CHAPTER XI.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Continued_.

It was in 1852 that anti-slavery, through the eloquent lips of such men

as George Thompson, Phillips, and Garrison, first proclaimed to Miss

Anthony its pressing financial necessities. To their inspired words she

gave answer, four years afterward, by becoming a regularly employed

agent in the Anti-slavery Society. For her espoused cause she has always

made boldest demands. In the abolition meetings she used to tell each

class why it should support the movement financially; invariably calling

upon Democrats to give liberally, as the success of the cause would

enable them to cease bowing the knee to the slave power.

There is scarce a town, however small, from New York to San Francisco,

that has not heard her ringing voice. Who can number the speeches she

has made on lyceum platforms, in churches, schoolhouses, halls, barns,

and in the open air, with a lumber wagon or a cart for her rostrum? Who

can describe the varied audiences and social circles she has cheered and

interested? Now we see her on the far-off prairies, entertaining, with

sterling common sense, large gatherings of men, women, and children,

seated on rough boards in some unfinished building; again, holding

public debates in some town with half-fledged editors and clergymen;

next, sailing up the Columbia River and, in hot haste to meet some

appointment, jolting over the rough mountains of Oregon and Washington;

and then, before legislative assemblies, constitutional conventions, and

congressional committees, discussing with senators and judges the letter

and spirit of constitutional law.

Miss Anthony's style of speaking is rapid and vehement. In debate she is

ready and keen, and she is always equal to an emergency. Many times in

traveling with her through the West, especially on our first trip to

Kansas and California, we were suddenly called upon to speak to the

women assembled at the stations. Filled with consternation, I usually

appealed to her to go first; and, without a moment's hesitation, she

could always fill five minutes with some appropriate words and inspire

me with thoughts and courage to follow. The climax of these occasions

was reached in an institution for the deaf and dumb in Michigan. I had

just said to my friend, "There is one comfort in visiting this place; we

shall not be asked to speak," when the superintendent, approaching us,

said, "Ladies, the pupils are assembled in the chapel, ready to hear

you. I promised to invite you to speak to them as soon as I heard you

were in town." The possibility of addressing such an audience was as

novel to Miss Anthony as to me; yet she promptly walked down the aisle

to the platform, as if to perform an ordinary duty, while I, half

distracted with anxiety, wondering by what process I was to be placed in

communication with the deaf and dumb, reluctantly followed. But the

manner was simple enough, when illustrated. The superintendent, standing

by our side, repeated, in the sign language, what was said as fast as

uttered; and by laughter, tears, and applause, the pupils showed that

they fully appreciated the pathos, humor, and argument.

One night, crossing the Mississippi at McGregor, Iowa, we were icebound

in the middle of the river. The boat was crowded with people, hungry,

tired, and cross with the delay. Some gentlemen, with whom we had been

talking on the cars, started the cry, "Speech on woman suffrage!"

Accordingly, in the middle of the Mississippi River, at midnight, we

presented our claims to political representation, and debated the

question of universal suffrage until we landed. Our voyagers were quite

thankful that we had shortened the many hours, and we equally so at

having made several converts and held a convention on the very bosom of

the great "Mother of Waters." Only once in all these wanderings was Miss

Anthony taken by surprise, and that was on being asked to speak to the

inmates of an insane asylum. "Bless me!" said she, "it is as much as I

can do to talk to the sane! What could I say to an audience of

lunatics?" Her companion, Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis, replied: "This

is a golden moment for you, the first opportunity you have ever had,

according to the constitutions, to talk to your 'peers,' for is not the

right of suffrage denied to 'idiots, criminals, lunatics, and women'?"

