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
Just emerged from a long line of snowdrifts and stepped at this
little country tavern, supped and am now roasting over a hot stove.
Oh, oh, what an experience! No trains running and we have had a
thirty-six mile ride in a sleigh. Once we seemed lost in a drift
full fifteen feet deep. The driver went on ahead to a house, and
there we sat shivering. When he returned we found he had gone over
a fence into a field, so we had to dismount and plough through the
snow after the sleigh; then we reseated ourselves, but oh, the poor
horses!...
WENDTE'S STATION, January 14, 12-1/2 o'clock P. M.
Well, well, good folks at home, these surely are the times that try
women's souls. After writing you last, the snows fell and the winds
blew and the cars failed to go and come at their appointed hours.
We could have reached Warsaw if the omnibus had had the energy to
come for us. The train, however, got no farther than Warsaw, where
it stuck in a snowdrift eleven feet deep and a hundred long, but we
might have kept that engagement at least. Friday morning we went to
the station; no trains and no hope of any, but a man said he could
get us to Attica in time for an evening meeting, so we agreed to
pay him $5. He had a noble pair of greys and we floundered through
the deepest snowbanks I ever saw, but at 7 o'clock were still
fourteen miles from Attica.
We stopped at a little tavern where the landlady was not yet twenty
and had a baby fifteen months old. Her supper dishes were not
washed and her baby was crying, but she was equal to the occasion.
She rocked the little thing to sleep, washed the dishes and got our
supper; beautiful white bread, butter, cheese, pickles, apple and
mince pie, and excellent peach preserves. She gave us her warm
bedroom to sleep in, and on a row of pegs hung the loveliest
embroidered petticoats and baby clothes, all the work of that young
woman's fingers, while on a rack was her ironing perfectly done,
wrought undersleeves, baby dresses, embroidered underwear, etc. She
prepared a 6 o'clock breakfast for us, fried pork, mashed potatoes,
mince pie, and for me, at my especial request, a plate of delicious
baked sweet apples and a pitcher of rich milk. Now for the moral of
this story: When we came to pay our bill, the dolt of a husband
took the money and put it in his pocket. He had not lifted a hand
to lighten that woman's burdens, but had sat and talked with the
men in the bar room, not even caring for the baby, yet the law
gives him the right to every dollar she earns, and when she needs
two cents to buy a darning needle she has to ask him and explain
what she wants it for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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