precious mother, awaited his coming.... It is impossible for me to express my feelings of love and respect, of honor and gratitude, for the life, the words, the works, of your father; but you all know, I trust, that few mortals had greater veneration for him than I. His approbation was my delight; his disapproval, my regret.... That each and all of you may strive to be to the injustice of your day and generation what he was to that of his, is the best wish—the best aspiration—I can offer. Blessed are you indeed, that you mourn so true, so noble, so grand a man as your loved and loving father.
In her diary that night she wrote: "I sent a letter, but how paltry it seemed compared to what was in my heart. Why can I not put my thought into words?"
The last of May she went home, having lectured and worked every day since the previous October. She records with much delight that she has now snugly tucked away in bank $4,500, the result of her last two lecture seasons. During the one just closed she spoke 140 nights, besides attending various conventions. This bank account did not represent all she had earned, for she always gave with a lavish hand. How much she has given never can be known, but in the year 1879, for instance, one friend acknowledges the receipt of $50 to enable her to buy a dress and other articles so that she can attend the Washington convention. Another writes: "I have just learned that the $25 you handed me to pay my way home from the meeting had been given you to pay your own." To an old and faithful fellow-worker, now in California, she sends by express a warm flannel wrapper. There is scarcely a month which does not record some gift varying from $100 in value down to a trinket for remembrance. Each year she contributed $100 to the suffrage work, besides many smaller sums at intervals, and the account-books show that her benefactions were many. She never spared money if an end were to be accomplished, and never failed to keep an engagement, no matter at what risk or expense. On several occasions she chartered an engine, even though the cost was more than she would receive for the lecture. As she was now approaching her sixtieth birthday, relatives and friends were most anxious that she should lay aside part of her earnings for a time when even her indomitable spirit might have to succumb to physical weakness, but she herself never seemed to feel any anxiety as to the future.
Notwithstanding her own disastrous experiment, Miss Anthony never ceased to desire a woman's paper, one which not only should present the questions relating directly to women but should be edited and controlled entirely by women, and discuss all the issues of the day. Scattered through the correspondence of years are letters on this subject, either wanting to resurrect The Revolution or to start a new paper. At intervals some wealthy woman would seem half-inclined to advance money for the purpose and then hope would be revived, only to be again destroyed. During the summer of 1872 a clever journalist, Mrs. Helen Barnard, had edited a paper called the Woman's Campaign, supported by Republican funds. Miss Anthony had hoped to convert this into her ideal paper after the election, and spent considerable time in trying to form a stock company. A large amount was subscribed but not enough, and all was returned by Mrs. Sargent, then national treasurer. Sarah L. Williams, editor of the woman's department of the Toledo Blade, started a bright suffrage paper called the Ballot-Box and edited it for several years. Miss Anthony assisted her in every possible way, and spoiled the effect of many a fine speech by asking at its close for subscribers to this paper. In 1878, '79 and '80 she secured 2,500 names. In 1878 Mrs. Williams turned her paper over to Matilda Joslyn Gage, who added National Citizen to the title. Miss Anthony's and Mrs. Stanton's names were placed at the head as corresponding editors, and the paper was ably conducted by Mrs. Gage, but it had not the financial backing necessary to success; when Miss Anthony ceased lecturing, new subscribers no longer came and, after much tribulation, it finally suspended in 1881.
While Miss Anthony continued for many years to cherish this idea of a distinctively woman's paper, the daily press grew more and more liberal, devoting larger space to the interests of women every year, and she became of the opinion that possibly the most effective work might be accomplished through this medium. She held, however, that there should be one woman upon each paper whose special business it should be to look after this department, and who should be permitted to discuss not only the "woman question" but all others from a woman's standpoint. As newspapers are now managed, the readers have only man's views of all the vital issues attracting public attention. Woman occupies a subordinate position and must write on all subjects in a spirit which will be acceptable to the masculine head of the paper; so the public gets in reality his thought and not hers. She had come to see, also, that the newspaper work should be a leading and distinctive feature of the National Association to a far greater extent than hitherto had been attempted, and which, until of late years, had not been possible. No man or woman ever had a higher opinion of the influence of the press, which she considered the most powerful agency in the world for good or for evil.
In the summer of 1879, Miss Anthony received from her friend, A. Bronson Alcott, a complimentary ticket for three seasons of lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy; but the living questions of the day were too pressing for her to withdraw to this classic and sequestered retreat, outside the busy and practical world.
During the decade from 1870 to 1880, there was a large accession of valuable workers to the cause of woman suffrage and many new friends came into Miss Anthony's life. Among these were May Wright Sewall; the sisters, Julia and Rachel Foster; Clara B. Colby; Zerelda G. Wallace; Frances E. Willard; J. Ellen Foster; the wife and three talented daughters of Cassius M. Clay, Mary B., Laura and Sallie Clay Bennett; M. Louise Thomas; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert and others, who became her devoted adherents and fellow-workers, and whose homes and hospitality she enjoyed during all the years which followed.
At the close of her lecture season in 1879 she was able to spend Christmas and New Year's at her own home for the first time in many years; but she left on January 2 to fill engagements, reaching Washington on the eve of the National Convention, which assembled at Lincoln Hall, January 21, 1880. As Mrs. Stanton was absent, Miss Anthony presided over the sessions. During this meeting, 250 new petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, signed by over 12,000 women, were sent to Congress, besides over 300 petitions from individual women praying for a removal of their political disabilities. These were presented by sixty-five different representatives. Hon. T.W. Ferry, of Michigan, in the Senate, and Hon. George B. Loring, of Massachusetts, in the House, introduced a resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment. This with all the petitions was referred to the judiciary committees, each of which granted a hearing of two hours to the ladies. Among the delegates who addressed them was Julia Smith Parker, of Glastonbury, Conn., at that time over eighty years old, who with her sister Abby annually resisted the payment of taxes because they were denied representation, and whose property was in consequence annually seized and sold. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the mother so beautifully pictured in Ben Hur, addressed a congressional committee for the first time, and among the other speakers were Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Blake, Miss Couzins, Mrs. Emma Mont McRae, of Indiana, and Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, of Louisiana. It was at this hearing that Senator Edmunds complimented Miss Anthony by saying, "Most speeches on this question are platform oratory; yours is argument." Through the influence of Hon. E.G. Lapham, all these addresses were printed in pamphlet form.
During this convention Miss Anthony was the guest of Mrs. Spofford, whose husband was proprietor of the Riggs House. The place of hostess, which had been so beautifully filled by Mrs. Sargent, was assumed at once by Mrs. Spofford, a lady of culture and position. For twelve years a suite of rooms was set apart for Miss Anthony in this commodious hotel whenever she was at the capital, whether for days or for months, and she received every possible courtesy and attention, without price. Miss Anthony wrote her many times: "You can not begin to know what a blessing your home is to me, or how grateful I am to you for its comfort and luxury. You are indeed Mrs. Sargent's successor in love and hospitality, and my hope is always to deserve them."
After a brilliant reception at the Riggs House to the delegates, Miss Anthony left for Philadelphia, in company with the venerable Julia Smith Parker, and went to Roadside, the suburban home of Lucretia Mott, "where," she writes, "it was a wonderful sight to see the two octogenarians talking together, so bright and wide awake to the questions of the present." She never again saw Lucretia Mott or heard her sweet voice.
The