Much curiosity has been expressed as to the love-life of Miss Anthony;

but, if she has enjoyed or suffered any of the usual triumphs or

disappointments of her sex, she has not yet vouchsafed this information

to her biographers. While few women have had more sincere and lasting

friendships, or a more extensive correspondence with a large circle of

noble men, yet I doubt if one of them can boast of having received from

her any exceptional attention. She has often playfully said, when

questioned on this point, that she could not consent that the man she

loved, described in the Constitution as a white male, native born,

American citizen, possessed of the right of self-government, eligible to

the office of President of the great Republic, should unite his

destinies in marriage with a political slave and pariah. "No, no; when I

am crowned with all the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen,

I may give some consideration to this social institution; but until then

I must concentrate all my energies on the enfranchisement of my own

sex." Miss Anthony's love-life, like her religion, has manifested itself

in steadfast, earnest labors for men in general. She has been a watchful

and affectionate daughter, sister, friend, and those who have felt the

pulsations of her great heart know how warmly it beats for all.

As the custom has long been observed, among married women, of

celebrating the anniversaries of their wedding-day, quite properly the

initiative has been taken, in late years, of doing honor to the great

events in the lives of single women. Being united in closest bonds to

her profession, Dr. Harriet K. Hunt of Boston celebrated her

twenty-fifth year of faithful services as a physician by giving to her

friends and patrons a large reception, which she called her silver

wedding. From a feeling of the sacredness of her life work, the admirers

of Susan B. Anthony have been moved to mark, by reception and

convention, her rapid-flowing years and the passing decades of the

suffrage movement. To the most brilliant occasion of this kind, the

invitation cards were as follows:

The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception on

Tuesday evening, February 15th, to celebrate the fiftieth birthday

of Susan B. Anthony, when her friends will have an opportunity to

show their appreciation of her long services in behalf of woman's

emancipation.

No. 49 East 23d St., New York,

February 10, 1870.

Elizabeth B. Phelps,

Anna B. Darling,

Charlotte Beebe Wilbour.

In response to the invitation, the parlors of the bureau were crowded

with friends to congratulate Miss Anthony on the happy event, many

bringing valuable gifts as an expression of their gratitude. Among other

presents were a handsome gold watch and checks to the amount of a

thousand dollars. The guests were entertained with music, recitations,

the reading of many piquant letters of regret from distinguished people,

and witty rhymes written for the occasion by the Cary sisters. Miss

Anthony received her guests with her usual straightforward simplicity,

and in a few earnest words expressed her thanks for the presents and

praises showered upon her. The comments of the leading journals, next

day, were highly complimentary, and as genial as amusing. All dwelt on

the fact that, at last, a woman had arisen brave enough to assert her

right to grow old and openly declare that half a century had rolled over

her head.

Of carefully prepared written speeches Miss Anthony has made few; but

these, by the high praise they called forth, prove that she can--in

spite of her own declaration to the contrary--put her sterling thoughts

on paper concisely and effectively. After her exhaustive plea, in 1880,

for a Sixteenth Amendment before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate,

Senator Edmunds accosted her, as she was leaving the Capitol, and said

he neglected to tell her, in the committee room, that she had made an

argument, no matter what his personal feelings were as to the

conclusions reached, which was unanswerable--an argument, unlike the

usual platform oratory given at hearings, suited to a committee of men

trained to the law.

It was in 1876 that Miss Anthony gave her much criticised lecture on

"Social Purity" in Boston. As to the result she felt very anxious; for

the intelligence of New England composed her audience, and it did not

still her heart-beats to see, sitting just in front of the platform, her

revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison. But surely every fear vanished

when she felt the grand old abolitionist's hand warmly pressing hers,

and heard him say that to listen to no one else would he have had

courage to leave his sick room, and that he felt fully repaid by her

grand speech, which neither in matter nor manner would he have changed

in the smallest particular. But into Miss Anthony's private

correspondence one must look for examples of her most effective writing.

Verb or substantive is often wanting, but you can always catch the

thought, and will ever find it clear and suggestive. It is a strikingly

strange dialect, but one that touches, at times, the deepest chords of

pathos and humor, and, when stirred by some great event, is highly

eloquent.

