The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
Miss Anthony now came forward and told a good story, a noble one,
about Olympia Brown. Four months Olympia traveled in Kansas in
every way except by railroad. She spoke every day of the four
months, and oftener twice than otherwise. Generally she had met the
kindest treatment, but sometimes not, for in every audience there is
generally a fringe of humanity where there is more boot-heel than
brain. There was one district in Kansas where intelligent people
lived, where for years they were unable to get a schoolhouse. They
could get no majority to vote upon the question, because the claims
in the town were owned by single men, who did not want to vote to
be taxed, or else by non-residents who were never there to give a
decision one way or another. The father worked on year after year,
but all in vain. After the passage of the law giving woman the right
to vote on the school question, the mothers arose at 11 o’clock at
night, voted, and got a schoolhouse. Why the women should be obliged
to arise at 11 o’clock at night to vote, instead of waiting until
a respectable hour in the morning, Susan forgot to mention. Miss
Anthony said once upon a time she was announced to speak in Brooklyn,
at the same time with Miss Anna Dickinson. Just as she had changed
her frock, and got ready for starting, the fickle Anna telegraphed
that she could not be there. There was no time to prepare for this
unforeseen catastrophe, so she put on her bonnet and went over to
Brooklyn--went into the vast hall, crowded with humanity, who had
come to see Anna, not her. Had the heavens opened and buckets of
ice-water been showered down upon her head she could have felt no
worse. She looked around and there sat Henry Ward Beecher, and
Chapin, and a host of intellectual lights, which were enough to cook
any woman’s marrow to the bones, and she was as bare of thought as
New York is of honesty. She applied a forcing pump to her mind, but
still the water of thought wouldn’t come; her brain was as dry as a
squeezed orange. What should she do? She looked around on the hungry
audience, and at last her eyes rested on Henry Ward Beecher, and she
felt saved. Leaving her place on the platform, she advanced to the
great preacher, and, laying her hand on his shoulder she said, “You
must help me; I can’t do it.” Susan did not tell us whether it was
owing to her command or the pressure which she brought to bear on his
shoulder that conquered him. At any rate, he came gallantly to her
side; and never was such a rousing speech made by the great parson in
all the days of his life. Then she said, “What did I tell this story
for? Something I am sure! Let me see. Oh, yes! I wanted to prove
that men and women needed to work together side by side. When one
fails, the other can come to the rescue.” At this moment Susan gave
evidence of having touched the bottom of her remarkable strength and
vitality. The unmitigated drain upon her vital forces for three days
of convention seemed to have done its work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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