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
In our humble judgment, it is by no means complimentary to wives
and mothers to be found present at such discourses, encouraging
such untruthful and pernicious advice. If Miss Anthony's ideas were
practically applied in the relations of life, women would sink from
the social elevation they now hold and become the mere _appendages_
of men. Miss Anthony concluded with a flourish of trumpets, that
the woman's rights question could not be put down, that women's
souls were beginning to expand, etc., after which she gathered her
short skirts about her tight pants, sat down and wiped her
spectacles.
A letter written to Miss Anthony by her father during this tour shows
that even thus early he recognized the utter inability of women to
effect great reforms without a vote: "I see notices of your meetings in
multitudes of papers, all, with a few exceptions, in a rejoicing mood
that woman at last has taken hold in earnest to aid in the reformation
of the mighty evils of the day. Yet with all this 'rejoicing' probably
not one of these papers would advocate placing the ballot in the hands
of woman as the easiest, quickest and most efficient way of enabling
her to secure not only this but other reforms. They are willing she
should talk and pray and 'flock by herself in conventions and tramp up
and down the State, footsore and weary, gathering petitions to be
spurned by legislatures, but not willing to invest her with the only
power that would do speedy and efficient work."
At this time interest in the study of phrenology was at its height and
while Miss Anthony was in New York she had an examination made of her
head by Nelson Sizer (with Fowler & Wells) who, blindfolded, gave the
following character sketch:
You have a finely organized constitution and a good degree of
compactness and power. There is such a balance between the brain
and the body that you are enabled to sustain mental effort with
less exhaustion than most persons. You have an intensity of emotion
and thought which makes your mind terse, sharp, spicy and clear.
You always work with a will, a purpose and a straightforwardness of
mental action. You seldom accomplish ends by indirect means or
circuitous routes, but unfurl your banner, take your position and
give fair warning of the course you intend to pursue. You are not
naturally fond of combat, but when once fairly enlisted in a cause
that has the sanction of your conscience and intellect, your
firmness and ambition are such, combined with thoroughness and
efficiency of disposition, that all you are in energy and talent is
enlisted and concentrated in the one end in view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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