On February 11, Miss Anthony spoke in Cincinnati to an audience of 2,000, under the management of A. W. Whelpley, city librarian.[46] The Commercial Gazette commented: "Miss Susan B. Anthony had every reason for congratulation on the audience, both as to quality and quantity, which greeted her Sunday afternoon at the Grand Opera House. Her discourse proved to be one of the most entertaining of the Unity Club lectures this season, and if she did not succeed in gaining many proselytes to her well-known views regarding woman's emancipation, she certainly reaped the reward of presenting the arguments in an interesting and logical manner. Every neatly turned point was received with applause and that good-natured laughter that carries with it not a little of the element of conviction. As of old, this pioneer of the woman's cause is abundantly able to return sarcasm for sarcasm, as well as to present an array of facts in a manner which would do credit to the most astute of our politicians."

Miss Anthony was much gratified at the cordial reception given her in Cincinnati and the evident success of her speech, and Tuesday morning, with a happy heart, took the train for her western lecture tour. She settled herself comfortably, glanced over her paper and was about to lay it aside when her eye caught the word "Leavenworth." A hasty glance told her of the drowning the day before of Susie B. Anthony, while out skating with a party of schoolmates! Susie B., her namesake, her beloved niece, as dear as a daughter, and with many of her own strong characteristics—she was almost stunned. Telegraphing at once to cancel her engagements, she hastened to Leavenworth. Just six months before, Colonel and Mrs. Anthony had lost a little daughter, five years old, and now the sudden taking away of this beautiful girl in her seventeenth year was a blow of crushing force. She found a stricken household to whom she could offer but small consolation out of her own sorrowing heart. After the last services she attempted to fill her engagements in Arkansas, speaking in Helena, Fort Smith and Little Rock; at the last place being introduced to the audience by Governor James B. Eagle. She was so filled with sympathy for her brother and his wife that she gave up her other lectures and returned to Leavenworth, where she remained for two months, going away only for two or three meetings.

She lectured in Memorial Hall, St. Louis, March 5,[47] and a brilliant reception was given her at the Lindell Hotel. On March 9, she spoke at Jefferson City, where the Daily Tribune contained a full synopsis of her address, beginning as follows: "The hall of the House of Representatives was crowded last night as never before, with ladies and gentlemen—State officials, members of the general assembly, clerks of the departments and of the legislature, and all the students from Lincoln Institute.... Miss Anthony was received with applause, and plunged at once into the subject which for many years has made her name a household word in every English-speaking country on the globe."

Leavenworth was in the midst of an exciting municipal campaign and Colonel Anthony had been nominated for mayor by the Republicans. Miss Anthony made a number of speeches, at Chickering Hall, the Conservatory of Music, the different churches, meetings of colored people, etc. The night of the last great rally she writes in her diary: "It does seem as if the cause of law and order and temperance ought to win, but the saloon element resorts to such tricks that honest people can not match them." So it seemed in this case, and Colonel Anthony was defeated. The Republicans, both men and women, were divided amongst themselves with the usual results.

Her grief over the untimely death of Susie B. was still fresh, and in a letter to a friend who had just suffered a great bereavement, she said: "It is a part of the inevitable and the living can not do otherwise than submit, however rebellious they may feel; but we will clutch after the loved ones in spite of all faith and all philosophy. By and by, when one gets far enough away from the hurt of breaking the branch from its tree, there does, there must, come a sweet presence of the spirit of the loved and gone that soothes the ache of the earlier days. That every one has to suffer from the loss of loving and loved ones, does not make our anguish any the less."

To the sorrowing father she wrote after she returned home: "Can you not feel when you look at those lonely mounds, that the spirits, the part of them that made life, are not there but in your own home, in your own heart, ever present? It surely is more blessed to have loved and lost than never to have loved.... Which of us shall follow them first we can not tell, but if it should be I, lay my body away without the heartbreak, the agony that must come when the young go. Try to believe that all is well, that however misunderstood or misunderstanding, all there is clear to the enlarged vision. Whenever I have suffered from the memory of hasty or unkind words to those who have gone, my one comfort always has been in the feeling that their spirits still live and are so much finer that they understand and forgive."

Miss Anthony went from Leavenworth to Indianapolis for a few days' conference with Mrs. Sewall on matters connected with the National Suffrage Association and National Council of Women. She writes in her diary: "Mrs. Sewall introduced me to the girls of her Classical School as one who had dared live up to her highest dream. I did not say a word for fear it might not be the right one." From here she journeyed to Philadelphia, stopping, she says, "with dear Adeline Thomson, whose door is always open to those who are working for women;"[48] thence to New York for the State convention April 26.

The preceding evening a reception was tendered Miss Anthony at the Park Hotel, where she notes, "I wore my garnet velvet and point lace." This did not suit the correspondent of the Chicago Herald, who said: "Her futile efforts to adjust her train with the toe of her number seven boot, instead of the approved backward sweep of heel, demonstrated that she certainly was not 'to the manner born.'" He then continued to sneer at the suffrage women for "adopting the social elegancies of life inaugurated by Mrs. Ashton Dilke, at the council last winter;" evidently unaware that Miss Anthony had been wearing her velvet gown since 1883. But the same day the New York Sun had a long and serious editorial to the effect that "equal suffrage never would be successful until it was made fashionable." This illustrates how hard it is to please everybody, and also how prone men are to make a woman's work inseparable from her garments, always giving more prominence to what she wears than to what she says and does, and then censuring her because she "gives so much time and thought to her clothes." Even from far-off Memphis the Avalanche tumbled down on Miss Anthony for wearing point lace "when the women who wore their lives out making it were no better than slaves." Doubtless the editor abjured linen shirt-bosoms because the poor Irishwomen who bleach the flax are paid starvation wages. The Brooklyn Times also jumped into the breach and, in a column editorial, attempted to prove that "the ballot for woman is as superfluous as a corset for a man." Thus does the male mind illustrate its superiority!

On May 17, Miss Anthony addressed the Woman's Political Equality Club of Rochester, in the Unitarian church, which was crowded to its capacity. She spoke in Warren, O., May 21, the guest of Hon. Ezra B. Taylor and his daughter, Mrs. Upton. The next day the two ladies went to the Ohio State Convention at Akron and were entertained at the palatial home of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Miller. A dinner was given to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace and Rev. Anna Shaw by Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Schumacher.

A report went the rounds of the newspapers at this time saying that "Miss Anthony had renounced woman suffrage." It was started doubtless by some one who supposed her to be so narrow as to abandon a great principle because her brother had been defeated in a city where women had the suffrage. The Portland Oregonian having used this alleged renunciation as the basis for a leading editorial, the ladies of Tacoma, Wash., where women had been arbitrarily disfranchised by the supreme court, sent a telegram to Miss Anthony asking if the rumor were true. She telegraphed in reply: "Report false; am stronger than ever and bid Washington restore woman suffrage."

She went to Philadelphia to attend the wedding, June 21, of one of her family of nieces, who filled the place in her great heart which would have been given to her daughters, had she chosen marriage instead of the world's work for all womankind. When her sister Hannah had died years before, Miss Anthony had brought the little orphan, Helen Louise Mosher, to her own home, where she had remained until grown. For some time she had been a successful supervisor of kindergarten work in Philadelphia and today she was the happy bride of Alvan James, a prominent business man of that city.[49] Miss Anthony was pleased with the marriage and the young couple started on their wedding tour with her blessing.

In July a charming letter was received from Madame Maria Deraismes, president of the French Woman's Congress, conveying "the greetings of the women of France to the leader of women in America." On the Fourth Miss Anthony addressed a Grangers' picnic, at Lyons, held under the great trees in the dooryard of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Bradley, who were her hosts. One hot week this month was spent with Dr. Sarah A. Dolley, a prominent physician of Rochester, in her summer home at Long Pond. Early in August, with her niece Maud, she took a very delightful trip through the lake and mountain regions of New York. After a visit at Saratoga they went up Mount McGregor, and Miss Anthony writes in her diary: "Here we saw the room where General Grant died, the invalid chair, the clothes he wore, medicine bottles, etc.—very repulsive. If the grand mementoes of his life's work were on exhibition it would be inspiring, but these ghastly reminders of his disease and death are too horrible."

They spent a few days at the Fort William Henry Hotel on beautiful Lake George, and she says: "Several of the colored waiters formerly at the Riggs House recognized me the moment I entered the dining-room, and one of them brought me a lovely bouquet." They sailed through Lake Champlain to Montreal, stopping at the Windsor, visiting the grand cathedrals and enjoying the glorious view from the summit of the Royal mountain. Then they journeyed to the Berkshire hills and enjoyed many visits with the numerous relatives scattered throughout that region. At Brooklyn they were the guests of the cousins Lucien and Ellen Hoxie Squier.

Early in July Miss Anthony had accepted an invitation to address the Seidl Club, who were to give a luncheon at Brighton Beach, the fashionable resort on Coney Island. The invitation had been extended through Mrs. Laura C. Holloway, one of the editorial staff of the Brooklyn Eagle and a valued friend of many years' standing, who wrote: "Not nearly all our members are suffragists, but all of them honor you as a great and noble representative of the sex. You can do more good by meeting this body of musical and literary women than by addressing a dozen out-and-out suffrage meetings. You will find many old friends to greet you, and a loving and proud welcome from yours devotedly." She addressed the club August 30, after an elegant luncheon served to 300 members and guests. She selected for her subject, "Woman's Need of Pecuniary Independence," and her remarks were received with much enthusiasm. "Broadbrim's" New York letter thus describes the occasion:

The Seidl Club had an elegant time down at Coney Island this week, and dear old Susan B. Anthony addressed the members, many of whom are among the representative women of the land. It was the custom in years gone by for a lot of paper-headed ninnies, who write cheap jokes about mothers-in-law, to fire their paper bullets at Susan B. She has lived to see about one-half of them go down to drunkard's graves, and the other half are either dead or forgotten, while she today stands as one of the brightest, cheeriest women, young or old, to be found in our own or any other land. What a tremendous battle she has fought, what a blameless life she has led, rejoicing in the strength which enabled her to mingle with the weak and erring of her sex when necessary without even the smell of smoke on her garments. She made an address, and what an address it was, with more good, sound, hard sense in it than you would find in fifty congressional speeches, and how the women applauded her till they made the roof ring! Susan B. Anthony was by all odds the lioness of the day.

A few days were given to Mrs. Stanton, who was spending the summer with her son Gerrit and his wife at Hempstead, L. I., and they prepared the call for the next national convention. She reached home in time to speak on September 9 at Wyoming, where she was a guest at the delightful summer home of Mrs. Susan Look Avery for several days, as long as she could be persuaded to stay. She then hastened back to New York to visit Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, president of Sorosis, for a day or two, and arrange National Council affairs, and down to Philadelphia to plan suffrage work with Rachel Foster Avery.[50] Just as she was leaving she received a letter from Margaret V. Hamilton, of Ft. Wayne, announcing that her mother, Emerine J. Hamilton, had bequeathed to Miss Anthony for her personal use $500 in bank stock, a testimonial of her twenty years of unwavering friendship. While grieved at the loss of one whose love and hospitality she had so long enjoyed, she rejoiced in the thought that from the daughters she still would receive both in the same unstinted degree.

September 27 saw her en route for the West once more and by October 1 she was at Wichita, ready for the Kansas State Convention. The Woman's Tribune had said: "It is the greatest boon to the president of a State convention to have the presence and counsel of Miss Anthony." At this meeting the committee reported a set of resolutions beginning, "We believe in God," etc., when she at once protested on the ground that "the woman suffrage platform must be kept free from all theological bias, so that unbelievers as well as evangelical Christians can stand upon it."

The 10th of October Miss Anthony, fresh, bright and cheery, reported for duty at the Indiana State Convention held at Rushville. On October 14, strong and vigorous as ever, she announced herself at Milwaukee, ready for the Wisconsin State Convention, where she spoke at each of the three days' sessions. In one of her addresses here she said that she did not ask suffrage for women in order that they might vote against the liquor traffic—she did not know how they would vote on this question—she simply demanded that they should have the same right as men to express their opinions at the ballot-box. Immediately the report was sent broadcast that Miss Anthony had said "as many women would vote for beer as against it."

Then down to Chicago she journeyed to talk over the "Isabella Memorial" with her cousin, Dr. Frances Dickinson, who was a prime factor of this movement. While there she had a charming visit with Harriet Hosmer, the great sculptor, who afterwards wrote her:

It was a real treat to see you once more.... How well do I remember our first meeting in the office of The Revolution. I do not know of anything that would give me so much pleasure as being present at the Washington convention, and if I am in America next January you may rest assured I shall be there.... Yes, you are quite right; there ought to be a National Art Association of women who are real artists, and it would be a good thing all round. There is nothing which has impressed me so much and so favorably since my return here as the number of helpful clubs and associations which are of modern growth, and one of the best fruits of the work that has been done among women. Not only are they full of pleasantness but where unity is there is strength.

Now that we have come together, don't let us permit a vacuum of twenty years to intervene again; we have a great deal to say to each other.

H. Hosmer."]

Miss Anthony went from Milwaukee to the Minnesota State Convention at Minneapolis, and addressed the students of the university. She also visited the Bethany Home for the Friendless and writes in her journal: "I saw there over forty fatherless babes, and twenty or thirty girls who must henceforth wear the scarlet letter over their hearts, while the men who caused their ruin go forth to seek new recruits for the Bethany homes!" At Duluth she was the guest of her faithful friends, Judge J. B. and Sarah Burger Stearns, speaking here in the Masonic Temple. The judge introduced Miss Anthony in these words: "The first quality we look for in men is courage; the next, ability; the third, benevolence. It is my pleasure to present to you tonight a woman who has exhibited, in a marked degree, all three."

On November 11, 1889, at the beginning of the northern winter, she went from here to South Dakota. A woman suffrage amendment had been submitted to be voted on in 1890, and Miss Anthony had been receiving urgent letters from the members of the State Suffrage Association to assist them in a preliminary canvass and advise as to methods of organization, etc. "Every true woman will welcome you to South Dakota," wrote Philena Johnson, one of the district presidents. "My wife looks upon you as a dependent child upon an indulgent parent; your words will inspire her," wrote the husband of Emma Smith DeVoe, the State lecturer. "We are very grateful that you will come to us," wrote Alonzo Wardall, the vice-president.

Miss Anthony began the canvass at Redfield, November 12, introduced by Judge Isaac Howe. The Supreme Court decision allowing "original packages" of liquor to come into the State had just been announced, and the old minister who opened this meeting devoted all of his prayer to explaining to the Almighty the evils which would follow in the wake of these "original packages!" She held meetings throughout the State, had fine audiences and found strong friends at each place. There was much public interest and the comments of the press were favorable in the highest degree.[51]

She addressed the Farmers' Alliance at their State convention in Aberdeen; they were very cordial and officially endorsed the suffrage amendment. In a letter at this time she said: "I have learned just what I feared—the Prohibitionists in their late campaign studiously held woman suffrage in the background. The W. C. T. U. woman who introduced me last night publicly proclaimed she had not yet reached woman suffrage. Isn't it discouraging? When I get to Washington, I shall see all of the South Dakota congressmen and senators and learn what they intend to do. The Republican party here stood for prohibition, and if it will stand for woman suffrage we can carry it, and not otherwise." Her fine optimism did not desert her, however, and to the Woman's Tribune she wrote:

I want to help our friends throughout this State to hold the canvass for woman suffrage entirely outside all political, religious or reform questions—that is, keep it absolutely by itself. I advise every man and woman who wishes this amendment carried at the ballot-box next November to wear only the badge of yellow ribbon—that and none other. This morning I cut and tied a whole bolt of ribbon, and every woman went out of the court-house adorned with a little sunflower-colored knot.

The one work for the winter before our good friends in South Dakota, should be that of visiting every farmhouse of every school district of every county in the State; talking and reading over the question at every fireside these long evenings; enrolling the names of all who believe in woman suffrage; leaving papers and tracts to be read and circulated, and organizing equal suffrage committees in every district and village. With this done, the entire State will be in splendid trim for the opening of the regular campaign in the spring of 1890.

She started eastward the very day her canvass ended, reaching Chicago on Thanksgiving evening, and went directly to Detroit where she spoke November 29, and was the guest of her old friends of anti-slavery days, Giles and Catharine F. Stebbins. Her nephew, Daniel R. Jr., came over from Michigan University to hear her and accompanied her back to Ann Arbor, where she was entertained by Mrs. Olivia B. Hall. He thus gives his impressions to his parents:

Aunt Susan spoke here for the benefit of the Ladies, Library Association, and had an excellent audience; and Sunday night she spoke at the Unitarian church. It was jammed full and people were in line for half a block around, trying to get inside. At the beginning of her lecture Aunt Susan does not do so well; but when she is in the midst of her argument and all her energies brought into play, I think she is a very powerful speaker.

Dr. Sunderland, the Unitarian minister, invited her to dinner and, as I was her nephew, of course I had to be included. The Halls are very fine people and as I took nearly every meal at their house while she was here, I can also testify that they have good things to eat. I brought Aunt Susan down to see where I lived. It being vacation time of course the house was closed and hadn't been aired for a week, and some of the boys having smoked a good deal she thought the odor was dreadful, but that otherwise we were very comfortably fixed.

Miss Anthony spoke at Toronto December 2, introduced by the mayor and entertained by Dr. Augusta S. Gullen, daughter of Dr. Emily H. Stowe. She addressed the Political Equality Club of Rochester in the Universalist church, December 5. During the past three months she had travelled several thousand miles and spoken every night when not on board the cars. Three days later she started for Washington to arrange for the National convention, and from there wrote Rachel Foster Avery:

I have done it, and to my dismay Mrs. Colby has announced my high-handedness in this week's Tribune, when I intended to keep my assumption of Andrew Jackson-like responsibility a secret. One night last week the new Lincoln Hall was opened and when I saw what a splendid audience-room it is, I just rushed the next day to the agent and found our convention days not positively engaged; then rushed to Mr. Kent and from him to Mr. Jordan and got released from the little church, and then back I went and had the convention booked for Lincoln Hall. I did not mean to have any notice of the change of place go out over the country, because it makes no difference to friends outside of Washington. Well, no matter. I couldn't think of taking our convention into any church when we had a chance to go back to our old home, and that in a new and elegant house reared upon the ashes of the old. So if killed I am for this high-handed piece of work, why killed I shall be!

A letter will illustrate her efforts for South Dakota: "I have 50,000 copies of Senator Palmer's speech ready to go to the Senate folding-room, and thence to the South Dakota senators and representatives to be franked, and then back to me to be addressed to the 25,000 men of the Farmers' Alliance, etc. If suffrage literature does not penetrate into every single family in every town of every county of South Dakota before another month rolls round, it will be because I can not get the names of every one. I am securing also the subscription lists of every county newspaper. If reading matter in every home and lectures in every school house of the State will convert the men, we shall carry South Dakota next November with a whoop! I do hope we can galvanize our friends in every State to concentrate all their money and forces upon South Dakota the coming year. We must have no scattering fire now, but all directed to one point, and get everybody to thinking, reading and talking on the subject."

