[1] The Chicago press gave very satisfactory reports of this meeting, but the Springfield Republic was vulgar and abusive, called the ladies "withered beldames," "cats on the back roof," and advised them to "go home and attend to their children, if they had any, and if not, to engage in that same occupation as soon as they could regularly do so." The charge being so often made that the leaders of the suffrage movement were a lot of old maids and childless wives, Miss Anthony prepared a list showing that sixteen of the most prominent were the mothers of sixty-six children. Of the pioneers she herself was the only one who never married. Of the younger speakers Phoebe Couzins was the only one who remained single. [2] The Cincinnati Commercial said at this time: "Miss Anthony is the same clear, calm reasoner--a woman of the same firm convictions and with the same forcible, dignified and essentially womanly manner of expressing them--that she has always been. While in Cincinnati she is the guest of her cousin, Mrs. A. B. Merriam, of Walnut Hills, where many call upon her and find a talk with a woman so earnest and fine in intellectual power to be a genuine satisfaction. On the 'woman question,' she is hopeful but not a hopeless enthusiast. She is too clear-headed for that, and has overcome too many obstacles not to appreciate the requisite momentum and the force necessary to produce it. Her life is great in that it has made a larger life and higher work possible to other women, who share her aspirations without her invincible strength to carve their way." [3] This and the hospitable homes of Robert and Harriet Purvis, Sarah Pugh, and Adeline and Annie Thomson, sisters of J. Edgar Thomson. [4] The women of Kansas contributed $75 toward Mrs. Nichols' picture as a testimonial to her suffrage work in that State. CHAPTER XXXI. THE LEGACY--NEBRASKA CAMPAIGN--OFF FOR EUROPE. 1881-1882-1883. It had been decided this year of 1881 to take the anniversary meeting into the very heart of New England, and for the first time the National Association went to Boston, opening in Tremont Temple, May 26. The address of welcome was made by Harriet H. Robinson, wife of "Warrington," the well-known newspaper correspondent, and there were several new speakers in the convention, including A. Bronson Alcott, Mary F. Eastman, Anna Garlin Spencer, Frank Sanborn, ex-Governor Lee, of Wyoming, the noted politician, Francis W. Bird, Harriette Robinson Shattuck and Rev. Ada C. Bowles. The ladies had no cause to complain of the hospitality of this conservative New England center. The Boston Traveller expressed the general sentiment in saying: