The hope of yet aiding the cause is the polar star which guides all my efforts.  If it were possible I would do this directly, but the fashion of the times has made me a dependant and home aid would scarcely be extended to me in this.  I am trying to make myself independent.  Fortune now promises favorable things.  If I succeed, count on me.  All that I can do, I will, to rescue my sex from the fetters which have chafed me so bitterly, from the evils of the giant system which makes woman everywhere a satellite.  I have drank of the cup which is offered as the wine of woman’s life, and have found the draught frothy and unsatisfactory.  Now am I willing, if successful, to give all to purchase her a purer aliment.  I have faith enough in the cause to move mountains, but if I speak at present I forfeit all claims on my home forever.

Lucy Stone when appealed to with the intimation that she was losing interest in the work, replied:  “Now that I occupy a legal position in which I can not even draw in my own name the money I have earned or give a valid receipt for it when it is drawn or make any contract, but am rated with fools, minors and madmen, and can not sign a legal document without being examined separately to see if it is by my own free will, and even the right to my own name questioned, do you think that, in the grip of such pincers, I am likely to grow remiss?...  I am not at all sanguine of the success of the convention.  However much I hope, or try to hope, the old doubt comes back.  My only trust is in your great, indomitable perseverance and your power of work.”

That the answers were not always favorable and that the women constantly found themselves between two fires, the following letters will show.  Horace Greeley, who heretofore had been so friendly, wrote: 

The only reason why I can not publish your notices in our news columns is that my political antagonists take advantage of such publications to make the Tribune responsible for the anti-Bible, anti-Union, etc., doctrines, which your conventions generally put forth.  I do not desire to interfere with your “free speech.”  I desire only to secure for myself the liberty of treating public questions in accordance with my own convictions, and not being made responsible for the adverse convictions of others.  I can not, therefore, print this programme without being held responsible for it.  If you advertise it, that is not in my department, nor under my control.[23]

From Gerrit Smith came these emphatic opinions: 

You invite me to attend the woman’s convention in New York.  It will not be in my power to do so.  You suggest that I write a letter in case I can not attend, but so peculiar and offensive are my views of the remedy for woman’s wrongs, that a letter inculcating them would not be well received.  Hence, I must not write it.  I believe that poverty is the great curse of woman,