The opening convention was held in Boyd's Opera House, Omaha, September 26, 27, 28. The Bee was ironical and contemptuous in its treatment, heading its report "Mad Anthony's Raid." The Herald, under control of a young son of U. S. Senator Hitchcock, was vulgar and abusive, referring to the question as a "dead issue." The Republican, edited by D. C. Brooks, replied:

PRETTY LIVELY "DEAD ISSUE."—During the three days' sessions of the woman suffrage convention, we estimate that 7,000 people were in attendance. The Republican, in its three daily issues, and its coming weekly issue, will have laid the proceedings in full before about 75,000 readers, and the Bee and Herald will have given them nearly as many more. For a "dead issue" we submit this is a pretty respectable showing. Considered as a series of political meetings, the suffrage convention had more hearers than all the Democratic meetings and conventions held in Omaha during the last five years. The audiences were truly representative, embracing the business, professional and working interests of our city, and composed very largely of voters and citizens influential in politics.

The next convention was held in Lincoln with the same crowded houses. The newspapers were fair in their reports. The National Association raised $5,000 by contributions, mostly from outside the State. Miss Anthony gave her time and services and over $1,000 in money besides all she collected. Mrs. Foster and daughters contributed $500. Eleven speakers were kept in the field,[10] and all the complicated series of meetings was arranged and managed by Rachel Foster, assisted by Mrs. Colby. Miss Anthony herself spoke in forty counties, free transportation being given her by all the railroads in the State. On October 13, she held the famous debate at Omaha with Edward Rosewater, editor of the Bee, in the presence of an immense audience. Everywhere her meetings were perfect ovations, people coming in from a radius of twenty-five miles; and outside of Lincoln and Omaha, there was no audience-room large enough to hold the crowds.

A splendid force of Nebraska women conducted the campaign in behalf of the State. Every effort possible was made in the brief space of six weeks, but the masses of voters were not prepared for the question, most of the leading newspapers opposed it, and the women had no help from either of the political parties. In spite of these fatal drawbacks, the suffrage amendment received about one-third of the total vote.[11]

Miss Anthony returned home by way of St. Louis, where Mrs. Minor gave a large reception in her honor. When she reached Rochester she was invited by the Lincoln Club, one of the leading political organizations of the city, to give her address, "Woman Wants Bread, not the Ballot." The Democrat and Chronicle said in its report: "The large audience-room of the city hall was completely filled, and many extra seats were brought in. A number of prominent ladies and gentlemen occupied seats upon the platform. W. E. Werner, president of the club, in introducing the speaker, said it was fitting the hall should be full to overflowing with an audience anxious to hear the greatest advocate of one of the greatest questions of the day."

Miss Anthony had made a short trip to Washington immediately upon her return from Nebraska, to confer with the select committees on woman suffrage and also to make final arrangements for the approaching National Convention. It met in Lincoln Hall, January 23, 24 and 25, 1883, and she presided over its deliberations.

In response to many urgent letters written by Mrs. Stanton from England, and encouraged by friends at home who felt that she needed a long rest after more than thirty years of uninterrupted public work, Miss Anthony decided to make a trip abroad. As Rachel Foster contemplated a few years' study in Europe, the pleasant arrangement was made that she should undertake the financial management of the journey, act as interpreter and give Miss Anthony the care and attention her loving heart would suggest.[12] Miss Anthony's sixty-third birthday being near at hand, the friends in Philadelphia, led by the Citizens' Suffrage Association, Edward M. Davis, president, tendered her a reception, which circumstances rendered it necessary to hold on the 19th instead of the 15th of February. The Philadelphia Times gave this account:

The parlor of the Unitarian church was filled to overflowing on the occasion of the farewell reception to Miss Susan B. Anthony. After prayer by Rev. Charles G. Ames, Robert Purvis, who presided, said in a brief and earnest address: "I have the honor, on behalf of the National Suffrage Association, to present to you these resolutions testifying to their high regard, confidence, and affection." After the applause which the resolutions evoked, Mr. Purvis continued: "I present these with feelings which I can not express in words, for my thoughts take me back in vivid recollection to those stormy periods of persecution and outrage when you, Miss Anthony, with the foremost in the ranks of the Abolitionists, battled for the freedom and rights of the enslaved race. You have lived, with many compeers, to see the glorious result of your labors in redeeming from the infamy and degradation of chattelism 4,000,000 slaves. That done, your attention was turned to the greater question—in view of numbers—of woman's emancipation from civil and political debasement."

Upon rising to reply Miss Anthony received an ovation. She said: "I feel that I must speak, because if I should hear all these words of praise and remain silent, I should seem to assent to tributes which I do not wholly deserve. My kind friends have spoken almost as if I had done the work, or the greater part of it, alone, whereas I have been only one of many men and women who have labored side by side in this cause. Philadelphia has had the honor of giving to the world a woman who led the way in this noble effort. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were active in the good work ere my attention had been called to it. It was through their influence that I was led to consider and accept the then new doctrine. Alone I should have been as a mere straw in the wind.... I have known nothing the last thirty years save the struggle for human rights on this continent. If it had been a class of men who were disfranchised and denied their legal rights, I believe I should have devoted my life precisely as I have done in behalf of my own sex. I hope while abroad that I shall do something to recommend our work here, so as to make them respect American women and their demand for political equality...."

Letters, telegrams, flowers and gifts were received in great numbers.[13]

May Wright Sewall had this graphic description in the Indianapolis Times, owned and edited by Col. Wm. R. Holloway, an earnest advocate of woman suffrage:

The few days spent in Philadelphia by Miss Anthony prior to sailing were a series of fetes. She spoke to over one thousand girls of the Normal School on the public duties of women; was officially invited to visit the Woman's Medical College; was given a reception by the New Century Club; was tendered a complimentary dinner by Mrs. Emma J. Bartol, in her own elegant home, where ten courses were served and toasts were drunk to the guest of honor.... Letters of introduction, quite unsolicited, poured in from friends and countrymen personally unknown to her, who thus showed their desire to facilitate her meeting with the stars of various desirable circles abroad. At the public reception, Robert Purvis presented the following testimonial, beautifully engrossed on vellum, and encased in garnet velvet with gold borders:

"Resolved, That the National Woman Suffrage Association of the United States does hereby testify its appreciation of the life-long devotion of Susan B. Anthony to the cause of woman; that it acknowledges her as the chief inspirer of women in their struggle for personal liberty, for civil equity, and for political equality; that as one of the foremost of American women it commends her to the women of foreign lands.

"Resolved, That the members of the association rejoice in the approaching holiday of their beloved leader; that they will follow her wanderings with affection and sympathy; that during her absence they will steadfastly uphold the principles to which her life has been devoted; that on her return they will welcome her to a resumption of her labors and hold themselves ready to work under her able and devoted leadership."

Among the numerous letters and telegrams were messages from Wendell Phillips, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Mary Clemmer, Helen Potter, Emma C. Bascom and Dr. Alida C. Avery.... Probably no testimony was more enjoyed than the following:

"ROCHESTER, N. Y., THE HOME OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY: In this open letter old friends and neighbors unite with all who honor the birthday of its true citizen, and express the sincere wish that Miss Anthony in her sojourn in strange lands may find what she has in full measure here at home—a genuine appreciation of her true womanliness, her sturdy adherence to honest conviction and her heroic stand, against all opposition, for the higher education and enfranchisement of women. Wishing her Godspeed and a safe return, we, the undersigned, do not need to assure her that neither the triumphs nor the defeats of her future public life will change our estimation of her, for to us she will ever remain what her life among us has proved her to be—a good, true woman, self-consecrated to the cause of woman in every land."

The signatures include the names of eighty of the leading men and women of Rochester; among them editors of the papers of both parties, pastors of the prominent churches, university professors, bankers, politicians, etc. Honor, if tardy, surely comes at last to the prophet in her own country. A song written for the occasion and inscribed to Miss Anthony, by Annie E. McDowell, one of the first editors of a woman's paper, was splendidly sung by Mr. Ford, the composer, who had set it to music.

