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I found the knowing gentleman on the front seat was instructing his uninformed listener on the back seat into the details of Mrs. Packard's persecution. And I soon became satisfied that he was the defender of Mr. Packard, and therefore clothed facts with such a fictitious drapery that the truth became too distorted to be even recognized by his listener.

He seemed determined to defend the position that this lady was insane, and in making out his proof he used lies and misrepresentations as his evidence.

"Did I understand you she had a trial of her sanity?" asked the inquirer.

"Yes, she had a trial before a jury of twelve men."

"What was their decision? "

"After hearing all the evidence in the case, strange to say! they decided she was sane."

"Indeed! What did Mr. Packard do then?"

"He, for some unaccountable reason, fled his country."

"What became of his wife? "

"She returned to Manteno, made quite a fuss about his robbing her of her things, and got some men to assist her in getting them, promising them she would stand between them and all harm, and then fled, without paying them as she had promised."

"Indeed! then she showed herself out at last! didn't she?"

At this point my indignation could no longer be repressed -- I could hear that woman slandered no longer, without rushing to the defense of the injured one. I arose from my seat, stepped across the car, and thus addressed them:

"Gentlemen, excuse me for interrupting you, but I am too staunch a defender of truth and justice, to allow a falsehood to pass unnoticed. I know the facts in relation to the lady of whom you speak to be a little different from what you state. I think you stated she left her men without paying them as she promised -- the fact is she offered each one of them the money they asked and they would not accept it."

"That does give a different view to the case. Are you acquainted with Mrs. Packard?" inquired the listener.

"Yes, I am somewhat acquainted, and am very familiar with the facts in the case?"

"Will you please sit down and inform us, for I have become interested in her case."

As I did so, he inquired:

"Do you think Mrs. Packard a sane woman? "

"There is a difference of opinion on that point," I replied.

"What do you think about it?"

"I am inclined to think the decision of the jury was correct, for had there been even any evidence of insanity I think it would have been presented to the jury. But they failed to produce the slightest evidence."

Here the knowing minister remarked, for they both told me they were ministers: "I hear Dr. Sturtevant. and all the ministers in Jacksonville, are down upon her!"

"Yes, so are the Calvinists generally, as she is fearless in exposing their system as an anti-Christian one. But I don't think they have any right to call her insane for this reason alone. But they do."

Thus he asked and I answered questions for about one-half hour about this lady they had been so long slandering, and I gave her such a good defense as led the uninformed minister to change his opinion of her, and even to express sympathy for her in these words:

"I do feel some pity for that woman after all. She may have been a much injured woman!" I retraced the whole ground gone over by his informant, who now evidently quailed before the truth when divested of its false habiliments, and I think, when the cars stopped at Aurora, he did not regret to hear me say:

"I stop here."

But the blank look of astonishment which overspread his countenance, I shall not soon forget, as I arose to leave and introduced myself in these words:

"Gentlemen, before leaving, allow me to introduce myself as Mrs. Packard! Good morning, gentlemen!"

CHAPTER VII.
How to Commence Business Without Capital.

The sad lesson was now learned, by my own experience, that as the laws then were, married woman could hold no legal right to either her own or her husband's property, while he lived, and as there was no prospect of my coming into possession of my "right of dower" by becoming his widow, and as my principles forbade my seeking protection under the divorce laws, by alimony, I seemed driven to the alternative of either following Mr. Packard to Massachusetts, to be imprisoned by him, for life, in an Insane Asylum, or to keep out of his reach and support myself.

This last I chose, inasmuch as I preferred personal liberty, on a self-supporting basis, rather than imprisonment with my food and clothing provided at public expense.

"Yes, give me liberty and want, rather than imprisonment and plenty."

"But what need is there of my suffering want in this free country, with health and education for my capital?"

"None at all!"

"But how shall I commence a lucrative business without money?" is the question now to be solved.

I left the Asylum prison with a book written, ready for publication, which would cost two thousand five hundred dollars to print one thousand copies.