CONVENTIONS FROM WASHINGTON TO SOUTH DAKOTA.
1889.
The eleventh of January, 1889, found Miss Anthony in her usual pleasant
suite of rooms at the Riggs House. She plunged at once into preparations
for the approaching convention, interviewing congressmen, calling at the
newspaper offices and conferring with local committees. The Twenty-first
National Convention opened January 21, in the Congregational church,
with the speakers as bright and full of hope as they had been through
all the score of years. The opening address was given by Hon. A. G.
Riddle and, during the sessions, excellent speeches were made by Hon.
William D. Kelley, Senator Blair, Rev. Alexander Kent and State Senator
Blue, of Kansas. Rev. Anna H. Shaw made her first appearance on the
National platform and delivered her splendid oration, "The Fate of
Republics." Laura M. Johns gave a practical and pleasing talk on
"Municipal Suffrage in Kansas;" and there was the usual array of talent.
Miss Anthony presided, putting every speaker to the front and making a
substantial background of her own felicitous little speeches, each
containing an argument in a nutshell.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Very truly yours, Wm D Kelley"]
While in Washington she was entertained at dinner by the "Six O'clock
Club," and seated at the right hand of its president Dr. Wm. A.
Hammond. The subject for the evening was "Robert Elsmere" and, in giving
her opinion, she said she had found nothing new in the book; all those
theological questions had been discussed and settled by the Quakers long
ago. What distressed her most was the marriage of Robert and Catherine,
who, any outsider could have seen, were utterly unfitted for one
another, and she wondered if there could be any way by which young
people might be able to know each other better before marrying.
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.
[Illustration: Autograph: "Keep me in your heart as I keep you in mine
and hold me even [illegible] 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.