Among the telegrams was this from her brother, D. R. Anthony: "Sixty-three years have crowned you with the honor and respect of the people of America, and with the love of your brothers and sisters." From the friends in Washington, D. C., came a plush case, on whose satin lining rested an exquisite point lace fichu and sleeve ruffles. A New York gentleman sent $100 to be used toward the purchase of an India shawl, writing: "I don't believe in woman suffrage, but I do believe in Susan B. Anthony." The Cheney Brothers sent a handsome black silk dress pattern; Helen Potter, a steamer rug; the Fosters, a travelling bag; Adeline and Annie Thomson, a silver cup; Robert Purvis, a gold-handled umbrella, and there were various other tokens of remembrance. Many of the leading papers contained an editorial farewell, with a hearty compliment and Godspeed. The Chicago Tribune, edited by Joseph Medill, offered this tribute:

The best known and most popular woman in the United States, engaged in public work, is Susan B. Anthony, the co-worker of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, Wendell Phillips, Lucretia Mott and others in the anti-slavery movement, and the fellow-laborer of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the woman's rights movement. She ranks first among the warriors in this latter contest, because she has lived her life in its service and there has been no side issue to it. Neither father nor mother, husband nor children, have diverted her mind from her hobby, or led her to cease for a day from the prosecution of the task she set out to accomplish.... Miss Anthony is an American woman whom the better class of English people particularly, and of foreigners generally, will delight to honor, and one that her country-women are pleased to have represent them. She is, in point of character and ability, one of the few of her sex who have made themselves a name and a place in the history of her time....

She has had occasion to speak sharply, to lecture women severely, when in her heart she would have preferred to praise; but women love her dearly all the same, and trust her implicitly. In integrity, stainless honor and generosity of sentiment and of deed she has no peer. She has stood the storm of raillery and abuse she aroused, as the leader of the "shrieking sisterhood," with perfect equanimity, and while others were cowed by the ridicule which was hardest of all to bear, Miss Anthony busied herself using this opportunity to show to women the real opinion of them entertained by the stronger sex.

Only those who are aware of the great and beneficent changes made in the laws relating to the rights of property, for instance, can at all estimate the good accomplished by these brave women. Almost all the leaders in the movement are gone. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, both elderly women, now remain in the work, and Miss Anthony alone still labors with the old-time zeal and freedom. She is at her best mentally and physically, and is likely to live many years to follow up the work she is now doing. The best lesson that women can learn from her life is that success in any one thing is secured only by the sacrifice of many others, and that for a woman to reach the highest place in her chosen pursuit is for her to work with an eye single to it, counting it a privilege to forego pleasures and affections which tend to distract and divide attention. Miss Anthony knew this secret of success, as she has proven.

When the history of the reform work done in this country in this century is written, no individual laborer will have higher praise than that which belongs to Miss Anthony. Honest, sincere, tolerant and kind, she has won the homage of her adversaries; for while there is but a small minority of men and women who believe in woman suffrage, there are none who fail to pay tribute to the sterling qualities of this representative woman.

The Kansas City Journal said good-by in these graceful words: "Susan B. Anthony will celebrate her sixty-third birthday tomorrow, and in a few days will sail for England.... She goes abroad a republican queen—uncrowned to be sure, but none the less of the blood royal, and we have faith that the noblest men and women of Europe will at once recognize and welcome her as their equal. Fair winds waft her over the sea and home again!"

The two ladies sailed from Philadelphia on the morning of February 23, and a special dispatch to the New York Times thus announced their departure:

Miss Susan B. Anthony, accompanied by Miss Rachel Foster, embarked on the British Prince, of the American Steamship Line, at 9 o'clock this morning, for Liverpool. Notwithstanding the cold and cheerless weather, quite a number of persons stood patiently on the wharf, facing the raw and snow-laden air which blew from the river, waiting to see the steamer get under way and to catch a glimpse of the celebrated champion of woman's rights. A little before 10 o'clock Miss Anthony came out of her stateroom with several friends and, bidding them a final farewell, watched with sober countenance as they passed down the gang-plank. Among those present were Miss Mary Anthony, of Rochester, Miss Julia Foster, Miss Thomson, a sister of the first president of the Pennsylvania R. R.; Rev. Dr. Soule, formerly of Scotland; Mrs. M. Louise Thomas and Edward M. Davis....

Miss Anthony was attired in a black silk dress and wore a black velvet bonnet. A beaver-lined satin circular was drawn tightly about her form. She retired immediately to her stateroom, where a pleasant surprise awaited her in the shape of a handsome silk flag, the gift of a friend, which was suspended in a corner of the room. Her eyes rested upon the tasty and comfortable apartment, bearing numerous evidences of the kindly feeling and good wishes of her friends, with visible enjoyment and emotion.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] This comment applies with equal force to Albany today. It is the only city in the United States where Miss Anthony has not a standing invitation to a number of hospitable homes.

[6] For full report of debate see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 198.

[7] Miss Anthony, Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Jane Graham Jones remained over one day to appear before the House committee, presenting arguments in favor of abolishing the word "male" from the Constitution of Dakota before admitting it as a State.

[8] This national celebration of Miss Anthony's birthday by suffrage clubs was first suggested by Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, in her department, "Woman's Kingdom," in the Chicago Inter-Ocean.

[9] For full text of reports see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III., p. 263.

[10] Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Gougar, Miss Couzins, Mrs. Minor, Mrs. Saxon, Miss Hindman, Mrs. Shattuck, Mrs. Mason, Madame Neymann, Mrs. Blake and Miss Anthony.

[11] After the election some of the students of the State University placed an effigy of Miss Anthony in a coffin and with torches and pallbearers started in a funeral procession. They were met by another crowd of students who, to preserve the honor of the university, overpowered them and took the effigy away.

[12] It was on this trip that, as "Miss Anthony" seemed too formal and "Susan" too familiar, Miss Foster adopted the endearing title "Aunt Susan." After they returned and a few of the younger workers most closely associated with her began to use this name, Miss Anthony did not object; but when it came into general use and not only older women and comparative strangers, but men also, and the newspapers, fell into the habit of calling her "Aunt Susan," she was very much annoyed and never heard or saw the name without an inward protest.

[13] Among the letters was the following from Senator John J. Ingalls: "I see by the papers that you are about to depart for Europe. Though I do not sympathize with the opinions whose advocacy has made you famous, yet I am not insensible to the great value of the example of your courageous and self-denying labors to the cause of American womanhood. I hope that none but prosperous gales may follow your ship, that your visit may be happy, and that your life may be spared till your aspirations are realized."



CHAPTER XXXII.

MISS ANTHONY'S EUROPEAN LETTERS.

1883.

No pen so well as Miss Anthony's own, can describe her delightful tour abroad, and although her letters were dashed off while travelling from point to point, or at the close of a hard day's sight-seeing, and the entries in the diary are a mere word, they tell in a unique way her personal impressions. Because of limited space descriptions of scenery will be omitted in order to leave room for opinions of people and events.

ON BOARD THE BRITISH PRINCE, February 24.

MY DEAR MRS. SPOFFORD: Here we are at noon, Friday, steaming down Delaware Bay. We got along nicely until 3 P. M. yesterday, when we came to a standstill. "Stuck in the mud," was the report. There we lay until eight, when with the incoming tide we made a fruitless attempt to get over the bar; then had to steam back up the river to anchor, and lie there until nine this morning—twenty-four hours almost in sight of the loved ones! It is a break from all fastenings to friends to be thus cut loose from the wharf and wafted out into the waters. These long hours of delay have given me time to think of those left behind, and how very far short I have come of doing and saying all I should have done and said....

From the diary:

Feb. 24.—The weather lovely; saloon cozy and pleasant with piano, flowers and canaries. There are only seven passengers, among them a Catholic priest, a dear little three-year-old child and a baby. We sent twenty letters on shore, written during the day we have been detained.

Feb. 25.—Today dawns with no possibility of communicating with a soul outside the ship, a lonely feeling indeed; but I am determined to get all the good I can to mind and body out of this trip, and as little harm as possible.

Feb. 26.—I sit at the captain's right hand at table. The sea is perfectly smooth; I wonder if this broad expanse can be rolled up into mountains.

4 P.M.—The wind and waves are beginning to roar. The priest shows signs of surrender.

Mar. 2.—Sea calm and dishes no longer have to be fastened to table. It seems like freedom again. I can think of nothing beyond shipboard, can see no moves to be made when we reach Liverpool.

Mar. 4.—Winds fair, sea smooth, whole company at breakfast. Captain Burton read the church service. Rachel played the piano and led the singing.

ON BOARD THE BRITISH PRINCE, March 5.

MY DEAR SISTER MARY: At lunch the captain said, "I'll soon show you land! It will be Mizzenhead, the farthest southwest point of Ireland." This is the first pen put to paper since I wrote you at the Delaware breakwater, eleven days ago. Think of it, oh, ye scribbling fairies, almost two weeks and not a letter written by S. B. A.!

