I thus saw and heard Dr. Harriet Kezia Hunt; Mr. and Mrs. George Hildreth; Mrs. George Bradburn; Grace Greenwood; Rev. Henry Bond; Rev. Mr. Mumford; Rev. Mr. Chapin; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Dr. W. Elder; Bayard Taylor; James Murdock, the actor; Frederick Douglass; Mr. John Giles, of the Lyceum lecture system; Rev. Starr King; prominent professors of the Western Reserve College; and a number of leading _literati_ of those times as well as men distinguished in politics, such as Speaker Colfax, leader of the Free Soil party, and Secretary Salmon Chase, who were holding political meetings. All these acquaintances were of incalculable use to me in this educational period. Although not able to converse with them, I could observe and learn much that was of greatest importance to my future. Discussions pro and con on all kinds of subjects agitated the people, and more than once did I hear the “Boston Trio”--William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker--denounced as disturbers of Law and Order. To Mrs. Vaughan’s untiring patience do I owe my acquiring the English language as well as I was then capable of doing. I had to write two essays that winter, one being for an association formed by the medical students, and one being my thesis. After having assisted me in correcting the grammar, Mrs. Vaughan made me read over each one four times, from ten to half-past eleven o’clock, for fifty evenings, until I got a good English pronunciation of which I was very proud. My German conservatism was not a little startled when I found that here also the so-called Woman’s Rights movement (the political enfranchisement of women) was heartily indorsed. Yet, in all the families whose acquaintance I made from this social center, and who were so different from those in the circles of Mrs. Severance and Mr. Mayo, I soon recognized the same prejudice existing against all women who attempted to step out of the domestic sphere. In spite of their cultivation in literature and music and the fine arts generally, after the completion of school life the women preferred a mere social activity in their own surroundings and a Lady Bountiful attitude among the poor belonging to their respective churches.