And again she writes: "With my $400 which I have contributed to the National this year, I have made life members of myself, nieces Lucy E. and Louise, and Mrs. Stanton. Now I intend to make Mrs. Minor, Olympia Brown, Phoebe Couzins and Matilda Joslyn Gage life members. I had thought of others, but these last four are of longer standing, were identified with the old National and have suffered odium and persecution because of adherence to it."

In the diary's mention of busy days is one item: "Went to the Capitol to the celebration of the centennial of the First Congress. Justice Fuller made a beautiful oration on the progress of the century but failed to have discovered a woman all the way down;" and another: "This morning called on Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Stanford and Mrs. Manderson to talk about having women represented in the Columbian Exposition of 1892. All are in favor of it."

Every hour was filled with business, and with social duties undertaken solely because of the influence they might have on the great and only question. The last day of 1889 she went to pay the final honors to the wife of her faithful ally, Hon. A. G. Riddle. Death had robbed her of many friends during the past year. On February 1 her old co-worker Amy Post, of Rochester, was laid to rest, one of the veteran Abolitionists who commenced the work in 1833 with Garrison, and who had stood by the cause of woman as faithfully as by that of the slave. In March passed away in the prime of womanhood, Mary L. Booth, editor of Harper's Bazar from its beginning in 1867. In June died Maria Mitchell, the great astronomer, in the fullness of years, having completed threescore and ten. In November was finished the work of Dinah Mendenhall, the venerable Quaker and philanthropist, wife of Isaac Mendenhall, whose home near Philadelphia had been for sixty years the refuge of the poor and oppressed, without regard to sex, color or creed.[52]

At the close of the old year, the Washington Star in a long interview, headed "A Leader of Women," said.

Miss Anthony is now at the capital, ready for the regular annual agitation before Congress of the proposed Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. She is one of the remarkable women of the world. In appearance she has not grown a day older in the past ten years. Her manner has none of the excitement of an enthusiast; never discouraged by disappointment, she keeps calmly at work, and she could give points in political organization and management to some of the best male politicians in the land. Her face is strong and intellectual, but full of womanly gentleness. Her gold spectacles give her a motherly rather than a severe expression, and a stranger would see nothing incongruous in her doing knitting or fancy-work. In no sense does she correspond with the distorted idea of a woman's rights agitator. In conversation her manner is that of perfect repose. She is always entertaining, and the most romantic idealizer of women would not expect frivolity in one of her age and would not charge it to strong-mindedness that she is sedate.... Speaking of the Columbus celebration, she said she understood it was probable that the board of promotion at the capital would decide to permit women a part in the organization and management of the enterprise.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] In response to a letter of introduction from Mr. Spofford, of the Riggs, Miss Anthony was the guest of the Burnet House with a fine suite of apartments. In a letter home she writes: "The chambermaid said, 'Why, you have had more calls than Mrs. Hayes had when she occupied these rooms.'"

[47] Mrs. Minor managed this meeting and also tried to arrange for Miss Anthony to address a large Catholic gathering but was unsuccessful. She writes: "The vicar-general was on the side of your lecture and spoke in complimentary terms of you and your work."

[48] In a letter Miss Thomson wrote: "I want you to know that my heart is warmer for you than for any other mortal, my thoughts follow you wheresoever you go, and I am always glad when your footsteps turn toward me."

[49] A little incident showed the family spirit. When her lover was about to present her with a handsome diamond engagement ring, she requested that instead the money should be given to the National Suffrage Association, which was done.

[50] In a letter to Mrs. Avery relative to some pressing work, Miss Anthony wrote: "I would not for anything have you drudge on this during your husband's vacation. No, no, there is none too much of life and happiness for any of us, so plan to go and be and do whatever seemeth best unto the twain made so beautifully one."

[51] She spoke at Huron, Mitchell, Yankton, Sioux Falls, Madison, Brookings, DeSmet, Watertown, Parker, Pierre, St. Lawrence and Aberdeen, and presented a full set of the History of Woman Suffrage to libraries in each of these towns.

[52] The year previous Mrs. Mendenhall had given Miss Anthony and Frances Willard each her note for $1,000 payable after her death, to be used for the cause of woman suffrage and temperance, but the heirs refused to honor the notes.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

AT THE END OF SEVENTY YEARS.

1890.

Miss Anthony received New Year's calls in the Red Parlor of the Riggs House, January 1, 1890, entertained a party of friends at dinner in the evening, and had the usual number of pleasant gifts and loving letters. While busy with preparations for the national convention, she learned of the project to celebrate her seventieth birthday on February 15. Supposing it to be simply a tribute from her friends, like the observance of her fiftieth anniversary twenty years before in New York, she was pleased at the compliment, but after the arrangements were commenced she learned that it was to take the form of an elegant banquet at the Riggs and tickets were to be sold at $4 each. Her feelings were expressed in a letter to May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster Avery, who had the matter in charge:

I write in utter consternation, hoping it is not too late to recall every notice sent for publication. I never dreamed of your doing other than issuing pretty little private invitations signed by Mrs. Stanton and yourselves as officers of the National Association. If its official board is too far dissolved for this, please let the whole matter drop, and I will invite a few special friends to sup with me on my birthday. I know Mr. and Mrs. Spofford would love to unite with you in a personal entertainment of this kind. I may be wrong as to the bad taste of issuing a notice, just like a public meeting, and letting those purchase tickets who wish; but it seems to me the very persons least desired by us may be the first to buy them. I should be proud of a banquet with invited guests who would make it an honor, but with such persons as will pay $5, more or less, it resolves itself into a mere matter of cash. I would vastly prefer to ask those we wanted and foot the entire bill myself.

Mrs. Sewall wrote at once to Mrs. Avery, "This letter strikes dismay to my soul. I will share with you the expense of the banquet." In a day or two Miss Anthony's heart smote her and she wrote again: "I have blown my bugle blast and I know I have wounded your dear souls, but I can not see the plan a bit prettier than I did at first. I may be very stupid or supersensitive. If it were to honor Mrs. Stanton, I would be willing to charge for tickets." And then a few days later: "Have I killed you outright? I can not tell you how much I have suffered because I can not see this as you do, but I would rather never have a mention of my birthday than to have it in that way. I know you meant it all lovely for me, but you did not look at it outside your own dear hearts. Do tell me that I have not alienated the two best-beloved of all my girls."

They finally effected a compromise on the money feature by sending out handsomely engraved invitations to those whom they wished as guests and letting them pay $4 a plate if they came. Although they proved to Miss Anthony that this always was done in such cases, she assented very unwillingly, and begged that they would ask the friends to contribute $4 apiece to the fund for South Dakota instead of the birthday banquet. Finally, when all her scruples had been overcome, she made out so long a list of people whom she wished to have complimentary invitations that they would have filled every seat in the dining hall. She also was so anxious that no one should be slighted in a chance to speak that Mrs. Avery wrote: "The banquet would have to last through eternity to hear all those Miss Anthony thinks ought to be heard."

On the evening of the birthday over 200 of her distinguished friends were seated in the great dining-room of the Riggs House, including a delegation from Rochester and a number of relatives from Leavenworth, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. Miss Anthony occupied the place of honor, on her right hand were Senator Blair and Mrs. Stanton; on her left, Robert Purvis, Isabella Beecher Hooker and May Wright Sewall. (Mrs. Foster Avery was detained at home.) The room was beautifully decorated and the repast elaborate, but with such an array of intellect, the after-dinner speeches were the distinguishing feature of the occasion. The Washington Star, in a long account, said:

A company of the most remarkable women in the world were assembled. As she sat there, surrounded by the skirted knights of her long crusade, Miss Anthony looked no older than fifty, but she had got a good start into her seventy-first year before the dinner ended. May Wright Sewall presided. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that venerable and beautiful old stateswoman, sat at the right of Senator Blair, looking as if she should be the Lord Chief-Justice, with her white hair puffed all over her head, and her amiable and intellectual face marked with the lines of wisdom. Isabella Beecher Hooker, who reminds one of her great brother, with the stamp of genius on her brow and an energy of intellect expressed upon her face, sat at the left of Miss Anthony. Old John Hutchinson, the last of the famous singing family, his white hair and beard forming a fringe about his shoulders; Clara Barton, her breast sparkling with Red Cross medals; and many other women of wide fame were present. Before the banquet the guests assembled in the Red Parlor of the Riggs, where a levee was held and congratulations were offered. It was after 10 o'clock when the line was formed and the guests marched down to the dining-room, Miss Anthony, on the arm of Senator Blair, leading the way.

The correspondent of the New York Sun said in a brilliant description: "The dining-room was a splendid scene, long to be remembered. The American flag was everywhere and, with tropical flowers and foliage, made bright decorations.... It was a notable gathering of women world-wide in fame, and of distinguished men. The lady with a birthday—seventy of them indeed—was of course the star on which all others gazed. She never looked better, never happier, and never so much like breaking down before her feelings. No wonder, with such a birthday party! Friends of her youth calling her 'Susan,' affectionate deference from everybody, and all saying she deserved a thousand just such birthdays—young in heart, beautiful in spirit."

