People of all denominations went miles to hear her. Soon she began traveling around the country, speaking in Quaker meeting-houses, telling her listeners of the peace-loving principles of the Friends, pointing out the evils of injustice in any form, and always, in season and out of season, emphasizing the sin of slavery. Long before Lundy and Garrison began their newspapers, long before Garrison and Wendell Phillips were thundering against slavery and urging immediate emancipation, this small sweet-faced Friend, mild and gentle in nature, was blazing the way for the anti-slavery movement, a pioneer among the advocates for freedom. Through New York State, into New England and across to Nantucket, as far south as Virginia, west to Ohio and Indiana, she traveled by stage-coach or boat or carriage. Speaking at seventy-one meetings in a ten weeks’ trip seems to have been no unusual record for her. She always wore a simple, dove-colored dress, with a crossed muslin kerchief at the neck, and a prim little cap. But the secret of her magnetic personality was that she spoke because she was conscious of a power impelling her to do so. Words came to her, as tears come, without will of her own, because her heart was full and she couldn’t help it. Though the leading abolitionists were often described as raving fanatics, Lucretia Mott was noted for her unfailing composure, her calm tone of profound faith, her lack of vehement accents and violent gestures. “Notice was given here for a religious meeting,” said the distressed elders in one western town that bordered on a slave state. “We do hope, Mrs. Mott, you will not name slavery, or allude to it this afternoon.” “Why,” was her answer, “that is eminently a religious subject. I should consider myself disobedient to the voice of God in my soul if I did not speak against it.” Her audience there was so large that many had to stand. Ordinarily they would have become restless. For an hour and a half she held them, closely attentive, and though she said some things far from palatable to that prejudiced, excited, border section, her sincerity commanded their respect and they crowded the hall again that evening to hear her speak.