Returning home for her vacation in August, she found to her surprise that a second woman's rights convention had been held in Rochester in the Unitarian church, that her mother, her father, and her sister Mary, and many of their Quaker friends had not only attended, but had signed the Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions, and that her cousin, Sarah Burtis Anthony, had acted as secretary. Her father showed so much interest, as he told her about the meetings, that she laughingly remarked, "I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the times."[29] She countered Mary's ardent defense of the convention with good-natured ridicule. The whole family, however, continued to be so enthusiastic over the meetings and this new movement for woman's rights, they talked so much about Elizabeth Cady Stanton "with her black curls and ruddy cheeks"[30] and about Lucretia Mott "with her Quaker cap and her crossed handkerchief of the finest muslin," both "speaking so grandly and looking magnificent," that Susan's interest was finally aroused and she decided she would like to meet these women and talk with them. There was no opportunity for this, however, before she returned to Canajoharie for another year of teaching. It proved to be a year of great sadness because of the illness of her cousin Margaret whom she loved dearly. In addition to her teaching, she nursed Margaret and looked after the house and children. She saw much to discredit the belief that men were the stronger and women the weaker sex, and impatient with Margaret's husband, she wrote her mother that there were some drawbacks to marriage that made a woman quite content to remain single. In explanation she added, "Joseph had a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one for weeks. 'Oh,' said the husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine pain, yours is sort of a natural consequence.'"[31] Within a few weeks Margaret died. This was heart-breaking for Susan, and without her cousin, Canajoharie offered little attraction. Teaching had become irksome. The new principal was uncongenial, a severe young man from the South whose father was a slaveholder. Susan longed for a change, and as she read of the young men leaving for the West, lured by gold in California, she envied them their adventure and their opportunity to explore and conquer a whole new world. [Illustration: Frederick Douglass] * * * * * The peaches were ripe when Susan returned to the farm. The orchard which her father had planted, now bore abundantly. Restless and eager for hard physical work, she discarded the stylish hoops which impeded action, put on an old calico dress, and spent days in the warm September sunshine picking peaches. Then while she preserved, canned, and pickled them, there was little time to long for pioneering in the West.