Channing, Freeman, Buckminster, and a few others in that early day, they would have been as sheep without a shepherd. The history is well known. I need not repeat it here. CHAPTER XIV MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SIXTIES This decade, 1860-1870, marks a new epoch in my intellectual life. In the period already described, I had found my way to recognized authorship. In this later time, an even greater enlargement of activity was before me, unanticipated until, by gradual steps, I came into it. The results of my more serious study now began to take form in writings of a corresponding scope. I remember to have heard John Weiss use more than once this phrase, "the poets and men of expression." The antithesis to this, in his view, evidently was, "the philosophers and men of deep thought." I confess that I myself am one of those to whom expression, in some form, is natural and even necessary; and yet I think that my best studies have been those which have made me most desirous to give to my own voice the echo of other voices, and to ascertain by experiment how much or how little of my individual persuasion is in accordance with the normal direction of human experience. In the days of which I now write, it was borne in upon me (as the Friends say) that I had much to say to my day and generation which could not and should not be communicated in rhyme, or even in rhythm. I once spoke to Parker of my wish to be heard, to commend my own thoughts with my own voice. He found this not only natural, but also in accordance with the spirit of the age, which, he said, "called for the living presence and the living utterance." I did not act at once, or even very soon, upon this prompting; the difficulties to be overcome were many. My husband was himself averse to public appearances. Women speakers were few in those days, and were frowned upon by general society. He would have been doubly sensitive to such undesirable publicity on my account. Meantime, the exigencies of the time were calling one woman after another to the platform. Lucy Stone devoted the first years of her eloquence to anti-slavery and the temperance reform. Anna Dickinson achieved a sudden and brilliant popularity. I did not dream of trying my strength with theirs, but I began to weave together certain essays which might be read to an invited audience in private parlors. I then commissioned certain of my friends to invite certain of their friends to my house for an appointed evening, and began, with some trepidation, my course of parlor lectures. We were residing, at this time, in the house in Chestnut Street which was afterwards made famous by the sittings of the Radical Club. The parlors were very roomy, and were well filled by those who came to hear me. Among them was my neighbor, Rev. Dr. Lothrop, who, in speaking of these occasions at a later day, once said, "I think that they were the best meetings that I ever knew. The conversation that followed the readings was started on a