In introducing me to my audience, the Colonel--remembering, perhaps, that I did not "mix things," or feeling that he might trust my consciousness of being cornered on the slavery question--remarked in a vein of courteously concealed irony: "It looks very strange to us for a lady to speak in public, but we must remember that in the section of country from which this lady comes, the necessity of self-support bears equally upon women, and crowds them out of domestic life into vocations more congenial to the sterner sex. Happily our domestic institutions, by relieving women of the necessity to labor, protect them in the sacred privacy of home." In his ignorance of the subject, my friend had unwittingly resined the bow. In bringing his "domestic institution" to the front, he had so "mixed things," that in my showing of the legal disabilities of women, of the _no_-right of the white wife and mother to herself, her children, and her earnings, my audience could not fail to appreciate the anomalous character of a "protection" so pathetically suggestive of the legal level of the slave woman, to which man, in his greed of wealth and power, had "crowded" both. Some months later, at the breakfast-table of a Missouri River steamer, a gentleman of St. Joseph recognized me, and reported my lectures to ex-Governor Rollins, who was also on board, and asked an introduction. After a long and pleasant discussion with the Governor, who entered at once upon the subject, in its legal, political, and educational aspects, it was agreed that I should lecture at my earliest convenience in several of the principal towns of the State, the capital included; the Governor himself proposing to communicate with influential citizens to make the necessary arrangements.