While all the women were giving themselves, body and soul, to the great work of the war, the New York Legislature, April 10, 1862, finding them off guard, very quietly amended the law of 1860 and took away from mothers the lately-acquired right to the equal guardianship of their children. They also repealed the law which secured to the widow the control of the property for the care of minor children. Thus at one blow were swept away the results of nearly a decade of hard work on the part of women, and wives and mothers were left in almost the same position as under the old common law. Had one woman been a member of the Legislature, such an act never would have been possible; but the little band who for ten years had watched and toiled to protect the interests of their sex, were in the sanitary commission, the hospitals, at the front, on the platform in the interest of the Union, or at home doing the work of those who had gone into the army, and this was their reward! Miss Anthony's anger and sorrow were intense when she heard of the repeal of the laws which she had spent seven long years to obtain, tramping through cold and heat to roll up petitions and traversing the whole State of New York in the dead of winter to create public sentiment in their favor. In her anguish she wrote Lydia Mott: Your startling letter is before me. I knew some weeks ago that abominable thing was on the calendar, with some six or eight hundred bills before it, and hence felt sure it would not come up this winter, and that in the meantime we should sound the alarm. Well, well; while the old guard sleep the "young devils" are wide awake, and we deserve to suffer for our confidence in "man's sense of justice;" but nothing short of this could rouse our women again to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to have grown politic. All alike say: "Have no conventions at this crisis; wait until the war excitement abates;" which is to say: "Ask our opponents if they think we had better speak, or rather if they do not think we had better remain silent." I am sick at heart, but I can not carry the world against the wish and will of our best friends. What can we do now when even the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship is voted down? Twenty thousand petitions rolled up for that--a hard year's work--the law secured--the echoes of our words of gratitude in the Capitol scarcely died away, and now all is lost! This year began the acquaintance with Anna Dickinson, whose letters are as refreshing as a breeze from the ocean: