were Horace Greeley, who made a strong address, Mrs. Greeley, Abby Hopper Gibbons and others. The Tribune and Post were very complimentary, saying it was the first time a woman had spoken within those walls and the meeting would compare favorably with any ever held in the building. After it was over Mr. Townsend divided the net proceeds among the three women. He also arranged for them to speak in Broadway Tabernacle and in Brooklyn Academy of Music, each of which was crowded to its capacity.
During March and April they made a successful tour of the principal cities in the State, Miss Anthony assuming the management and financial responsibility. They went to Sing Sing, Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Troy, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and other places, greeted everywhere with large and attentive audiences attracted by the unusual spectacle of women speaking in public. They lectured chiefly on temperance, but asked incidentally for equal civil and political rights. While they received from most of the papers respectful treatment, they were sometimes viciously assailed. The Utica Evening Telegraph gave the following false and malicious report:
Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY AND REV. A.L. BROWN ON THE STUMP.—Mechanics' Hall was tolerably well filled last evening by persons wishing to hear the above-named ladies "spout" about temperance. Seven-eighths of the audience was composed of women, and there was noticeable an absence of all rank, fashion and wealth. The ladies proper of Utica don't seem desirous of giving countenance to the silly vagaries disseminated by these strong-minded women. We conceived a very unfavorable opinion of this Miss Anthony when she performed in this city on a former occasion, but we confess that, after listening attentively to her discourse last evening, we were inexpressibly disgusted with the impudence and impiety evinced in her lecture. Personally repulsive, she seems to be laboring under feelings of strong hatred towards male men, the effect, we presume, of jealousy and neglect. She spent some hour or so to show the evils endured by the mothers, wives and daughters of drunkards. She gravely announced that the evil is a great one, and that no remedy might hopefully be asked from licentious statesmen nor from ministers of the gospel, who are always well fed and clothed and don't care for oppressed women. Prominent among the remedies which she suggested for the evils which she alleges to exist, are complete enfranchisement of women, allowing them the run of the legislative halls, ballot-box, etc. With a degree of impiety which was both startling and disgusting, this shrewish maiden counseled the numerous wives and mothers present to separate from their husbands whenever they became intemperate, and particularly not to allow the said husbands to add another child to the family (probably no married advocate of woman's rights would have made this remark). Think of such advice given in public by one who claims to be a maiden lady!
Miss Anthony may be a very respectable lady, but such conversation is certainly not calculated to enhance public regard for her.... She announced quite confidently that wives don't de facto love their husbands if they are dissipated. Everyday observation proves the utter falsity of this statement, and if there is one characteristic of the sex which more than another elevates and ennobles it, it is the persistency and intensity of woman's love for man. But what does Miss Anthony know of the thousand delights of married life; of the sweet stream of affection, of the golden ray of love which beams ever through life's ills? Bah! Of a like disgusting character was her advice to mothers about not using stimulants, even when prescribed by physicians, for the benefit of the young. What in the name of crying babies does Miss Anthony know about such matters?
In our humble judgment, it is by no means complimentary to wives and mothers to be found present at such discourses, encouraging such untruthful and pernicious advice. If Miss Anthony's ideas were practically applied in the relations of life, women would sink from the social elevation they now hold and become the mere appendages of men. Miss Anthony concluded with a flourish of trumpets, that the woman's rights question could not be put down, that women's souls were beginning to expand, etc., after which she gathered her short skirts about her tight pants, sat down and wiped her spectacles.
A letter written to Miss Anthony by her father during this tour shows that even thus early he recognized the utter inability of women to effect great reforms without a vote: "I see notices of your meetings in multitudes of papers, all, with a few exceptions, in a rejoicing mood that woman at last has taken hold in earnest to aid in the reformation of the mighty evils of the day. Yet with all this 'rejoicing' probably not one of these papers would advocate placing the ballot in the hands of woman as the easiest, quickest and most efficient way of enabling her to secure not only this but other reforms. They are willing she should talk and pray and 'flock by herself in conventions and tramp up and down the State, footsore and weary, gathering petitions to be spurned by legislatures, but not willing to invest her with the only power that would do speedy and efficient work."
At this time interest in the study of phrenology was at its height and while Miss Anthony was in New York she had an examination made of her head by Nelson Sizer (with Fowler & Wells) who, blindfolded, gave the following character sketch:
You have a finely organized constitution and a good degree of compactness and power. There is such a balance between the brain and the body that you are enabled to sustain mental effort with less exhaustion than most persons. You have an intensity of emotion and thought which makes your mind terse, sharp, spicy and clear. You always work with a will, a purpose and a straightforwardness of mental action. You seldom accomplish ends by indirect means or circuitous routes, but unfurl your banner, take your position and give fair warning of the course you intend to pursue. You are not naturally fond of combat, but when once fairly enlisted in a cause that has the sanction of your conscience and intellect, your firmness and ambition are such, combined with thoroughness and efficiency of disposition, that all you are in energy and talent is enlisted and concentrated in the one end in view.
You are watchful but not timid, careful to have everything right and safe before you embark; but when times of difficulty and danger arrive, you meet them with coolness and intrepidity. You have more of the spirit of acquisition than of economy; you would rather make new things than patch the old. Your continuity is not large enough. You find it at times difficult to bring the whole strength of your mind to bear upon a subject and hold it there patiently in writing or speaking. You are apt to seize upon fugitive thoughts and wander, unless it be a subject on which you have so drilled your intellect as to become master of it.
You have a full development of the social group. I judge that in the main you have your father's character and talents and your mother's temperament. You have the spirit of her nature, but the framework in the main is like the father. You have large benevolence, not only in the direction of sympathy but of gratitude. You have frankness of character, even to sharpness, and you are obliged to bridle your tongue lest you speak more than is meet. You have mechanical ingenuity, the planning talent, and the minds of others are apt to be used as instruments to accomplish your objects. For instance, if you were a lawyer, you would arrange the testimony and the mode of argument in such a way that the best final result would be achieved. You judge correctly of the fitness and propriety, as well as of the power, of the means you have to be employed. You would plan a thing better than you could use the tools to make it. Your reasoning organs are gaining upon your perceptions. At fifteen your mind was devoted to facts and phenomena; of late years you have been thinking of principles and ideas. You are a keen critic, especially if you can put wit as a cracker on your whip; you can make people feel little and mean if they are so, and when you are vexed can say very sharp things.
You are a good judge of character. You have a full development of language devoted rather to accuracy and definiteness of meaning than volubility; and yet I doubt not you talk fast when excited—that belongs to your temperament. Your intellect is active and your mind more naturally runs in the channel of intellect than of feeling. It seeks an intellectual development rather than to be developed through the affections merely. You have fair veneration and spirituality but are nothing remarkable in these respects. Your chief religious elements are conscience and benevolence; these are your working religious organs, and a religion that does not gratify them is to you "as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
Those who know Miss Anthony intimately will readily