Phoebe Couzins replied to the toast "St. Susan," making a witty contrast between the austere St. Anthony of old and the St. Anthony of today, representing self-abnegation for the good, the beautiful, the true. Rev. Anna Shaw made a delightfully humorous response to "The Modern Peripatetic," referring to the ancient philosopher who had founded the school of men, and Miss Anthony who had founded the modern school of women peripatetics, ready to grab their grips and start around the world at a moment's notice. Matilda Joslyn Gage responded to "Miss Anthony as a Fellow-worker;" Clara Bewick Colby to "Miss Anthony as a Journalist;" Laura Ormiston Chant, of England, to "American Womanhood;" Mrs. Jane Marsh Parker, sent by the Ignorance Club of Rochester, to "Miss Anthony at Home," beginning: "To have brought to Miss Anthony all the testimonials which Rochester would have laid at her feet tonight would have made me appear at the banquet like the modern Santa Claus—the postman at Christmastide." Rev. Frederick W. Hinckley, of Providence, began his graceful address by saying:

King Arthur, sword in hand, is not at the head of the table, but Queen Susan is, the silver crown of seventy honorable years upon her brow; and we gather here from every quarter of the Union, little knights and great knights, without distinction of sex, to take anew at her hands the oath of loyal service to the cause of universal liberty. Those of us who have followed her through all these years know that she has been a knight without reproach, that her head has been level and her heart true. Faithful to the cause of her sex, she has been broad enough to grasp great general principles. She has been not only an advocate of equal rights, but the prophet of humanity; and a better advocate of equal rights because a prophet of humanity. There never has been a time when Whittier's lines concerning Sumner would not have been applicable to her:

"Wherever wrong doth right deny, Or suffering spirits urge their plea, Here is a voice to smite the lie, A hand to set the captive free."

Nineteenth century chivalry renders all honor to that type of womanhood of which she is an illustrious example.

Robert Purvis eloquently referred to Miss Anthony's grand work for the abolition of slavery, which, he said, was still continued in the vaster and more complicated work for the freedom of women. Mrs. Stanton's two daughters, Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Blatch, made sparkling responses. Representative J. A. Pickler said in part:

Five years since, when a member of the Dakota legislature and in charge of the bill giving full suffrage to women, I was characterized in the public press as "Susan B. Pickler." I look upon this as one of the greatest honors ever bestowed upon me. I have never learned how Miss Anthony regarded it....

Unswerved by the shafts of ridicule, without love of gain, she has sublimely borne through all these years ridicule and reproach for principle, for humanity, for womanhood. The soldier battles amid the plaudits of his countrymen, the statesman supported by his party, the clergyman sanctioned by his church, but alone, this great woman has stood for half a century, contending for the rights of women. Says Professor Swing: "Mark any life pervaded by a worthy plan, and how beautiful it is! Webster, Gladstone, Sumner, Disraeli; fifty years were these temples in the building!" How aptly these words describe our great advocate of woman. Gratifying it must be to Susan B. Anthony; gratifying, we bear witness, it is to her friends, that in her maturer years we see this cause, long hated by others but by her always loved, now respected by all; and herself, its representative and exponent, revered, loved and honored by a whole nation.

The main address was made by Mrs. Stanton, who responded to the sentiment "The Friendships of Women," in an oration full of humor, and closed:

If there is one part of my life which gives me more intense satisfaction than another, it is my friendship of more than forty years' standing with Susan B. Anthony. Ours has been a friendship of hard work and self-denial.... Emerson says, "It is better to be a thorn in the side of your friend than his echo." If this add weight and stability to friendship, then ours will endure forever, for we have indeed been thorns in the side of each other. Sub rosa, dear friends, I have had no peace for forty years, since the day we started together on the suffrage expedition in search of woman's place in the National Constitution. She has kept me on the war-path at the point of the bayonet so long that I have often wished my untiring coadjutor might, like Elijah, be translated a few years before I was summoned, that I might spend the sunset of my life in some quiet chimney-corner and lag superfluous on the stage no longer.

After giving up all hope of her sweet repose in Abraham's bosom, I sailed some years ago for Europe. With an ocean between us I said, now I shall enjoy a course of light reading. I shall visit all the wonders of the old world, and write no more calls, resolutions or speeches for conventions—when lo! one day I met Susan face to face in the streets of London with a new light in her eyes. Behold there were more worlds to conquer. She had decided on an international council in Washington, so I had to return with her to the scenes of our conflict.... Well, I prefer a tyrant of my own sex, so I shall not deny the patent fact of my subjection; for I do believe that I have developed into much more of a woman under her jurisdiction, fed on statute laws and constitutional amendments, than if left to myself reading novels in an easy-chair, lost in sweet reveries of the golden age to come without any effort of my own.

As Mrs. Stanton concluded, "The Guest of the Evening" was announced and, amidst long continued applause and waving of handkerchiefs, Miss Anthony arose and made one of those little speeches that never can be reported, in which she said:

I have been half inclined while listening here to believe that I had passed on to the beyond. If there is one thing I hope for more than another, it is that, should I stay on this planet thirty years longer, I still may be worthy of the wonderful respect you have manifested for me tonight. The one thought I wish to express is how little my friend or I could have accomplished alone. What she said is true; I have been a thorn in her side and in that of her family too, I fear. I never expect to know any joy in this world equal to that of going up and down the land, getting good editorials written, engaging halls, and circulating Mrs. Stanton's speeches. If I ever have had any inspiration she has given it to me, for I never could have done my work if I had not had this woman at my right hand. If I had had a husband and children, or opposition in my own home, I never could have done it. My father and mother, my brothers and sisters, those who are gone and those who are left, all have been a help to me. How much depends on the sympathy and co-operation of those about us! It is not necessary for all to go to the front. Every woman presiding over her table in the homes where I have been, has helped sustain me, I wish they could know how much.

Poems were read or sent by Harriet Hosmer, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Alice Williams Brotherton and a number of others. At the close of Mrs. Hooker's verses entitled "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?" the entire company arose and sang two stanzas of "Auld Lang Syne," led by the venerable John Hutchinson. From the many letters received only a few extracts can be given:

Allow me to congratulate you on your safe arrival at the age of threescore and ten. How much we may congratulate ourselves on the great gains that have come to woman during these years; gains for which you have worked so hard and so long! Hoping that you may still be on this planet when the ballot is the sure possession of our sex, I am very truly your co-worker,

LUCY STONE.

None can more heartily congratulate thee on thy threescore and ten years nobly devoted to the welfare of humanity, to unremitting labor for temperance, for the abolition of slavery and for equal rights of citizenship, irrespective of sex or color. We have lived to see the end of slavery, and I hope thou wilt live to see prohibition enforced in every State in the Union, and sex no longer the condition of citizenship. God bless thee and give thee many more years made happy by works of love and duty. I am truly thy friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER.



My heart honors, loves and blesses you. Every woman's would if she only knew you. You'll have a statue some day in the Capitol at Washington, but your best monument is built already in your countrywomen's hearts. God bless you, brave and steadfast elder sister! Accept this as the only valentine I ever wrote. May you live a hundred years and vote the last twenty-five, is the wish and prediction of your loyal sister,

FRANCES E. WILLARD.

Miss Anthony's sole and effective fidelity to the cause of the equal rights of her sex is worthy of the highest honor, and I know that it will be eloquently and fitly acknowledged at the dinner, which I trust will be in every way successful. Very respectfully yours,

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

It is a grief to me that I can not be present to honor the birthday of our dear Susan B. Anthony; long life to her! I should have been delighted to respond to the toast proposed, and to bear my heartfelt tribute of respect and love for the true and unselfish reformer, to whom women are no more indebted than are men. "Time shall embalm and magnify her name." Very sincerely yours,

WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

I know her great earnestness in every righteous cause, especially that most righteous of all, woman suffrage, which I hope may receive a new impulse from your gathering. As I grow older I feel assured, year by year, that the granting of suffrage to women will remedy many evils which now are attendant on popular government; and if we are to despair of that cause we must despair of the final establishment of justice as the controlling power in the political affairs of mankind. I am faithfully yours,

GEORGE F. HOAR.



I can not venture to promise to be present at the dinner to be given to Miss Anthony, but I should be sorry to lose an opportunity to express my admiration of her life and character. In themselves they are ample refutation of the charges made by the unthinking that participation in public affairs would make women unwomanly. If any system of subjection has enabled any woman to preserve more thoroughly the respect and affectionate regard of all her friends than has Miss Anthony amid the struggles of an active and strenuous life I have yet to learn of it. With sincere hope that she may have many years still left to her, I am yours sincerely,

THOMAS B. REED.

I think I express the feeling of most if not all the workers in our cause when I say that the women of America owe more to Susan B. Anthony than to any other woman living. While Mrs. Stanton has been the standard bearer of liberty, announcing great principles, Miss Anthony has been the power which has carried those principles on toward victory and impressed them upon the hearts of the people. Yours truly,

OLYMPIA BROWN.

May you live many years longer to enjoy the results of your herculean work, and score as many triumphs in the future as you have in the past. On the morning of the 15th some flowers will be sent you with my love. I wish they were as imperishable as your name and fame. Affectionately,

MRS. JOHN A. LOGAN.



How good to have lived through the laugh of the world into its smiles of welcome and honor—how much better to have reached these with a heart gentle and humble like hers—how best of all to care, as she must, scarce a rush for the personal honor and accept it only as an honor to the cause for which she has given so many of the seventy years. Truly yours,

W. C. AND MARY LEWIS GANNETT.

With the hope that you may live to one hundred or until, like ancient Simeon, you behold what you hope for, I am yours very truly,

T. W. PALMER.

My wife and I send you our hearty congratulations on your birthday. May you have many happy returns of the day, with increasing honor and affection from your numerous friends, amongst whom we hope you will let us count ourselves. Yours very truly,

CHARLES NORDHOFF.

