principle, and the hope of the men, who intended to carry it as a political measure. Henceforward women took no active part in temperance until the Ohio crusade revived them again all over the nation, and gathered the scattered forces into "The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union," of which Miss Frances E. Willard is president. As now, so in 1853, intelligent women saw that the most direct way to effect any reform was to have a voice in the laws and lawmakers. Hence they turned their attention to rolling up petitions for the civil and political rights of women, to hearings before legislatures and constitutional conventions, giving their most persistent efforts to the return technically called "Woman's Rights."
Susan B. Anthony had a similar battle to fight in the educational conventions. Having been a successful teacher in the State of New York fifteen years of her life, she had seen the need of many improvements in the mode of teaching and in the sanitary arrangements of school buildings; and more than all, the injustice to women in their half-pay as teachers. Her interest in educational conventions was first roused by listening to a tedious discussion at Elmira on the "Divine ordinance" of flogging children, in which Charles Anthony, principal of the Albany Academy, quoted Solomon's injunction, "Spare the rod, and spoil the child.",
In 1853, the annual convention being held in Rochester, her place of residence, Miss Anthony conscientiously attended all the sessions through three entire days. After having listened for hours to a discussion as to the reason why the profession of teacher was not as much respected as that of the lawyer, minister, or doctor, without once, as she thought, touching the kernel of the question, she arose to untie for them the Gordian knot, and said, "Mr. President." If all the witches that had been drowned, burned, and hung in the Old World and the New had suddenly appeared on the platform, threatening vengeance for their wrongs, the officers of that convention could not have been thrown into greater consternation.
There stood that Quaker girl, calm and self-possessed, while with hasty consultations, running to and fro, those frightened men could not decide what to do; how to receive this audacious invader of their sphere of action. At length President Davies, of West Point, in full dress, buff vest, blue coat, gilt buttons, stepped to the front, and said, in a tremulous, mocking tone, "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir, to speak to the question under discussion," Miss Anthony replied. The Professor, more perplexed than before, said: "What is the pleasure of the Convention?" A gentleman moved
