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
Crowded house at Port Byron. I tried to say a few words at opening,
but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is a terrible
martyrdom for me to speak.... Very many Abolitionists have yet to
learn the A B C of woman's rights.... The Boston Congregationalist
has a scurrilous article. Shall write the editor.... It is
discouraging that no man does right for right's sake, but
everything to serve party.... I find such comfort in Aurora Leigh
when I am sorely pressed.... Heard Stephen A. Douglas today; a low
spectacle for both eye and ear.... Gave my lecture on "The True
Woman" at Penn Yan teachers' institute. Some strange gentleman
present supported my plea for physical culture for girls.... Had a
talk with Frederick Douglass. He seems to have no faith in simple
and abstract right.... Lost patience this morning over a lamp and
suffered vastly therefor. Why can I not learn self-control?...
Company came and found me out in the garden picking peas and
blackberries--and hoopless.... A fine-looking young colored man on
train presented me with a bouquet. Can't tell whether he knew me or
only felt my sympathy.... Am reading Buckle's History of
Civilization and Darwin's Descent of Man. Have finished his Origin
of Species. Pillsbury has just given me Emerson's poems....
Miss Anthony did not fail to put aside everything long enough to attend
the State Teachers' Convention at Syracuse. The right of women to take
part had now become so well established that it needed no further
defense, but she still fought for equal pay for equal services, and
equal advantages of education for colored children, and each year found
her views gaining a stronger support from both men and women. After
this convention she continued her meetings, anti-slavery and woman's
rights, and during the summer visited again her birthplace at Adams,
Mass., writing home:
Found grandfather working in the oat field, just think of it,
ninety-and-a-half years old! But in honor of my arrival he remained
home and visited all the afternoon. How hard the women here work,
and how destitute they are of all the conveniences. It is perfectly
barbarous when they have plenty of money. I borrowed a calico dress
and sunbonnet and with the cousins climbed to the very top of Old
Greylock. Later I visited the "Daniel House," as grandfather calls
our old home. I rambled through the orchard, but the spice-apple
tree is dead and the little tree in the corner that we children
loved so well. I visited the old spring up in the pasture, and
thought how many times the tired feet of mother and grandmother had
trod those paths--and the little brook runs over the stones as
merry and beautiful as ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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