I congratulate you with all my heart upon your health and happiness on this your seventieth birthday, and wish to say that I believe no woman lives in the United States who has done more for her sex, and for ours as well, than yourself. The great advancement of women, not alone in the direction of suffrage, but in every field of labor and every department of the better and nobler life of manhood and womanhood, during the past generation, has sprung from the work which you inaugurated years ago. Mrs. Carpenter joins me in congratulations and good wishes. Very truly yours,

FRANK G. CARPENTER.

Cordial greetings were received from Neal Dow and Senator Dawes, and letters and telegrams came from distinguished individuals and societies in every State and from many foreign countries. Over 200 of these are preserved among other mementoes of this occasion. Among the telegrams were these, representing the great labor organization of the country:

We congratulate you on the seventieth anniversary of a useful and successful life. May you enjoy many years of health and happiness.

HANNAH POWDERLY, T. V. POWDERLY.

May your noble, self-sacrificing life be spared to participate in your heart's dearest wish—woman's full emancipation.

LEONORA M. BARRY, Grand Organizer K. of L.



Mrs. Colby issued a birthday edition of the Woman's Tribune containing a history of Miss Anthony's trial, a fine biographical sketch written by herself and many beautiful tributes from other friends, among them this from Laura M. Johns: "Always to efface herself and her own interests and to put the cause to the fore; to be striving to place a crown upon some other brow; to be receiving and giving, but never retaining; ever enriching the work but never herself; to be busy through weariness and difficulty and resting only in a change of labor; to bear the stinging hail of ridicule which fell on this movement, and to receive with surprised tears the flowers that bloomed in her thorny path; to be in the heat of the noonday harvest field at seventy, with years of activity and usefulness still remaining to add to her glorious life and crown it with such dignity as belongs to few—this is the story of Susan B. Anthony."

Miss Anthony carried in her arms seventy pink carnations with the card, "For she's the pink o' womankind and blooms without a peer," from Miss Cummings, of Washington. Flowers were sent in profusion, and there was no end of lovely little remembrances of jewelry, water colors, books, portfolios, card cases, handkerchiefs, fans, satin souvenirs, fancy-work, the gifts of loving women in all parts of the country.[53] The evening was one of the proudest and happiest of a life which, although filled with toil and hardship, had been brightened, as had that of few other women, with the bountiful tributes and testimonials not only of personal friends but of people in all parts of the world who knew of her only through her work for humanity. The next day she sat down to Sunday dinner at a table which, thanks to Mrs. Spofford's thoughtfulness, had been arranged especially for the occasion, surrounded by twenty-five of her own relatives who had come to Washington to celebrate her birthday.

Among many newspaper editorials upon this celebration, an extract from the Boston Traveller, which bears the impress of the gifted Lilian Whiting, may be taken as an example of the general sentiment:

Without any special relay of theories on the subject, Miss Susan B. Anthony discovered early in life the secret of imperishable youth and constantly increasing happiness—a secret that may be translated as personal devotion to a noble purpose. To devote one's self to something higher than self—this is the answer of the ages to those who would find the source of immortal energy and enjoyment. It is a statement very simply and easily made but involving all the philosophy of life. Miss Anthony recognized it intuitively. She translated it into action with little consciousness of its value as a theory; but it is the one deepest truth in existence, and one which every human soul must sometime or somewhere learn.

On February 15, 1820, when Susan B. Anthony was born, Emerson was a youth of seventeen; Henry Ward Beecher was a child of seven and Harriet Beecher Stowe a year his junior; Wendell Phillips was nine, Whittier thirteen, and Wm. Lloyd Garrison fifteen years of age. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was four years old, and Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and James Russell Lowell were Miss Anthony's predecessors in this world only by one or two years. Margaret Fuller was ten, Abraham Lincoln was eleven, and thus, between 1803-20, inclusive, were born a remarkable group of people—a galaxy whose influence on their century has been unequalled in any age or in any country, since that of Pericles and his associates in the golden age of Greece. It is only now, as the work of these immortals begins to assume something of the definite outline of completeness; as some results of the determining forces for which this great galaxy has stood, begin to be discerned, that we can adequately recognize how important to the century their lives have been. There are undoubtedly high spirits sent to earth with a definite service to render to their age and generation; a service that prepares the way for the next ascending round on the great cycle of progress, and it is no exaggeration to say that Susan B. Anthony is one of these....



Even brief quotations must be omitted for want of space, but this from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Charles E. Fitch, editor, is entitled to a place as the sentiment in the city where Miss Anthony had made her home for nearly half a century:

The occasion is a notable one. It is in honor of one of the noblest women of her time. The day is past when Susan B. Anthony is met with ridicule. She is honored everywhere. Consistent earnestness will, at the last if not at the first, command respect. Slowly but surely, Miss Anthony has won that respect from her countrymen. The cause of the emancipation of women, for which she has labored so long and so zealously, is not yet triumphant, nor is it probable that she will live to see woman suffrage the rule of the land; but at threescore years and ten, she may freely cherish the faith that it is a conquering cause, destined some day to be vindicated in the organic law of the separate American commonwealths and the Federal union.

But it is not alone for the service which Miss Anthony has rendered to the cause of woman suffrage that she is highly honored. She is honored because of her womanhood, because she has ever been brave without conceit and earnest without pretense, because she has the heart to sympathize with suffering humanity in its various phases, and the will to redress human wrongs. She has revealed a true nobility of soul, and has ever been patient under abuse and misrepresentation. She has allied herself with all good causes, and has been the friend of those struggling against the dominion of appetite as well as of those who have sought to free themselves from political thralldom. She has earned the esteem even of those who were diametrically opposed to her views. Within the movements which she has urged, she has been an administrator rather than an orator, although on occasions her speech has been informed with the eloquence of conviction. In private life she has constrained affection by a gentleness with which the world would hardly credit her; but those who best know her, best know also the gracious womanhood which illustrates itself in acts of unselfishness and beneficence.

The birthday was celebrated by individuals and clubs in many states with luncheons, teas, receptions and literary entertainments. After all these pleasant happenings, Miss Anthony felt new courage and hope to enter upon the Twenty-second National Suffrage Convention, February 18, at Lincoln Music Hall. This was to be an important meeting, as it was to consummate the union of the National and American organizations, and she was anxious for a large attendance. "Do come," she wrote to the most influential friends, "if you stay away forever afterwards. This will be the crucial test whether our platform shall continue broad and free as it has been for forty years. Some now propose secession because it is to be narrow and bigoted; others left us twenty years ago because it was too liberal. Some of the prominent women are writing me that the union means we shall be no more than an annex to the W. C. T. U. hereafter; others declare we are going to sink our identity and become sectarian and conservative. There is not the slightest ground for any of these fears, but come and be our stay and support."

She also had the annual struggle to secure the presence of Mrs. Stanton, who was about to sail with her daughter for England, but, after the usual stormy correspondence, the day of departure was postponed and she wrote: "You will have me under your thumb the first of February." As her time was limited, Miss Anthony arranged for the hearing before the Senate committee on February 8, which was held in the new room assigned to the committee on woman suffrage. A few days later the ladies spoke before the House Judiciary Committee.

The union of the two organizations was effected before the opening of the convention and Mrs. Stanton elected president.[54] She faced a brilliant assemblage at the opening of the National-American Convention and made one of the ablest speeches of her life, stating in the first sentence that she considered it a greater honor to go to England as the president of this association than to be sent as minister plenipotentiary to any court in Europe. She closed by introducing her daughter, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, who captivated the audience.[55] Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, ex-president of the American Association, then delivered an eloquent and scholarly address. At its close Mrs. Stanton was obliged to leave, as she sailed for Europe the next morning. When she arose to say farewell the entire audience joined in the waving of handkerchiefs, the clapping of hands, and the men in three rousing cheers.



The usual corps of National speakers received a notable addition in Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Henry B. Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Hon. J. A. Pickler and Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone, being detained at home by illness, sent a letter of greeting. When Miss Anthony, as vice-president-at-large, took the chair after Mrs. Stanton's departure, a great bouquet of white lilies was presented to her.

A woman suffrage amendment was pending in South Dakota, and the claims of the new State were presented by Representative and Mrs. Pickler and Alonzo Wardall, secretary of the Farmer's Alliance and vice-president of the suffrage association, all of whom felt confident that with financial help the amendment could be carried but, as the State was poor, most of this would have to come from outside. The convention became very enthusiastic and a South Dakota campaign committee was formed; Susan B. Anthony, chairman, Clara B. Colby, Alice Stone Blackwell. Rev. Anna H. Shaw made a stirring appeal for money. Miss Anthony pledged all that she could raise between then and the November election. Mrs. Clara L. McAdow, of Montana, headed the list with $250. A number of ladies followed with pledges for their respective States. In a short time it seemed evident that a large sum could be raised and, at Miss Anthony's request, the association directed all contributions to be sent to its treasurer, Mrs. Spofford, at Washington, and she herself agreed to devote a year's work to Dakota.[56]

Miss Anthony remained in Washington several weeks, looking after various matters: first of all, a representation of women in the management of the Columbian Exposition; then there were the reports of the Senate and the House committees, upon which she always brought to bear as much as possible of that "indirect influence" which women are said to possess. Just now the admission of Wyoming as a State with woman suffrage in its constitution was hanging in the balance, but on March 26 she had the inexpressible pleasure of witnessing, from her seat in the gallery of the House, the final discussion and passage of the bill.[57] She also was arranging for the incorporation of the National-American Association, the old National, which had been a corporate body for a number of years, having added American to its name. The bills of the convention were to be settled,[58] and there were still other subjects claiming her attention before she started for the far West to inaugurate the South Dakota campaign.