Well, we are thus far and have had no more than what the sailors call a "stiff breeze" and only two whiffs of that sort. Since Thursday the weather has been lovely—bright sun and crisp air. Rachel succumbed one night when the "stiff breeze" first opened upon us, and I felt a little squalmy. The next morning a sudden lurch of the ship took both feet from under me and I was flat on my back. The following day while I was lying on a seat, reading and half-dozing, the first I knew I was in a heap on the floor. Then I learned it wasn't safe to lie down without a board fence in front. Again, in the evening I had taken the one loose chair in the saloon, drawn it under a lamp and seated myself very complacently to read, when lo, I was pitched over as if propelled from a ten-pounder! Three times and out—all in rapid succession—taught me to trust not to myself at all, but always to something fast to the ship. I haven't lost a meal during the whole trip. Another time I should take a larger stock of oranges, lemons and other fruit.

3 P. M.—We have just been up on the bridge for a first sight of the Emerald Isle. So long as there was no immediate prospect of setting foot on land, I could get up no spirit to write or think. I have worn the old velvet-trimmed black silk dress right through, and it is pretty well salted. I should love to have Lucy and Louise and Maud along on this trip, with sister Mary, too. What a jolly lot of tramps we would make! Well, their one ray of hope is to "pull through" the free academy and get on their own feet. There is plenty of good in store for all who can bring themselves in line to get it. Holding a dish right side up to catch the shower is the work for each one of us. How much I do think and hope for the three nieces now entering womanhood. For Susie B. Jr., and little Anna O. and Gula, I shall think and hope by and by. As for the nephews, I do not forget them, but they'll fight their way through somehow, as have all boys before them....

Dinner is over and an hour's talk at table after it. The Englishman Mr. Mullinor, summed up: "Your country will come to ruin from such doctrines as you woman's rights folks advocate;" and I have put the case to him to the best of my sea-brain's ability. This is the very first time I have let my tongue loose. We expect to be in Liverpool tomorrow early, and then I will write you. Just take it for granted all is well with me, and I will try to do the same with you.

Miss Anthony found at Liverpool a cordial letter from Mrs. A. A. Sargent, whose husband was now United States Minister to Germany. She welcomed her to Europe, saying: "You always have the entree to our home and hearts. Come and stay as long as you will." A note from Mrs. Stanton to her "beloved Susan" said: "I came up to London the moment I heard of the arrival of the British Prince. To think of your choosing a 'Prince' when a 'Queen' was coming! I am on the tiptoe of expectation to meet you.... I write in the suffrage rooms surrounded with ladies."

A week later the diary records: "Left London at 10 A. M. for Rome, Rachel and self, also Hattie Daniels, Alice Blatch and Mrs. Fanny Keartland, five in all, three of the Eagle and two of the Lion, each glorying in her own nationality!"

ROME, NO. 75 VIA NAZIONALE, March 22.

MY DEAR SISTER: Here it is a whole month tomorrow since we took a last glimpse of each other and scarce a decent letter have I written you; but it is fearfully hard work to find the minutes. There is so much to tell, and the spelling and pronunciation of the names are so perfectly awful.... At Liverpool we drove two hours in the Princess and Sefton parks and then went to the city museum, where the most interesting things to us were the portraits of all the Bonapartes—men and women, old and young—Josephine's very lovely; and to the city library, which is free. There is also an immense free lecture hall, which was built for an aquarium but found impracticable, so it is an enormous circle, seated from the circumference down to the center, with a large platform at one side and every step and seat cut out of solid stone. Here the most learned men of the English colleges give free lectures, the city fund being ample to meet all expenses. The librarian, on hearing we were Americans, took great pains to show us everything. Of course when he said, "We have over 80,000 volumes," I asked, "Have you among them the History of Woman Suffrage, by Mesdames Stanton, etc., of America?" And lo, he had never heard of it!

Thursday morning we took train—second-class carriage—for London. Mrs. Stanton was at the station, her face beaming and her white curls as lovely as ever, and we were soon landed at our boarding-house. Lydia Becker came to dinner by Mrs. Stanton's invitation, so she was the first of England's suffrage women for us to meet. Friday afternoon we glanced into the House of Commons and happened to see Gladstone presenting some motion. Spent the evening chatting with Mrs. Stanton—a world of things to talk over....

Saturday we went again to Bayswater to see Mrs. Rose—found her very lonely because of the death of her devoted husband a year ago. She threw her arms around my neck and her first words were: "O, that my heart would break now and you might close my eyes, dear Susan!" She is vastly more isolated in England because of her non-Christian views than she ever was in America. Sectarianism sways everything here more now than fifty years ago with us.

That afternoon I left for Basingstoke, the new home of darling Harriot Stanton, now with Blatch suffixed. Her husband is a fine specimen of a young Englishman of thirty. Sunday morning he took me in a dog-cart through two gentlemen's parks, a pleasant drive through pasture and woodland, thousands of acres enclosed by a stone wall. When I said, "What a shame that all these acres should thus lie waste, while myriads of poor people are without an inch of ground whereon to set foot," he replied: "They would be no better off if all should be cut up into forty-acre farms and divided among the poor, for no man could possibly support a family upon one. The owners of these parks are actually reduced to poverty trying to keep them up." So you see it is of no use to talk of giving every Englishman a farm, when the land is so poor no one can make a living off of it. Of course this is not true of all England, but evidently its inhabitants must be fed from other countries. On our return I was conducted through the garden and green-house of Mr. Blatch's father, where I saw peach trees in blossom and grape vines budding. The tree-trunks were not larger than my arm and I exclaimed, "How many peaches can you get off these little trees?" "Why, last year, we had 250," said he. How is that by the side of our old farm harvest of 1,000 trees? And yet these English people talk as if they raised fruit!...

The next day I returned to London and Mrs. Stanton and I called on Rev. William Henry Channing at the West End, and had a two hours' chat with him.... He was very cordial and on our leaving said, "I can't tell you how grateful I am for this interview. You have my blessing and benediction;" so we were glad at heart. Mr. Channing loves America above all other countries and feels it was a mistake for him to have left it. His elder daughter is the wife of Edwin Arnold. March 12 we dined with the son-in-law of William Ashurst, the friend of Wm. Lloyd Garrison—Mr. Biggs, and his four daughters. Caroline Ashurst Biggs, the second, is the editor of the Englishwoman's Review and one of the leading suffrage women of England.



After dinner some twenty ladies and gentlemen came in and we had a delightful evening, but such a continual serving of refreshments!



Tuesday morning I went again to Mrs. Rose's and finding her bonneted and cloaked for a chair ride, I walked beside her, holding her hand, through Kensington Park. I hope and almost believe she will go back to America with me. I feel sure that we, who have not forgotten her early and wonderful work for woman and for freedom of thought, will do all in our power to smooth her last days.... That evening Rachel and I went to see Irving and Ellen Terry in Much Ado About Nothing. The painting and the lights and shadows of the scenery were lovely, and I suppose the acting was good, but I can not enjoy love and flirtation exhibited on the stage any more than off. All passional demonstrations seem to belong to the two concerned, not to other persons. The lovemaking, however, was cooler, more distant and more piquant than usual.

Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Rebecca Moore, our old Revolution correspondent, took me to a meeting at Mrs. Mueller's, about the Contagious Diseases Acts—fifty or sixty ladies present—was introduced, and several invited me to speak for them when I returned to London. Miss Rye, who has made between thirty and forty trips across the Atlantic with little girls, taking over more than 10,000 and placing them in good homes in Canada, was there and spoke. She said all her efforts could accomplish nothing in thinning out the more than 1,000,000 surplus women of the island. Not one seemed to dare speak out the whole of the facts and philosophy. Each promised, "I will not shock you by calling the names," etc. Mrs. Peter Taylor's reception that evening was an unusually brilliant affair. She is looked upon as the mother of the English movement, as Mrs. Stanton is of the American. She is a magnificent woman and acted the part of hostess most gracefully. Her husband is a member of Parliament. At eleven we went home and packed our trunks to be off for Rome on the morrow, half-regretting that we had planned to leave London....

ROME, March 23.

MY DEAR SISTER: It is noon—Good Friday—and just set in for a steady rain, so I will give you the goings, seeings and sayings of our company since leaving London.... We started from Victoria Station—second-class carriage, no sleeper—for a three days' and two nights' journey to Rome. It looked appalling, even to so old a traveller as myself, but I inwardly said, "I can stand it if the younger ones can." The crossing of the straits of Dover was rough, the sea dashing over the sides of the boat, but Rachel and I went through the two hours without a quaver. At Calais we had the same good luck as at London—a compartment of the car all to ourselves. Here we were to be settled without change for that night and the next day, so with bags and shawl-straps, bundles, lunch-baskets and a peck of oranges, we adjusted ourselves. We breakfasted at Basle, after having pillowed on each other for the night as best we could. Now we were in the midst of the Jura mountains, and all day long we wound up and down their snowy sides and around the beautiful lakes nestling at their feet—through innumerable tunnels, one of them, the St. Gothard, taking twenty-three minutes—over splendid bridges and along lovely brooks and rivers.

