire in the grate is the only mode of heating, and they seem quite oblivious to the danger of throwing a door open into a cold hall at one's back, while the servants pass in and out with the various courses at dinner. As we Americans were sorely tried, under such circumstances, it was decided, in the home of my son-in-law, Mr. Blatch, to have a hall-stove, which, after a prolonged search, was found in London and duly installed as a presiding deity to defy the dampness that pervades all those ivy-covered habitations, as well as the neuralgia that wrings their possessors. What a blessing it proved, more than any one thing making the old English house seem like an American home! The delightful summer heat we, in America, enjoy in the coldest seasons, is quite unknown to our Saxon cousins. Although many came to see our stove in full working order, yet we could not persuade them to adopt the American system of heating the whole house at an even temperature. They cling to the customs of their fathers with an obstinacy that is incomprehensible to us, who are always ready to try experiments. Americans complain bitterly of the same freezing experiences in France and Germany, and, in turn, foreigners all criticise our overheated houses and places of amusement.
While attending a meeting in Birmingham I stayed with a relative of Joseph Sturge, whose home I had visited forty years before. The meeting was called to discuss the degradation of women under the Contagious Diseases Act. Led by Josephine Butler, the women of England were deeply stirred on the question of its repeal and have since secured it. I heard Mrs. Butler speak in many of her society meetings as well as on other occasions. Her style was not unlike that one hears in Methodist camp meetings from the best cultivated of that sect; her power lies in her deeply religious enthusiasm. In London we met Emily Faithful, who had just returned from a lecturing tour in the United States, and were much amused with her experiences. Having taken prolonged trips over the whole country, from Maine to Texas, for many successive years, Miss Anthony and I could easily add the superlative to all her narrations.
It was a pleasant surprise to meet the large number of Americans usually at the receptions of Mrs. Peter Taylor. Graceful and beautiful, in full dress, standing beside her husband, who evidently idolized her, Mrs. Taylor appeared quite as refined in her drawing room as if she had never been exposed to the public gaze while presiding over a suffrage convention. Mrs. Taylor is called the mother of the suffrage movement. The reform has not been carried on in all respects to her taste, nor on what she considers the basis of high principle. Neither she nor Mrs. Jacob Bright has ever been satisfied with the bill asking the rights of suffrage for "widows and spinsters" only. To have asked this right "for all women duly qualified," as but few married women are qualified through possessing property in their own right, would have been substantially the same, without making any invidious distinctions. Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Bright felt that, as married women were the greatest sufferers under the law, they should be the first rather than the last to be enfranchised. The others, led by Miss Becker, claimed that it was good policy to make the demand for "spinsters and widows," and thus exclude the "family unit" and "man's headship" from the discussion; and yet these were the very points on which the objections were invariably based. They claimed that, if "spinsters and widows" were enfranchised, they would be an added power to secure to married women their rights. But the history of the past gives us no such assurance. It is not certain that women would be more just than men, and a small privileged class of aristocrats have long governed their fellow-countrymen. The fact that the spinsters in the movement advocated such a bill, shows that they were not to be trusted in extending it. John Stuart Mill, too, was always opposed to the exclusion of married women in the demand for suffrage.
My sense of justice was severely tried by all I heard of the persecutions of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh for their publications on the right and duty of parents to limit population. Who can contemplate the sad condition of multitudes of young children in the Old World whose fate is to be brought up in ignorance and vice—a swarming, seething mass which nobody owns—without seeing the need of free discussion of the philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social problems? The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy, seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of well-educated men of good moral standing thrown into prison in solitary confinement, for speaking lightly of the Hebrew idea of Jehovah and the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus! Our Protestant clergy never hesitate to make the dogmas and superstitions of the Catholic Church seem as absurd as possible, and why should not those who imagine they have outgrown Protestant superstitions make them equally ridiculous? Whatever is true can stand investigation and ridicule.
In the last of April, when the wildflowers were in their glory, Mrs. Mellen and her lovely daughter, Daisy, came down to our home at Basingstoke to enjoy its beauty. As Mrs. Mellen had known Charles Kingsley and entertained him at her residence in Colorado, she felt a desire to see his former home. Accordingly, one bright morning, Mr. Blatch drove us to Eversley, through Strathfieldsaye, the park of the Duke of Wellington. This magnificent place was given to him by the English government after the battle of Waterloo. A lofty statue of the duke, that can be seen for miles around, stands at one entrance. A drive of a few miles further brought us to the parish church of Canon Kingsley, where he preached many years, and where all that is mortal of him now lies buried. We wandered through the old church, among the moss-covered tombstones, and into the once happy home, now silent and deserted—his loved ones being scattered in different quarters of the globe. Standing near the last resting place of the author of "Hypatia," his warning words for women, in a letter to John Stuart Mill, seemed like a voice
