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“Who is she?” was the question asked on every side as the eager crowd pushed its way out of the building, all curious to get a nearer view of the youthful speaker. Doctor Longshore, who had opened the meeting, as on the previous Sunday, was now determined to become acquainted with Anna and find out what had gone into the making of such a remarkable personality, and at the close of the meeting he lost no time in introducing himself to her and making an engagement to go to the Dickinson home to meet her family.

Before the time of his promised call–in fact, before Anna had even mentioned her success as a speaker to her mother–while she was out one day two gentlemen called at the house and inquired if Miss Anna Dickinson lived there. Her mother’s cheeks paled with fright, for she feared Anna had been doing some unconventional thing which the strangers had come to report. When they said they had heard her speak at a public meeting and were so much pleased with her speech that they had come to find out something about her home surroundings, Mrs. Dickinson’s brow cleared, and, leading them into the house, she spent a pleasant half-hour with them, and was secretly delighted with their comments on her daughter’s first appearance in public. When Anna came home Mrs. Dickinson took her to task for not telling her about such a great event, and was surprised to see the real diffidence which the girl showed when she was questioned about the meetings and her speeches. A few days later Doctor Longshore called with her brother, Elwood, and with their flattering assurances that her daughter was a born speaker, and that she had already made some valuable points on a vital subject, Mrs. Dickinson began to feel that all her worry over Anna’s turbulent childhood and restless girlhood had not been in vain, that she was born to do great things, and from that time she took a genuine pride in all the achievements of the young girl who came so rapidly into public notice.

The Longshores took Anna into their hearts and home at once, and many of her happiest hours were spent with them. “We felt toward her,” Doctor Longshore said, “as if she were our own child. We were the first strangers to show an interest in her welfare and future plans, and she returned our friendship with confidence and love.” She was always so buoyant, so full of vitality and gayety, that her visits were eagerly anticipated, and for hours at a time she would entertain her new friends with vivid and droll accounts of her experiences at home and in school and of her attempts to make money. And as she had won her way into the hearts of her audience, at those first meetings, so now she kept the Longshores enthralled, making them laugh at one moment and cry at another. One night she had a horrible dream to relate.

“I had been reading an account of the horrors of the slave system at its worst,” she said. “After going to bed, I was long in falling asleep. Finally I slept and dreamed that I was a slave girl, and, oh, the agony of the knowledge! The hot sun scorched my burning skin as I toiled in the fields, with almost no clothing to soften the sun’s heat. I was hungry, but there was insufficient food. At last I was dressed in clean, showy clothes and led to the auction-block, where I was auctioned off to the highest bidder. He led me away in triumph to even worse experiences, and when I woke up I could not throw off the horror of the awful nightmare.”

Seeing her tremble under the misery of the recollection, Doctor Longshore soothed her by saying that the dream was a natural result of the highly colored account she had been reading before going to sleep, that all slaves were not by any means treated in such a cruel manner, and at last she grew calm. But whenever in future she spoke on the subject of slavery this terrible memory would come back to her so vividly that it would intensify her power to speak with conviction.