to do better that even my dreams are filled with these desires.
The sin thus bitterly bewailed consisted in neglecting to use "thee" and "thou" in addressing her schoolmates. She would wake up in the night and mourn over it. One would judge from Deborah's continual lectures that the school was made up of a lot of desperately wicked girls sent her to be reformed, instead of a band of demure and saintly little Quaker maidens. On the 31st Susan writes:
Our class has not recited in Philosophy, Chemistry or Physiology, nor have we read, since the 20th of this month, for the reason of there being such a departure among the scholars from the paths of rectitude.
Later she records that a new teacher has arrived "to relieve Deborah of some of her bodily labors," that "he is a stern-looking man," and that she was "somewhat mortified that she could not give him the desired definition of compendiums."
The woman who sells molasses candy has been here, but when she leaves she does not carry the confusion with her which she causes.... Deborah requested eight of us larger girls to remain last evening, for the purpose of reproving us. The cause was the levity and mirthfulness which were displayed on Third day of the week previous. She compared us to Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his master with a kiss. She said there were those amongst us who would surely have to suffer deep affliction for not attending to the manifestations of truth within.—I have been guilty of much levity and nonsensical conversation and have also permitted thoughts to occupy my mind which should have been far distant, but I do not consider myself as having committed any wilful offence. Perhaps the reason I can not see my own defects is because my heart is hardened. O, may it become more and more refined until nothing shall remain but perfect purity.
2nd mo. 11th day.—First day evening Deborah came down and sat with us. In a few moments she called for her Bible, and in a short time she read, "Jesus wept;" and then, after a long pause, she said, "There are those present who, if they do not attend to what has been said to them, will have their strings shortened, even as short as this verse." This she said after having inquired on what subject Abraham Loire preached in the morning and none of us was able to tell.
2nd mo. 12th day.—Deborah came down in the afternoon to examine our writing. She looked at M.'s and gave her a severe reproof; she then looked at C.'s and said nothing. I, thinking I had improved very much, offered mine for her to examine. She took it and pointed out some of the best words as those which were not well written, and then she asked me the rule for dotting an i, and I acknowledged that I did not know. She then said it was no wonder she had undergone so much distress in mind and body, and that her time had been devoted to us in vain. This was like an Electrical shock to me. I rushed upstairs to my room where, without restraint, I could give vent to my tears. She said the same as that I had been the cause of the great obstruction in the school. If I am such a vile sinner, I would that I might feel it myself. Indeed I do consider myself such a bad creature that I can not see any who seems worse.—And we had a new scholar to witness this scene!
Think of causing all this anguish and humiliation to a young girl because she did not know the rule for dotting an i!
2nd mo. 15th day.—This day I call myself eighteen. It seems impossible that I can be so old, and even at this age I find myself possessed of no more knowledge than I ought to have had at twelve. Dr. Allen, a Phrenologist, gave us a short lecture this morning and examined a few heads, mine among them. He described only the good organs and said nothing of the bad. I should like to know the whole truth.
Susan relates with a good deal of satisfaction that she has written a letter to a schoolmate at home, without putting it on the slate for the teacher to see. A few days later Deborah sends for her. She "went down with cheerfulness," but what was her astonishment to see Deborah with the intercepted letter open in her hand! Susan closes her account of the interview by saying, "Little did I think, when I was writing that letter, that I was committing such an enormous crime."
Learning that a young friend had married a widower with six children, she comments in her diary, "I should think any female would rather live and die an old maid." She has a cold and cough for which Deborah gives her a "Carthartick," followed by some "Laudanum in a silver spoon." "The beautiful spring weather," she says, "inhales me with fresh vigor." She sees some spiderwebs in the schoolroom and, her domestic habits asserting themselves, gets a broom and mounts the desks to sweep them down, "little thinking of the mortification and tears it was to occasion." Finally she steps upon Deborah's desk and breaks the hinges on the lid. That personage is informed by an assistant teacher and arrives on the scene:
"Deborah, I have broken your desk." She appeared not to notice me, walked over, examined the desk and asked the teacher who broke it. "What! Susan Anthony step on my desk! I would not have set a child upon it," she said, and much more which I can not write. "How came you to step on it?" she asked, but I was too full to speak and rushed from the room in tears. That evening, after we read in the Testament, she said that where there was no desire for moral improvement there would be no improvement in reading. There was one by the side of her who had not desired moral improvement and had made no advancement in Literature.
This deliberate cruelty to one whose heart was bursting with sorrow and regret! "Never will this day be forgotten," says the diary. In speaking of this incident Miss Anthony said: "Not once, in all the sixty years that have passed, has the thought of that day come to my mind without making me turn cold and sick at heart."
On one occasion when a composition had been severely criticised, Susan blazed forth the inquiry why she always was censured and her sister praised. "Because," was the reply, "thy sister Guelma does the best she is capable of, but thou dost not. Thou hast greater abilities and I demand of thee the best of thy capacity." Throughout this little record are continual expressions of the pain of separation from the dear home, of keen disappointment if the expected letter fails to come, and most affectionate references to the beloved parents, brothers and sisters. Even the austere Deborah is mentioned always with respect and kindness for, notwithstanding her frequent censure, she inspired the girls with love and reverence.
Subsequent events show that this lady was failing rapidly with consumption. Among the old letters, one from an assistant teacher to Daniel Anthony, dated 1839, a year after Susan left school, says: "The tender chord that so long confined our beloved Deborah to this world was broken on the 25th day of the 4th month, and we trust her happy spirit took its flight to realms of eternal felicity." Deborah Moulson was a cultured and estimable woman, but she represented the spirit of that age toward childhood, one of chilling severity and constant repression, when reproof was as liberally administered as praise was conscientiously withheld.
1. Sixty-five years later, this cousin, Nancy Howe Clark, aged eighty-seven, wrote Miss Anthony:
"The year I spent at your father's was the happiest of my whole long life. How well I remember the sweet voices saying 'Cousin Nancy,' and the affectionate way in which I was received by your dear father and mother. It had never been my fortune before to live in a household with an educated man at its head, and I felt a little shy of your father but soon found there was no occasion. Although it was a period of great financial depression, he always found time to be social and kindly in his family. He seemed to have an eye for everything, his business, the school and every good work. I considered your father and mother a model husband and wife and found it hard to leave such a loving home."
2. In later years the younger children were instructed on piano and violin, and he enjoyed nothing better than listening to them.
3. In reading them over, sixty years afterwards, she said mournfully, "That has been the way all my life. Whenever I take a pen in hand I always seem to be mounted on stilts." To those who are acquainted with her simple, straightforward