From being the most ridiculed and mercilessly persecuted woman, Miss

Anthony has become the most honored and respected in the nation. Witness

the praises of press and people, and the enthusiastic ovations she

received on her departure for Europe in 1883. Never were warmer

expressions of regret for an absence, nor more sincere prayers for a

speedy return, accorded to any American on leaving his native shores.

This slow awaking to the character of her services shows the abiding

sense of justice in the human soul. Having spent the winter of 1882-83

in Washington, trying to press to a vote the bill for a Sixteenth

Amendment before Congress, and the autumn in a vigorous campaign through

Nebraska, where a constitutional amendment to enfranchise women had been

submitted to the people, she felt the imperative need of an entire

change in the current of her thoughts. Accordingly, after one of the

most successful conventions ever held at the national capital, and a

most flattering ovation in the spacious parlors of the Riggs House, and

a large reception in Philadelphia, she sailed for Europe.

Fortunate in being perfectly well during the entire voyage, our traveler

received perpetual enjoyment in watching the ever varying sea and sky.

To the captain's merry challenge to find anything so grand as the ocean,

she replied, "Yes, these mighty forces in nature do indeed fill me with

awe; but this vessel, with deep-buried fires, powerful machinery,

spacious decks, and tapering masts, walking the waves like a thing of

life, and all the work of man, impresses one still more deeply. Lo! in

man's divine creative power is fulfilled the prophecy, 'Ye shall be as

Gods!'"

In all her journeyings through Germany, Italy, and France, Miss Anthony

was never the mere sight-seer, but always the humanitarian and reformer

in traveler's guise. Few of the great masterpieces of art gave her real

enjoyment. The keen appreciation of the beauties of sculpture, painting,

and architecture, which one would have expected to find in so deep a

religious nature, was wanting, warped, no doubt, by her early Quaker

training. That her travels gave her more pain than pleasure was,

perhaps, not so much that she had no appreciation of aesthetic beauty,

but that she quickly grasped the infinitude of human misery; not because

her soul did not feel the heights to which art had risen, but that it

vibrated in every fiber to the depths to which mankind had fallen.

Wandering through a gorgeous palace one day, she exclaimed, "What do you

find to admire here? If it were a school of five hundred children being

educated into the right of self-government I could admire it, too; but

standing for one man's pleasure, I say no!" In the quarters of one of

the devotees, at the old monastery of the Certosa, at Florence, there

lies, on a small table, an open book, in which visitors register. On the

occasion of Miss Anthony's visit the pen and ink proved so unpromising

that her entire party declined this opportunity to make themselves

famous, but she made the rebellious pen inscribe, "Perfect equality for

women, civil, political, religious. Susan B. Anthony, U.S.A." Friends,

who visited the monastery next day, reported that lines had been drawn

through this heretical sentiment.

During her visit at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, in Berlin, Miss

Anthony quite innocently posted her letters in the official envelopes of

our Suffrage Association, which bore the usual mottoes, "No just

government can be formed without the consent of the governed," etc. In a

few days an official brought back a large package, saying, "Such

sentiments are not allowed to pass through the post office." Probably

nothing saved her from arrest as a socialist, under the tyrannical

police regulations, but the fact that she was the guest of the Minister

Plenipotentiary of the United States.

My son Theodore wrote of Miss Anthony's visit in Paris: "I had never

before seen her in the role of tourist. She seemed interested only in

historical monuments, and in the men and questions of the hour. The

galleries of the Louvre had little attraction for her, but she gazed

with deep pleasure at Napoleon's tomb, Notre Dame, and the ruins of the

Tuileries. She was always ready to listen to discussions on the

political problems before the French people, the prospects of the

Republic, the divorce agitation, and the education of women. 'I had

rather see Jules Ferry than all the pictures of the Louvre, Luxembourg,

and Salon,' she remarked at table. A day or two later she saw Ferry at

Laboulaye's funeral. The three things which made the deepest impression

on Miss Anthony, during her stay at Paris, were probably the interment

of Laboulaye (the friend of the United States and of the woman

movement); the touching anniversary demonstration of the Communists, at

the Cemetery of Père La Chaise, on the very spot where the last

defenders of the Commune of 1871 were ruthlessly shot and buried in a

common grave; and a woman's rights meeting, held in a little hall in the

Rue de Rivoli, at which the brave, far-seeing Mlle. Hubertine Auchet was

the leading spirit."

