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
In November she went again to Auburn to the State convention, remaining
four days. The Daily Advertiser said: "Miss Susan B. Anthony, the grand
old woman of the equal rights cause, was then introduced and spoke at
length upon the objects for which she had labored so faithfully all her
life. Except for her gray hair and a few wrinkles, no one would suppose
the speaker to be in her seventy-second year. The full, firm voice, the
active manner and clear logic, all belonged to a young woman." At the
close of the convention Mrs. Osborne gave a reception in her honor,
attended by nearly one hundred ladies.
By invitation of the Unitarian minister, Rev. W. C. Gannett, Miss
Anthony participated with himself and Rabbi Max Lansberg in Thanksgiving
services at the Unitarian church. The topic was "The Unrest of the Times
a Cause for Thankfulness," as indicated by "The Woman, the Social and
the Religious Movements." Miss Anthony responded to the first in a
concise address, considered under twelve heads and not occupying more
than that number of minutes in delivery, beginning with Ralph Waldo
Emerson's declaration, "A wholesome discontent is the first step toward
progress," and giving a resume of women's advancement during the past
forty years, due chiefly to dissatisfaction with their lot.
It had not been an easy matter for Miss Anthony to have even this
fragment of a year at home. From many places she had received letters
begging her to come to the assistance of societies and conventions, and
she was just as anxious to go as they were to have her. The most urgent
of these appeals came from Mrs. Johns, of Kansas, where a constitutional
convention was threatened and the women wanted a suffrage amendment.
When Miss Anthony did not go to the spring convention, Mrs. Johns wrote,
April 18: "I can never tell you how I missed you, and the people--they
seemed to think they must have you. Letter after letter came asking, 'Is
there no way by which we can get Miss Anthony?'" When she declined to go
to the fall convention, Mrs. Johns wrote, November 26: "I declare it
seemed as if I did not know how to go on without you, and our women felt
just as I did. We have had you with us so often that we depended on your
presence more than we knew." In another long letter she said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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