[GATHERING OF THE STRONG-MINDED.]
The Woman Suffragists Tell of Their Trials.
Washington, January 21, 1870.
The last evening’s session of the woman’s suffrage convention opened under the most dazzling auspices. No movement of the kind at the national capital has ever been so honored before. Quite a strong solution of intellect, power, and fashion shaded its eyes before the meteoric display. For the first time in convention, respectable audiences have seen spiritualism, long-haired masculine, and pantaloon feminine banished from the stage. Just as a flame flashes up more brilliantly before it expires, the convention assumed a vermillion hue before its final dissolution.
Mrs. Stanton appeared clad in solemn black velvet, but the bright ribbons nestling in her snowy curls, the girlish ornaments in exactly the right place, strangled all thoughts of a funereal aspect.
Mrs. Wilbour glimmered in the black silk of golden wheat memory, and Mrs. Beecher was clad in royal purple; Phœbe Couzins smothered her manifold attractions under a great white opera cloak, and Susan B. Anthony was just as twisted and knotty as ever.
But whilst the beautiful feminine element which Mrs. Wilbour has so faithfully portrayed formed the background of the picture, the great central form of attraction was Professor Wilcox, otherwise known in the capital as “the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure.” A description of his person, as he corruscated upon the stage, is copied from the Washington Chronicle: “Professor Wilcox appeared upon the scene in wrappings of swallow-tail and patent leather. His polished foundation was only eclipsed by the manifold attractions of the other extremity. His whiskers were trimmed to an angle of forty-five degrees, whilst his superb eyes rested in serene beneficence upon the feminine elements that surged and rolled in grandeur on the stage.”
As the women were detained at home for the arrangement of their toilettes beyond the hour appointed, Professor Wilcox moved that Mrs. Griffing address the meeting. This most estimable woman proposed a substitute in the person of Madame Anneke, who came forward and said she could not talk, only “wid her heart.” She could not speak English. “All my friends I embrace.” This last sentence must have been a metaphor, for although Professor Wilcox was in grappling distance, nothing occurred which could shock the most delicate mind. Madame Anneke said that it had been told that Germany was not in favor of this movement. This was a mistake. Germany was with us; all Europe too. Twenty years ago she had started a paper to advocate the cause, but it stopped in two years because of her sickness. One hundred years ago a German philosopher said that women should have equal rights with men. A hundred years ago a good man had said the same things which these women were telling the people to-day. But she could say no more, she was going to act.
Mrs. Stanton then came forward and said Madame Anneke was going to travel all through the West for the “cause,” and this was what she meant by the word act. If Madame Anneke can not talk English to Western barbarians, she can make up by acting on the stage. Her immense rotundity, quivering like a huge caldron of jelly, will stir the human heart to its profoundest depths, and it can safely be said by a Western woman who knows the taste of the home community that Madame Anneke will be able to attract audiences.