While on the Continent Miss Anthony experienced the unfortunate

sensation of being deaf and dumb; to speak and not to be understood, to

hear and not to comprehend, were to her bitter realities. We can imagine

to what desperation she was brought when her Quaker prudishness could

hail an emphatic oath in English from a French official with the

exclamation, "Well, it sounds good to hear someone even swear in old

Anglo-Saxon!" After two months of enforced silence, she was buoyant in

reaching the British Islands once more, where she could enjoy public

speaking and general conversation. Here she was the recipient of many

generous social attentions, and, on May 25, a large public meeting of

representative people, presided over by Jacob Bright, was called, in our

honor, by the National Association of Great Britain. She spoke on the

educational and political status of women in America, I of their

religious and social position.

Before closing my friend's biography I shall trace two golden threads in

this closely woven life of incident. One of the greatest services

rendered by Miss Anthony to the suffrage cause was in casting a vote in

the Presidential election of 1872, in order to test the rights of women

under the Fourteenth Amendment. For this offense the brave woman was

arrested, on Thanksgiving Day, the national holiday handed down to us by

Pilgrim Fathers escaped from England's persecutions. She asked for a

writ of habeas corpus. The writ being flatly refused, in January, 1873,

her counsel gave bonds. The daring defendant finding, when too late,

that this not only kept her out of jail, but her case out of the Supreme

Court of the United States, regretfully determined to fight on, and gain

the uttermost by a decision in the United States Circuit Court. Her

trial was set down for the Rochester term in May. Quickly she canvassed

the whole county, laying before every probable juror the strength of her

case. When the time for the trial arrived, the District Attorney,

fearing the result, if the decision were left to a jury drawn from Miss

Anthony's enlightened county, transferred the trial to the Ontario

County term, in June, 1873.

It was now necessary to instruct the citizens of another county. In this

task Miss Anthony received valuable assistance from Matilda Joslyn Gage;

and, to meet all this new expense, financial aid was generously given,

unsolicited, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, and other

sympathizers. But in vain was every effort; in vain the appeal of Miss

Anthony to her jurors; in vain the moral influence of the leading

representatives of the bar of Central New York filling the courtroom,

for Judge Hunt, without precedent to sustain him, declaring it a case of

law and not of fact, refused to give the case to the jury, reserving to

himself final decision. Was it not an historic scene which was enacted

there in that little courthouse in Canandaigua? All the inconsistencies

were embodied in that Judge, punctilious in manner, scrupulous in

attire, conscientious in trivialities, and obtuse on great principles,

fitly described by Charles O'Conor--"A very ladylike Judge." Behold him

sitting there, balancing all the niceties of law and equity in his Old

World scales, and at last saying, "The prisoner will stand up."

Whereupon the accused arose. "The sentence of the court is that you pay

a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution." Then

the unruly defendant answers: "May it please your Honor, I shall never

pay a dollar of your unjust penalty," and more to the same effect, all

of which she has lived up to. The "ladylike" Judge had gained some

insight into the determination of the prisoner; so, not wishing to

incarcerate her to all eternity, he added gently: "Madam, the court

will not order you committed until the fine is paid."

It was on the 17th of June that the verdict was given. On that very day,

a little less than a century before, the brave militia was driven back

at Bunker Hill--back, back, almost wiped out; yet truth was in their

ranks, and justice, too. But how ended that rebellion of weak colonists?

