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
From the time that Mrs. Stanton had decided to return to America for the
remainder of her days, Miss Anthony had hoped they might have a home
together and finish their life-work of history and reminiscence. When
she learned that her friend, with a widowed daughter and a bachelor son,
contemplated taking a house in New York, she was greatly distressed, as
she felt that this would be the end of all her plans. She wrote her
immediately:
We have just returned from the Unitarian church where we listened
to Mr. Gannett's rare dissertation on the religion of Lowell; but
all the time there was an inner wail in my soul, that by your
fastening yourself in New York City I couldn't help you carry out
the dream of my life--which is that you should take all of your
speeches and articles, carefully dissect them, and put your best
utterances on each point into one essay or lecture; first deliver
them in the Unitarian church on Sunday afternoon, and then publish
in a nice volume, just as Phillips culled out his best. Your
Reminiscences give only light and incidental bits of your life--all
good but not the greatest of yourself. This is the first time since
1850 that I have anchored myself to any particular spot, and in
doing it my constant thought was that you would come here, where
are the documents necessary to our work, and stay for as long, at
least, as we must be together to put your writings into systematic
shape to go down to posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my
ambition is not for myself, but it is for one by the side of whom I
have wrought these forty years, and to get whose speeches before
audiences and committees has been the delight of my life.
Well, I hope you will do and be as seemeth best unto yourself,
still I can not help sending you this inner groan of my soul, lest
you are not going to make it possible that the thing shall be done
first which seems most important to me. Then, too, I have never
ceased to hope that we would finish the History of Woman Suffrage,
at least to the end of the life of the dear old National.
Mrs. Stanton's children would not consent to this plan, but she came to
Rochester for a month's visit in September. It was desired by many
friends that to the very satisfactory busts of Miss Anthony and Lucretia
Mott, which had been made by Adelaide Johnson, should be added one of
Mrs. Stanton, and all be placed in the Woman's Building at the World's
Fair. To accomplish this Miss Anthony rented a large room in the
adjoining house for a studio and invited the sculptor to her home for a
number of weeks, until the sittings were finished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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