nted a publishing problem as well as a writing
ordeal, and Susan, interviewing New York publishers, found the subject
had little appeal. Finally, however, she signed a contract with Fowler
& Wells under which the authors agreed to pay the cost of composition,
stereotyping, and engravings; and as usual she raised the necessary
funds.[342]

[Illustration: Matilda Joslyn Gage]

Returning to Tenafly as to a second home, Susan usually found Mrs.
Stanton beaming a welcome from the piazza and Margaret and Harriot
running to the gate to meet her. The Stanton children were fond of
Susan. It was a comfortable happy household, and Susan, thoroughly
enjoying Mrs. Stanton's companionship, attacked the history with
vigor. Sitting opposite each other at a big table in the sunny tower
room, they spent long hours at work. Susan, thin and wiry, her graying
hair neatly smoothed back over her ears, sat up very straight as she
rapidly sorted old clippings and letters and outlined chapters, while
Mrs. Stanton, stout and placid, her white curls beautifully arranged,
wrote steadily and happily, transforming masses of notes into readable
easy prose.[343]

Having sent appeals for information to colleagues in all parts of the
country, Susan, as the contributions began to come in, struggled to
decipher the often almost illegible, handwritten manuscripts, many of
them careless and inexact about dates and facts. To their request for
data about her, Lucy Stone curtly replied, "I have never kept a diary
or any record of my work, and so am unable to furnish you the required
dates.... You say 'I' must be referred to in the history you are
writing.... I cannot furnish a biographical sketch and trust you will
not try to make one. Yours with ceaseless regret that any 'wing' of
suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other."[344]

The greater part of the writing fell upon Mrs. Stanton, but Matilda
Joslyn Gage contributed the chapters, "Preceding Causes," "Women in
Newspapers," and "Women, Church, and State." Susan carefully selected
the material and checked the facts. She helped with the copying of the
handwritten manuscript and with the proofreading. Believing that
pictures of the early workers were almost as important for the
_History_ as the subject matter itself, she tried to provide them, but
they presented a financial problem with which it was hard to cope, for
each engraving cost $100.[345]

When the first volume of the _History