converted to the idea that "we old folks" had the best of it.
The day was ushered in with telegrams, letters, and express packages, which continued to arrive during the week. From England, France, and Germany came cablegrams, presents, and letters of congratulation, and from all quarters came books, pictures, silver, bronzes, California blankets, and baskets of fruits and flowers. The eulogies in prose and verse were so hearty and numerous that the ridicule and criticism of forty years were buried so deep that I shall remember them no more. There is no class who enjoy the praise of their fellow-men like those who have had only blame most of their lives. The evening of the 12th we had a delightful reunion at the home of Dr. Clemence Lozier, where I gave my essay, after which Mrs. Lozier, Mrs. Blake, Miss Anthony, "Jenny June," and some of the younger converts to our platform, all made short speeches of praise and congratulation, which were followed by music, recitations, and refreshments.
All during the autumn Miss Anthony and I looked forward to the spring, when we hoped to have completed the third and last volume of our History, and thus end the labors of ten years. We had neither time nor eyesight to read aught but the imperative documents for the History. I was hungering for some other mental pabulum.
In January, 1886, I was invited to dine with Laura Curtis Bullard, to meet Mme. Durand (Henri Gréville), the novelist. She seemed a politic rather than an earnest woman of principle. As it was often very inconvenient for me to entertain distinguished visitors, who desired to meet me in my country home during the winter, Mrs. Bullard generously offered always to invite them to her home. She and her good mother have done their part in the reform movements in New York by their generous hospitalities.
Reading the debates in Congress, at that time, on a proposed appropriation for a monument to General Grant, I was glad to see that Senator Plumb of Kansas was brave enough to express his opinion against it. I fully agree with him. So long as multitudes of our people who are doing the work of the world live in garrets and cellars, in ignorance, poverty, and vice, it is the duty of Congress to apply the surplus in the national treasury to objects which will feed, clothe, shelter, and educate these wards of the State. If we must keep on continually building monuments to great men, they should be handsome blocks of comfortable homes for the poor, such as Peabody built in London. Senator Hoar of Massachusetts favored the Grant monument, partly to cultivate the artistic tastes of our people. We might as well cultivate our tastes on useful dwellings as on useless monuments. Surely sanitary homes and schoolhouses for the living would be more appropriate monuments to wise statesmen than the purest Parian shafts among the sepulchers of the dead.
The strikes and mobs and settled discontent of the masses warn us that, although we forget and neglect their interests and our duties, we do it at the peril of all. English statesmen are at their wits' end to-day with their tangled social and industrial problems, threatening the throne of a long line of kings. The impending danger cannot be averted by any surface measures; there must be a radical change in the relations of capital and labor.
In April rumors of a domestic invasion, wafted on every Atlantic breeze, warned us that our children were coming from England and France—a party of six. Fortunately, the last line of the History was written, so Miss Anthony, with vol. III. and bushels of manuscripts, fled to the peaceful home of her sister Mary at Rochester. The expected party sailed from Liverpool the 26th of May, on the America After being out three days the piston rod broke and they were obliged to return. My son-in-law, W.H. Blatch, was so seasick and disgusted that he remained in England, and took a fresh start two months later, and had a swift passage without any accidents. The rest were transferred to the Germanic, and reached New York the 12th of June. Different divisions of the party were arriving until midnight. Five people and twenty pieces of baggage! The confusion of such an invasion quite upset the even tenor of our days, and it took some time for people and trunks to find their respective niches. However crowded elsewhere, there was plenty of room in our hearts, and we were unspeakably happy to have our flock all around us once more.
I had long heard so many conflicting opinions about the Bible—some saying it taught woman's emancipation and some her subjection—that, during this visit of my children, the thought came to me that it Would be well to collect every biblical reference to women in one small compact volume, and see on which side the balance of influence really was. To this end I proposed to organize a committee of competent women, with some Latin, Greek, and Hebrew scholars in England and the United States, for a thorough revision of the Old and New Testaments, and to ascertain what the status of woman really was under the Jewish and Christian religion. As the Church has thus far interpreted the Bible as teaching woman's subjection, and none of the revisions by learned ecclesiastics have thrown any new light on the question, it seemed to me pre-eminently proper and timely for women themselves to review the book. As they are now studying theology in many institutions of learning, asking to be ordained as preachers, elders, deacons, and to be admitted, as delegates, to Synods and General Assemblies, and are refused on Bible grounds, it seemed to me high time for women to consider those scriptural arguments and authorities.
A happy coincidence enabled me at last to begin this work. While my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, was with me, our friend Miss Frances Lord, on our earnest invitation, came to America to visit us. She landed in New York the 4th of August, 1886. As it was Sunday she could not telegraph, hence there was no one to meet her, and, as we all sat chatting on the front piazza, suddenly, to our surprise and delight, she drove up. After a few days' rest and general talk of passing events, I laid the subject so near my heart before her and my daughter. They responded promptly and heartily, and we immediately set to work. I wrote to every woman who I thought might join such a committee, and Miss Lord ran through the Bible in a few days, marking each chapter that in any way referred to women. We found that the work would not be so great as we imagined, as all the facts and teachings in regard to women occupied less than one-tenth of the whole Scriptures. We purchased some cheap Bibles, cut out the texts, pasted them at the head of the page, and, underneath, wrote our commentaries as clearly and concisely as possible. We did not intend to have sermons or essays, but brief comments, to keep "The Woman's Bible" as small as possible.
Miss Lord and I worked several weeks together, and Mrs. Blatch and I, during the winter of 1887, wrote all our commentaries on the Pentateuch. But we could not succeed in forming the committee, nor, after writing innumerable letters, make the women understand what we wanted to do. I still have the commentaries of the few who responded, and the letters of those who declined—a most varied and amusing bundle of manuscripts in themselves. Some said the Bible had no special authority with them; that, like the American Constitution, it could be interpreted to mean anything—slavery, when we protected that "Institution," and freedom, when it existed no longer. Others said that woman's sphere was clearly marked out in the Scriptures, and all attempt at emancipation was flying in the face of Providence. Others said they considered all the revisions made by men thus far, had been so many acts of sacrilege, and they did hope women would not add their influence, to weaken the faith of the people in the divine origin of the Holy Book, for, if men and women could change it in one particular, they could in all. On the whole the correspondence was discouraging.
Later Miss Lord became deeply interested in psychical researches, and I could get no more work out of her. And as soon as we had finished the Pentateuch, Mrs. Blatch declared she would go no farther; that it was the driest history she had ever read, and most derogatory to women. My beloved coadjutor, Susan B. Anthony, said that she thought it a work of supererogation; that when our political equality was recognized and we became full-fledged American citizens, the Church would make haste to bring her Bibles and prayer books, creeds and discipline up to the same high-water mark of liberty.
Helen Gardener said: "I consider this a most important proposal, and if you and I can ever stay on the same side of the Atlantic long enough, we will join hands and do the work. In fact, I have begun already with Paul's Epistles, and am fascinated with the work. The untenable and unscientific positions he takes in regard to women are very amusing. Although the first chapter of Genesis teaches the simultaneous creation of man and woman, Paul bases woman's subjection on the priority of man, and because
