The occasion and result of the commencement of her public career was thus given by her own pen in a letter dated August, 1854: 

“Well, I am out lecturing.  I have lectured every night this week; besides addressed a Sunday-school, and I shall speak, if nothing prevent, to-night.  My lectures have met with success.  Last night I lectured in a white church in Providence.  Mr. Gardener was present, and made the estimate of about six hundred persons.  Never, perhaps, was a speaker, old or young, favored with a more attentive audience....  My voice is not wanting in strength, as I am aware of, to reach pretty well over the house.  The church was the Roger Williams; the pastor, a Mr. Furnell, who appeared to be a kind and Christian man....  My maiden lecture was Monday night in New Bedford on the Elevation and Education of our People.  Perhaps as intellectual a place as any I was ever at of its size.”

Having thus won her way to a favorable position as a lecturer, the following month she was engaged by the State Anti-Slavery Society of Maine, with what success appears from one of her letters bearing date—­Buckstown Centre, Sept. 28, 1854: 

“The agent of the State Anti-Slavery Society of Maine travels with me, and she is a pleasant, dear, sweet lady.  I do like her so.  We travel together, eat together, and sleep together. (She is a white woman.) In fact I have not been in one colored person’s house since I left Massachusetts; but I have a pleasant time.  My life reminds me of a beautiful dream.  What a difference between this and York!...  I have met with some of the kindest treatment up here that I have ever received....  I have lectured three times this week.  After I went from Limerick, I went to Springvale; there I spoke on Sunday night at an Anti-Slavery meeting.  Some of the people are Anti-Slavery, Anti-rum and Anti-Catholic; and if you could see our Maine ladies,—­some of them among the noblest types of womanhood you have ever seen!  They are for putting men of Anti-Slavery principles in office, ... to cleanse the corrupt fountains of our government by sending men to Congress who will plead for our down-trodden and oppressed brethren, our crushed and helpless sisters, whose tears and blood bedew our soil, whose chains are clanking ’neath our proudest banners, whose cries and groans amid our loudest paeans rise.”

Everywhere in this latitude doors opened before her, and her gifts were universally recognized as a valuable acquisition to the cause.  In the letter above referred to she said:  “I spoke in Boston on Monday night....  Well, I am but one, but can do something, and, God helping me, I will try.  Mr. Brister from Lowell addressed the meeting; also Rev. ——­ Howe.  We had a good demonstration.”

Having read the narrative of Solomon Northrup (12 years a slave), she was led to embrace the Free Labor doctrine most thoroughly; and in a letter dated at Temple, Maine, Oct. 20, 1854, after expressing the interest she took in the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society of that state, she remarked: