REASONS, FACTS AND FIGURES W HEN I resumed my seat there were cries of "Don't stop!" "Do go on!" When quiet was restored I was introduced to all the members of my audience, and was invited to stay for tea. It is to me gratifying to report that within two months after I made this address, my friend had married, and the other ladies had long since returned to their homes, declaring they would thereafter be loyal subjects to their respective sovereigns. I talked with them at times during several days. They told me they had been clandestinely listening to speeches and reading books upon theories of society, until they were so fired thereby, and had became so imbued with such teachings, that they were willing to endure all the risks and privations incident to their circulation; and I caught them only in time to prevent their joining a secret alliance bent upon destroying aristocracies. Since the assassination of President McKir ley by an anarchist, these ladies have all, without a single exception, again urged me so persistently to publish the speech I made to them, that I do so now in hopes of saving other women who are endorsing tenets which are so perilous to their sex. By far the greater part of the speech was extemporaneous, and had it not been for the "chief instigator," the very ringleader (the most prominent of that little gathering of women) no verbatim report of it would have been preserved for she, being very suspicious of my motives in volunteering to address them, had a stenographic report made thereof, and it is this report which I publish (just as it was taken down, with the comments and criticisms thereon.) When I made this speech, as I have before explained, I was in a strange land, thousands of miles from home, and had to rely entirely upon memory for quotations, several of which I have not placed in quotation marks, nor ascribed to their authors (having forgotten in some cases who the authors were) and in several cases making free quotations, which of necessity are not |