Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
conscientiously in debt. Turning over her year-books the pages give a
fair record up to 1863. Here began the first herculean labor. The
Woman's Loyal League, sadly in need of funds, was not an incorporated
association, so its secretary assumed the debts. Accounts here became
quite lamentable, the deficit reaching five thousand dollars. It must be
paid, and, in fact, will be paid. Anxious, weary hours were spent in
crowding the Cooper Institute, from week to week, with paying audiences,
to listen to such men as Phillips, Curtis, and Douglass, who contributed
their services, and lifted the secretary out of debt. At last, after
many difficulties, her cash-book of 1863 was honorably pigeon-holed. In
1867 we can read account of herculean labor the second. Twenty thousand
tracts are needed to convert the voters of Kansas to woman suffrage.
Traveling expenses to Kansas, and the tracts, make the debtor column
overreach the creditor some two thousand dollars. There is recognition
on these pages of more than one thousand dollars obtained by soliciting
advertisements, but no note is made of the weary, burning July days
spent in the streets of New York to procure this money, nor of the ready
application of the savings made by petty economies from her salary from
the Hovey Committee.
It would have been fortunate for my brave friend, if cash-books 1868,
1869, and 1870 had never come down from their shelves; for they sing and
sing, in notes of debts, till all unite in one vast chorus of far more
than ten thousand dollars. These were the days of the _Revolution_, the
newspaper, not the war, though it was warfare for the debt-ridden
manager. Several thousand dollars she paid with money earned by
lecturing, and with money given her for personal use. One Thanksgiving
was, in truth, a time for returning thanks; for she received, canceled,
from her cousin, Anson Lapham, her note for four thousand dollars. After
the funeral of Paulina Wright Davis, the bereaved widower pressed into
Miss Anthony's hand canceled notes for five hundred dollars, bearing on
the back the words, "In memory of my beloved wife." One other note was
canceled in recognition of her perfect forgetfulness of self-interest
and ready sacrifice to the needs of others. When laboring, in 1874, to
fill every engagement, in order to meet her debts, her mother's sudden
illness called her home. Without one selfish regret, the anxious
daughter hastened to Rochester. When recovery was certain, and Miss
Anthony was about to return to her fatiguing labors, her mother gave
her, at parting, her note for a thousand dollars, on which was written,
in trembling lines, "In just consideration of the tender sacrifice made
to nurse me in severe illness." At last all the _Revolution_ debt was
paid, except that due to her generous sister, Mary Anthony, who used
often humorously to assure her she was a fit subject for the bankrupt
act.
There is something humorously pathetic in the death of the
_Revolution_--that firstborn of Miss Anthony. Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard
generously assumed the care of the troublesome child, and, in order to
make the adoption legal, gave the usual consideration--one dollar. The
very night of the transfer Miss Anthony went to Rochester with the
dollar in her pocket, and the little change left after purchasing her
ticket. She arrived safely with her debts, but nothing more--her pocket
had been picked! Oh, thief, could you but know what value of faithful
work you purloined!
From the close of the year 1876 Miss Anthony's accounts showed favorable
signs as to the credit column. Indeed, at the end of five years there
was a solid balance of several thousand dollars earned on lecturing
tours. But alas! the accounts grow dim again--in fact the credit column
fades away. "The History of Woman Suffrage" ruthlessly swallowed up
every vestige of Miss Anthony's bank account. But, in 1886, by the will
of Mrs. Eddy, daughter of Francis Jackson of Boston, Miss Anthony
received twenty-four thousand dollars for the Woman's Suffrage Movement,
which lifted her out of debt once more.
In vain will you search these telltale books for evidence of personal
extravagance; for, although Miss Anthony thinks it true economy to buy
the best, her tastes are simple. Is there not something very touching in
the fact that she never bought a book or picture for her own enjoyment?
The meager personal balance-sheets show four lapses from
discipline,--lapses that she even now regards as ruthless
extravagance,--viz.: the purchase of two inexpensive brooches, a much
needed watch, and a pair of cuffs to match a point-lace collar presented
by a friend. Those interested in Miss Anthony's personal appearance long
ago ceased to trust her with the purchase-money for any ornament; for,
however firm her resolution to comply with their wish, the check
invariably found its way to the credit column of those little cash-books
as "money received for the cause." Now, reader, you have been admitted
to a private view of Miss Anthony's financial records, and you can
appreciate her devotion to an idea. Do you not agree with me that a
"bread-winner" can be a conscientious reformer?
In finishing this sketch of the most intimate friend I have had for the
past forty-five years,--with whom I have spent weeks and months under
the same roof,--I can truly say that she is the most upright,
courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous human being I have ever known.