Miss Anthony was a welcome guest at dinners and receptions in the homes of many of the dignitaries in Washington, but accepted these invitations only when she saw an opportunity thereby to further the cause of woman suffrage. She realized fully that one important step in the work was to interest women of influence, socially and financially, and the high plane of respectability which this question had now attained was at least partly due to her winters in Washington, where, at the Riggs House and in society, she met and made friends with prominent men and women from all parts of the country and converted them to her doctrines, which they disseminated in their various localities upon returning home.

She writes her sister, in describing social events, of a dinner at the handsome home of John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who in person brought the invitation, while his wife, the daughter of General Beale, looked after her "as if she had been the Queen of Sheba." Here she met Senator and Mrs. Payne of Ohio, Senator and Mrs. Cockrell of Missouri, Senator and Mrs. Butler of South Carolina, Speaker and Mrs. Reed of Maine, Justice and Mrs. Field and other notables. Then she speaks of a meeting of the Cobweb Club, composed of women in official life, where, at the close of her informal talk, they crowded around her and exclaimed: "Why, Miss Anthony, we never understood this question before; of course we believe in it." Mrs. Hearst, wife of the Senator, said: "Had any one ever presented this subject to me as you have done today, you should have had my help long ago." "And so you see," she writes, "that at this juncture of our movement much could be accomplished by accepting such invitations, but it costs me more courage than to face an audience of a thousand people."

While Miss Anthony was still in Washington she sat for her bust by a young sculptor, Adelaide Johnson. "So marble and canvas both are to tell the story," she wrote, "for I have sat also for a painting. The time draws near when I must start out campaigning and O, how I dread it!" During this winter she received an invitation from a State W. C. T. U. to bring a suffrage convention to their city and they would bear the expenses, stipulating only that she herself should be present, and that "no speaker should say anything which would seem like an attack on Christianity." She wrote Miss Shaw: "Won't that prevent your going, Rev. Anna? I wonder if they'll be as particular to warn all other speakers not to say anything which shall sound like an attack on liberal religion. They never seem to think we have any feelings to be hurt when we have to sit under their reiteration of orthodox cant and dogma. The boot is all on one foot with the dear religious bigots—but if they will all pull together with us for suffrage we'll continue to bear and forbear, as we have done for the past forty years."

In this winter of 1890 many loving letters passed between Miss Anthony and Rachel Foster Avery, almost too sacred to be quoted, and yet a few sentences may be used to show the maternal tenderness in the nature of the great reformer:

Of course I miss you from my side, but do not feel for a moment that any doubt of your love and loyalty ever crosses my mind. No, my dear, you and all of us must consider only the best interests of the loved though not yet seen. Banish anxiety and let the rest of us take all the work and care. Be happy in the new life you are molding; avoid all but lovely thoughts; let your first and nearest and dearest feelings be for the precious little one whose temperament and nature you are now stamping. Your every heartbeat, not only of love and peace and beauty, but of the reverse as well, is making its mark on the unborn.... I feel much better satisfied to know Sister Mary is with you for a few days. If her presence is comforting, why don't you ask her to stay with you till the wee one arrives?

And so the serene and helpful sister Mary remains until a telegram is sent to the anxious one, by that time in far-off Dakota, announcing the birth of a daughter. "My heart bounded with joy," wrote Miss Anthony, "to hear the ordeal was passed and the little, sassie Rose Foster Avery safely launched upon the big ocean of time." And in a little while the mother replied: "Darling Aunt Susan, when I lie with baby Rose in my arms, I think so often of what she and I and all women, born and to be born, owe to you, and my heart overflows with love and gratitude."

FOOTNOTES:

[53] There were also more substantial tokens, an Irish wool shawl from Mrs. Chant; a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary from Mrs. Colby, with the inscription, "The words in this volume can not express what women owe you;" a silk dress pattern from brother Daniel R.; a $50 check from sister Mary; $200 from Sarah Willis of Rochester, and $100 from the Woman's Political Equality Club of that city; seventy golden dollars from the Toledo Suffrage Club; $50 from Mrs. Arthur A. Mosher of St. Louis, and enough $5 bills in friendly letters to bring the amount to over $500. The very next day Miss Anthony gave a part of this to friends who were ill or needy, including $50 to Phoebe Couzins.

[54] Described in detail in Chapter XXXV.

[55] Miss Anthony wrote in her journal that night: "Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy her mother and her mother's life-long friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment for me."

[56] Among those who contributed largely to this fund were Senator Stanford, $300; Rachel Foster Avery, $300; George C. Lemon, Washington City; Hon. Ezra V. Meeker, Puyallup; Rev. Anna H. Shaw; Isabella Hedenberg, Chicago; Alice Stone Blackwell; Emily Howland, Sherwood, N. Y.; O. G. and Alice Peters, Columbus, O.; John L. Whiting, Boston; Senator R. F. Pettigrew, Sioux Falls; Albert O. Willcox, New York, $100 each; Mary H. Johnson, Louisville, $115, which she earned by knitting wool shawls and fascinators; May Wright Sewall sent nearly $200, collected from Indiana friends; James and Martha Callanan, Des Moines, $150; Mary Grew, $143 for the Pennsylvania society. Other women sent their jewelry to be sold, and one offered a gift of western land. The rest of the $5,500 was sent in smaller amounts, and all receipts and expenditures were carefully entered on the national treasurer's books for 1890. When later some carping individuals complained at so much money passing through Miss Anthony's hands, Mrs. Livermore silenced them by saying: "Susan would use every dollar for suffrage if millions were given to her."

[57] Mary Grew wrote her immediately: "All hail and congratulations! I read in this morning's paper that you were in the House yesterday; and I have no doubt that today you are doing something to promote the passage of the bill through the Senate.... One object of this letter is to urge you to take more care of your health. Emily Howland reports that you are very much overworked and exhausted. Pray stop awhile and rest yourself, for the sake of the cause as well as for your own and your friends'."

[58] I will authorize you to add my signature to yours in approving any bills relating to the expenses of the National-American convention just past. It will save time and trouble. You are on the spot and know all about the bills. Yours sincerely,

LUCY STONE.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE SOUTH DAKOTA CAMPAIGN.

1890.

Miss Anthony left Washington to attend the wedding of her nephew, Wendell Phillips Mosher, and Carolyn Louise Mixer, at Cleveland, O., April 17; stopped in Chicago for a day, and reached Huron, S. Dak., April 23, 1890.[59] During the early winter she had had the most urgent letters from this State, begging her to hasten her coming, that all depended upon her. "If you will come we will throw off our coats and go to work," wrote the men. "Woe to the man or woman who is not loyal to you! If ever you were needed anywhere, you are needed here now," wrote the women. When she had been in South Dakota the previous autumn, all had united in urging her to take charge of the campaign, and for months she had been receiving appeals for help. "We have not enough money to organize one county," came from a member of the executive committee. In January, from Alonzo Wardall, vice-president of the State Association, "We are very grateful for your earnest efforts in our behalf and trust you will be able to spend the coming summer with us." His wife, the superintendent of press, wrote in February: "We shall give you the credit, dear Miss Anthony, if we succeed next November."

On March 5, the president of the association, S. A. Ramsey, said in the course of a long letter: "I had begun to feel misgivings relative to our success, because we were so poorly prepared for the great conflict which is pending; but the appointment by the national convention of a special committee to aid us in our work has inspired me with great hope, especially as you were placed at the head of that committee." Mrs. H. M. Barker, State organizer, wrote March 10: "Organizing must have stopped in the third district, had it not been for the money you sent. It is utterly impossible for us to pay even $10 a week to organizers. I have been disappointed in my home workers, so many incapacitated for various reasons. We shall make suffrage a specialty in all our W. C. T. U. county and district conventions." And April 11, the State secretary, Rev. M. Barker, supplemented this with: "It is absolutely impossible to raise money in the State to pay speakers and furnish literature. This you understand. The election must go by default if it is expected."

At the Washington convention it had been ordered that all contributions should be forwarded to the national treasurer and disbursed by order of the committee. Notwithstanding this, a large proportion was sent directly to Miss Anthony with the express stipulation that it should be expended under her personal supervision. There never was a woman connected with the suffrage movement who could collect as much money as she; people would give to her who refused all others, with the injunction that she should use according to her own judgment. That which was sent her for Dakota she turned over at once to the treasurer, Mrs. Spofford, and paid all the campaign bills by checks.

The Dakota people had made the mistake of electing a suffrage board entirely of men, except the treasurer and State organizer, and, although they had not a dollar in their treasury and no prospects, they agreed to pay the secretary $100 a month for his services! When money from all parts of the country had been sent to the national treasurer, until the Dakota fund reached $5,500, the executive committee of that State suddenly discovered that they could manage their own campaign, and made a demand upon the national committee to turn the funds over to them. Miss Anthony, as chairman, already had sent them $300 for preliminary work; had written and telegraphed that the services of Miss Shaw could be had for only one month, at that time, and asked if they would arrange her routes; and had twice written them to send her their "plan of campaign," but had received no answer to any of these communications. At the last moment she was obliged herself to make out Miss Shaw's route and send her into the field with practically no advertisement. On March 29 she wrote to the State president:

Immediately on the receipt of your answer to my first letter to your executive committee, instead of sending you a personal reply I wrote again to the entire committee, answering the various points presented by you, Mr. and Mrs. Barker and others. This I did to save writing the same thing to half a dozen different people, as well as to make sure that I should get your official action upon what seemed to me most important matters; but to this date I have received not only no official answer, but no information which shows my letter to have been acted upon. Nor have I heard from any member of the committee that you have mapped out any plan of campaign, or have accepted and proposed to work on the one which I outlined last November at the Aberdeen meeting, and twice over have stated in my letters.