We arrived at Milan at 7:50 P. M., when even the bravest of our party voted to stop over twenty-four hours and try the virtues of a Christian bed. Rachel and I shared a large old-fashioned room with a soap-stone stove, where we had a wood-fire built at once. (Remember that all the houses have marble floors and stairs, and are plastered on the stone walls, so they seem like perfect cellars.) We had two single bedsteads (I haven't seen any other sort on the continent) with the same bedclothes covering both. Our big room was lighted with just two candles! We "slept solid" till 8 A. M., when Rachel got out her Italian phrase-book, rang the bell and ordered a fire and hot water.

After fairly good steak and coffee, we five began a day of steady sight-seeing.... In the evening we went to the station, and here found a wood-fire in a fireplace and monstrous paintings of Christ and the saints on the walls. All who had trunks had now to pay for every pound's weight. I had brought only my big satchel and shawl-strap. We were not so fortunate as to find a compartment to ourselves but had two ladies added to our number, while four or five men in the next one smoked perpetually and the fumes came over into ours. We growled but that availed nothing, as men here have the right of way. At Genoa the ladies left us—midnight—and two men took their places. These proved to be seafarers and could talk English, so we learned quite a bit from them. At ten we were halted and rushed in to breakfast. Sunday afternoon we reached the Eternal City and came direct to the Pension Chapman, tired and hungry, but later went to St. John's Cathedral to vespers.... After dinner we were glad to lay ourselves away. We have a pleasant room, with windows opening upon a broad court and lovely garden and fountain. Monday we drove around the city for bird's-eye views from famous points. Such wonders of ruins upon ruins!

Sunday Evening.—It is of no avail that I try and try to write-when the sight-seeing is done for the day I am too tired.... Last evening the Coliseum was illuminated—a weird, wonderful sight. Today, Easter Sunday, I have seen crowds of people reverently kissing St. Peter's big toe. Tomorrow we go to Naples for a week and then return and finish Rome.

NAPLES, March 27.

Here we are, Rachel and I, at the Pension Brittanique, far up a high hill, in a room overlooking the beautiful bay of Naples. It is lovely, lovely! The little island of Capri, the city, the bold shores and mountain setting—a perfect gem.... We have a little bit of wood-fire with the smallest sticks—twigs we should call them—two sperm candles to light our bedroom and no matches except what we furnish. But 8 o'clock is here and we are all to meet for breakfast....

Yesterday was a lovely May day, and our party drove to the village of Resina, which is built forty feet above the ruins of Herculaneum. There, with a guide, we descended a hundred steps and walked through the old theater, over the same stone stairs and seats which two thousand years ago were occupied by the gayest of mortals. Then we went to the ruins of Pompeii and ate our lunch under large old trees growing upon the debris left by the great eruption. We passed through the narrow streets, over stone pavements worn by the tread of long-buried feet, through palaces, public gardens and baths, temples, the merchants' exchange, customhouse and magnificent theater....

I have just received John Bright's splendid address before the 2,000 students of Glasgow University on being made Lord Rector. It fired my soul beyond all the ruins and all the arts in Rome or Naples. It is grand indeed, and reminds one of our own Wendell Phillips' address to the Harvard students two years ago.[14]

ROME, March 29.

To Madam Susan B. Anthony, of New York, U. S. A.

MADAM: We had the honor to announce your coming to Rome some three weeks ago in the Italian Times. While we ourselves have an impressive appreciation of your distinguished mental acquirements, yet we would wish to carry to our numerous English-speaking subscribers on this continent some testimony of your presence in our midst. Therefore we place our columns at your disposal, and will esteem the privilege of presenting to the public any topic your facile pen may write. To this end we will wait upon you or be pleased to see you at our sanctum. With much respect, we are, Madam, your obedient servants,

THE PROPRIETORS OF THE ITALIAN TIMES.

[Only English newspaper published in Italy.]

ROME, April 1.

DEAR BROTHER D. R.: We have climbed Vesuvius. One feels richly paid when the puffing and exploding and ascending of the red-hot lava meet the ears and eyes. The mountains, the Bay of Naples, the sail to Capri and the Blue Grotto are fully equal to my expectations.... The squalid-looking people, however, and their hopeless fate make one's stay at any of these Italian resorts most depressing. Troops of beggars beset one all along the streets and roads, and with tradesmen there is no honesty. For instance, a man charged some twenty francs for a shell comb, then came down to seven, six, five, and finally asked, "What will you give?" I, never dreaming he would take it, said, "two francs," and he threw the comb into the carriage.... Saturday we took the cars from Naples to Palermo. Every mountainside having a few seven-by-nine patches of soil in a place, is terraced and covered with grape vines and lemon trees, the latter now yellow with fruit. On many I counted twenty and thirty terraces, each with a solid stone wall to hold the earth in place. It is wonderful what an amount of labor it costs to earn even the little the natives seem to care for. Our hotel here is an old monastery, and on one side of the court is the cathedral with its grotesque paintings. One becomes fairly sickened with the ghastly spectacle of the dead Christ. It is amazing how little they make of the living Christ.

On Monday morning we drove back over that magnificent road, and took the train to Naples. In the afternoon we went to Lake Avernus and into the grotto of the sibyls, the entrance to Dante's Inferno. It was a dark, cavernous passage and with the flaring candles making the darkness only more visible, we could not but feel there was reason for the old superstition. The narrowness of the streets of Naples—and they are without the pretense of a sidewalk—leave the men, women and children, horses and carriages, funny little donkeys with their big loads, the cows and goats (which are each night and morning driven along and halted at the doors while the pint cupful, more or less, is milked to supply the people within) all marching along together in the filthy road, jostling each other at every step.

But we are back in Rome now and this forenoon we spent in the galleries of the Vatican. One is simply dazed with the wealth of marble—not only statuary, but stairs, pillars and massive buildings. We stop here till the 9th, then go to Florence.[15]

It is good for our young civilization to see and study that of the old world, and observe the hopelessness of lifting the masses into freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and integrity. How any American, any lover of our free institutions based on equality of rights for all, can settle down and live here is more than I can comprehend. It will be only by overturning the powers that education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The hope of the world is indeed in our republic; so let us work to make it a genuine democracy, where every citizen—woman as well as man—shall be crowned with the one symbol of equality—the ballot....

ROME, April 5.

MY DEAR SISTER: How these anniversary days of our dear mother's illness and death bring back to me everything, even at this distance and amid these strange surroundings. How she would have enjoyed these sights because of her knowledge and love of history. She could have told the Bible story of every one of these great frescoes. What a woman she would have been, could she have had the opportunities of education and culture which her granddaughters are having....

Tell Mrs. Lewia Smith her lovely piece of lace has been honored with the wearing in London and Rome several times and has been pronounced beautiful; but I prize it most of all for the giver's sake. No one but she would have trudged through the slush and rain to get those splendid names to that testimonial. Nothing which came to me gave so much pleasure as those signatures of my own townsmen and women, from President Anderson all the way to the end of the list.... This evening Rachel has gone to a friend's to study German so as to make our way with that nationality. What a jumble, that by just crossing an imaginary line one finds people who can't understand a word one says!

Last evening we heard the grand Ristori render a part of Dante's Inferno and a selection from Joan of Arc. Of course I couldn't understand a word she said, but her voice, her gestures, her expression told the whole story. Then the music, vocal and instrumental, was the softest and sweetest....

ZURICH, April 23.

MY DEAR SISTER: We spent Friday night at Milan—there took our last look at Italian cathedrals, as we did our first, and its own still holds highest place as to beauty. We left early next morning and very soon were among the Alps.... The eleven hours' stretch was tiresome and disgusting inside our compartment, with from three to five stalwart men puffing away at their pipes all day long, and at every station rushing out for a drink of wine or beer. Our only chance of a free breath was to open the window, and then all the natives were in consternation!

We reached Zurich at six and, after a splendid dinner of roast chicken, green peas and lettuce, took a cab and called on Elizabeth Sargent, who is studying medicine at the university, and found her very happy and glad to see us. In the afternoon we took a delightful drive, as it was too cold and misty for the lake excursion we had intended. The highest Alps are still lost to us by fog and clouds. After supper we called at the American consulate. Think of our government supporting a consul in most of the twenty-two cantons of Switzerland!

