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
Mrs. Stanton had a large house and a constantly increasing family,
making it exceedingly difficult to find time for literary work; so when
a state paper was to be written, Miss Anthony would go to Seneca Falls.
After the children were in bed, the two women would sit up far into the
night arranging material and planning their work. The next day Mrs.
Stanton would seek the quietest spot in the house and begin writing,
while Miss Anthony would give the children their breakfast, start the
older ones to school, make the dessert for dinner and trundle the
babies up and down the walk, rushing in occasionally to help the writer
out of a vortex. Many an article which will be read with delight by
future generations was thus prepared. Mrs. Stanton describes these
occasions in her charming Reminiscences:
It was mid such exhilarating scenes that Miss Anthony and I wrote
addresses for temperance, anti-slavery, educational and woman's
rights conventions. Here we forged resolutions, protests, appeals,
petitions, agricultural reports and constitutional arguments, for
we made it a matter of conscience to accept every invitation to
speak on every question, in order to maintain woman's right to do
so. It is often said by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she
has been my good angel, always pushing and guiding me to work. With
the cares of a large family, perhaps I might in time, like too many
women, have become wholly absorbed in a narrow selfishness, had not
my friend been continually exploring new fields for missionary
labors. Her description of a body of men on any platform,
complacently deciding questions in which women had an equal
interest without an equal voice, readily roused me to a
determination to throw a fire-brand in the midst of their assembly.
Thus, whenever I saw that stately Quaker girl coming across my lawn
I knew that some happy convocation of the sons of Adam were to be
set by the ears with our appeals or resolutions. The little
portmanteau stuffed with facts was opened and there we had what
Rev. John Smith and Hon. Richard Roe had said, false interpretation
of Bible texts, statistics of women robbed of their property, shut
out of some college, half-paid for their work, reports of some
disgraceful trial--injustice enough to turn any woman's thoughts
from stockings and puddings. Then we would get out our pens and
write articles for papers, a petition to the Legislature, letters
to the faithful here and there, stir up the women in Ohio,
Pennsylvania or Massachusetts, call on the Lily, the Una, the
Liberator, the Standard, to remember our wrongs. We never met
without issuing a pronunciamento on some question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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