considered the most powerful agency
in the world for good or for evil.

In the summer of 1879, Miss Anthony received from her friend, A.
Bronson Alcott, a complimentary ticket for three seasons of lectures at
the Concord School of Philosophy; but the living questions of the day
were too pressing for her to withdraw to this classic and sequestered
retreat, outside the busy and practical world.

[Autograph: A. Bronson Alcott]

During the decade from 1870 to 1880, there was a large accession of
valuable workers to the cause of woman suffrage and many new friends
came into Miss Anthony's life. Among these were May Wright Sewall; the
sisters, Julia and Rachel Foster; Clara B. Colby; Zerelda G. Wallace;
Frances E. Willard; J. Ellen Foster; the wife and three talented
daughters of Cassius M. Clay, Mary B., Laura and Sallie Clay Bennett;
M. Louise Thomas; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert and others, who became her
devoted adherents and fellow-workers, and whose homes and hospitality
she enjoyed during all the years which followed.

At the close of her lecture season in 1879 she was able to spend
Christmas and New Year's at her own home for the first time in many
years; but she left on January 2 to fill engagements, reaching
Washington on the eve of the National Convention, which assembled at
Lincoln Hall, January 21, 1880. As Mrs. Stanton was absent, Miss
Anthony presided over the sessions. During this meeting, 250 new
petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, signed by over 12,000 women, were
sent to Congress, besides over 300 petitions from individual women
praying for a removal of their political disabilities. These were
presented by sixty-five different representatives. Hon. T.W. Ferry, of
Michigan, in the Senate, and Hon. George B. Loring, of Massachusetts,
in the House, introduced a resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment. This
with all the petitions was referred to the judiciary committees, each
of which granted a hearing of two hours to the ladies. Among the
delegates who addressed them was Julia Smith Parker, of Glastonbury,
Conn., at that time over eighty years old, who with her sister Abby
annually resisted the payment of taxes because they were denied
representation, and whose property was in consequence annually seized
and sold. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the mother so beautifully pictured
in Ben Hur, addressed a congressional committee for the first time, and
among the other speakers were Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Blake, Miss Couzins,