The 7th of March, the day of the election, a terrific snowstorm prevailed, but did not prevent the women from assembling in the hotel near the place of voting, where each one was presented, on the part of their gentlemen friends, with a beautiful bouquet of flowers.  At the proper time, a number of these gentlemen came over to the hotel and escorted the ladies to the polls, where a convenient place for them to vote had been arranged.  There was a great crowd inside the hall, eager to see the joke of women voting, and many were ready to jeer and hiss.  But when, through the door, the women filed, led by Sarah Grimke and Angelina Weld, the laugh was checked, the intended jeer unuttered, and deafening applause was given instead.  The crowd fell back respectfully, nearly every man removing his hat and remaining uncovered while the women passed freely down the hall, deposited their votes, and departed.

Of course these votes were not counted.  There was no expectation that they would be (though the ticket was elected), but the women had given a practical proof of their earnestness, and though one man said, in consequence of this movement, he would sell his house two thousand dollars cheaper than he would have done before, and another declared he would give his away if the thing was done again, and still another wished he might die if the women were going to vote, the women themselves were satisfied with their first step, and more than ever determined to march courageously on until the citadel of man’s prejudices was conquered.

The following summer, Sarah Grimke, believing that much good might be accomplished by the circulation of John Stuart Mill’s “Subjection of Women,” made herself an agent for the sale of the book, and traversed hill and dale, walking miles daily to accomplish her purpose.  She thus succeeded in placing more than one hundred and fifty copies in the hands of the women of Hyde Park and the vicinity, in spite of the ignorance, narrowness, heartlessness, and slavery which, she says, she had ample opportunity to deplore.  The profits of her sales were given to the Woman’s Journal.

Under date of May 25, 1871, she writes:—­

“I have been travelling all through our town and vicinity on foot, to get signers to a petition to Congress for woman suffrage.  It is not a pleasant work, often subjecting me to rudeness and coldness; but we are so frequently taunted with:  ‘Women don’t want the ballot,’ that we are trying to get one hundred thousand names of women who do want it, to reply to this taunt.”

But the work which enlisted this indefatigable woman’s warmest sympathies, and which was the last active charity in which she engaged, was that of begging cast-off clothing for the destitute freedmen of Charleston and Florida.  Accounts reaching her of their wretched condition through successive failures of crops, she set to work with her old-time energy to do what she could for their relief.  She literally went from