ess. It was the first great
victory of her forty years of work. She spoke as one inspired,
while the audience listened for every word, some cheering, others
weeping.

When Miss Anthony was starting for South Dakota she was urged not
to go, through fear of the effect of such a campaign on her health.
Her reply was, "Better lose me than lose a State." A grand answer
from a grander woman. And this night in South Dakota we had won a
State and still had Miss Anthony with us, the central figure of the
suffrage movement as she was the central figure in that
never-to-be-forgotten night of great rejoicing.

[Illustration: Autograph: "Ever affectionately and faithfully yours,
Mary Seymour Howell."]

As very few women were able to hire help, many were obliged to bring
their babies to the meetings and, before the speaking was over, the heat
and confusion generally set them all to crying. Miss Anthony was very
patient and always expressed much sympathy for the overworked and tired
mothers. One occasion, however, was too much for her, and Anna Shaw thus
describes it:

One intensely hot Sunday afternoon, a meeting was held by the side
of a sod church, which had been extended by canvas coverings from
the wagons. The audience crowded up as close as they could be
packed to where Miss Anthony stood on a barn door laid across some
boxes. A woman with a baby sat very near the edge of this
improvised platform. The child grew tired and uneasy and finally
began to pinch Miss Anthony's ankles. She stepped back and he
immediately commenced to scream, so she stepped forward again and
he resumed his pinching. She endured it as long as she could, but
at last stooped down and whispered to the mother, "I think your
baby is too warm in here; take him out and give him a drink and he
will feel better." The woman jerked it up and started out,
exclaiming, "Well, this is the first time I have ever been insulted
on account of my motherhood!" A number of men gathered around her,
saying, "That is just what to expect from these old maid
suffragists." Some one told Miss Anthony she had lost twenty votes
by this. "Well," she replied, "if they could see the welts on my
ankles where they were pinched to keep that child still, they would
bring their twenty votes back."

She said to me the next day: "Now, Anna, n