I found the West Coast a lively place. Ideas were being constantly thrashed out. Every discourse had a challenging reception. Emma Goldman had been there year after year and had stirred people to dare express themselves. All sorts of individuals catechized you, and if you were not well grounded in your subject you were quickly made aware of your ignorance. The Wobblies spent hours in libraries, not only keeping warm, but trying to find points on which to attack the next lecturer who should come to town. Often those most eager were considered cranks—on diet, free trade, single tax, and free silver—so familiar that their rising was hailed with groans. I never minded having questions asked, though everything I knew was questioned. It was as well for me that, in addition to my Malthus, I knew my Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, my Henry George, Marx, and Kropotkin. It seems to me that today the tone of audiences has deteriorated; queries rarely have the same intellectual grasp behind them. My welcome at Portland was delightful. The sixty-year-old poet, C. E. S. Wood, dapper and gracious, made a practice of greeting personally women speakers, dedicating poems to them on their arrival, and sending bowers of flowers to their hotel rooms. The City of Roses did much to entertain its visitors. Here I was invited by a church to address its congregation following the evening service. I had not been very well in the afternoon, but I promised over the telephone to be there if I could. I was late and the meeting had already begun. As I slipped in at the rear I heard the chairman refer to me as a Joan of Arc. Entirely too many Joans of Arc were floating about in those days. Not wishing to be a disappointment I turned right around and walked back to the hotel. Since no one had ever seen me, both my entrance and exit went unremarked. I admired robust, vital women; they appeared so efficient, and I regretted the fact that I did not give the same impression. I felt that way, but could not help resembling, as someone phrased it, “a hungry flower drooping in the rain.” If I were in a room with ten people and somebody came in who expected me to be present, she invariably approached the biggest woman and addressed her, “How do you do, Mrs. Sanger?” For a brief while I tried to make myself seem more competent-looking by wearing severe suits, but this phase did not last; for one thing, effective simplicity cost money and I did not have enough to be really well-tailored. However, the anonymity due to my appearance was, on the whole, fortunate. I was always able to go along any street, into any restaurant or shop, and seldom be identified, and this made it possible for me to maintain a relatively private life.