You, personally, say to me that you must have the national funds put into your treasury before you can plan work. Now, my dear sir, as a business man you never would give your money to any person or committee until they had presented to you a plan for using it which met your approval. Then I have had no indication of any intention on the part of your executive committee or State organizer to hold any series of suffrage meetings or conventions. The only ones written of are W. C. T. U. county and district conventions. California's suffrage lecturer, I am informed, is to be introduced to the State at the First District W. C. T. U. Convention.

Now, I want to say to you individually, and to the executive committee generally, that the National-American South Dakota committee will pay the money entrusted to them only to suffrage lecturers and suffrage conventions. We shall not pay it to any individual or association for any other purpose, or in any other name, than suffrage for women, pure and simple. We talked this over fully in your executive committee meeting at Aberdeen last fall, and all agreed that, while the temperance societies worked for suffrage in their way, the suffrage campaign should be carried forward on the basis of the one principle. Our national money will not go to aid Prohibition leagues, Grand Army encampments, Woman's Relief Corps, W. C. T. U. societies or any others, though all, we hope, will declare and work for the suffrage amendment. We can not ally ourselves with the Prohibition or Anti-Prohibition party—the Democrats or the Republicans. Each may do splendid work for suffrage within its own organization, and we shall rejoice in all that do so; but the South Dakota and the National-American Associations must stand on their own ground.

Co-operation is what our committee desire, and we stand ready to aid in holding three series of county conventions with three sets of speakers, at least one of each set a national speaker, beginning on May 1 and continuing until the school election, June 24. I am feeling sadly disappointed that every voting precinct of every county has not been visited, and will not have been by the 1st of May, as was agreed upon at Aberdeen. Still, I want to begin now and henceforth push the work; but the entire fund would not pay every single man and woman in the State who helps, hence every one who can must work without cost either to the State or national committee.

On the 7th of April Miss Anthony wrote to the State secretary:

Yours mailed April 3 is received. The National-American committee have only about $1,300 yet in hand, and we have arranged a trip through your State for Rev. Anna Shaw. When your committee did not answer my telegram, I could not wait longer for fear of losing Miss Shaw's good work before the students of your various educational institutions, and having had urgent importunities from Mrs. D. W. Mayer to send some of our very best speakers to Vermillion so that the 600 students there might be roused to thought before separating for the summer, I felt the cause could not afford to lose Miss Shaw's effective services and so mapped out her route, and telegraphed and wrote asking that she be advertised.

Now, my dear friends, once for all, I want to say on behalf of our South Dakota committee, the National-American Association, and the friends who have placed money in our hands—that we shall no more turn it over to you to appropriate as your executive committee please, without our voice or vote, than you would turn over the money entrusted to your care to our committee to spend as we choose, without your voice or vote. But while we shall retain our right to expend the national fund in accordance with our best judgment, we shall in future, as I have several times written your committee, hold ourselves ready to help defray the cost of whatever work you present to us. I have once verbally, and twice or oftener by letter, presented a plan of campaign asking your adoption of it, or of one which suited you better, telling you that we would co-operate with you in executing the plan and paying therefor; and to all of my propositions to help, the one reply has been: "The wheels are blocked until you turn the money over to us. You in Washington can not run the South Dakota campaign." Now nearly five months have elapsed, and, so far as reported, the resident committee have adopted no plan and had no organizers at work in the different counties.

Rev. Anna Shaw made her lecture tour throughout the State, and wrote Miss Anthony that the people everywhere were most anxious for her to come and there was not the slightest disaffection except on the part of two or three persons who wished to handle the funds. To these Miss Shaw said:

What our committee object to, and what they have no right to do by the vote of our convention, is to put a dollar of our money into your treasury to be spent without our consent or for any purpose of which we do not approve. For example, not one of us, myself least of all, will consent to take out of the contributions from friends of suffrage one dollar to pay towards a salary of $100 a month to any man as secretary. We do not pay our national secretary a cent, and we have no doubt there are plenty of women in the State of Dakota who would be glad to do the secretary's work for love of the cause. I understand it has been planned, and the statement has gone out, that your committee propose to cut loose from Miss Anthony. Now if you do, you cut loose from the goose that lays the golden egg for the South Dakota work; you cut loose from all the national speakers and workers and all the money given.

Miss Anthony wrote Alice Stone Blackwell:

I fully agree with you and dear Mrs. Wallace about not antagonizing the prohibition and W. C. T. U. people who made the 6,000 majority last fall in South Dakota; but I also feel that we must not antagonize the license people, for they are one-half of the voters, lacking only 6,000, and fully 6,000 of the Prohibition men are anti-suffragists and can not be converted. Hence it is also vastly important that the license men shall not have just cause to feel that our national suffrage lecturers are W. C. T. U. agents. That is my one point—that we shall not at the outset repel every man who is not a Prohibitionist.

But we shall see. I surely am as earnest a prohibitionist and total abstainer as any woman or man in South Dakota or anywhere else. But they have prohibition, and now are after suffrage; therefore it should not be the old prohibition and W. C. T. U. yardstick in this campaign, but instead it must be the woman suffrage yardstick alone by which every man and every woman shall be measured. Best assured I shall try not to offend a single voter, of whatever persuasion, for it is votes we are after now. I hope to make such a good showing of work done in this spring campaign, that our friends will feel like giving another and larger contribution to help on the fall canvass.

The editors of the two suffrage papers, the officers of the National-American Association, the largest contributors to the fund and the other members of the committee, all sustained Miss Anthony in her position. Zerelda G. Wallace published the following notice: "Having pledged to the committee on work in South Dakota one month's services in the projected suffrage campaign in that State, I wish to announce publicly that all I do there will be done under the direction of the South Dakota committee of which Susan B. Anthony is chairman."

Finally, on April 15, the executive committee of South Dakota forwarded their plan, which included a provision that "every dollar expended should pass through the State treasury, and that the State executive committee should have control of all plans of work and decide what lecturers should be engaged;" but by the time it reached Washington Miss Anthony was well on her way to South Dakota. When she arrived she found that it was just as she had been informed, the disaffection was confined to a few persons, but the body of workers made her welcome and she was cordially received throughout the State. Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, State lecturer and one of the ablest women, at once placed her services at Miss Anthony's disposal, and in a short time nearly all were working in harmony with the national plan.

The autumn previous, when Miss Anthony was attending a convention in Minneapolis, H. L. Loucks and Alonzo Wardall, president and secretary of the South Dakota Farmers' Alliance, had made a journey expressly to ask her to come into the State to conduct this canvass. She had replied that she never again would go into an amendment campaign unless it was endorsed and advocated by at least one of the two great political parties. They assured her that the Farmers' Alliance dominated politics in South Dakota, that it held the balance of power, and the year previous had compelled the Republicans to put a prohibition plank in their platform and, through the influence of the Alliance, that amendment had been carried by 6,000 majority. They were ready now to do the same for woman suffrage. It was wholly because of the assurance of this support that Miss Anthony took the responsibility of raising the funds and conducting the campaign in South Dakota.

When she arrived in the State, April 23, none of the political conventions had been held. In co-operation with the State executive board, she at once planned the suffrage mass meetings, arranged work for the corps of speakers, pushed the district organization and made speeches herself almost every night. The National-American Association sent into the State and paid the expenses of Rev. Anna Shaw, Rev. Olympia Brown, Laura M. Johns, Mary Seymour Howell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Julia B. Nelson and Clara B. Colby.[60] It also contributed over $1,000 to the office expenses of the State committee, paid $400 to the Woman's Journal and Woman's Tribune for thousands of copies to be sent to residents of South Dakota during the campaign, and flooded the State with suffrage literature. The speakers collected altogether $1,400 in South Dakota, which went toward their expenses. California, as her contribution to the national fund, raised $1,000 through a committee consisting of Hon. George C. Perkins, Mrs. Ellen Clark Sargent, Mrs. Knox Goodrich, Hon. W. H. Mills, Miss Sarah C. Severance and Dr. Alida C. Avery. This was used to pay the expenses of Matilda Hindman for eight months, as one of the campaign organizers and speakers.

As Miss Anthony was on her way to a meeting June 3, she received a telegram which sent her at once to Huron, where the annual convention of the Farmers' Alliance was in session. Upon arriving she found her information had been correct, that the Alliance and the Knights of Labor had combined forces and were about to form an independent party. She was permitted to address the convention and in the most impassioned language she begged them not to take this step, as it would be death to the woman suffrage amendment. She appealed to them in the name of their wives and daughters at home, doing double duty in order that the men might attend this convention; she reminded them of their pledges to herself and the other women to stand by the amendment, and showed them that, of themselves, they would not be strong enough to carry it, and that the Republican party, unless sustained by the Alliance, would not and could not support it. Her appeals fell upon deaf ears, and the old story was repeated—the women sacrificed to party expediency.

The Alliance of 478 delegates, at its State convention the previous year, November, 1889, after Miss Anthony's speech and after she had met with its business committee, had passed this resolution:

Resolved, That we will do all in our power to aid in woman's enfranchisement in South Dakota at the next general election, by bringing it before the local Alliances for agitation and discussion, thereby educating the masses upon the subject.

