refused several women wishful to accompany their husbands who had been
chosen as pioneers, and we could make no exceptions. When the young lady
found that her appeals failed to move us men of the committee, she turned
to our female relatives, whom she speedily discovered; but she met with
little success among them. She was cordially and affectionately received by
the ladies, for she was very charming in her enthusiasm; but that was only
another reason, in the eyes of the women, for concluding that the men had
been right in refusing to allow such a delicate creature to share in the
dangers and privations of the journey of exploration. She was petted and
treated like a spoilt child that longed for the impossible, until Miss
Ellen Fox was fairly beside herself.

She suddenly calmed down; and this occurred in a striking manner
immediately after she became acquainted with another lady who also, though
for other reasons, wished to join our expedition. This other lady was my
sister Clara. While the former was prompted to go to Africa by her zeal for
our principles, the latter was fired with the same desire by detestation
and dread of those same principles. My sister (twelve years my senior, and
still unmarried, because she had not been able to find a man who satisfied
her ideal of personal distinction and lofty character) was one of the
best--in her inmost heart one of the noblest--of women, but full of
immovable prejudices with which I had been continually coming into contact
for the twenty-six years of my life. She was not cold-hearted--her hand was
always open to those who needed help; but she had an invincible contempt
for everything that did not belong to the so-called higher, cultured
classes. When for the first time the social question was explained to her
by me, she was seized with horror at the idea that reasonable men should
believe that she and her kitchen maid were endowed with equal rights by
nature. Finding that all efforts to convert her were in vain, I long
refrained from telling her anything of my relations with Dr. Strahl, or of