Tuesday.—At Munich. We saw princes and princesses galore out driving this afternoon, but not the king. We leave tomorrow morning for Nuremberg, and reach Berlin Saturday, and there I hope to rest at least a week—but then the Emperor William must be seen, and lots of other curiosities.... If I could command the money, as soon as each of our girls graduated, I would take her first on a tour of her own continent and then through the old world, before she settled down to the hard work of life either in a profession or in marriage. Thus she would have much to think of and live over, no matter how heavy might be the burdens and sorrows of her after life....

COLOGNE, May 8.

MY DEAR SISTER: We left Berlin yesterday morning after a delightful week with the Sargents. I do not believe our nation ever has been represented at any foreign court by such genuine republican women, in the truest and broadest sense, as are Mrs. Sargent and her daughters. Mr. Sargent, too, touches the very height of democratic principle. Their association with monarchial governments and subjects but makes them love our free institutions the more.[16]

Our last evening was spent with the Frau Dr. Liburtius—formerly Henriette Hirschfeldt—a practicing dentist in Berlin since 1869, who studied at the Philadelphia Dental College. No college in Germany will admit women. Frau Libertius is dentist for various members of the royal family as well as for the Sisters of Charity. She says there are no dental colleges in the world equal to those of America....

May 10.—At Worms—where Martin Luther made his glorious declaration for the right of private judgment. There is a magnificent monument in a beautiful square; Luther's is the central statue—a standing one; below, at the corners, are sitting Huss, Savonarola, Wycliffe and Peter Waldo, and on a still lower pedestal are four more worthies—one of them Melancthon.... We spent Tuesday at Cologne—visited the splendid cathedral and the church of St. Ursula. The latter contains the bones of 11,000 virgins martyred at Cologne in the fifth century. Whole broadsides of chapels are lined with shelves of skulls, which the noble ladies of the twelfth century partly covered with embroidery. Wednesday we took steamer up the Rhine at six in the morning and landed at Mayence at eight. It was a beautiful panorama, but not surpassing all others I have seen. The vine-clad hillsides, the ruins of the old castles (nothing like as many of them as I had thought) and the winding of the river were all very lovely. We visited the cathedral, the monuments of Gutenberg and Schiller, and then the fortress and the remains of a Roman monument erected nine years before Christ....

HEIDELBERG, May 11.

DEAR BROTHER D. R.: As I clambered among the ruins of Heidelberg Castle today, I wished for each of my loved ones to come across old ocean and look upon the remains of ancient civilization—of art and architecture, bigotry and barbarism. I am enjoying my "flying," though I would not again make such a rush, but I am getting a good relish for a more deliberate tour at some later day. All of life should not be given to one's work at home, whether that be woman suffrage, journalism or government affairs.

After being perpetually among people whose language I could not understand, it was doubly grateful to be in the midst of not only my countrymen but my dearest friends, and I enjoyed their society so much that I almost forgot there were any wonders to be seen in Berlin. But we did make an excursion to Potsdam—a jolly company of us, Mr. and Mrs. Sargent and their gifted daughter Ella, also the professor of Greek in your Kansas State University, Miss Kate Stephens. She interpreted the utterances of the ever-present guides, whose jabber was worse than Greek.

At Potsdam we were shown the very rooms in which Frederick the Great lived and moved and had his being, plotted and planned to conquer his neighbors. In the little church are myriads of tattered flags, taken in their many wars, and two great stone caskets in which repose the bodies of Frederick the Great and his father, Frederick William, peaceful in death, however warlike in life. We also visited the new palace where the present Emperor spends the summer. We saw parlors, dining-rooms, bedrooms, the plain, narrow bedstead the Emperor sleeps upon, the great workshop, in which are maps and all sorts of material for studying and planning how to hold and gain empires. I even peered into the kitchen and saw the pitchers, plates, coffee-pots and stew-pans. It was my first chance of a real mortal living look of things, so I enjoyed it hugely. There are rooms enough in these palaces for an army of people. All of these magnificent displays of wealth in churches, palaces and castles, citadels, fortifications and glittering military shows of monarchial governments, only make more conspicuous the poverty, ignorance and degradation of the masses; and all pleasure in seeing them is tinged with sadness.

From the diary for May:

12.—Showering, but I walked up the mountain to pay a last visit to Heidelberg Castle, the most magnificent ruin in Germany. Its ivy-covered towers always will be pictured in my memory.

13.—At Strasburg. We have driven over the city, looked at the wonderful fortifications and explored the great cathedral with its famous clock. We heard the grand organ and saw 250 priests conduct the services before an audience of 2,000 people, nine-tenths women. Then to St. Thomas' church and the monument to Marshal Saxe.

14.—Left for Paris and had a beautiful ride through Alsace and Lorraine, the lost kingdoms of France. It made me sad all day; I wanted them returned to their own mother country. Theodore Stanton and his wife Marguerite met us at the station.

15.—Madam de Barron has invited me to be her guest while here. Such a delightful home and intelligent hostess! I have a charming room, and this morning the sun is shining bright and warm and the robins are singing in the trees. My continental breakfast—rolls, butter and coffee—was sent to my room and, for the first time in my life, I ate it in bed. What would my mother have said?

16.—Went to grand opera last night; magnificent house, scenery, toilets, equipages; but with my three "lacks," a musical ear, a knowledge of French and good eyesight, I could not properly appreciate the performance.

17.—Theodore took me to the Chamber of Deputies to see how Frenchmen look in legislative assembly—very like Americans. Then we called on friends at the American Exchange and the Hotel Normandie, and I was too tired to go to U. S. Minister Morton's reception at night.

22.—Called and had a good chat with Charlotte B. Wilbour, of New York; called also on Grace Greenwood; visited the Hotel des Invalides and walked in the gardens.

23.—Theodore and Marguerite took me to St. Cloud by boat and back on top of tram-car. Delightful!

27.—Today, Sunday, we went to Pere la Chaise and saw great crowds of Communists hanging wreaths on the wall where hundreds of their friends were shot down in 1871—a sorrowful sight.

28.—At noon we went to the College of France to witness the last honors to Laboulaye, the scholar and Liberal. Saw his little study and sadly watched the priests perform the services over his coffin.

29.—Left Paris at 9 A. M., Theodore and his little Elizabeth Cady going with me to the station. The parks and forests are green and lovely, the homes cozy and pretty, France is a beautiful country. I have enjoyed the last three months exceedingly, but I am very, very tired; and yet it is a new set of faculties which are weary, and the old ones, so long harped upon, are really resting.

To Miss Susan B. Anthony, PARIS.

MADAM: Having been informed of your arrival in Paris, I take the liberty of writing to ask from your courtesy the favor of a short interview. I have since several years heard of all the work you have done in behalf of womankind, and I need not say how happy I would be to meet a person who has so often been praised in my presence. Hoping you will forgive my intrusion, and have the great kindness to let me know when I may have the honor to call, I am, madam, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

[Of Le Soir.] A. SALVADOR.

PARIS, May 20.

MY DEAR MRS. SPOFFORD: I have just come from a call on Mademoiselle Hubertine Auclert, editor of La Citoyenne. I can not tell you how I constantly long to be able to speak and understand French. I lose nearly all the pleasure of meeting distinguished people, because they are as powerless with my language as I with theirs. We called also on Leon Richer, editor of La Femme. He thinks it inopportune to demand suffrage for women in France now, when they are yet without their civil rights. I wanted so much to tell him that political power was the greater right which included the less....

Miss Foster has gone to London for presentation at Court. She had the "regulation" dress made in Berlin—cream-white satin, low neck, no sleeves at all, and a four-yard train!... I have not decided when I shall go home, but before many months, for I long to be about the work that remains undone. The fact is, I am weary of mere sight-seeing. Amidst it all my head and heart turn to our battle for women at home. Here in the old world, with its despotic governments, its utter blotting out of woman as an equal, there is no hope, no possibility of changing her condition, so I look to our own land of equality for men, and partial equality for women, as the only one for hope or work.

PARIS, May 24.

MY DEAR RACHEL: I am glad to hear that you were not cheated out of teetering through the palace halls in front of the princess, and that you are not utterly prostrated by it.... I attended the suffrage meeting last evening, and heard and saw several men speak—well, I inferred from the cheering and shouting of "bravo!"

This afternoon I visited the tomb of Napoleon. It surpasses every mausoleum I have ever seen, not excepting that of Frederick the Third and Queen Louise in Berlin. It is well that his memory should be thus honored, for had he been born a hundred years later, when the march of civilization had pointed to some other goal to gratify his great nature than that of bloody conquest of empire, I believe he would have stood at the head of those who strive to make free and independent sovereigns of all men and all women. Everywhere here are reminders of the ravages of war, the madness of ignorance and unreason. I want to get away from them and their saddening associations. You will think I am blue. So I am, from having lived a purposeless life these three months. I don't know but the women of America, myself in particular, will be the greater and grander for it, but I can not yet see how this is to be....

