Work was pressing upon her from every side. In the spring of this year she had been engaged by the editors of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia to write the chapter on suffrage and prepare the biographies of a number of eminent women. Amidst all the other cares of the summer and fall, she had been endeavoring to collect the materials for these sketches, having the usual experience. Some failed to answer; others wrote asking a score of questions; many sent four times as many words as were requested, with the statement that not one single line could be cut out; while a number forwarded a mass of unintelligible matter and requested her to make a good sketch out of it. The history also was occupying her waking and sleeping thoughts, and the depleted condition of her pocket-book foreshadowed the necessity of another lecture tour. Meanwhile, the mother at home was growing very feeble, and on Thanksgiving Day Miss Anthony wrote to her: "I feel as if I were robbing myself of the last moments which I may ever have to be with you, but I can not see the way clear to stay at home this coming winter. It is ever thus with me, so hard to know which is the strongest duty, the one that ought to be done first, and so I grope on in the dark. That I am always away from home may look to the world as if I care less for it than other people, whereas my longing for it almost makes me weak; but you, dear mother, understand my love."
[82] See Appendix for full speech.
[83] At Carbondale she addressed the students of the Normal School, the day after her lecture, emphasizing the necessity of woman's being able to care for herself, urging them to marry only for love and not for support, and to look upon marriage as a luxury and not a necessity. She was a little doubtful as to the effect of this talk upon both faculty and students, but one of the professors called to tell her how fitting was every word and how he had longed to have just those things said. The girl students sent her a handsome bouquet as she was taking her train.
[84] President M.B. Anderson, of Rochester University, wrote a friend in this connection: "I always remember Miss Anthony as an angel of mercy in the house of a sister who was crushed by the loss of a son."
[85] See Appendix for full speech.
[86] From a large number of clippings, the following are selected as specimens:
Miss Anthony has now earned the money and discharged the last obligation of her paper. This is the work of a brave and good woman.... She is a woman who pays her debts and sets a watch upon her lips.—Cincinnati Enquirer.
It is the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B. Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to us—and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman suffrage—that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood which the follies of a thousand others can not remove.—Utica Observer.
"She has paid her debts like a man," says an exchange. Like a man? Not so. Not one man in a thousand but would have "squealed," "laid down" and settled at ten or twenty cents on the dollar. As people go in this wicked world, it is no more than fair to say in good faith that Miss Anthony is a very admirable person. She is in business, as in other matters, one of the few—the select few—who steer by their own compass and not by the shifting winds.—Buffalo Express.
Miss Susan B. Anthony has done a noble thing, which deserves to be widely known. She has lectured 120 times during this season and has paid off the last debt of The Revolution. That she has felt obliged to work thus for years when thousands of men avail themselves of the privileges of the bankrupt act, is a phenomenal exhibition of personal honor. A woman is thoroughly qualified to plead for the claims of her own sex when she respects the rights of human nature so keenly.—New York Graphic.