age convention, and dined at Robert Collyer's; back to Iowa,
speaking at Burlington, Davenport, Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa; over
into Nebraska once more, from there returning to Illinois; into
Indiana, thence to Milwaukee and points in Wisconsin; and once more to
Chicago, where, as was often the case, she was the guest of Mr. and
Mrs. Fernando Jones; from here across to Painesville and other towns in
northern Ohio; then on to numerous places in western New York, and
finally home to Rochester, April 25, having slept scarcely two nights
in the same bed for over three months.

Such is the hard life of the public lecturer, the most exhausting and
exacting which man or woman can experience. During all this long trip
Miss Anthony had met everywhere a cordial welcome and had been
entertained in scores of delightful homes. Her speech on this tour was
entitled "The New Situation," and was a clear and comprehensive
argument to prove that the Fourteenth Amendment gave women the right to
vote. Although composed largely of legal and constitutional references,
it was not written but drawn from the storehouse of her wonderful
memory, aided only by a few notes.

At the close of the Washington convention the advocates of woman
suffrage honestly believed that the battle was almost won. They felt
sure Congress would pass the enabling act, permitting them to exercise
the right that they claimed to be conferred by the Fourteenth
Amendment, in which claim they were sustained by some of the best
constitutional lawyers in the country. The agricultural committee room
in the Capitol was placed at the disposal of the national woman
suffrage committee, who put Josephine S. Griffing in charge. The latter
part of January she wrote:

Our room is thronged. Yesterday and today no less than twelve wives
of members of Congress were here and large numbers of the
aristocratic women of Washington. Blanche Butler Ames assures me
that all her sympathies are with us. President Grant's sister, Mrs.
Cramer, has been here and given her name, saying that Mrs. Grant
sent her regards and sympathized with our movement, and that she
had refused from principle to sign Mrs. Sherman's protest.... The
daily press is on its knees and is publishing long editorials in
our favor. You ask if this is a Republican dodge. I do not know. I
feel as Douglass did, ready to welcome the bolt from heaven or hell
that shivers the chains. If