Orator. All were invited to attend—
especially the fashionable ladies."

The "fashionable ladies"—which was,
indeed, a shrewd way of putting it, for
what lady in Highport did not imagine
herself included?—were, perhaps, not
loath to have a little change; for flirting,
sea-bathing, and the pleasure of making
one's toilet four times a day, do get a
little monotonous after a while. Curiosity
was a-tiptoe at the prospect of seeing some
"real strong-minded women."

It is within a day or two of the assembling
of the "Convention," and the signs
of the approaching invasion begin to
multiply. The landlord of the Beach House
has orders to retain some thirty rooms for
the accommodation of the "leaders" of the
movement. The fashionable ladies have
been deluged with sundry neat little tracts
full of capital letters and italics, urging
them to rouse themselves from the torpor
of their servitude, to come to the convention,
and to declare their independence
of the tyrant man for now and always.
Certain hirsute, shabby, slouch-hatted
individuals suddenly appear in the streets,
keen-eyed, observant of everything about
them, and with long note-books, in which
they make a jotting now and then;
gentlemen of the press these, from New York
and Boston, promptly arrived to detail the
events of the convention from beginning to
end. The gay visitors are fain to keep a
close watch on the steamboats as they
arrive, morning and evening, curious to
catch sight of one of those wonderful
beings, a woman's rights woman. At last
the public anxiety is satisfied; for, the
evening before the appointed day, as the
crowd of richly-dressed visitors is chirping
and buzzing on the pretty pier, out steps,
from the just-harboured steamboat, a
ponderous lady of confident countenance,
with a halo of silver-grey curls popping up
and down around her ruddy, determined
face, as if they were so many wire springs,
and marches up to a cab with all the
dignity of matronly middle age and her
mission resting on her. A thin, solemn-
looking man in black broadcloth and
gloves; and a very sprucely-dressed
coloured gentleman whose face wears a
continual expression of protest that he should
be regarded as a curiosity, attend her on
either side. It is the famous president of the
Woman's Rights Society, Reverend Selina
Sharpe, pastor of the Independent Church
at Cranberry Centre; the solemn-looking
man is known, not as Mr. Sharpe, but as
Reverend Mrs. Sharpe's husband—her
lesser half; the coloured gentleman, it is
whispered, is Mark Antony Higgs, who
refused the embassy to San Domingo, and
is a redoubtable champion of woman's
rights. At the hotel, the reverend lady
and her companions are gazed at with
curiosity and much whispering, as she
enters the dining-room, or is seen ascending
and descending the broad staircase.
Her arrival heralds that of the various
multitude of her disciples. Ladies in
spectacles; long-haired radicals with very wide
collars and very slouchy coats and trousers;
bright little richly-dressed women
with snapping eyes and short ringlets;
Arab-like philosophers with big foreheads
and long flowing oriental beards; smart
young miracles of editors with a very
independent look and gait, who are going
to say very startling things in a cool
way when they get upon the stage
tomorrow—these begin to promenade the
streets and beach, oddly mingling with
the fashionable folk, and intent upon the
business for which they have arrived at
Highport. There are, indeed, many human
oddities and eccentricities among them,
male and female; there are curious faces
and curious dresses; but do not imagine
that all the woman's rights people are to be
laughed or sneered at. Among them you
will not fail to notice many vivacious,
fashionably-attired, consciously-pretty
young ladies, who, with all their "strong-
mindedness," are not indifferent to the
admiring glances of the sea-side beaux, nor
painfully oblivious of their toilet and the
disposition of their tresses. Among them,
too, are many fine-looking men, with no
marked oddness of dress or demeanour;
men well known in the nation for their
talents and earnestness, who redeem the
cause from that suspicion of fanaticism and
craziness which its more eccentric
advocates cast upon it.

At eleven o'clock on the morning on
which the convention is announced to
meet, the little town is all astir with the
zealous actors in the scene about to ensue,
and the gaily-dressed audience to-be
is a-tiptoe with expectation. The neat,
graceful little hall, which has served these
many weeks for fashionable concerts,
picturesque lecturers and deft conjurors, is
open, and free to all to enter. Soon the hall
is well filled: the audience begins to manifest
its impatience at the sight of the vacant stage
by a well-bred clapping of hands; whereon
two cadaverous reporters emerge timidly
from behind the scenes, and survey the
audience with a half scared look. Next