The cause of American womanhood, embodied for the moment in the liberty

of a single individual, received a rebuff on June 17, 1873; but, just as

surely as our Revolutionary heroes were in the end victorious, so will

the inalienable rights of our heroines of the nineteenth century receive

final vindication.

In his speech of 1880, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard,

Wendell Phillips said--what as a rule is true--that "a reformer, to be

conscientious, must be free from bread-winning." I will open Miss

Anthony's accounts and show that this reformer, being, perhaps, the

exception which proves the rule, has been consistently and

conscientiously in debt. Turning over her year-books the pages give a

fair record up to 1863. Here began the first herculean labor. The

Woman's Loyal League, sadly in need of funds, was not an incorporated

association, so its secretary assumed the debts. Accounts here became

quite lamentable, the deficit reaching five thousand dollars. It must be

paid, and, in fact, will be paid. Anxious, weary hours were spent in

crowding the Cooper Institute, from week to week, with paying audiences,

to listen to such men as Phillips, Curtis, and Douglass, who contributed

their services, and lifted the secretary out of debt. At last, after

many difficulties, her cash-book of 1863 was honorably pigeon-holed. In

1867 we can read account of herculean labor the second. Twenty thousand

tracts are needed to convert the voters of Kansas to woman suffrage.

Traveling expenses to Kansas, and the tracts, make the debtor column

overreach the creditor some two thousand dollars. There is recognition

on these pages of more than one thousand dollars obtained by soliciting

advertisements, but no note is made of the weary, burning July days

spent in the streets of New York to procure this money, nor of the ready

application of the savings made by petty economies from her salary from

the Hovey Committee.

It would have been fortunate for my brave friend, if cash-books 1868,

1869, and 1870 had never come down from their shelves; for they sing and

sing, in notes of debts, till all unite in one vast chorus of far more

than ten thousand dollars. These were the days of the _Revolution_, the

newspaper, not the war, though it was warfare for the debt-ridden

manager. Several thousand dollars she paid with money earned by

lecturing, and with money given her for personal use. One Thanksgiving

was, in truth, a time for returning thanks; for she received, canceled,

from her cousin, Anson Lapham, her note for four thousand dollars. After

the funeral of Paulina Wright Davis, the bereaved widower pressed into

Miss Anthony's hand canceled notes for five hundred dollars, bearing on

the back the words, "In memory of my beloved wife." One other note was

canceled in recognition of her perfect forgetfulness of self-interest

and ready sacrifice to the needs of others. When laboring, in 1874, to

fill every engagement, in order to meet her debts, her mother's sudden

illness called her home. Without one selfish regret, the anxious

daughter hastened to Rochester. When recovery was certain, and Miss

Anthony was about to return to her fatiguing labors, her mother gave

her, at parting, her note for a thousand dollars, on which was written,

in trembling lines, "In just consideration of the tender sacrifice made

to nurse me in severe illness." At last all the _Revolution_ debt was

paid, except that due to her generous sister, Mary Anthony, who used

often humorously to assure her she was a fit subject for the bankrupt

act.

There is something humorously pathetic in the death of the

_Revolution_--that firstborn of Miss Anthony. Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard

generously assumed the care of the troublesome child, and, in order to

make the adoption legal, gave the usual consideration--one dollar. The

very night of the transfer Miss Anthony went to Rochester with the

dollar in her pocket, and the little change left after purchasing her

ticket. She arrived safely with her debts, but nothing more--her pocket

had been picked! Oh, thief, could you but know what value of faithful

work you purloined!

From the close of the year 1876 Miss Anthony's accounts showed favorable

signs as to the credit column. Indeed, at the end of five years there

was a solid balance of several thousand dollars earned on lecturing

tours. But alas! the accounts grow dim again--in fact the credit column

fades away. "The History of Woman Suffrage" ruthlessly swallowed up

every vestige of Miss Anthony's bank account. But, in 1886, by the will

of Mrs. Eddy, daughter of Francis Jackson of Boston, Miss Anthony

received twenty-four thousand dollars for the Woman's Suffrage Movement,

which lifted her out of debt once more.