I have seen her beset on every side with the most petty annoyances,
ridiculed and misrepresented, slandered and persecuted; I have known
women refuse to take her extended hand; women to whom she presented
copies of "The History of Woman Suffrage," return it unnoticed; others
to keep it without one word of acknowledgment; others to write most
insulting letters in answer to hers of affectionate conciliation. And
yet, under all the cross-fires incident to a reform, never has her hope
flagged, her self-respect wavered, or a feeling of resentment shadowed
her mind. Oftentimes, when I have been sorely discouraged, thinking that
the prolonged struggle was a waste of force which in other directions
might be rich in achievement, with her sublime faith in humanity, she
would breathe into my soul renewed inspiration, saying, "Pity rather
than blame those who persecute us." So closely interwoven have been our
lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling
of incompleteness--united, such strength of self-assertion that no
ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us
insurmountable. Reviewing the life of Susan B. Anthony, I ever liken her
to the Doric column in Grecian architecture, so simply, so grandly she
stands, free from every extraneous ornament, supporting her one vast
idea--the enfranchisement of woman.
As our estimate of ourselves and our friendship may differ somewhat from
that taken from an objective point of view, I will give an extract from
what our common friend Theodore Tilton wrote of us in 1868:
"Miss Susan B. Anthony, a well-known, indefatigable, and lifelong
advocate of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's rights, has been,
since 1851, Mrs. Stanton's intimate associate in reformatory
labors. These celebrated women are of about equal age, but of the
most opposite characteristics, and illustrate the theory of
counterparts in affection by entertaining for each other a
friendship of extraordinary strength.
"Mrs. Stanton is a fine writer, but a poor executant; Miss Anthony
is a thorough manager, but a poor writer. Both have large brains
and great hearts; neither has any selfish ambition for celebrity;
but each vies with the other in a noble enthusiasm for the cause to
which they are devoting their lives.
"Nevertheless, to describe them critically, I ought to say that,
opposites though they be, each does not so much supplement the
other's deficiencies as augment the other's eccentricities. Thus
they often stimulate each other's aggressiveness, and, at the same
time, diminish each other's discretion.
"But, whatever may be the imprudent utterances of the one or the
impolitic methods of the other, the animating motives of both are
evermore as white as the light. The good that they do is by design;
the harm by accident. These two women, sitting together in their
parlors, have, for the last thirty years, been diligent forgers of
all manner of projectiles, from fireworks to thunderbolts, and have
hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner
of educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies;
sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members,
more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims;
and, in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's
teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole
country. Nor will they, themselves deny the charge. In fact this
noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum, keeping up what
Daniel Webster called 'The rub-a-dub of agitation.'"
CHAPTER XII.
MY FIRST SPEECH BEFORE A LEGISLATURE.
Women had been willing so long to hold a subordinate position, both in
private and public affairs, that a gradually growing feeling of
rebellion among them quite exasperated the men, and their manifestations
of hostility in public meetings were often as ridiculous as humiliating.
True, those gentlemen were all quite willing that women should join
their societies and churches to do the drudgery; to work up the
enthusiasm in fairs and revivals, conventions and flag presentations; to
pay a dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being members
of their various organizations; to beg money for the Church; to
circulate petitions from door to door; to visit saloons; to pray with or
defy rumsellers; to teach school at half price, and sit round the
outskirts of a hall, in teachers' State conventions, like so many
wallflowers; but they would not allow them to sit on the platform,
address the assembly, or vote for men and measures.
Those who had learned the first lessons of human rights from the lips of
Henry B. Stanton, Samuel J. May, and Gerrit Smith would not accept any
such position. When women abandoned the temperance reform, all interest
in the question gradually died out in the State, and practically nothing
was done in New York for nearly twenty years. Gerrit Smith made one or
two attempts toward an "anti-dramshop" party, but, as women could not
vote, they felt no interest in the measure, and failure was the result.
I soon convinced Miss Anthony that the ballot was the key to the
situation; that when we had a voice in the laws we should be welcome to
any platform. In turning the intense earnestness and religious
enthusiasm of this great-souled woman into this channel, I soon felt the
power of my convert in goading me forever forward to more untiring work.
Soon fastened, heart to heart, with hooks of steel in a friendship that
years of confidence and affection have steadily strengthened, we have
labored faithfully together.
From the year 1850 conventions were held in various States, and their
respective legislatures were continually besieged; New York was
thoroughly canvassed by Miss Anthony and others. Appeals, calls for
meetings, and petitions were circulated without number. In 1854 I
prepared my first speech for the New York legislature. That was a great
event in my life. I felt so nervous over it, lest it should not be
worthy the occasion, that Miss Anthony suggested that I should slip up
to Rochester and submit it to the Rev. William Henry Channing, who was