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
The Albany Register said "this report was received with roars of
laughter." Judge Hay, Lydia Mott and a number of Miss Anthony's friends
wrote her not to be discouraged at this insult, but it may be imagined
that she took up the work again with a heart filled with resentment and
indignation. She had many peculiar experiences during her travels and
had to listen to many a chapter of family history which was far from
harmonious. On one occasion a friend was pouring into her ears an
account of the utter uncongeniality between herself and husband,
largely because he was wholly unappreciative of her higher thoughts and
feelings. As an example she related that when they visited Niagara
Falls and her soul was soaring into the seventh heaven of glory,
majesty and sublimity, he exclaimed, "What a magnificent water power
this would be, if utilized;" and that he did it on purpose to shock her
sensibilities. Miss Anthony finally said: "Now, my dear, the trouble is
you fail to recognize that your husband is so constituted that he sees
the practical while you feel only the sentimental. He does not jar your
feelings any more by his matter-of-fact comments than you jar his by
flying off into the realms of poetry on every slight provocation." She
then recalled a number of similar instances which the wife had detailed
as illustrating the husband's cruelty, impressing upon her that they
were born with different temperaments and neither had any right to
condemn the other. At the end of this conversation, the woman, weeping,
put her arms around Miss Anthony and said: "You have taught me to
understand my husband better and love and respect him more than I had
learned to do in all my long years of living with him."
In March Garrison wrote, thanking her and her family for their generous
hospitality, concluding, "Nowhere do I visit with more real
satisfaction." He told her that he had had to give up his lecture
engagements on account of the heavy snows, but she had gone straight
through with hers. She now closed her series of meetings and went home
to arrange for Theodore Parker's lecture. Antoinette Brown Blackwell
wrote her: "I hear a certain bachelor making a number of inquiries
about Susan B. Anthony. This means that we shall look for another
wedding in our sisternity before the year ends. Get a good husband,
that's all, dear."
On Miss Anthony's return from the May anti-slavery meeting in New York,
she received a reminder from the president of the State Teachers'
Association that she would be expected to read her paper on
"Co-Education" before that body in August. This recollection had been
keeping her awake nights for some time. It had been an easy thing to
present a resolution or make a five-minute speech, but it was quite
another to write an hour's lecture to be delivered before a most
critical audience. As was always her custom in such a dilemma, she
turned to Mrs. Stanton, who responded:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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