The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
Her mission accomplished, Miss Anthony plunged again into the ice and
snow of northern New York. At Albany a wealthy and cultured Quaker
gentleman had been an attentive and interested listener, and when she
took the stage a few days later at Lake George, she found not only that
he was to be her fellow-passenger, but that he had a thick plank
heated, which he asked permission to place under her feet. Whenever the
stage stopped he had it re-heated, and in many ways added to the
comfort of her journey. At the close of the next meeting to her
surprise she found his fine sleigh waiting filled with robes and drawn
by two spirited gray horses, and he himself drove her to his own
beautiful home presided over by a sister, where she spent Sunday. In
this same luxurious conveyance she was taken to several towns and,
during one of these trips, was urged in the most earnest manner to give
up the hard life she was leading and accept the ease and protection he
could offer. But her heart made no response to this appeal while it did
urge her strongly to continue in her chosen work.
All through the Schroon Lake country the snow was over the fences and
the weather bitterly cold. At Plattsburg, Miss Anthony was a guest at
Judge Watson's. Before leaving Rochester she had had a pair of high
boots made to protect her from the deep snows, which were so much
heavier than she was accustomed to that they almost ruined her feet.
She was at that time an ardent convert to the "water cure" theories
and, after suffering tortures from one foot especially, she came home
from the afternoon meeting, put it under the "penstock" in the kitchen
and let the cold water run over it till it was perfectly numb, then
Crapped it up in flannels. That evening it did not hurt her a particle,
and concluding that what was good for one foot must be good for two,
she put both under the "penstock" till they were almost congealed. In
the morning she scarcely could get out of bed, all the pain having
settled in her back, but in spite of protests from the family she
resumed her journey. All the way to Malone, she had to hold fast to the
seat in front of her to relieve as much as possible the motion of the
cars. She managed to conduct her afternoon and evening meetings, and
then went on to Ogdensburg, where she stopped with a cousin. The next
morning she hardly could move and the women of the family had to help
her make her toilet. Nothing they could say would persuade her to
remain; she was advertised to speak at Canton and proposed to do it if
she were alive, so she was carried out, put into a sleigh and driven
seventeen miles actually doubled up with her head on her knees. She
finished the two meetings and then resolved on heroic measures. Arising
at 4 A.M. she rode in a stage to within ten miles of Watertown, took
the cars to that city and went to a hotel. Here she ordered the
chambermaid to bring several buckets of ice water into her room and,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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