Rev. John!  We have allowed you to be heard at full length; now you and your set will be silent and hear us.  Very palpably your palaver about Mr. Higginson’s motion is a dodge, a quirk, a most contemptible quibble, reluctant as we are to speak thus irreverently of the solemn utterances of a Doctor of Divinity.  Right well do you know, reverend sir, that the particular form or time or fashion in which the question came up is utterly immaterial, and you interpose it only to throw dust in the eyes of the public.  Suppose a woman had been nominated at the right time and in the right way, according to your understanding of punctilios, wouldn’t the same resistance have been made and the same row got up?  You know right well that there would.  Then what is all your pettifogging about technicalities worth?  The only question that anybody cares a button about is this, “Shall woman be allowed to participate in your World’s Temperance Convention on a footing of perfect equality with man?” If yea, the whole dispute turns on nothing, and isn’t worth six lines in the Tribune.  But if it was and is the purpose of those for whom you pettifog to keep woman off the platform of that convention and deny her any part in its proceedings except as a spectator, what does all your talk about Higginson’s untimeliness and the committee’s amount to?  Why not treat the subject with some show of honesty?

The women and their friends held a grand rally in the Broadway Tabernacle the second day afterwards.  Every foot of sitting and standing room was crowded, although there was an admission fee of a shilling.  Miss Anthony presided and there was the strongest enthusiasm, but perfect order was maintained.  The following comment was made by the New York Commercial-Advertiser: 

        THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES.—­On Saturday evening the Broadway
    Tabernacle reverberated with the shrill, defiant notes of Miss Lucy
    Stone and her “sisters,” who have thrown down the gauntlet to the
    male friends of temperance and declared not literally “war to the
    knife” but conflict with tongues....  Henceforth the women’s rights
    ladies—­including among them the misses, Lucy herself, Emily Clark,
    Susan B. Anthony, Antoinette Brown, some Harriets and Angelinas,
    Melissas and Hannahs, with a Fanny too (and more’s the pity for it
    is a sweet name) and sundry matrons whose names are household
    words in newspapers—­are to be in open hostility to the regularly
    constituted temperance agencies, under cover of association with
    whom they have contrived to augment their notoriety.  The delegates
    at the Brick Church, who took the responsibility of knocking off
    these parasites, deserve the thanks of the temperance friends the
    Union through....  Such associations would mar any cause.  Left to
    themselves such women must fall into contempt; they have used the
    temperance cause for a support long enough, and we are glad that
    the seeming alliance has been thus formally disowned by the
    temperance delegates.