The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 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 2 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
If ever there was a gay-hearted, good-natured woman it is certainly
Miss Anthony. From the beginning of this council it is she who has
kept the fun barometer away up. The gray-headed friends of her
youth are all "girls" to her, and she is a girl among them.
Parliamentary rules have been by no means so severe as to keep
even the regular proceedings free from her lively interpolation and
comment. When Miss Anthony has felt the public pulse or looked at
her watch and seen that a speech has gone far enough, she says
under her breath, "Your time's about up, my dear." If the speaker
continues, the next thing is, "I guess you'll have to stop now;
it's more than ten minutes." When this fails, she usually begins to
hang gently on the orator's skirt, and if pluckings and pullings
fail, she then subsides with a quizzical smile, or stands erect and
uncompromising by the speaker's side. There is none of the rude
beating of the gavel, nor any paraphrase of "The gentleman's time
is up," which marks the stiff proceedings of men "in congress
assembled." To an unprejudiced eye this free-and-easy method of
procedure might lack symmetry and dignity, but there is not the
slightest doubt that Miss Anthony has been as wise as a serpent
while being as gentle as a dove.
When Frances E. Willard rose to address the council, she laid her hand
tenderly on Miss Anthony's shoulder and said: "I remember when I was
dreadfully afraid of Susan, and Lucy too; but now I love and honor them,
and I can not put into words my sense of what it means to me to have the
blessing of these women who have made it possible for more timid ones
like myself to come forward and take our part in the world's work. If
they had not blazed the trees and pioneered the way, we should not have
dared to come. If there is one single drop of chivalric blood in woman's
veins, it ought to bring a tinge of pride to the face that Susan B.
Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe and these
other grand women, our leaders and our foremothers, are here for us to
greet; that they, who heard so much that was not agreeable, may hear an
occasional pleasant word while they are alive." Very few of the speakers
failed to express their deep feeling of personal obligation and the
indebtedness of all women to the early labors of Miss Anthony and the
other pioneers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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