from a, quiet, domestic Quaker maiden to a strong, courageous,
uncompromising advocate of absolute equality of rights for woman.
Brought into close association with the most advanced men and women of
the age, seeing on every hand the injustice perpetrated against her sex
and hearing the magnificent appeals for the liberty of every human
being, her soul could not fail to respond; and having passed the age
when women are apt to consecrate themselves to love and marriage, it
was most natural that she should dedicate her services to the struggle
for the freedom of woman. She did not realize then that this would
reach through fifty years of exacting and unending toil, but even had
she done so, who can doubt that she freely would have given up her life
to the work?

In the ten weeks before the State convention at Albany, 6,000 names
were secured for the petition that married women should be entitled to
the wages they earned and to the equal guardianship of their children,
and 4,000 asking for the suffrage. Miss Anthony herself trudged from
house to house during that stormy winter, many of the women slamming
the door in her face with the statement that they "had all the rights
they wanted;" although at this time an employer was bound by law to pay
the wife's wages to the husband, and the father had the power to
apprentice young children without the mother's consent, and even to
dispose of them by will at his death. One minister, in Rochester, after
looking her over carefully, said: "Miss Anthony, you are too fine a
physical specimen of woman to be doing such work as this. You ought to
marry and have children." Ignoring the insult, she replied in a
dignified manner: "I think it a much wiser thing to secure for the
thousands of mothers in this State the legal control of the children
they now have, than to bring others into the world who would not belong
to me after they were born."

The State convention met in Association Hall, Albany, February 14,
1854. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, president, delivered a magnificent
address which Miss Anthony had printed and laid upon the desk of every
member of the Legislature; she also circulated 50,000 of these
pamphlets throughout the State. The convention had been called for two
days, but so great was the interest aroused and so popular were the
speakers in attendance that evening meetings were held for two weeks;
the questions under consideration were taken up by the newspapers of
Albany and