The last of April came the long-expected summons to Boston to receive the legacy of Mrs. Eddy, the courts having sustained the will. While eastward bound, crossing the State of Illinois, newspapers were brought on the train announcing the death of Grant, and she writes: "The weather is lovely and springlike today, but how still and solemn it seems out here on these broad prairies with that great general gone forever!" The case had been in litigation three years, Benjamin F. Butler appearing for Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone. His fees were very reasonable but several thousand dollars were swallowed up in the suit. The legacy, in first-class securities, stocks, bonds, etc., was paid April 27, each receiving $24,125.[26] Miss Anthony gives an amusing account, in one of her letters, of the awful nightmare she had on board the sleeper going home, when she dreamed that a woman was at the head of her berth stifling her while a man knelt in front, his hand cautiously creeping toward the inside pocket where she had sewed the money and bonds. She awoke with a scream and did not go to sleep again. If this bequest had been left to Miss Anthony for her own personal use, she could not have felt one-half the joy she now experienced in having the means to carry on the work which always had been so seriously impeded for lack of funds. Of course its receipt was heralded far and wide by the papers, and appeals began to pour in from all sides, nor were they always appeals, but often demands. Scores of women considered themselves entitled to a share because the money had been left to further the cause of woman. One wanted it to help lift a mortgage on her home, others to educate their children, to pay a debt, to reward them for the valuable services they had given to woman suffrage, to start a paper, to carry one already started, and so on without end. The men also were willing to relieve her of a portion. "I am terribly oppressed by it all," Miss Anthony writes, "and nothing would make me happier than to respond to every one, but my money would melt away in a month." It was ludicrous and yet pitiful to see certain persons who had repudiated her in days gone by because she was too radical and too aggressive, discovering all at once how much they always had valued her and how anxious they had been for a long time to renew the old friendship--the common story, ancient as the world.