Then, of course, I had to make them quiet again. I
lifted the little mallet, but I did not strike it, and they all became
still. I was surprised at the good breeding of such a crowd. In the
evening about half was made up of men. I could not have believed that
such a crowd would keep still when I asked them to.
"They say I did well. Think of my developing as a president of a social
science society in my old age!"
Miss Mitchell took no prominent part in the woman suffrage movement, but
she believed in it firmly, and its leaders were some of her most highly
valued friends.
"Sept. 7, 1875. Went to a picnic for woman suffrage at a beautiful grove
at Medfield, Mass. It was a gathering of about seventy-five persons
(mostly from Needham), whose president seemed to be vigorous and
good-spirited.
"The main purpose of the meeting was to try to affect public sentiment
to such an extent as to lead to the defeat of a man who, when the
subject of woman suffrage was before the Legislature, said that the
women had all they wanted now--that they could get anything with 'their
eyes as bright as the buttons on an angel's coat.' Lucy Stone, Mr.
Blackwell, Rev. Mr. Bush, Miss Eastman, and William Lloyd Garrison
spoke.
"Garrison did not look a day older than when I first saw him, forty
years ago; he spoke well--they said with less fire than he used in his
younger days. Garrison said what every one says--that the struggle for
women was the old anti-slavery struggle over again; that as he looked
around at the audience beneath the trees, it seemed to be the same scene
that he had known before.
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