It is three years since I wrote that.  Those lectures were my first step, and, like all first steps, cost me more of a struggle than anything I have done since.  As I look back over these three years, I see that every hope and aspiration I then cherished has been more than realized.  I can trace the steady progress of my intellect.  I can go back to the days when I started to earn my own living—­when I thought it a great thing to have gained a few dollars by my own labor.  Yes, I am very glad to have this record of the past:  it makes me strong and hopeful of the future.  I have never regretted my decision to make an independent life for myself.  I have sought only to do that for which Nature had gifted me, and from which nothing but custom and prejudice debarred me; and in claiming my own position I am conscious of having helped other women, and of having led the way for those who may be less courageous than I am.

All this might sound very conceited and self-confident to any one who should read it, but I do not write to be read by other eyes than my own:  my journal is the reflex of my thoughts and feelings; so I may be frank with myself.  And why should I not be proud of my independence, as well as any other human creature?

But I must prepare my speech for to-morrow.  They say they can’t do without me, and I really believe they mean it; for though some women besides myself have opinions, and can put them into words, they mostly lack the courage that I certainly possess.  What a delicious sense of freedom and unfettered action I have in my life!  I don’t think I have laid down the special powers of my sex in asserting my freedom; but you must wait, little book, for the confession that is on the tip of my pen.  Work first:  that is my motto.

Nov. 10.  Ten days since I opened my journal, and such busy days as they have been!  Three speeches, and half a pamphlet written!  I have done what people commonly term “a man’s work” this week.  How I despise all these time-honored phrases, which, dead letters as they are, act as links to strengthen the chain that binds women in a state of inferiority.  Why not say “a woman’s work”?  But that is a different sort of thing, I should be told:  a woman should stay at home and take care of her house and children.  Why so, say I, if she has no house, and does not wish for husband and children, feeling that they would impede her in her work?  All women are not born to be wives and mothers:  some have other work to do.  But I need not argue with my journal:  it is of my way of thinking; my ideas meet no opposition here.  “But this is not at all womanly,” my critic would say, had I one, which I have not:  “you have not said a word of the really important event of the week.”  Dare I say that I had half forgotten it?  A man has asked me to marry him!  The great event of a woman’s life has been within my reach, and I refused it.  Mr. Whitaker is a very nice fellow, but too adoring by half.