I knew most of the time it was a shadow from my brain, but was glad to hear Tom's chain rattle and feel sure it was not his very self.
They nursed me carefully, and I lay thinking of the "little ones sick and in prison." Old Martha came and plead with me.

I saw Liza and Maria under the lash for the crime of chastity, and myself the accomplice of their brutal masters.

I pictured one of them a member of the M.E.
Church, appealing to that church for redress and spurned under the "Black Gag," and I?
why I had been helping men who voted for it to build a meeting-house! What was Peter's denial compared to mine?
The case arranged itself in my mind.

I had writing materials brought, and there, with my head fast on the pillow, I wrote a hexameter rhyme half a column long, arraigning by name those Black Gag preachers, painting the scene, and holding them responsible.

I signed my initials, and sent it to Mr.Fleeson, with a note telling him to give my name if it was inquired for.
Our "Spirit" did not come that week; but soon my husband came to my room with a copy of "The Pittsburg Gazette," in which was an editorial and letter full of pious horror and denunciation of that article, and giving my name as the author; so that we knew Mr.Fleeson had published the name in full.