on
of the evening, said in a voice which broke in spite of her
self-control: "If this were an assembled mob opposing the rights of
women I should know what to say. I never made a speech except to rouse
people to action. My work is that of subsoil plowing.... I ask you
tonight, as your best testimony to my services, on this, the twentieth
anniversary of my public work, to join me in making a demand on
Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, and
then to go with me before the several legislatures to secure its
ratification; and when the Secretary of State proclaims that that
amendment has been ratified by twenty-eight States, then Susan B.
Anthony will stop work--but not before."

When all was over, before she slept, Miss Anthony wrote this
characteristically tender little note to the one who never was absent
from her mind:

MY DEAR MOTHER: It really seems tonight as if I were parting with
something dear--saying good-by to somebody I loved. In the last few
hours I have lived over nearly all of life's struggles, and the
most painful is the memory of my mother's long and weary efforts to
get her six children up into womanhood and manhood. My thought
centers on your struggle especially because of the proof-reading of
Alice Gary's story this week. I can see the old home--the
brick-makers--the dinner-pails--the sick mother--the few years of
more fear than hope in the new house, and the hard years since. And
yet with it all, I know there was an undercurrent of joy and love
which makes the summing-up vastly in their favor. How I wish you
and Mary and Hannah and Guelma could have been here--and yet it is
nothing--and yet it is much.

My constantly recurring thought and prayer now are that the coming
fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness
nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed--that
no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale of truth
and right.

Then there is the bare mention of a luncheon a few days before with
Alice and Phoebe Cary, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker. What a treat would
have been a resume of the conversation of that gifted quintette of
women!

Mrs. Stanton was ill and could not attend the reception, which was a
great disappointment to Miss Anthony. They had shared so much trouble
that she felt most anxious they should share this one great pleasure.
I