I might—I should—have echoed him back at once: “My father forbids it.” It had been instilled in me often enough that preaching was not women’s work. No woman was to think of giving prophecy in meeting, though any unlettered cowcatcher might exercise his gifts there, so long as he be a man. A woman might not even ask a question in meeting, if some matter was obscure to her. I had been instructed to ask at home, privily, if I needed scriptural guidance.
