Still keeping her watchful eye on the National American Association, Susan traveled to Minneapolis in the spring of 1901 for the first annual convention under the new administration. There was talk of an "entire new deal," the retirement of all who had served under Miss Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the proceedings.[437] Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ on which she and Mrs. Harper had been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by letter. In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "It is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in public--all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a handful...."[438] Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair. Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours, trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."[439] From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea--but the Laws of Nature are still going on--with no shadow or turning--what a wonder it is--it goes right on and on--no matter who lives or who dies."[440] * * * * *