hty years old, that I must go to her
for a few days before I enter upon that long canvass, but I will come to
you soon."

It was a hard campaign, the summer the hottest ever known, the distances
long, the entertainment the best which could be offered, good in the
towns but in the rural districts sometimes very poor, and the speakers
slept more than once in sod houses where the only fuel for preparing the
meals consisted of "buffalo chips." The people were in severe financial
straits. A two years' drouth had destroyed the crops, and prairie fires
had swept away the little which was left. "Starvation stares them in the
face," Miss Anthony wrote. "Why could not Congress have appropriated the
money for artesian wells and helped these earnest, honest people,
instead of voting $40,000 for a commission to come out here and
investigate?"

Frequently the speakers had to drive twenty miles between the afternoon
and evening meetings, in the heat of summer and the chill of late
autumn; at one time forty miles on a wagon seat without a back. On the
Fourth of July, a roasting day, Miss Anthony spoke in the morning, drove
fifteen miles to speak again in the afternoon, and then left at night in
a pouring rain for a long ride in a freight-car. At one town the school
house was the only place for speaking purposes, but the Russian trustees
announced that "they did not want to hear any women preach," so after
the long trip, the meeting had to be given up. Several times in the
midst of their speeches, the audience was stampeded by cyclones, not a
soul left in the house.[63] The people came twenty and thirty miles to
these meetings, bringing their dinners. Miss Anthony speaks always in
the highest terms of the fine character of the Dakota men and women, and
of their large families of bright, healthy children.

The speakers never tire of telling their experiences during that
campaign. Mary Seymour Howell relates in her own interesting way that
once she and Miss Anthony had been riding for hours in a stage which
creaked and groaned at every turn of the wheels, the poor, dilapidated
horses not able to travel out of a walk, the driver a prematurely-old
little boy whose feet did not touch the floor, and a cold Dakota wind
blowing straight into their faces. After an unbroken, homesick silence
of an hour, Miss Anthony said in a subdued and solemn voice, "Mrs.
Howell, humanity is at a very low ebb!" The tone, the look, the words,
so in harmony wi