Miss Anthony then reiterated the glories of the late convention, and went off into one of those spasmodic efforts practically impossible to any one but Susan.
Mrs. Beecher again cautioned her, and told her not to forget the place where she was. This brought Susan to terra firma.
Mrs. Gage then said she held a petition in her hand, signed by 3,000 people, but no one seemed inclined to take it away from her, and she quietly sat down.
The Honorable Hannibal Hamlin then arose to correct Mrs. Stanton in what she had said about changing the laws for the District of Columbia; that no such bill was before the committee to which Mrs. Stanton had alluded. There was a bill, but it was unlike the one reported in the newspapers. The District of Columbia was governed by laws made a hundred years ago, and the age had outgrown them. He believed they should be modified, and he advocated the change to be made by the citizens, subject to the will of Congress. He only spoke for himself and not for his associates.
Judge Cook, of Illinois, chairman of the committee of the House, said that Congress was no place to bring up such a great question. There is too much to do here already. We have no time—absolutely no time—for the consideration of the subject. At the same time he seemed to be looking about for a hole to escape.
Mrs. Hooker said that time should be made for such a subject.
Mrs. Stanton said, “Present the sixteenth amendment.”
Honorable Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, chairman of the Senate Committee, said, “We will take this question into consideration. When Saul went up into Damascus he said unto Paul, ‘I am almost persuaded to become a Christian.’” The reporters’ table was illuminated by smiles, and one man was malicious enough to say a little Scripture reading would do the Senator good, for he meant Agrippa instead of Saul. Another answered that the Senator was figuratively speaking, and he might as well use one name as another.
The council was broken by the Congressional lions going stealthily away, but before they all had a chance to get out, Susan buttonholed two or three. “Sixteenth amendment” was distilled from her lips like honey from flowers. Senator Sumner came around genial as a summer’s sun, yet it was noticed that during the whole ordeal he never opened his lips, but endured all with the resignation of martyrdom. And thus the meeting of the Amazon warriors passed away.