LONDON, June 7.

MY DEAR SISTER: For the hundredth time I am going to beg you to shut up the house and come over here. It does seem as if now we two sisters, left so alone, ought to be able to travel and enjoy together. You can not know how I long to have you with me; it hurts every minute to think of you treading round and round, with never a moment of leisure or enjoyment. Surely you have given a mother's love and care to our nieces for eight years, and now you can let them go out from under your eye....

Rachel and I came up from Basingstoke on Sunday to attend a small reception at Mrs. Jacob Bright's. Her husband has championed woman suffrage in Parliament for years, and she has led the few who have dared say, "And married women, too, should have the franchise." When the powers that be forbade her to include married women in the Parliamentary Suffrage Bill now pending, Mrs. Bright withdrew and started a bill for their property rights, which was passed last session and is now in force.



Monday morning we went to Bedford Park and spent two hours at Moncure D. Conway's. His charming wife read us what a delegate here from the American Unitarians says of Emerson, Alcott, Frothingham and George Ripley—that all are wearying of their early theories and theologies and returning to the old faith. Today I had an hour with William Henry Channing, and he virtually told me this was true of himself! I exclaimed: "Do you mean to say that you have returned to the belief in the immaculate conception of Jesus and in the miracles—that you no longer explain all these things as you used to do in your Bible readings at Rochester?" He replied: "I never disbelieved in miracles. Man's levelling and tunnelling the mountains is a miracle." Well, I was stunned and left. Even if all these grand men, in old age, or when broken in body, decide that the conclusions of their early and vigorous manhood were false, which shall we accept as most likely to be true—the strong or the weakened thought? It is very disheartening if we are so constituted that with our deepest, sincerest study we grope and dwell in error through our threescore and ten, and after those allotted years find all we believed fact to be mere hallucination. It is—it must be—simply the waning intellect returning to childish teachings.

That evening we visited the House of Commons and heard several members speak as we peeped through the wire latticework of the ladies' cage. The next afternoon we attended a large reception at Mrs. J. P. Thomasson's, daughter of Margaret Bright Lucas and wife of a member of Parliament. There we met the leading suffrage women. Wednesday morning I went to Tunbridge Wells—thirty miles—to see Mrs. Rose, who is trying the waters there in hope of relief.... I should have told you that I dined on Sunday with Margaret Lucas—John Bright's sister—and lunched today with Mrs. Mellen, mother-in-law of General Palmer, of Colorado, president of the Rio Grande R. R.—an elegant and wealthy woman.

LONDON, June 22.

MY DEAR SISTER: ... Sunday morning we went to hear Stopford Brooke, a seceder from the established church. I could see no diminution in the poppings up and down, nor in the intonings and singsongs, but when, after a full hour of the incantations, he came to his sermon on the Christian duty of total abstinence, he gave us a splendid one. Before commencing he said that, from his request the previous Sunday, twenty members out of his congregation of 600 came to the meeting to form a Church Total Abstinence Society, and ten of those made special and earnest protest against the formation of such a society! Can you imagine the chilliness of the spiritual air in that church as he laid down the Christian's duty of denying himself that he might save his fellow who had not the power to drink moderately?

Afterwards, we called on Hon. William D. Kelley, wife and daughter Florence, of Philadelphia. We also attended a reception at Emily Faithfull's and met a number of nice people; then took underground railway for Bedford Park and had tea with Eliza Orme, England's first and only woman lawyer—or as nearly one as she can be and not have passed the Queen's Bench. Her mother was lovely and so proud of her daughter and glad to see me. Miss Orme has a partner, Miss Richardson, who is a member of the London school board and has visited our schools in America. She says London has none, public or private, to compare with those of the United States.

The next morning we went to hear Laura Curtis Bullard read her sketch of Mrs. Stanton, which is to go into Famous Women, the same book for which Mrs. Stanton is writing me up. In the afternoon we called on Miss Mueller, who purchased a house and lives in it that she may be a householder, as is necessary to hold office. She too is a member of the school board. Miss Mueller insisted that I should talk to the ladies there, about thirty of them, and so I did, sitting under the trees in her garden, where we had our tea. Thence we went to the women's suffrage parlors and met some fifty or sixty, and then to the Albemarle Club of both ladies and gentlemen, the only one of the kind in London. Then came a meeting at the Somerville Club—all ladies. A paper was read on the topic, "Sentiment is not founded on reason and is a hindrance to progress," and followed by a bright discussion, in which both Rachel and I were invited to take part. A pretty full afternoon and evening!

Wednesday morning I studied on my speech for the 25th under the auspices of the National Women's Suffrage Society. Harriot has so divided the subject, that Mrs. Stanton is to take the educational, social and religious departments, and S. B. A. the industrial, legal and political. That evening we went to the Court Theater with Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, another member of the London school board. The nights are all days here now—daylight till after 9 o'clock and again at 3. Rachel and I lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bright, and had a splendid visit; then went to the school board meeting.



Saw there five of the seven women members, among them Miss Helen Taylor, stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill, and the senior woman member of the board. Today I spent an hour with Mrs. Lucas, sister of John and Jacob Bright, and this afternoon Rachel and I are going to a Women's Poor Law Guardian meeting, at which Mrs. Lucas is to preside and other ladies to speak....

Just back from the meeting. In all England there are thirty-one women poor law guardians. There are 19,000 of the guardians elected and 1,000, mainly clergymen, are honorary. They have over 1,000,000 paupers to look after. The secretary, Mrs. Chamberlain, stated that in her section of London there were 16,000. The guardians overlook everything about the workhouses and asylums, get no pay, and yet the public hesitates to put women on the board. One man stirred up the handful present by saying, "suffrage not only for widows and spinsters, but for married women."

June 26.—Well, the ordeal is over and everybody is delighted. Moncure D. Conway said: "I have learned more of American history from your speech than I ever dreamed had been made during the past thirty years." Even the timid ones expressed great satisfaction. Mrs. Stanton gave them the rankest radical sentiments, but all so cushioned they didn't hurt. Mrs. Duncan McLaren came down from Edinburgh and Mrs. Margaret Parker from Dundee. Rachel said I made a good statement of the industrial, legal and political status of women in America. We went to tea with Mrs. Jacob Bright; then I took dinner with Mrs. Stanton at Mrs. Mellen's, getting up from table at 9:15 P. M.



Saturday Rachel and I drove four hours in Miss Mueller's carriage and called on Lady Wilde, a bright, quaint woman. Sunday morning I went to Friends' meeting and had a look at John Bright, though I was not sure it was he until after the meeting was over; then he was gone, and I not introduced to him! In the afternoon I called on Miss Jane Cobden, daughter of Richard Cobden, a charming woman. Yesterday I presented her with a set of our History in memory of her noble father, and for her own sake also. I will not foreshadow the coming days but they are busy indeed. You will see that the Central Committee have put both my name and Mrs. Stanton's on the card for the meeting of July 5....

LONDON, June 28.

MY DEAR SISTER: It is now just after luncheon and at 4 o'clock we are to be at Mrs. Jacob Bright's reception, tomorrow evening at one at Mrs. Thomasson's, which she gives to friends for the special purpose of meeting Stanton and Anthony, and Saturday at Frances Power Cobbe's—and so we go. Yesterday morning Miss Frances Lord—a poor law guardian—escorted us through Lambeth workhouse. It has 1,000 inmates and 700 more in the infirmary, and gives out-door relief to 2,000 besides.

[Jacob Bright presided over the Prince's Hall meeting, and William Woodall over that at St. James' Hall.[17] All of the prominent newspapers in Great Britain contained editorials on the meetings, and noted especially the addresses of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, speaking of them in a dignified and respectful manner.]

LONDON, July 13.

MY DEAR SISTER: My last letter was mailed the 3d. That afternoon I was at Rebecca Moore's reception. We dined at Miss Mueller's and afterwards went to Horn's assembly rooms to a suffrage meeting. Her sister Eva, wife of Walter McLaren, M.P., was one of the speakers.... At 9 P. M., we went to a Fourth of July reception at Mrs. Mellen's, given in honor of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, and a brilliant affair it was. About 150 were there; she had elegant refreshments; and the young American girls gave songs, recitations, violin music, etc. Grace Greenwood recited her "Mistress O'Rafferty"—a woman's rights poem in Irish brogue—very rich and racy; her daughter Annie sang, also Mrs. Carpenter, of Chicago; Kate Hillard, of Brooklyn, Adelaide Detchon, the actress, and Mildred Conway recited; Frank Lincoln impersonated; Nathaniel Mellen sang a negro jubilee melody; Maude Powell played the violin. She is not fifteen yet and is a charming player. The company did not disperse until after one.

