women not daring to come out openly after having so long heard ‘let you women keep silence’ sounded in their ears from the sacred desk. This meeting was conducted so quietly it hardly caused a ripple of excitement, and passed almost unnoticed by the press.” CHAPTER THIRD. SHE WRITES ABOUT IT. Women up to this time had never, or very seldom, indeed, come forward as public speakers in behalf of Temperance or any other reform movements. True, Abby Kelly Foster had made her appearance on the platform as an abolition lecturer, but her speeches were so radical and denunciatory in their character that they added little strength to the position or popularity of women speakers. The Quaker preachers were of both sexes; of these Lucretia Mott was the recognized leader among the gentler sex, and the purity of her character and the mildness of her addresses, compared with those of Mrs. Foster, made her popular with all classes. Mrs. Bloomer heard both of these women, and her husband well remembers that, on one occasion after she had been listening to Mrs. Foster’s radical criticisms on an article which appeared in the editorial columns of his paper, she came home greatly distressed and with tears in her eyes over the denunciations, to which she had listened. She learned in subsequent years to take such things more calmly. But though public sentiment did not then sanction the appearance of women speakers even to advocate so good a cause as Temperance, yet they could use their pens in its support. Mrs. Bloomer did this quite freely as we have seen, but the little society in Seneca Falls concluded that it must have a paper of its own, and on the 1st of January, 1849, such a paper was commenced in that place. BIRTH OF THE _LILY_. Mrs. Bloomer herself tells the story of its birth and her connection with it as follows: