Читать книгу The Women of the Suffrage Movement - Jane Addams - Страница 62

Table of Contents

Miss Anthony's annual struggle to hold Washington Convention; speech in Chicago on Social Purity; comment of St. Louis Democrat and other papers; hard lecture tour in Iowa; shooting of brother Daniel R.; Revolution debt paid; commendation of press; Centennial Resolutions at Washington Convention; establishing Centennial headquarters at Philadelphia; Republicans again recognize Woman in National platform; Miss Anthony and others present Woman's Declaration of Independence at Centennial celebration; eloquent description; History of Woman Suffrage begun; writes articles for Johnson's Encyclopedia.

At the close of 1874, December 28, the cause of woman suffrage lost a strong supporter by the death of Gerrit Smith. Miss Anthony felt the loss deeply, as he had been her warm personal friend for twenty-five years and always ready with financial aid for her projects; but she suffered a keener shock one week later when the news came of the sudden death of Martha C. Wright, January 4, 1875. She says in her diary: "It struck me dumb, I could not believe it; clear-sighted, true and steadfast almost beyond all other women! Her home was my home, always so restful and refreshing, her friendship never failed; the darker the hour, the brighter were her words of encouragement, the stronger and closer her support. I can not be reconciled."

But for this earnest advocate there could be no cessation of work and the 14th of January found her again in Washington at the National Convention. These annual meetings, with their advertising, hall rent, expenses of speakers, etc., were costly affairs. Before every one Miss Anthony always received scores of letters from the other workers begging that it might be given up for that year, insisting that for various reasons it would be a failure, and declaring that they could not and would not attend. Mrs. Stanton usually headed the list of the objectors, for she hated everything connected with a convention. On the back of one of these vehement protests, carefully filed away, is written in Miss Anthony's penmanship, "Mrs. Stanton's chronic letter before each annual meeting." She never paid the slightest heed to any of these appeals, but went straight ahead, wheeled all of them into line, engaged the speakers, raised the money and carried the convention to a finish. When the funds were lacking she advanced them from her own, usually ending one or two hundred dollars out of pocket. Then she went about among the friends and secured enough to replace the loan or, failing in this, worked so much the harder to make it up out of her earnings.

On her way home from Washington, Miss Anthony stopped for a visit with her loved cousin Anson Lapham and on leaving he handed her a check for $1,000, saying, "Susan, this is not for suffrage but for thee personally." Nevertheless she at once applied it on the debt still hanging over her from The Revolution. Francis & Loutrel, of New York, who had furnished her with paper, letter-heads, etc., also presented her at this time with their receipted bill for $200.

In the winter of 1875, Miss Anthony prepared her speech on "Social Purity" and gave it first at the Grand Opera House, Chicago, March 14, in the Sunday afternoon Dime lecture course.1 When she reached the opera house the crowd was so dense she could not get inside and was obliged to go through the engine room and up the back way to the stage. The gentleman who was to introduce her could not make his way through the throng and so this service was gracefully performed by "Long John" Wentworth, who was seated on the stage. At the close of the address, to her surprise, A. Bronson Alcott, Parker Pillsbury and A.J. Grover came up to congratulate her. She had not known they were in the city. Mr. Alcott said: "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter." No other speaker, man or woman, ever had handled this question with such boldness and severity and the lecture produced a great sensation. Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same committee the following winter.

It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,2 Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied. On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis, in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century—remarkable for the purity of her life, the earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth—if she ever had any bloom—hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the platform as preachers of social impossibilities."

The metropolitan press generally acknowledged the necessity for such a lecture and complimented Miss Anthony's courage in undertaking it, but the country papers were greatly distressed, as a specimen extract will show:

There is very little satisfaction in observing that Miss Anthony is following in the wake of Anna Dickinson, in publicly lecturing upon subjects that no modest woman ought, in respect for her sex, to acknowledge that she is so familiar with. Miss D. expatiates upon the "Social Evil," and Miss A. enlarges upon "Social Purity"—topics that maidenly delicacy, we repeat, should refuse to discuss. It would be suggestively coarse for a married woman to deliberately select such questionable themes for a public discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary information—are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say analyze it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous details. The women's crusade against liquor effected nothing, for the simple reason that women were out of their proper sphere in attempting it; but if so, how much more do they degrade their sex when they go out of the way to ask us to believe that they are intimate with a corruption infinitely more debasing and more destructive? The best lecture a woman can give the community on "moral purity" is the eloquent one of a spotless life. The best discourse she can furnish us on the sad "evil" alluded to is the sincerity of her profound ignorance of the subject.

A woman suffrage bill was under consideration by the legislature of Iowa and Miss Anthony felt that missionary work ought to be done in that State, so she wrote to the friends in one hundred different towns, offering to speak for $25 or one-half the gross receipts. Sixty of them accepted and during the spring and autumn of 1875 she filled these engagements, the sixty lectures averaging $30 apiece. In order to reach the different places she had to take trains at all hours of the night, occasionally to ride in a freight car, sometimes to drive twenty-five or thirty miles across country in mud and snow and prairie winds, and frequently to go on the platform without having eaten a mouthful or changed her dress. Even these ills were not so hard to bear as the cold, dirty rooms, hard beds, and poorly cooked food sometimes found in small hotels. Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges on both sides.

While Miss Anthony was in attendance at the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York, a telegram came announcing that her brother Daniel R., of Leavenworth, had been shot and fatally wounded. Her friends feeling that they could not go through with the meeting without her, retained the telegram until after her speech in the evening, and then she could get no train before the next day. She did not go to bed that night but, in the midst of her grief, she examined every bill for the convention and put each in an envelope with the money to pay it. In the early morning she took a local train for Albany and stopped off to bid a last farewell to her old friend, Lydia Mott, who was dying of consumption. Her sisters met her at the Rochester station with wrapper, slippers and comfortable things for the sickroom, and she learned that her brother was still alive. Telegrams came to her at intervals during the journey, and, after a most distressing delay at Kansas City, she finally reached Leavenworth at midnight, May 14, and was gladly received by her brother who had watched the clock and counted her progress every hour. The shooting had grown out of some criticisms in his paper. The ball had fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. His devoted wife and brother Merritt were in constant attendance.

Then began the long struggle for life. For nine weeks Miss Anthony sat by his bedside giving the service of a born nurse, added to the gentleness of a loving sister. At the end of the first month the physicians decided on a continued pressure upon the artery above the wound to prevent the constant rush of blood into the aneurism which had formed. Owing to its peculiar position this could be done only by pressing the finger upon it, and so the family and friends took turns day and night, sitting by the patient and pressing upon this vital spot. After five weeks, to the surprise of the whole medical fraternity, the experiment proved a success and recovery was no longer doubtful. The papers were filled with glowing accounts of Miss Anthony's devotion, seeming to think it wonderful that a woman whose whole life had been spent in public work should possess in so large a degree not only sisterly affection but the accomplishments of a trained nurse.3

Miss Anthony took back to Rochester her little four-year-old niece and namesake, Susie B., and many touching entries in her journal show how closely the child entwined itself about her heart. She found that Lydia Mott still lived, and, allowing herself only two days' rest after all the hard weeks of physical and mental strain, she went to Albany to stay with her friend till the end came, a month later. The diary of August 20 says: "There passed out of my life today the one who, next to my own family, has been the nearest and dearest to me for thirty years."

On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman, characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore. When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening." The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging letter and a liberal contribution.

Miss Anthony still continued on her weary round-through the inclement winter and spring, sometimes lecturing to meager and sometimes to crowded houses but netting an average of $100 a week, which was religiously applied to the payment of the debt. She returned to Chicago to lecture again in the Dime course, Sunday, March 26, and says in her diary: "An immense audience, hall packed, my speech was free, easy and happy, my audience quick to see and appreciate." The address on this occasion was "Bread and the Ballot."4 She returned at once to Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution debt!" It was just six years to the very month since she had given up her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness, and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from her shoulders and she was free. Even the newspapers offered congratulations in pleasant editorial paragraphs.5 In a long notice, the Chicago Daily News said:

Her paper lived a few years and then went down. In the heart of the woman whose hopes went down with it, the little paper that cost so much and died so prematurely occupies, perhaps, the place which in other women's hearts is occupied by the remembrance of a baby's face, now shrouded in folds of white satin and hushed in death. But The Revolution left behind a debt of several thousand dollars. Susan B. Anthony was poor, yet she stepped forward and assumed, individually, the entire indebtedness. By working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors of that paper and others who really know her, whatever they may think of her political opinions, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence.

The Rochester Post-Express thus voiced the opinion of her own townspeople:

The thousands of friends of the plucky and noble woman of whom we speak will rejoice with her over this success. There are a good many men who have hidden behind their wives' petticoats for a much smaller sum than $10,000. It should be remembered, furthermore, that Miss Anthony has labored indefatigably in the cause of woman suffrage, paying her own expenses most of the time; has undergone a contemptible and outrageous persecution at the hands of the United States court for violating the election laws; has bent for months over the bed of a brother wounded almost to death by an assassin's bullet; has watched tenderly over the steps of an aged mother; and has always, everywhere, been the soul of helpfulness and benevolence. Here is an example, in a woman, who our laws say is not fit to exercise the active and defensive privilege of citizenship, that puts to shame the lives of ninety-nine in every hundred men.

It is not surprising that the letters of her friends during these past months should speak of "the pale, sad face, so worn by lines of care and toil," but now all was over and she returned home. To rest? Far from it. The third day found her en route for New York to attend the Suffrage Anniversary, May 10 and 11.

The thinking women of the country were justly indignant, in this great centennial year of the Republic, at the high-handed manner in which they had been ignored in the vast preparations for its celebration, in spite of their protests and in face of the fact that women had purchased $100,000 of the centennial stock issued to pay expenses. It had been decided at the Washington convention that the National Association should open headquarters in Philadelphia, and at this May meeting Miss Anthony was made chairman of the 1876 campaign committee. The resolutions adopted show the spirit of the convention:

WHEREAS, The right of self-government inheres in the individual before governments are founded, constitutions framed or courts created; and whereas, Governments exist to protect the people in the enjoyment of their natural rights, and when one becomes destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to resist and abolish it; and whereas, The women of the United States for one hundred years have been denied the exercise of their natural right of self-government; therefore

Resolved, That it is their natural right and most sacred duty to rebel against the injustice, usurpation and tyranny of our present government.

WHEREAS, The men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did not claim to be of the people, but on the contrary upheld the "divine right of kings;" and whereas, The women of this nation today, under a government which claims to be based upon individual rights, in an infinitely greater degree are suffering all the wrongs which led to the war of the Revolution; and whereas, the oppression is all the more keenly felt because our masters, instead of dwelling in a foreign land, are our husbands, fathers, brothers and sons; therefore

Resolved, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than had the men of 1776.

Resolved, That with Abigail Adams we believe "the passion for liberty can not be strong in the breasts of those who are accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of liberty;" that, as she predicted in 1776, "we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation."

WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, and that a true republic is the best form of government in the world; and whereas, This government is false to its underlying principles in denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot; and one-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century of boasted liberty, are still political slaves; therefore

Resolved, That we protest against calling the present centennial a celebration of the independence of the people of the United States.

Resolved, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound to obey laws in whose making we have had no voice and, in presence of the assembled nations of the world gathered on this soil to celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the women of this land.

Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage had long had in view the preparation of a history of the woman's rights movement, which they expected to be a pamphlet of several hundred pages, and they offered this as a premium to every one who should send $5 toward the contemplated headquarters.6 Fifty-two women responded at once, and with this $260 they ventured to rent fine, large parlors in a desirable part of Philadelphia and fit them up in an attractive manner. By the laws of Pennsylvania a married woman could not make a contract and Miss Anthony, being the only femme sole, was obliged to assume the financial responsibility. She and Mrs. Gage took charge of the headquarters May 25, and issued the following announcement:

The National Woman Suffrage Association has established its Centennial headquarters in Philadelphia at No. 1431 Chestnut street. The parlors, in charge of the officers of the association, are devoted to the special work of the year, pertaining to the centennial celebration and the political party conventions; also to calls, receptions, etc. On the table a Centennial autograph book receives the names of visitors....

On July 4th, while the men of this nation and the world are rejoicing that "all men are free and equal" in the United States, a declaration of rights for women will be issued from these headquarters, and a protest against calling this Centennial a celebration of the independence of the people, while one-half are still political slaves. Let the women of the whole land, on that day, in meetings, in parlors, in kitchens, wherever they may be, unite with us in this declaration and protest; and immediately thereafter send full reports for record in our centennial book, that the world may see that the women of 1876 know and feel their political degradation no less than did the men of 1776.

In commemoration of the twenty-eighth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention, the National Suffrage Association will hold in Philadelphia, July 19 and 20, of the present year, a grand mass convention, in which eminent reformers from the new and the old world will take part.

From these headquarters eloquent letters were written to the national political conventions and sent by delegations of prominent women, asking for a woman suffrage plank. The Democrats ignored the question in their platform; the Republicans adopted the following: "The Republican party recognizes with approval the substantial advance recently made toward the establishment of equal rights for women by the many important amendments effected by the Republican legislatures, in the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives, mothers and widows, and by the election and appointment of women to the superintendence of education, charities and other public trusts. The honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights, privileges and immunities should be treated with respectful consideration." In a letter from Mrs. Duniway, of Oregon, she says, "Well, the Republicans have thickened the old sop and re-served it."

The women were determined to obtain a recognition at the centennial celebration to be held July 4, in Independence Square. "It is the hour, the golden hour, for woman to speak her word which shall roll down our second century as has man's Fourth of July manifesto through the last one hundred years," wrote Miss Anthony. Then she and Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage put their heads together and framed a document which had all the holy fire of the immortal Declaration of Independence, and this they proposed to have made a part of the-great day's proceedings.7 Their efforts to this end, their repulse and their subsequent action are so delightfully described in the History of Woman Suffrage that it would be presumptuous to attempt to improve upon it. Their utmost efforts could obtain but four seats on the platform. Miss Anthony had a ticket as reporter for her brother's paper. The earnest request of Mrs. Stanton, president of the National Suffrage Association, to General Joseph R. Hawley, president of the Centennial Commission, not that the women might read but simply might present their declaration, was refused on the ground that the program could not be changed. The report thus continues:

As President Grant was not to attend the celebration, the acting Vice-President, Thomas W. Ferry, representing the government, was to officiate in his place and he, too, was addressed by note, and courteously requested to make time for the reception of this declaration. As Mr. Ferry was a well-known sympathizer with the demands of woman for political rights, it was presumable that he would render his aid. Yet he was forgetful that in his position that day he represented, not the exposition, but the government of a hundred years, and he too refused; thus the simple request of woman for a half moment's recognition on the nation's centennial birthday was denied by all in authority.

While the women of the nation were thus absolutely forbidden the right of public protest, lavish preparations were made for the reception and entertainment of foreign potentates and the myrmidons of monarchial institutions. Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, a representative of that form of government against which the United States is a perpetual defiance and protest, was welcomed with fulsome adulation, and given a seat of honor near the officers of the day; Prince Oscar of Sweden, a stripling of sixteen, on whose shoulders rests the promise of a future kingship, was seated near. Count Rochambeau of France, the Japanese commissioners, high officials from Russia and Prussia, from Austria, Spain, England, Turkey, representing the barbarism and semi-civilization of the day, found no difficulty in securing recognition and places of honor upon that platform, where representative womanhood was denied.

Though refused by their own countrymen a place and part in the centennial celebration, the women who had taken this presentation in hand were not to be conquered. They had respectfully asked for recognition; now that it had been denied, they determined to seize upon the moment when the reading of the Declaration of Independence closed, to proclaim to the world the tyranny and injustice of the nation toward one-half its people. Five officers of the National Suffrage Association, with that heroic spirit which has ever animated lovers of liberty in resistance to tyranny, determined, whatever the result, to present the Woman's Declaration of Rights at the chosen hour. They would not, they dared not sacrifice the golden opportunity to which they had so long looked forward; their work was not for themselves alone, nor for the present generation, but for all women of all time. The hopes of posterity were in their hands and they determined to place on record for the daughters of 1976 the fact that their mothers of 1876 had asserted their equality of rights, and impeached the government of that day for its injustice toward woman. Thus, in taking a grander step toward freedom than ever before, they would leave one bright remembrance for the women of the next Centennial.

That historic Fourth of July dawned at last, one of the most oppressive days of that terribly heated season. Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake and Phoebe Couzins made their way through the crowds under the broiling sun to Independence Square, carrying the Woman's Declaration of Rights. This declaration had been handsomely engrossed by Mrs. Spencer and signed by the oldest and most prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. Their tickets of admission proved an open sesame through the military and all other barriers, and a few moments before the opening of the ceremonies, these women found themselves within the precincts from which most of their sex were excluded.

The declaration of 1776 was read by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, about whose family clusters so much of historic fame. The close of his reading was deemed the appropriate moment for the presentation of the Woman's Declaration. Not quite sure how their approach might be met—not quite certain if at this final moment they would be permitted to reach the presiding officer—these ladies arose from their seats at the back of the stage and walked down the aisle. The bustle of preparation for the Brazilian hymn covered their advance. The foreign guests, the military and civil officers who filled the space directly around the speaker's stand, courteously made way, while Miss Anthony in fitting words presented the Declaration. Mr. Ferry's face paled, as bowing low, with no word, he received it, and it thus became a part of the day's proceedings; the ladies turned, scattering printed copies as they deliberately passed up the aisle and off the platform. On every side eager hands were stretched; men stood on seats and asked for them, while General Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his audacious denial to women of the right to present their Declaration, shouted, "Order, order!"

Going out through the crowd, they made their way to a platform erected for the musicians in front of Independence Hall. Here on this historic ground, under the shadow of of Washington's statue, back of them the old bell which proclaimed "liberty to all the land and all the inhabitants thereof," they took their places, and to a listening, applauding crowd, Miss Anthony read a copy of the Declaration just presented to Mr. Ferry. It was warmly applauded at many points, and after again scattering a number of printed copies, the delegation descended from the platform and hastened to the convention of the National Association. A meeting had been appointed at 12 o'clock, in the First Unitarian church, where Rev. William H. Furness preached for fifty years, but whose pulpit was then filled by Joseph May, a son of Rev. Samuel J. May. They found the church crowded with an expectant audience, which greeted them with thanks for what they had just done; the first act of this memorable day taking place on the old centennial platform in Independence Square, the last in a church so long devoted to equality and justice.

The venerable Lucretia Mott, then in her eighty-fourth year, presided. Belva A. Lockwood took up the judiciary, showing the way that body lends itself to party politics. Matilda Joslyn Gage spoke upon the writ of habeas corpus, pointing out what a mockery to married women was that constitutional guarantee. Lucretia Mott reviewed the progress of the reform from the first convention. Sara Andrews Spencer illustrated the evils arising from two codes of morality. Lillie Devereux Blake spoke upon trial by jury; Susan B. Anthony upon taxation without representation, illustrating her remarks by incidents of unjust taxation of women during the present year. Elizabeth Cady Stanton pictured the aristocracy of sex and the evils arising from manhood suffrage. Judge Esther Morris, of Wyoming, said a few words in regard to suffrage in that territory. Phoebe Couzins, with great pathos, told of woman's work in the war. Margaret Parker, president of the women's suffrage club of Dundee, Scotland, and of the newly formed International W.C.T.U., declared this was worth the journey across the Atlantic. Mr. J.H. Raper, of Manchester, England, characterized it as the grandest meeting of the day, and said the patriot of a hundred years hence would seek for every incident connected with it, and the next Centennial would be adorned by the portraits of the women who sat upon that platform.

The Hutchinsons were present and in their best vein interspersed the speeches with appropriate and felicitous songs. Lucretia Mott did not confine herself to a single speech but, in Quaker style, whenever the spirit moved made many happy points. As her sweet and placid countenance appeared above the pulpit, the Hutchinsons burst into, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." The effect was marvellous; the audience at once arose, and spontaneously joined in the hymn. For five long hours of that hot midsummer day, that crowded audience listened earnestly to woman's demand for equality of rights before the law. When the meeting at last adjourned, the Hutchinsons singing, "A Hundred Years Hence," it was slowly and reluctantly that the great audience left the house.

The headquarters were kept open for two months, the weekly receptions were largely attended and the rooms each day crowded with visitors. The immense autograph book was signed by hundreds, most of whom also affixed their names to the Woman's Declaration of Rights. Lucretia Mott always came in after attending the mid-week meeting of the Friends, and the ladies had a pot of tea ready for her coming.8 When she left she never failed to hand them $5 "to pay for the trouble she had made," her contributions in this way amounting to $50. George W. Childs gave $100, Dr. Clemence Lozier, $100, Ellen C. Sargent, $50, Elizabeth B. Phelps, $50, Miss Anthony herself contributed $175, and altogether about two hundred people donated nearly $1,700, all of which was expended in keeping up the headquarters and printing and circulating thousands of documents. When the accounts were audited they showed a balance of just $4.64.

At this time Mrs. Mott sent Miss Anthony this little note, accompanied by a large package of fine tea: "I forgot to take the tea I promised thee, so please accept it now. Thank thee for so oft remembering me with the delicious drinks of it. After leaving thee so hurriedly yesterday, I feared that thou wast still short of an even balance, and now enclose another $10 for thy own personal use. It is too hard for our widely extended national society to suffer thee to labor so unceasingly without a consideration." But Miss Anthony did not work for personal reward and said in a letter to her old friend Clarina Howard Nichols: "The Kansas women say, 'All we have of freedom we owe to Mrs. Nichols and yet we never have given her a testimonial.' Well, you and I and all who labor to make the conditions of the world better for coming generations, must find our testimonials in the good accomplished through our work."

As soon as the Centennial headquarters were closed Miss Anthony proceeded to carry out her cherished plan of writing the history of the woman's rights movement. She had sent the most peremptory orders to Mrs. Stanton not to make a lecture engagement before December 1, so that in August, September, October and November they might prepare this history. She then shipped to Mrs. Stanton's home several large trunks and boxes full of letters, reports and various documents which she had carefully preserved during the past quarter of a century, and the first day of August they set to work. The entries in the diary for the next two months give some idea of her state of mind: "I am immersed to my ears and feel almost discouraged.... The work before me is simply appalling.... The prospect of ever getting out a satisfactory history grows less each day.... Would that the good spirits in my own brain would come to the rescue!... O, these old letters! It makes me sad and tired to read them over, to see the terrible strain I was under every minute then, have been ever since, am now and shall be, I think, the rest of my life."9

On August 24 occurred the death of Paulina Wright Davis and, at the husband's request, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the funeral. The former felt that again she had lost a friend who never could be replaced. Mrs. Davis was a woman of beauty, culture, wealth and social position and a life-long advocate of woman suffrage. In October the dear cousin Anson Lapham passed away, and in the diary that night was written: "No man except my father ever gave me such love and confidence, and his acts were equal to his faith."

Work was pressing upon her from every side. In the spring of this year she had been engaged by the editors of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia to write the chapter on suffrage and prepare the biographies of a number of eminent women. Amidst all the other cares of the summer and fall, she had been endeavoring to collect the materials for these sketches, having the usual experience. Some failed to answer; others wrote asking a score of questions; many sent four times as many words as were requested, with the statement that not one single line could be cut out; while a number forwarded a mass of unintelligible matter and requested her to make a good sketch out of it. The history also was occupying her waking and sleeping thoughts, and the depleted condition of her pocket-book foreshadowed the necessity of another lecture tour. Meanwhile, the mother at home was growing very feeble, and on Thanksgiving Day Miss Anthony wrote to her: "I feel as if I were robbing myself of the last moments which I may ever have to be with you, but I can not see the way clear to stay at home this coming winter. It is ever thus with me, so hard to know which is the strongest duty, the one that ought to be done first, and so I grope on in the dark. That I am always away from home may look to the world as if I care less for it than other people, whereas my longing for it almost makes me weak; but you, dear mother, understand my love."

1. See Appendix for full speech.

2. At Carbondale she addressed the students of the Normal School, the day after her lecture, emphasizing the necessity of woman's being able to care for herself, urging them to marry only for love and not for support, and to look upon marriage as a luxury and not a necessity. She was a little doubtful as to the effect of this talk upon both faculty and students, but one of the professors called to tell her how fitting was every word and how he had longed to have just those things said. The girl students sent her a handsome bouquet as she was taking her train.

3. President M.B. Anderson, of Rochester University, wrote a friend in this connection: "I always remember Miss Anthony as an angel of mercy in the house of a sister who was crushed by the loss of a son."

4. See Appendix for full speech.

5. From a large number of clippings, the following are selected as specimens:

Miss Anthony has now earned the money and discharged the last obligation of her paper. This is the work of a brave and good woman.... She is a woman who pays her debts and sets a watch upon her lips.—Cincinnati Enquirer.

It is the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B. Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to us—and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman suffrage—that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood which the follies of a thousand others can not remove.—Utica Observer.

"She has paid her debts like a man," says an exchange. Like a man? Not so. Not one man in a thousand but would have "squealed," "laid down" and settled at ten or twenty cents on the dollar. As people go in this wicked world, it is no more than fair to say in good faith that Miss Anthony is a very admirable person. She is in business, as in other matters, one of the few—the select few—who steer by their own compass and not by the shifting winds.—Buffalo Express.

Miss Susan B. Anthony has done a noble thing, which deserves to be widely known. She has lectured 120 times during this season and has paid off the last debt of The Revolution. That she has felt obliged to work thus for years when thousands of men avail themselves of the privileges of the bankrupt act, is a phenomenal exhibition of personal honor. A woman is thoroughly qualified to plead for the claims of her own sex when she respects the rights of human nature so keenly.—New York Graphic.

We are thankful to see the recognition accorded to the worth of our townswoman. She has been often misjudged and sometimes abused; but unfalteringly and unselfishly she has devoted herself to her life-work, and despite cavilling and sneers, has deeply impressed her thought upon the age in which she has been placed. Her executive talent has unceasingly declared itself and her character has been without reproach. She is today a power in the land, respected even by those who oppose her. She may not witness the full triumph of her cause; but her fame as a brave, truthful and consistent advocate of a conquering cause is secure. Even in her lifetime she is receiving something of the reward to which her fidelity to principle entities her.—Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

6. When this work finally was issued at $15 per set, every one of these pledges was carefully fulfilled, necessarily at a great pecuniary loss.

7. For full text of this magnificent document see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III.

8. The little teapot and the cup and saucer which she used now stand upon Miss Anthony's sideboard.

9. To this work, which these women expected to accomplish in four months, they gave every day that could be spared from other duties for the next ten years!