the feel of the baby in them yet; and I can not express to you the horror—the almost rage—with which I hear every story of such outrages on the maternal heart. It was this feature of mother-robbery in the system of slavery that always enraged me most against it. It was just at that point that the system dipped deepest into hell. Though slavery is gone, however, there are many evils yet remaining in the laws which should be remedied, and not the least of them is that which gives the father the entire control of the children instead of the mother. Some fathers, however, are quite willing to relinquish that control. I remember a colored woman in Washington, in whose kitchen I once happened to be for a moment, and, seeing several dark olive branches around, I said to her, "Are these your children?" She said, "Yes." "How many have you?" She said, "Seven, and all to support." I said to her, "Have you no husband?" "Oh, yes," she said, "I have a husband; I was married by a Methodist minister down South." "Well," said I, "why don't he support the children?" "Oh," she said, "he's done gone away." "Why has he left you?" "Oh, he was a very bright man," she said (meaning that he was light in color), "and he thought that I was too black." "But," I said, "didn't he know how black you were before he married you?" "That is just what old Missus said—she said, 'Why, you know'd she was black when you married her,' and he said, 'Yes, but den she didn't have so many relations about her.'" "What relations?" "Children!" Her children, of course, and his, too. "He doesn't want so many of my relations about, so he's done gone off." When a man doesn't want to go, the children are his "property"; when he wants to desert his wife, they are her "relations." I would be willing to have the strictest morality enjoined as a qualification for the ballot. But, as it is a poor rule that would not work both ways, if that test were applied to the male voters, what a frightful disfranchisement would take place. The Democratic party would be well-nigh annihilated, and the Republican party would be in a fit state to condole with it. I think, however, that all these things will adjust themselves when they come. All bugbears seem much more terrible at a distance than when they are close enough to be grappled with.
Mr. Oliver Johnson was then introduced. He said that the true germ of the present woman suffrage agitation was to be found in the foundation of the Anti-slavery Society. At the time that Society was founded, the question arose as to whether women were persons, in the sense in which that word was used in the constitution of that Society. The question gave rise to much discussion, and it was finally decided by a majority of the members that the word "person" did include women; and it was therefore determined that, in the Society, women should have all the rights that men had. And when thirty years ago the anniversary of the Society was held, it became the duty of the presiding officer on that occasion to appoint a business committee, and, in announcing the names of that committee, he included that of Abby Kelly—more lately known as that of Abby Kelly Foster—a Quaker woman of excellent character, and a devoted friend of the anti-slavery cause. The announcement of her name was the signal for much tumult, and the withdrawal for the time being of not less than one hundred and fifty clergymen, who, led by an eminent citizen, left that meeting and went down into the basement of the church and formed a new anti-