"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.
For several Sundays she went regularly to the "Progressive Friends'" meeting and spoke with unvarying success. Then she was invited to go to Mullica Hill, New Jersey, to speak on the subject, "Woman's Work." After discussing the matter with her mother and the Longshores, she accepted the invitation and set herself to prepare the lecture which she was to give. Then, on the first Sunday in April, the seventeen-year-old orator went to her trial experience as an invited speaker. By that time her praises had been widely sung, and when she rose and saw her audience there was a sea of upturned, eager faces looking into hers. Speaking from the depths of her own experience, she held the audience in breathless silence for over an hour. There was, it was said, an indescribable pathos in her full, rich voice that, aside from what she said, touched the hearts of her hearers and moved many to tears, while all were spellbound, and at the close of her address no one moved. Finally a man rose and voiced the feeling of the people.
"We will not disperse until the speaker promises to address us again this evening," he said, and a burst of applause greeted his statement. A starry-eyed girl stood and bowed her acknowledgment and agreed to speak again. As the audience dispersed Anna heard some one say, "If Lucretia Mott had made that speech it would be thought a great one."