July 5, drove to Mrs. Mellen's to a 10 o'clock breakfast, and worked on Rachel's report of my Prince's Hall speech—you'll find it in full in the Englishwoman's Review. In the evening Mrs. Thomasson gave a splendid dinner-party, and afterwards took us all in carriages to the St. James' Hall suffrage demonstration, where there was a fine audience of about 2,000.... Next morning I went to a meeting of the suffrage friends from various towns who had come up for the demonstration. At 8 P. M. Mrs. McLaren took me to the House of Commons, to witness Mr. Hugh Mason present the Women's Suffrage Bill; so I heard all the speeches pro and con, up to 1:30 A. M., and how tired I was! Mr. Jacob Bright's was the strongest and most earnest.

The morning of July 7, at the suffrage rooms, I heard strong protests against the way Mr. Mason disclaimed all intention of enfranchising married women. He carried the matter too far even for the most timid. In the afternoon, we went to the Somerville Club, and Rachel spoke beautifully on the need of union and co-operation among women. I followed her, and Mrs. McLaren moved a vote of thanks.... Rachel left for Antwerp this evening, to meet her mother and sister, and I returned to my room, lonesome enough. Sunday I lunched with Mrs. Lucas and Mrs. McLaren. I had calls from three factory-women, who told a sad story of the impossibility of getting even a dollar ahead by the most frugal and temperate habits.

Have I told you that I have a new dark garnet velvet? I wore it with my point lace at Mrs. Mellen's reception on the Fourth, and the India shawl I have worn today for the first time.... Tuesday I went with Mrs. Lucas to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham to a great national temperance demonstration. More than 50,000 people passed the gates at a shilling apiece, and we saw a solid mass of 5,000 boys and girls from all parts of the kingdom seated in a huge amphitheater, singing temperance songs—a beautiful sight. Then in another part of the palace was an audience of 2,000 listening to speeches. Among the speakers was Canon Wilberforce, a grandson of the great Abolitionist but a degenerate one. He said the reason the temperance movement was now progressing so rapidly was because the persons who led it were praying people, and that the Lord had willed it, and all depended on whether it was kept in the Lord's hands—if not, then it would fall back like the old Washingtonian movement in America. Mrs. Lucas was very wroth, and so was I. He never spoke of woman except as "maiden aunt" or "old grandmother," and advised the boys to take a little wine for the stomach's sake.

At 6 o'clock we went to Miss Mueller's where I remained until today. She took me to the Gaiety Theater to see Sarah Bernhardt. What a magnificent actor! I never saw any man or woman who so absolutely buried self out of sight and became the very being personated. Though I couldn't understand a single word, I enjoyed it all until the curtain fell at half-past eleven. I was tired beyond telling, but felt richly repaid by the seeing. She must be master of her divine art thus to impress one by action alone. Today Mrs. McLaren invites me to dine at her son's, Charles McLaren, M.P. All this is written in a hurry but is perhaps better than nothing. It is so difficult to clutch a moment to write.

LONDON, July 19.

MY DEAR RACHEL: ... I am to attend a suffrage meeting at the Westminster Palace Hotel Hall this afternoon, and tomorrow at 10:25 A. M. I start for Edinburgh with Mrs. Moore. I am bound to suck all the honey possible out of everybody and everything as they come to me or I go to them. It is such unwisdom, such unhappiness, not to look for and think and talk of the best in all things and all people; so you see at threescore and three I am still trying always to keep the bright and right side up. I am expecting a great ferment at the meeting today, for those who agree with Mrs. Jacob Bright have asked Mrs. Stanton to confer with them about what they shall do now. She advises them to demand suffrage for all women, married and single; but I contend that it is not in good taste for either of us to counsel public opposition to the bill before Parliament....

I wrote you about Miss ——. She is settled in the conviction that she never will marry any man—not even the one with whom she has had so close a friendship for the past ten years. She feels that to do the work for the world which she has mapped out she must eschew marriage, accepting platonic friendship but no more. I tell her she is giving her nature a severe trial by allowing herself this one particular friend, that if he does not in the end succeed in getting her to marry him, it will be the first escape I ever have heard of. She is a charming, earnest, conscientious woman, and I feel deeply interested in her experiment.

[After being royally entertained in London and making many little trips into the beautiful country around, Miss Anthony left for Edinburgh July 20, carrying with her many pleasant remembrances of friends.]

EDINBURGH, July 22.

MY DEAR SISTER: Here I am in Huntley Lodge, the delightful home of Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol, whose name we so often used to see in the Liberator and the Anti-Slavery Standard, and of whom we used to hear from Mr. Phillips and others who had visited England. We had a most cordial welcome from Mrs. Nichol—a queenly woman. She is now seventy-seven, and lives in this handsome house, two miles from the center of the city, with only her servants....

Mrs. Nichol has gone to her room to rest and Mrs. Moore and I are writing in the little, sunny southeast parlor. I have an elegant suite of three rooms, the same Mr. Garrison occupied when he visited here in 1867 and in 1877. Mrs. Nichol is one of the few left of that historic World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840. We are going to a "substantial tea" with Dr. Agnes McLaren, daughter of Duncan McLaren. She is very bright—spent four years in France studying her profession—has a good practice, takes a house by herself, and invites to it her friends. So many young Englishwomen are doing this, and indeed it is a good thing for single women to do.

The suffrage society—Eliza Wigham, president, Jessie M. Wellstood, secretary—has invited a hundred or more of the friends to an afternoon tea on Tuesday next in honor of my visit, and I am to make a brief speech, so what to say and how to say it come uppermost with me again....



THE RAVEN HOTEL, DROITWICH, August 5.

MY DEAR FRIEND SUSAN B. ANTHONY: I have often wished to write thee since we parted in London, my heart has been so full of loving thought. It has been a greater trial than I can describe that I have been denied the pleasure of receiving thee in my home in Edinburgh. If it had been only for an hour, I should have looked back on that hour as one of great privilege. But even if we should not meet again, I have had a pleasure which seems almost like a dream to me, in having made the personal acquaintance of thyself and dear Mrs. Stanton....

That thou shouldst have been on the 1st of August with the Elizabeth Pease of those grand anti-slavery times, revived in me the thought I expressed in moving a vote of thanks to thee and Mrs. Cady Stanton for the noble addresses you gave at the Prince's Hall Meeting in London; ... that you had been brought here to give us the hand of rejoicing fellowship; and that it gave me great faith to believe the God of Justice was leading us on, and had brought England and America together by your presence amongst us at this most critical and hopeful time of our agitation....

I have addressed thee in the dear singular person, because it seemed to me in harmony with the noble simplicity of thy character, and also more affectionate—just as I feel toward thee. Believe me, dear friend—I love so to call thee—thine very affectionately,

PRISCILLA BRIGHT MCLAREN.

[The diary notes many teas and luncheons in Edinburgh, drives to Melrose Abbey, Holyrood Palace, Roslyn Castle, to the celebrated monuments, the old cathedrals and the university; calls from distinguished professors and those interested in philanthropic movements, visits to public institutions, and lovely gifts from the new friends. Every day of the month was filled with pleasant incidents. The scenery through the lake and mountain regions Miss Anthony found so beautiful that, although there was a steady downpour of rain for days, she sat on the outside of boat or stage in order not to miss a moment of it. She hunted up the old home of Thomas Clarkson but could not find there a person who ever had heard of him. She went also to the Friends' meeting house at Ulverston, presented to the Society by George Fox and completed in 1688. To her such spots as these were more interesting and hallowed than towering castles and vine-clad abbeys.]

BALLACHULISH HOTEL, August 13.

MY DEAR SISTER: Miss Julia Osgood and I are here, waiting for sunshine.... While in Edinburgh Mrs. Nichol drove us out to Craigmillar Castle, where I saw the very rooms in which Queen Mary lived. We bought for a shilling a basket of strawberries plucked—no, "pulled"—the old man who sold them said, from the very garden in which berries and vegetables were "pulled" for Queen Mary three hundred years ago. One evening Professor Blackie, of the Edinburgh University, dined with Mrs. Nichol. At my reception he had said he did not want to "see refined, delicate women going down into the muddy pool of politics," and I asked him if he had ever thought that, since the only places which were too filthy for women were those where men alone went, perhaps they might be so from lack of women. At dinner Mrs. Nichol rallied him on the report that he had been converted, and he admitted that it was true; so as he was leaving I said, "Then I am to reckon an Edinboro' professor among my converts?" He seized my hand and kissed it, saying, "I'll seal it with a kiss." Don't be alarmed—he is fully eighty years of age but blithe and frolicsome—sang and acted out a Scotch war-song in the real Gaelic.

