In finishing this sketch of the most intimate friend I have had for the past forty-five years,—with whom I have spent weeks and months under the same roof,—I can truly say that she is the most upright, courageous, self-sacrificing, magnanimous human being I have ever known. I have seen her beset on every side with the most petty annoyances, ridiculed and misrepresented, slandered and persecuted; I have known women refuse to take her extended hand; women to whom she presented copies of "The History of Woman Suffrage," return it unnoticed; others to keep it without one word of acknowledgment; others to write most insulting letters in answer to hers of affectionate conciliation. And yet, under all the cross-fires incident to a reform, never has her hope flagged, her self-respect wavered, or a feeling of resentment shadowed her mind. Oftentimes, when I have been sorely discouraged, thinking that the prolonged struggle was a waste of force which in other directions might be rich in achievement, with her sublime faith in humanity, she would breathe into my soul renewed inspiration, saying, "Pity rather than blame those who persecute us." So closely interwoven have been our lives, our purposes, and experiences that, separated, we have a feeling of incompleteness—united, such strength of self-assertion that no ordinary obstacles, difficulties, or dangers ever appear to us insurmountable. Reviewing the life of Susan B. Anthony, I ever liken her to the Doric column in Grecian architecture, so simply, so grandly she stands, free from every extraneous ornament, supporting her one vast idea—the enfranchisement of woman.
As our estimate of ourselves and our friendship may differ somewhat from that taken from an objective point of view, I will give an extract from what our common friend Theodore Tilton wrote of us in 1868:
"Miss Susan B. Anthony, a well-known, indefatigable, and lifelong advocate of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman's rights, has been, since 1851, Mrs. Stanton's intimate associate in reformatory labors. These celebrated women are of about equal age, but of the most opposite characteristics, and illustrate the theory of counterparts in affection by entertaining for each other a friendship of extraordinary strength.
"Mrs. Stanton is a fine writer, but a poor executant; Miss Anthony is a thorough manager, but a poor writer. Both have large brains and great hearts; neither has any selfish ambition for celebrity; but each vies with the other in a noble enthusiasm for the cause to which they are devoting their lives.
"Nevertheless, to describe them critically, I ought to say that, opposites though they be, each does not so much supplement the other's deficiencies as augment the other's eccentricities. Thus they often stimulate each other's aggressiveness, and, at the same time, diminish each other's discretion.
"But, whatever may be the imprudent utterances of the one or the impolitic methods of the other, the animating motives of both are evermore as white as the light. The good that they do is by design; the harm by accident. These two women, sitting together in their parlors, have, for the last thirty years, been diligent forgers of all manner of projectiles, from fireworks to thunderbolts, and have hurled them with unexpected explosion into the midst of all manner of educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies; sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members, more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and, in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country. Nor will they, themselves deny the charge. In fact this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum, keeping up what Daniel Webster called 'The rub-a-dub of agitation.'"