alone, we were kept in touch with the outside world. But so conflicting
was the tone of the letters that, if we had not taken a very fair gauge
of ourselves and our advisers, we should have abandoned our project and
buried all the valuable material collected, to sleep in pine boxes
forever.

At this time I received a very amusing letter from the Rev. Robert
Collyer, on "literary righteousness," quizzing me for using one of his
anecdotes in my sketch of Lucretia Mott, without giving him credit. I
laughed him to scorn, that he should have thought it was my duty to have
done so. I told him plainly that he belonged to a class of "white male
citizens," who had robbed me of all civil and political rights; of
property, children, and personal freedom; and now it ill became him to
call me to account for using one of his little anecdotes that, ten to
one, he had cribbed from some woman. I told him that I considered his
whole class as fair game for literary pilfering. That women had been
taxed to build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a
literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right
to it. Moreover, I told him that man's duty in the world was to work, to
dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman's feet,
for her to use as she might see fit; that he should feel highly
complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I
thought worth using. He answered like the nobleman he is; susceptible of
taking in a new idea. He admitted that, in view of the shortcomings of
his entire sex, he had not one word to say in the way of accusation, but
lay prostrate at my feet in sackcloth and ashes, wondering that he had
not taken my view of the case in starting.

Only twice in my life have I been accused of quoting without giving due
credit. The other case was that of Matilda Joslyn Gage. I had, on two or