The headquarters were kept open for two months, the weekly receptions were largely attended and the rooms each day crowded with visitors. The immense autograph book was signed by hundreds, most of whom also affixed their names to the Woman's Declaration of Rights. Lucretia Mott always came in after attending the mid-week meeting of the Friends, and the ladies had a pot of tea ready for her coming.8 When she left she never failed to hand them $5 "to pay for the trouble she had made," her contributions in this way amounting to $50. George W. Childs gave $100, Dr. Clemence Lozier, $100, Ellen C. Sargent, $50, Elizabeth B. Phelps, $50, Miss Anthony herself contributed $175, and altogether about two hundred people donated nearly $1,700, all of which was expended in keeping up the headquarters and printing and circulating thousands of documents. When the accounts were audited they showed a balance of just $4.64.
At this time Mrs. Mott sent Miss Anthony this little note, accompanied by a large package of fine tea: "I forgot to take the tea I promised thee, so please accept it now. Thank thee for so oft remembering me with the delicious drinks of it. After leaving thee so hurriedly yesterday, I feared that thou wast still short of an even balance, and now enclose another $10 for thy own personal use. It is too hard for our widely extended national society to suffer thee to labor so unceasingly without a consideration." But Miss Anthony did not work for personal reward and said in a letter to her old friend Clarina Howard Nichols: "The Kansas women say, 'All we have of freedom we owe to Mrs. Nichols and yet we never have given her a testimonial.' Well, you and I and all who labor to make the conditions of the world better for coming generations, must find our testimonials in the good accomplished through our work."
As soon as the Centennial headquarters were closed Miss Anthony proceeded to carry out her cherished plan of writing the history of the woman's rights movement. She had sent the most peremptory orders to Mrs. Stanton not to make a lecture engagement before December 1, so that in August, September, October and November they might prepare this history. She then shipped to Mrs. Stanton's home several large trunks and boxes full of letters, reports and various documents which she had carefully preserved during the past quarter of a century, and the first day of August they set to work. The entries in the diary for the next two months give some idea of her state of mind: "I am immersed to my ears and feel almost discouraged.... The work before me is simply appalling.... The prospect of ever getting out a satisfactory history grows less each day.... Would that the good spirits in my own brain would come to the rescue!... O, these old letters! It makes me sad and tired to read them over, to see the terrible strain I was under every minute then, have been ever since, am now and shall be, I think, the rest of my life."9
On August 24 occurred the death of Paulina Wright Davis and, at the husband's request, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the funeral. The former felt that again she had lost a friend who never could be replaced. Mrs. Davis was a woman of beauty, culture, wealth and social position and a life-long advocate of woman suffrage. In October the dear cousin Anson Lapham passed away, and in the diary that night was written: "No man except my father ever gave me such love and confidence, and his acts were equal to his faith."
Work was pressing upon her from every side. In the spring of this year she had been engaged by the editors of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia to write the chapter on suffrage and prepare the biographies of a number of eminent women. Amidst all the other cares of the summer and fall, she had been endeavoring to collect the materials for these sketches, having the usual experience. Some failed to answer; others wrote asking a score of questions; many sent four times as many words as were requested, with the statement that not one single line could be cut out; while a number forwarded a mass of unintelligible matter and requested her to make a good sketch out of it. The history also was occupying her waking and sleeping thoughts, and the depleted condition of her pocket-book foreshadowed the necessity of another lecture tour. Meanwhile, the mother at home was growing very feeble, and on Thanksgiving Day Miss Anthony wrote to her: "I feel as if I were robbing myself of the last moments which I may ever have to be with you, but I can not see the way clear to stay at home this coming winter. It is ever thus with me, so hard to know which is the strongest duty, the one that ought to be done first, and so I grope on in the dark. That I am always away from home may look to the world as if I care less for it than other people, whereas my longing for it almost makes me weak; but you, dear mother, understand my love."
1. See Appendix for full speech.
2. At Carbondale she addressed the students of the Normal School, the day after her lecture, emphasizing the necessity of woman's being able to care for herself, urging them to marry only for love and not for support, and to look upon marriage as a luxury and not a necessity. She was a little doubtful as to the effect of this talk upon both faculty and students, but one of the professors called to tell her how fitting was every word and how he had longed to have just those things said. The girl students sent her a handsome bouquet as she was taking her train.
3. President M.B. Anderson, of Rochester University, wrote a friend in this connection: "I always remember Miss Anthony as an angel of mercy in the house of a sister who was crushed by the loss of a son."
4. See Appendix for full speech.
5. From a large number of clippings, the following are selected as specimens:
Miss Anthony has now earned the money and discharged the last obligation of her paper. This is the work of a brave and good woman.... She is a woman who pays her debts and sets a watch upon her lips.—Cincinnati Enquirer.
It is the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B. Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to us—and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman suffrage—that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood which the follies of a thousand others can not remove.—Utica Observer.
"She has paid her debts like a man," says an exchange. Like a man? Not so. Not one man in a thousand but would have "squealed," "laid down" and settled at ten or twenty cents on the dollar. As people go in this wicked world, it is no more than fair to say in good faith that Miss Anthony is a very admirable person. She is in business, as in other matters, one of the few—the select few—who steer by their own compass and not by the shifting winds.—Buffalo Express.
Miss Susan B. Anthony has done a noble thing, which deserves to be widely known. She has lectured 120 times during this season and has paid off the last debt of The Revolution. That she has felt obliged to work thus for years when thousands of men avail themselves of the privileges of the bankrupt act, is a phenomenal exhibition of personal honor. A woman is thoroughly qualified to plead for the claims of her own sex when she respects the rights of human nature so keenly.—New York Graphic.
We are thankful to see the recognition accorded to the worth of our townswoman. She has been often misjudged and sometimes abused; but unfalteringly and unselfishly she has devoted herself to her life-work, and despite cavilling and sneers, has deeply impressed her thought upon the age in which she has been placed. Her executive talent has unceasingly declared itself and her character has been without reproach. She is today a power in the land, respected even by those who oppose her. She may not witness the full triumph of her cause; but her fame as a brave, truthful and consistent advocate of a conquering cause is secure. Even in her lifetime she is receiving something of the reward to which her fidelity to principle entities her.—Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
6. When this work finally was issued at $15 per set, every one
