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.