On August 1 we saw 200 medical students capped—and not a woman among them, because the powers ruled that none should be admitted. That afternoon we called on Professor Masson, a great champion of co-education. We took tea with Mrs. Jane and Miss Eliza Wigham. The stepmother, now eighty-two, was Jane Smeale in 1840. In their house have visited Henry C. Wright, Parker Pillsbury, and of course Mr. Garrison. Mrs. Nichol went with us to Melrose by rail, from which we drove to Abbotsford....

Tuesday at 2 o'clock Miss Osgood and I landed at Stirling. At 4:30 we reached Callander, where I found no trunk, and not a man of them could give a guess as to its whereabouts. They give you no check here, but just stick a patch on your trunk. I had expected not to find it at every stop, and now it was gone for sure; but the station-master was certain he could find it and forward it to me, so he wrote out its description and telegraphed in every direction. Meanwhile we went to a hotel for luncheon and there in the hall was my trunk! Nobody knew why or how it got there and all acknowledged our American check system superior. I was raging at their stupidity, and no system at all, but laughingly said, "You ought to send this trunk free a thousand miles to pay for my big scold at you." The man good-naturedly replied, "Where will you have it sent?" I answered "Oban," and he booked it.

At 6 o'clock we took the front seat with the driver on a great high stage which we mounted by a ladder—they call the stage the "machine"—and drove a few miles to the Trossachs Hotel, past Loch Achray and Loch Vennachar.... While the rain rested this noon I took a walk up the ravine and it seemed very like going up the mountain at Grandfather Anthony's. Indeed, there is nothing here more beautiful than we have in America, only everything has some historic or poetic association....

BRUNTSFIELD LODGE, WHITEHOUSE LOAN, EDINBURGH, August 23.

MY DEAR SISTER: Here am I, back in Edinboro' again, at Dr. Jex-Blake's delightful home—at least one hundred and fifty years old, with an acre or more of garden all enclosed with a six-foot wall. Lodge means a walled-in house; loan means lane, and the street took its name from a white house which two hundred and fifty years ago stood in this road. Every day the doctor has taken me a long and beautiful ride in her basket-carriage, driving her own little pony, White Angel, or her hay horse, while her boy-groom rides in his perch behind. Today she drove me through Lord Rosebery's park of thousands of acres. It is lovely as a native forest—the roads macadamized all through—and a palace-like residence set deep within....

AMBLESIDE, August 27.

MY DEAR SISTER: Last Thursday I left Edinburgh for Penrith, which has a fine view of the lake and the hills beyond. Next morning I took steamer at Pooley Bridge. The trip the whole length of the lake was beautiful, but can not compare with Lake George—indeed, nothing I have seen equals that—but the hills (mountains, they call them here), the water and the sky all were lovely. At Patterdale I had a cup of tea, with bread and butter and the veritable orange marmalade manufactured at Dundee. Thence I took a stage over Kirkstone Pass, and walked two miles up the hills to a small hotel with a signboard saying it is the highest inhabited house in England, 1,114 feet above the sea—not very much beside Denver's 6,000 and others in Colorado 10,000 or 12,000. Arrived at Ambleside to find the hotel overflowing, so they sent me to a farmer's house where I had a good bed, splendid milk and sweet butter. Saturday morning I went by coach to Coniston, then railway to Furness Abbey, a seven-hundred-year-old ruin of magnificent proportions. After four hours there, I took a train to Lakeside and then steamer up Lake Windermere back to Ambleside. The hotel still being full, "the Boots," as they call the porter or runner, found me lodgings at a private house, where I am now. It is the tiniest little stone cottage, but they have a cow, so I am in clover. My breakfasts consist of a bit of ham, cured by the hostess, a boiled egg, white and graham bread with butter and currant jam, and a cup of tea.

Saturday evening I strolled out and entered the gate of Harriet Martineau's home. On the terrace I met the present occupants, Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Hills. They invited me to call in the morning, when they would be happy to show me over the house. In naming the hour they said: "We never go to church—we are Liberal Friends—real Friends." At that I immediately felt at home with them. I called and spent two hours sitting and chatting in the drawing-room where Harriet Martineau received her many distinguished guests, and in the kitchen saw the very same table, chairs and range which were there when she died, and sitting on the doorsill was the same black-and-yellow cat, said to be fourteen years old now. The Hills invited me to 5 o'clock tea, which we took in the library, where Miss Martineau used to sit and study as well as entertain her guests at dinner. It seemed impossible to realize that I was actually in her house. It is not large and is covered with ivy, which grows most luxuriantly everywhere. It fronts on a large field, much lower than the knoll on which it stands, and fine hills stretch off beyond. The old gardener, who has been here more than thirty years, still lives in a little stone cottage just under the terrace.



Mr. Hills is a great lover of America and its institutions. He is one of the very few I have met here who really love republicanism. Nearly every one clings to the caste and class principle, thinks the world can not exist if a portion of the people are not doomed to be servants, and that for the poor to have an ambition to rise and become something more than their parents makes them discontented. "Yes," I answer, "and that is just what I want them to be, because it is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better."...

DUBLIN, September 10.

MY DEAR SISTER: ... I stayed in Belfast some days, and visited the Giant's Causeway with Miss Isabella Tod, amidst sunshine and drenching showers; still it was a splendid sight, fully equal to Fingal's Cave. The day before, we went nearly one hundred miles into the country to a village where she spoke at a temperance meeting. Here we were guests of the Presbyterian minister—a cousin of Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune—and a cordial greeting he and his bright wife gave me. They have three Presbyterian churches in that one little village. All welcomed the woman speaker most kindly, but not a person could be urged to vote down the whiskey shops, as these are licensed by a justice of the peace, appointed by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who receives his appointment from the Queen of England!



So all she could ask was that every one should become a total abstainer. I do not see how they can submit to be thus voiceless as to their own home regulations.

Saturday I took tea with Mrs. Haslam, a bright, lovely "come-outer" from the Friends. She had invited some twenty or thirty to be present at eight, and I spoke, they asking questions and I answering. Among them were a son of the Abolitionist Richard D. Webb, and ever so many nephews and nieces. Eliza Wigham's brother Henry and his wife had come ten miles to be there.... This afternoon I am going to the common council meeting with Alfred Webb, who is a member and a strong Home Ruler. The question of electing their own tax collector is to be discussed.

CORK, September 16.

MY DEAR SISTER: ... Your heart would break if you were here to see the poverty and rags, and yet the people seem cheerful under it all. Something surely must be wrong at the root to bear such fruit. I have had an awfully "hard side of a board time" of ten hours in a third-class car, paying therefor just as much as I would on the N. Y. Central for a first-class ticket. I not only saved $4.25 by going third-class, but I saw the natives. Men, women, boys and girls who had been to the market towns with their produce were on the train, and to see them as they tumbled in toward evening, at town after town, one would think that whiskey and tobacco were the main articles they bought. Any number of men and boys, and at least four women, were drunk enough, and they brought bottles with them and added to their puling idiocy as they went on. Nothing short of a pig-sty could match the filth, but it is only in that class of cars that you see anything of the vast number of poor farmers and laborers. If they can not pay exorbitant rates, refined, educated men and women are thrust into pens and seated face to face with the smoking, drinking, carousing rabble. I have everywhere protested against this outrage and urged the women to demand that the railway companies should give them separate cars, with no smoking allowed....

LEAMINGTON, October 1.

MY DEAR RACHEL: ... I must have told you of my good times at Belfast with Miss Tod, who gave a reception for me and I had a welcome all round.

Miss Osgood met me at Cork, and we went by rail to Macroom. Tuesday morning we visited the convent, nuns' schools, and the poorhouse with 400 helpless mortals, old and young; then took an Irish jaunting-car, and were driven some forty miles through "the Gap" to Glengariff. It rained almost all the way, much to our disgust. Next morning we packed into two great stages with thirty or more others, and started for the lakes of Killarney; but soon the rain poured again, and as we were losing so much of the scenery we stopped half-way at Kenmare. We visited the convent and the Mother Abbess showed us every cranny. Thirty girls were at work on beautiful Irish point and Limerick lace. These nuns have 400 pupils, and give 200 of the poorest their breakfast and lunch—porridge and a bit of bread. At two we took stage again, the sky looked promising, but alas! for half an hour it fairly poured. Then it grew lighter, and we got very fine views of hills and dales. Killarney is lovely....