Mrs. Bateman requested me to proceed. I rose, and asked leave to change my written speech for one not from my pen, but from my heart.
The protest of the Dayton "Mrs. Grundys" had been well larded with Scripture, so I added: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and never before, possibly never since, have I had greater liberty in relieving my mind, as the Quakers would say. I had been at New York and had boarded with Antoinette L. Brown, so I knew whereof I was bearing testimony, when I assured my hearers that Samuel Carey had certainly been lying — under a mistake. I gave my testimony, not cringingly, but as one who knew, and drew a comparison between Antoinette L. Brown, modestly but firmly standing her ground as a delegate from her society, with politicians and clergymen crying, "Shame on the woman," and stamping and clamoring till the dust on the carpet of the platform enveloped them in a cloud. Meanwhile, her best friends, William H. Channing, William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Wendell Phillips. and others stood by her, bidding her stand firm. The conduct of these ladies in marching through the streets of Dayton, in the most crowded thoroughfares, in the mid+t of a State fair, to tell some other women that they were making themselves "conspicuous." What I said, or how it was said, mattereth not.
That evening, the Sons of Temperance Hall, which our committee had promised to "keep clear of men," was well filled with women. But all around the walls, and between the benches, on the platform — and in the aisles, there were men from every part of the State. These ladies had given us a grand advertisement.
The following is the report of said meeting clipped from the Evening Post twenty-seven years ago, by Mrs. Gage:THE OHIO WOMEN'S CONVENTION.
To-day the Ohio State Women's Temperance Society held a meeting at this place. The attendance was not large, but was respectable, both in number and talents. Mrs. Bateman, of Columbus, presided, and a good officer she made. Parliamentary rules prevailed in governing the assembly, and were enforced with much promptness and dignity. She understood enough of these to put both sides of the question — an attainment which, I have noticed, many Mr. Presidents have often not reached.
The enactment of the Maine law in Ohio is the principal object at which they appeared to aim. Its constitutionality and effect were both discussed, decisions of courts criticised, and all with much acuteness and particularly happy illustrations. In reference to the practicability of enforcing it, when once passed, one woman declared, that "if the men could not do it, the women would give them effectual aid."
In the course of the meeting, two original poems were read, one by Mrs. Gage, formerly of this State, and now of St. Louis, and one by Mrs. Hodge, of Oberlin. There were also delivered three formal addresses, one by Mrs. Dryer, of Delaware County. Ohio. one by Mrs. Griffing, of Salem, Ohio, and the other by Mrs. Gage, either of which would not have dishonored any of our public orators