CHAPTER XLVI.
MRS. STANTON'S BIRTHDAY—THE BIBLE RESOLUTION.
1895-1896.
On the way homeward they were met at every large station by friends with something to add to the pleasure of their trip. Miss Shaw went through to Chicago, but Miss Anthony journeyed towards Leavenworth. She dined with friends at Topeka, and while waiting in the station, one of them remarked, "We are to have our suffrage meeting tomorrow, what shall we tell them from you?" In a spirit of fun she dashed off a resolution saying that "since 130,000 Kansas men declared themselves against woman suffrage at the late election and 74,000 showed their opposition by not voting; therefore it is the duty of every self-respecting woman in the State to fold her hands and refuse to help any religious, charitable or moral reform or any political association, until the men shall strike the adjective 'male' from the suffrage clause of the constitution."
She was in Topeka only five hours, but during that time attended a dinner party, gave a two-column interview to a reporter from each of the city papers, and furnished a resolution which set all the newspapers in the country by the ears. "Talk about hysterics," she said, laughingly, as she read the clippings, "it takes the editors to have 'em, if they are opposed to woman suffrage and can get hold of something to help them out." Any one who could have the patience to read the fearful morals which were deduced, the frightful sermons which were preached, from what was intended as a joking resolution, would quite agree with her. Even had it been meant seriously, it would have been only such retaliation as men would have visited upon women had the latter been possessed of the power and voted three to one to take the ballot away from them.
She visited a week in Leavenworth and Fort Scott, arrived at Chicago July 15, and was thus described by a Herald reporter:
Miss Anthony has grown slightly thinner since she was in Chicago attending the World's Fair Congresses, thinner and more spiritual-looking. As she sat last night with her transparent hands grasping the arms of her chair, her thin, hatchet face and white hair, with only her keen eyes flashing light and fire, she looked like Pope Leo XIII. The whole physical being is as nearly submerged as possible in a great mentality. She recalls facts, figures, names and dates with unerring accuracy. It was no Argus-eyed autocrat who told with pardonable pride last night of how her chair at every great function in San Francisco was hung with floral wreaths, how bouquets were piled at her feet until she could scarcely step for them. It was a pleasing story, told by a sweet old woman, of honors which she accepted for the sake of a beloved cause.
The next day she resumed her journey with Mr. and Mrs. Gross and Harriet Hosmer, who were going to Bar Harbor. She reached her own home at daybreak, and here, the diary shows, she sat down on the steps of the front porch and read the paper for an hour or two rather than disturb her sister's morning nap. The first word received from Miss Shaw was that she had arrived at her summer home on Cape Cod with a raging fever, the result of the great strain of constant speaking and travelling so many weeks without rest, and she continued alarmingly ill the remainder of the summer. She was much distressed because of an engagement she had to lecture to the Chautauqua Assembly at Lakeside, O., and to relieve her mind Miss Anthony telegraphed her that she would go in her place. She herself felt not the slightest ill effect from her journey, and the long interviews published in all the Rochester papers during the week she was at home, displayed the keenest and strongest mental power. She reached Lakeside on the 25th of July and the next day spoke to a large audience. Towards the close of her address, she ended abruptly, dropped into her chair and sank into a dead faint.
She was taken at once to Mrs. Southworth's summer home, at which she was a guest, and telegrams were sent out by the press reporters announcing that she could not live till morning. She learned afterwards that long obituary notices were put in type in many of the newspaper offices. One Chicago paper telegraphed its correspondent: "5,000 words if still living; no limit, if dead." She was very much vexed at this momentary weakness and, using her will-power, by the next day had rallied sufficiently to return home. The national suffrage business committee, by previous arrangement, met at her house, and she forced herself to keep up for two days, but felt very dull and tired, and on the morning of July 30 she did not rise. A physician was summoned and a trained nurse, and for a month she lay helpless with nervous prostration; her first serious illness in seventy-five years.