y and
By' and 'Old Hundred,' but I can not tell them apart. All music
sounds alike to me, but still if there is the slightest discord it
hurts me. Neither do I know anything about art," she continued,
"yet when I go into a room filled with pictures my friends say I
invariably pick out the best. I have good company, I always think,
in my musical ignorance. Wendell Phillips couldn't recognize tunes;
neither could Anna Dickinson."

"What's your favorite motto, or have you one?"

"For the last thirty years I have written in all albums, 'Perfect
equality of rights for women, civil and political;' or, 'I know
only woman and her disfranchised.' There is another, one of Charles
Sumner's, 'Equal rights for all.' I never write sentimental
things....

"Yes, I'll tell you what I think of bicycling," she said, leaning
forward and laying a hand on my arm. "I think it has done more to
emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every
time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a feeling of
self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and
away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood."

"What do you think the new woman will be?"

"She'll be free," said Miss Anthony. "Then she'll be whatever her
best judgment dictates. We can no more imagine what the true woman
will be than what the true man will be. We haven't him yet, and it
will be generations after we gain freedom before we have the
highest man and woman. They will constantly change for the better,
as the world does. What is the best possible today will be outgrown
tomorrow."

"What would you call woman's best attribute?"

"Good common sense; she has a great deal of uncommon sense now, but
I want her to be an all-around woman, not gifted overly in one
respect and lacking in others...."

"And now," I said, approaching a very delicate subject on tip-toe,
"tell me one thing more. Were you ever in love?"

"In love?" she laughed. "Bless you, Nelly, I've been in love a
thousand times!"

"Really!" I gasped, taken back by this startling confession.

"Yes, really," nodding her snowy head; "but I never loved anyone so
much that I thought it would last. In fact, I never felt I could
give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. Wh