es: "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.

The one thing she was determined to do first of all was to complete the
History of Woman Suffrage, upon which she and Mrs. Stanton had spent all
the days that could be spared for nearly ten years. The work had been
delayed by the many other demands upon their time, by their trips
abroad, but more than all else by lack of mone