reached Leavenworth the last day
of the month. Of her journey she wrote home:

I paid a dollar for a ride across the Mississippi on the ice. When
we reached Missouri all was devastation. I asked the conductor if
there were not a sleeper and he replied, "Our sleeping cars are in
the ditch." Scarcely a train had been over the road in weeks
without being thrown off the track. We were nineteen hours going
the 200 miles from Quincy to St. Joe. Twelve miles out from the
latter we had to wait for the train ahead of us to get back on the
rails. I was desperate. Any decent farmer's pigpen would be as
clean as that car. There were five or six families, each with half
a dozen children, moving to Kansas and Nebraska, who had been shut
up there for days. A hovel stood up the bank a little way and
several of the men went there and washed their faces. After
watching them enjoy this luxury for a while I finally rushed up
myself and asked the woman in charge if she would sell me a cup of
coffee. She grunted out yes, after some hesitation, and while she
was making it, I washed my face and hands. When she handed me my
drink she said, "This is no rye; it is real coffee." And so it was
and I enjoyed it, brass spoon, thick, dingy, cracked cup and all.

This was Miss Anthony's first visit to Kansas and she found much to
interest her in Leavenworth--caravans of emigrants long trains of
supplies for the army, troops from the barracks crowds of colored
refugees, the many features of frontier life so totally different from
all she had seen and known in her eastern home. The prominence of her
brother brought many distinguished visitors to his house, she enjoyed
the long carriage drives and the days were filled with pleasant duties,
so that she writes, "I am afraid I shall get into the business of being
comfortable." On her birthday, February 15, the diary shows that she
wagered a pair of gloves with the family physician that it would not
rain before morning, and on the 16th is recorded: "The bell rang early
this morning and a boy left a box containing a pair of gloves with the
compliments of the doctor." In March one entry reads: "The new
seamstress starts in pretty well but she can not sew nicely enough for
the little clothes. We shall have to make those ourselves."

This life of ease proved to be of short duration. Her brother was
renominated for mayor and plunged at once