eanwhile, the mother at home was growing very feeble, and on
Thanksgiving Day Miss Anthony wrote to her: "I feel as if I were
robbing myself of the last moments which I may ever have to be with
you, but I can not see the way clear to stay at home this coming
winter. It is ever thus with me, so hard to know which is the strongest
duty, the one that ought to be done first, and so I grope on in the
dark. That I am always away from home may look to the world as if I
care less for it than other people, whereas my longing for it almost
makes me weak; but you, dear mother, understand my love."

[Footnote 82: See Appendix for full speech.]

[Footnote 83: At Carbondale she addressed the students of the Normal
School, the day after her lecture, emphasizing the necessity of woman's
being able to care for herself, urging them to marry only for love and
not for support, and to look upon marriage as a luxury and not a
necessity. She was a little doubtful as to the effect of this talk upon
both faculty and students, but one of the professors called to tell her
how fitting was every word and how he had longed to have just those
things said. The girl students sent her a handsome bouquet as she was
taking her train.]

[Footnote 84: President M.B. Anderson, of Rochester University, wrote a
friend in this connection: "I always remember Miss Anthony as an angel
of mercy in the house of a sister who was crushed by the loss of a
son."]

[Footnote 85: See Appendix for full speech.]

[Footnote 86: From a large number of clippings, the following are
selected as specimens:

Miss Anthony has now earned the money and discharged the last
obligation of her paper. This is the work of a brave and good woman....
She is a woman who pays her debts and sets a watch upon her
lips.--Cincinnati Enquirer.

It is the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B.
Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to
us--and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman
suffrage--that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood
which the follies of a thousand others can not remove.--Utica Observer.

"She has paid her debts like a man," says an exchange. Like a man? Not
so. Not one man in a thousand but would have "squealed," "laid down"
and settled at ten or twenty cents on the dollar. As people go in this
wicked world, it is no more than fair to say in good faith that Miss
Anthony is a very admirable per