man."*

its former negro slave, and that in the eye of the law, the married white woman is almost as devoid of personality as the African ex-bondIn after years I made inquiry and found I was living in a State where a wife's earnings legally belonged to her husband; where her personal property (such as money, bonds, consols, stocks, jewels) belonged to her husband; where all the rents and profits accruing from her property or real estate, belonged, too, to her husband; where the wife could make no will which the husband could not prevent the probate of; where the law forcibly prevented

*At the solicitation of the speaker's great-grandmother, her great-uncle, Judge Robert Trimble (afterwards Justice of the United States Supreme Court) drafted the first bill ever drawn upon the American continent to give to married women the right to control their property and their children. That was about the year 1802. It was impossible to get any member of the legislature to introduce the bill, or even to give it a reading. A second and similar bill was drafted by her grandfather (afterwards Judge John Trimble, of the Kentucky Court of Appeals) about 1804. He also failed to induce any member of the legislature to introduce his bill, as the prejudice against giving such justice to women was overwhelming.

When

the mother from acting as guardian even of her own children, if she were married; where the married mother did not own her own children. Thus you see that I knew when very young, that all that men generally said about America being a free country and everybody in it equal was a lie made out of whole cloth. Years afterwards, when I wished to finish my studies, I was compelled to attend an inferior University, as the nation's greatest educational institutions were closed to me on account of my sex. I went through one of those magnificently-endowed seats of learning, when I found that Negroes, Indians, Chinamen-men of all nations, races and climes—were admitted to its splendid halls as students, and that entrance thereto was forbidden to every member of my sex, I became for the first time fully conscious what it meant to be a woman; and that night, for the first time, I failed to say my prayers. I-I-could-not; "Amen stuck in my throat."

As these universities are only quasi-public institutions, I shall not farther expatiate thereon, as I wish to deal chiefly with woman's position

with regard to laws and the government. And when I refer to other things it is only in order to show you that your belief that American men are more generous to women or are better than the men of other countries is a case of mistaken confidence, entirely unwarranted by facts. And I could easily prove to you that, in strictly social matters, they have less charity for women than have the men of other countries -but that would be going entirely out of my province.

When I was a very young girl, a cousin of mine who had charge of me took me to Washington, the National Capital. She went there to ask Congress (the National Legislature) to add an amendment to the Constitution which would place the white women of the Nation upon a public equality with its negro men. The first Member of Congress we met was a negro who had been formerly a slave of our own grandfather (I have never forgotten my cousin's humiliation), and, can you credit it—that "flatnosed, nappy headed African” was opposed to the Government granting white women recogni

tion equal to what it had given him! Years afterwards I went to the Legislature of a State where I heard native-born, tax-paying, educated ladies address a Committee thereof in order to gain some justice for their sex. Not a man of that Committee was a native-born American; but they were those who according to Schopenhauer, "had left Europe for Europe's good." During the time this Committee was being addressed the members thereof pared their nails, looked out the windows, thumped upon their chair-arms, and treated these ladies with the most insufferable insolence.

At another State Legislature I saw an ex-son of Ireland throw a petition, addressed to the Legislature of which he was a member, into a wastepaper basket. The petition in question had been signed by thousands of ladies, a number of whom presented it. But the member of Legislature had no more consideration for them than if they had been a flock of sheep bleating for his recognition. As he was in authority the petition was not allowed to reach the Legislature for consideration. He said that the Legis

lature was too busy with important matters to waste its time with the affairs of women. The Legislature, it may be remarked en passant, enacted almost 1,000 laws, not twenty per cent. of which were enforced, or were enforcible! If you ladies could hear that fellow talk about "Ireland's wrongs" (as he does so constantly), you would actually believe him to be in sympathy with liberty, equality, and all such things, and that he meant something more thereby than giving Irishmen a chance to tyrannize over other people.

At another time I addressed a letter to a member of Congress asking him to see me in order to discuss the matter of his arranging to introduce into that National Legislature a bill on behalf of my sex. I stated in I stated in my letter that, foreigner as he was by birth, he would assuredly concede that I, a native American, had as good a right to recognition by this government as himself; especially so as my ancestors had fought for and helped found the Republic. Besides, I said, I had paid taxes which were so heavy that they were virtually a con