Lucy Stone too was wavering and was thinking of having her next dress made long. The three women corresponded about it, and Lucy as well as Mrs. Stanton urged Susan to give up the bloomer. With these entreaties ringing in her ears, Susan set out for Albany in February 1854 to make final arrangements for the convention. On the streets in Albany, in the printing offices, and at the capitol, men stared boldly at her, some calling out hilariously, "Here comes my bloomer." She endured it bravely until her work was done, but at night alone in her room at Lydia Mott's she poured out her anguish in letters to Lucy. "Here I am known only," she wrote, "as one of the women who ape men--coarse, brutal men! Oh, I can not, can not bear it any longer."[45] Even so she did not let down the hem of her skirt, but wore her bloomer costume heroically during the entire convention, determined that she would not be stampeded into a long skirt by the jeers of Albany men or the ridicule of the women. However, she made up her mind that immediately after the convention she would take off the bloomer forever. She had worn it a little over a year. Never again could she be lured into the path of dress reform. The Albany _Register_ scoffed at the "feminine propagandists of woman's rights" exhibiting themselves in "short petticoats and long-legged boots."[46] Nevertheless, the convention aroused such genuine interest that evening meetings were continued for two weeks, featuring as speakers Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown, Samuel J. May, and William Henry Channing, the young Unitarian minister from Rochester; and when the men appeared on the platform, the audience called for the women. Susan could not have asked for anything better than Elizabeth Stanton's moving plea for property rights for married women and the attention it received from the large audience in the Senate Chamber. Her heart swelled with pride as she listened to her friend, and so important did she think the speech that she had 50,000 copies printed for distribution. To back up Mrs. Stanton's words with concrete evidence of a demand for a change in the law, Susan presented petitions with 10,000 signatures, 6,000 asking that married women be granted the right to their wages and 4,000 venturing to be recorded for woman suffrage. Enthusiastic over her Albany success, she impetuously wrote Lucy Stone, "Is this not a wonderful time, an era long to be remembered?"[47] Although the legislature failed to act on the petitions, she knew that her cause had made progress, for never before had women been listened to with such respect and never had newspapers been so friendly. She cherished these words of praise from Lucy, "God bless you, Susan dear, for the brave heart that will work on even in the midst of discouragement and lack of helpers. Everywhere I am telling people what your state is doing, and it is worth a great deal to the cause. The example of positive action is what we need."[48]