In vain will you search these telltale books for evidence of personal

extravagance; for, although Miss Anthony thinks it true economy to buy

the best, her tastes are simple. Is there not something very touching in

the fact that she never bought a book or picture for her own enjoyment?

The meager personal balance-sheets show four lapses from

discipline,--lapses that she even now regards as ruthless

extravagance,--viz.: the purchase of two inexpensive brooches, a much

needed watch, and a pair of cuffs to match a point-lace collar presented

by a friend. Those interested in Miss Anthony's personal appearance long

ago ceased to trust her with the purchase-money for any ornament; for,

however firm her resolution to comply with their wish, the check

invariably found its way to the credit column of those little cash-books

as "money received for the cause." Now, reader, you have been admitted

to a private view of Miss Anthony's financial records, and you can

appreciate her devotion to an idea. Do you not agree with me that a

"bread-winner" can be a conscientious reformer?

In finishing this sketch of the most intimate friend I have had for the

past forty-five years,--with whom I have spent weeks and months under

the same roof,--I can truly say that she is the most upright,

courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous human being I have ever known.

I have seen her beset on every side with the most petty annoyances,

ridiculed and misrepresented, slandered and persecuted; I have known

women refuse to take her extended hand; women to whom she presented

copies of "The History of Woman Suffrage," return it unnoticed; others

to keep it without one word of acknowledgment; others to write most

insulting letters in answer to hers of affectionate conciliation. And

yet, under all the cross-fires incident to a reform, never has her hope

flagged, her self-respect wavered, or a feeling of resentment shadowed

her mind. Oftentimes, when I have been sorely discouraged, thinking that

the prolonged struggle was a waste of force which in other directions

might be rich in achievement, with her sublime faith in humanity, she

would breathe into my soul renewed inspiration, saying, "Pity rather

than blame those who persecute us." So closely interwoven have been our

lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling

of incompleteness--united, such strength of self-assertion that no

ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us

insurmountable. Reviewing the life of Susan B. Anthony, I ever liken her

to the Doric column in Grecian architecture, so simply, so grandly she

stands, free from every extraneous ornament, supporting her one vast

idea--the enfranchisement of woman.

As our estimate of ourselves and our friendship may differ somewhat from

that taken from an objective point of view, I will give an extract from

what our common friend Theodore Tilton wrote of us in 1868:

"Miss Susan B. Anthony, a well-known, indefatigable, and lifelong

advocate of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's rights, has been,

since 1851, Mrs. Stanton's intimate associate in reformatory

labors. These celebrated women are of about equal age, but of the

most opposite characteristics, and illustrate the theory of

counterparts in affection by entertaining for each other a

friendship of extraordinary strength.

"Mrs. Stanton is a fine writer, but a poor executant; Miss Anthony

is a thorough manager, but a poor writer. Both have large brains

and great hearts; neither has any selfish ambition for celebrity;

but each vies with the other in a noble enthusiasm for the cause to

which they are devoting their lives.

"Nevertheless, to describe them critically, I ought to say that,

opposites though they be, each does not so much supplement the

other's deficiencies as augment the other's eccentricities. Thus

they often stimulate each other's aggressiveness, and, at the same

time, diminish each other's discretion.

"But, whatever may be the imprudent utterances of the one or the

impolitic methods of the other, the animating motives of both are

evermore as white as the light. The good that they do is by design;

the harm by accident. These two women, sitting together in their

parlors, have, for the last thirty years, been diligent forgers of

all manner of projectiles, from fireworks to thunderbolts, and have

hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner

of educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies;

sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members,

more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims;

and, in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's

teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole

country. Nor will they, themselves deny the charge. In fact this

noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum, keeping up what

Daniel Webster called 'The rub-a-dub of agitation.'"