The Knights of Labor, at their annual convention in Aberdeen, January, 1890, had adopted the following:

Resolved, That the Knights of Labor, in assembly convened, do hereby declare that we will support with all our strength the amendment to the State Constitution of South Dakota, to be voted on at the next general election, giving to our wives, mothers and sisters the ballot.... We believe that giving to the women of our country the ballot is the first step towards securing those reforms for which all true Knights of Labor are striving.

This action was taken by both conventions after the amendment had been submitted, and it was intended as a pledge of support. And yet the following June these two bodies formed a new political party and refused to put a woman suffrage plank in their platform! H. L. Loucks was himself a candidate for governor on this Independent ticket, and in his annual address at this time never mentioned woman suffrage. Before adjourning, the convention passed a long resolution making seven or eight declarations, among them one that "no citizen should be disfranchised on account of sex," but, during the entire campaign, as far as their party advocacy was concerned, this question was a dead issue.[61]

The State Democratic Convention met at Aberdeen the following week, and a committee of representative Dakota women was sent to present the claims of the amendment. They were invited to seats on the platform and there listened to an address by Hon. E. W. Miller, of Parker county, land receiver of the Huron district, in which, according to the press reports, "he declared that no decent, respectable woman asked for the ballot; that the women who did so were a disgrace to their homes; that when women voted men would have to suckle the babies," and used other expressions of an indecent nature, "which were received with prolonged and vigorous cheers." (Argus-Leader, June 16, 1890.)[62] Judge Bangs, of Rapid City, who had brought in a minority report in favor of a suffrage plank, supported it in an able and dignified speech, but it was overwhelmingly voted down amidst great disorder. A large delegation of Russians came to this convention wearing great yellow badges (the brewers' color in South Dakota) lettered "Against woman suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."

The Republican State Convention met in Mitchell, August 27. A suffrage mass meeting was held the two days preceding, and every possible effort made to secure a plank in the platform. Most of the national speakers and a large body of earnest and influential South Dakota men and women were present. Rev. Anna Shaw graphically relates an incident which deserves a place in history:

When the Republicans had their State convention some of the leading men promised that we should have a plank in the platform, so we went down to see it through. We requested seats in the body of the house for our delegation, which was composed of most of the national speakers and the brainiest women in South Dakota, but we were informed there was absolutely no room for us. Finally a friend secured admission for ten on the very back of the platform, where we could neither see nor hear unless we stood on our chairs. We begged a good seat for Miss Anthony but no place could be made for her. Soon after the convention opened, an announcement was made that a delegation was waiting outside and that back of this delegation would probably be 5,000 votes. It was at once moved and seconded that they be invited in, and a committee was sent to escort them to seats on the floor of the house. In a moment it returned, followed by three big, dirty Indians in blankets and moccasins. Plenty of room for Indian men, but not a seat for American women!

We asked for a chance to address the delegates, but the chairman adjourned the convention, and then announced that we might speak during the recess. That night we went back again to the hall, and the resolution committee not being ready to report, the audience called for leading speakers, but none of them dared say a word because they did not yet know what would be in the platform. Finally when no man would respond they called for me, and I went forward and said: "Gentlemen, I am not afraid to speak, for I know what is in our platform and I know also what I want you to introduce into yours."

She then made her plea. It was cordially received, but the platform entirely ignored the question of woman suffrage. This was true also of the press and party speakers during the campaign, with one exception. Hon. J. A. Pickler was renominated for Congress, and in his speech of acceptance declared his belief in woman suffrage and his regret that the Republicans did not adopt it in their platform. He was warned by the party leaders, but replied that he would advocate it even if he imperilled his chances for election. He spoke in favor of the amendment throughout his campaign and was elected without difficulty. His wife, Alice M. Pickler, was one of the most effective speakers and workers among the Dakota women and, although Mr. Pickler was a candidate, she did not once speak upon Republican issues but confined herself wholly to the question of woman suffrage. She was as true and courageous as her husband. Although fair reports of the suffrage meetings were published, scarcely a newspaper in the State gave editorial endorsement to the amendment.

The adverse action of the party conventions virtually destroyed all chance for success, but the suffrage speakers usually found enthusiastic audiences, and the friends still hoped against hope that they might secure a popular vote. Miss Anthony never lost courage, and her letters were full of good cheer. "Tell everybody," she wrote, "that I am perfectly well in body and mind, never better, and never doing more work.... Anna Shaw and I are on our way to the Black Hills, and shall rush into Sioux City for a pay lecture and turn the proceeds over to the Dakota fund.... O, the lack of the modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with it better than any of the young folks.... All of us must strain every nerve to move the hearts of men as they never before were moved. I shall push ahead and do my level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally.... I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of the good people everywhere.... The friends here are very sanguine and if I had not had my hopes dashed to the earth in seven State campaigns before this, I, too, would dare believe. But I shall not be cast down, even if voted down."



The eastern friends sent appreciative letters. "The thought of you and your fellow-workers in South Dakota in this hot weather and with insufficient funds, has lain like lead upon my heart," wrote John Hooker. "How I wish I could accept your invitation to come to you and talk to the old soldiers," said Clara Barton; "but alas, I have not the strength. My heart, my hopes, are with you and if there is a spoke I can get hold of, I will help turn that wheel before the campaign is over. My love is always with you and your glorious cause, my dear, dear Susan Anthony."



Anna Shaw wrote from Ohio in August: "I am trying to follow your magnificent example, in quietly passing over every personal matter for the sake of the greatest good for the work. Whenever I find myself giving way, I think of you and all you have borne and get fresh courage to try once more. Dear Aunt Susan, my heart is reaching out with such a great longing for my mother, now eighty years old, that I must go to her for a few days before I enter upon that long canvass, but I will come to you soon."

It was a hard campaign, the summer the hottest ever known, the distances long, the entertainment the best which could be offered, good in the towns but in the rural districts sometimes very poor, and the speakers slept more than once in sod houses where the only fuel for preparing the meals consisted of "buffalo chips." The people were in severe financial straits. A two years' drouth had destroyed the crops, and prairie fires had swept away the little which was left. "Starvation stares them in the face," Miss Anthony wrote. "Why could not Congress have appropriated the money for artesian wells and helped these earnest, honest people, instead of voting $40,000 for a commission to come out here and investigate?"

Frequently the speakers had to drive twenty miles between the afternoon and evening meetings, in the heat of summer and the chill of late autumn; at one time forty miles on a wagon seat without a back. On the Fourth of July, a roasting day, Miss Anthony spoke in the morning, drove fifteen miles to speak again in the afternoon, and then left at night in a pouring rain for a long ride in a freight-car. At one town the school house was the only place for speaking purposes, but the Russian trustees announced that "they did not want to hear any women preach," so after the long trip, the meeting had to be given up. Several times in the midst of their speeches, the audience was stampeded by cyclones, not a soul left in the house.[63] The people came twenty and thirty miles to these meetings, bringing their dinners. Miss Anthony speaks always in the highest terms of the fine character of the Dakota men and women, and of their large families of bright, healthy children.

The speakers never tire of telling their experiences during that campaign. Mary Seymour Howell relates in her own interesting way that once she and Miss Anthony had been riding for hours in a stage which creaked and groaned at every turn of the wheels, the poor, dilapidated horses not able to travel out of a walk, the driver a prematurely-old little boy whose feet did not touch the floor, and a cold Dakota wind blowing straight into their faces. After an unbroken, homesick silence of an hour, Miss Anthony said in a subdued and solemn voice, "Mrs. Howell, humanity is at a very low ebb!" The tone, the look, the words, so in harmony with the surroundings, produced a reaction which sent her off into a fit of laughter, in which Miss Anthony soon joined.

They had been warned to keep away from a certain hotel, at one place, as it was the very worst in the whole State. At the close of the afternoon meeting there, a man came up and said he would be pleased to entertain the speakers and could make them very comfortable. This seemed to be a sure escape, so they thankfully accepted his invitation, but when they reached his home, they discovered that he was the landlord of the poor hotel! Miss Anthony charged Mrs. Howell to make the best of it without a word of complaint. They went to supper, amidst heat and flies, and found sour bread, muddy coffee and stewed green grapes. Miss Anthony ate and drank and talked and smiled, and every little while touched Mrs. Howell's foot with her own in a reassuring manner. After supper Mrs. Howell went to her little, bare room, which she soon learned by the clatter of the dishes was next to the kitchen, and through the thin partition she heard the landlady say: "Well, I never supposed I could entertain big-bugs, and I thought I couldn't live through having Susan B. Anthony here, but I'm getting along all right. You ought to hear her laugh; why, she laughs just like other people!" Mrs. Howell gives this graphic description of the meetings at Madison, July 10:

In the afternoon we drove some distance to a beautiful lake where Miss Anthony spoke to 1,000 men, a Farmers' Alliance picnic. When she asked how many would vote for the suffrage amendment, all was one mighty "aye," like the deep voice of the sea. That evening we spoke in the opera house in the city. While Miss Anthony was speaking a telegram for her was handed to me, and as I arose to make the closing address I gave it to her. I had just begun when she came quickly forward, put her hand on my arm and said, "Stop a moment, I want to read this telegram." It was from Washington, saying that President Harrison had signed the bill admitting Wyoming into the Union with woman suffrage in its constitution. Before she could finish reading the great audience was on its feet, cheering and waving handkerchiefs and fans. After the enthusiasm had subsided Miss Anthony made a short but wonderful speech. The very tones of her voice changed; there were ringing notes of gladness and tender ones of thankfulness. It was the first great victory of her forty years of work. She spoke as one inspired, while the audience listened for every word, some cheering, others weeping.