Frederick Douglass was now nearly eighty years old. He had not retired from public life. His snow-white bushy hair, topping the straight, well-set figure was a familiar sight wherever people gathered to plan a stronger, nobler nation, to build a more understanding world. His faith in his country and in its ultimate destiny rendered him tolerant; his ready wit was gentle. Little knots of people gathered round him wherever he went and found themselves repeating his stories and remembering best of all his rare good humor. The villagers in Anacostia were proud of him. They told of the visitors who came from far and near seeking his home. On the morning of February 15, 1895, Susan B. Anthony arrived in Washington to open the second triennial meeting of the National Woman’s Council. This was her seventy-fifth birthday, and that afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass called to express their good wishes and congratulations. The big open meeting of the session was to be February 20. During the morning Frederick Douglass appeared and, amid resounding applause, was invited to the platform by the president, Mrs. Sewall. He accepted, but declined to speak, acknowledging the applause only by a bow. It was one of those bitterly cold days, and Douglass reached home just in time for supper. He was in high good spirits. Even while he shook off the snow and removed his boots in the hall he was recounting the happenings of the day. “Miss Anthony was at her best!” he said as he stood before the big open fire, warming his hands. “I’m a little tired,” he said after supper. He had started up the stairs and stopped, apparently to look at the picture of John Brown which hung there on the wall. His wife, in the living room, turned quickly. The phrase was unlike him. And then he fell. He was dead before they could get him to his room. All the great ones spoke at his funeral. Susan B. Anthony read Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s memorial to the only man who had sustained her demand for the enfranchisement of women at the first convention back in 1848. There have been many memorials to him--in marble and bronze, in song and poetry. But stone and wood are dead, and only we can make words come alive. Frederick Douglass’ words reach us across the years: Though I am more closely connected and identified with one class of outraged, oppressed and enslaved people, I cannot allow myself to be insensible to the wrongs and suffering of any part of the great family of man. I am not only an American slave, but a man, and as such, am bound to use my powers for the welfare of the whole human brotherhood.... I believe that the sooner the wrongs of the whole human family are made known, the sooner those wrongs will be reached.[35] _Epilogue_