My husband wanted me to lecture as did Abbey Kelley, but I thought this would surely be wrong.

The church had silenced me so effectuately, that even now all my sense of the great need of words could not induce me to attempt it; but if I could "plead the cause" through the press, I must write.

Even this was dreadful, as I must use my own name, for my articles would certainly be libelous.

If I wrote at all, I must throw myself headlong into the great political maelstrom, and would of course be swallowed up like a fishing-boat in the great Norway horror which decorated our school geographies; for no woman had ever done such a thing, and I could never again hold up my head under the burden of shame and disgrace which would be heaped upon me.

But what matter?
I had no children to dishonor; all save one who had ever loved me were dead, and she no longer needed me, and if the Lord wanted some one to throw into that gulf, no one could be better spared than I.
_The Pittsburg Commercial Journal_ was the leading Whig paper of western Pennsylvania, Robert M.Riddle, its editor and proprietor.