CHAPTER XLVIII.
HER LETTERS—BIRTHDAY PARTY—BIOGRAPHY.
1896-1897.
On the way home from California Miss Anthony and Mrs. Catt stopped at Reno, Nev., lecturing there Sunday, while Miss Shaw hastened on to speak at Salt Lake City. Then all met at Kansas City to attend the Missouri convention, where they were the guests of Mrs. Sarah Chandler Coates. The papers refer to Miss Anthony's speeches at this convention as being the very strongest she ever had made, and of her perfect physical condition at the close of an eight months' campaign.
She went from here directly home, and on November 19 a brilliant banquet was given in honor of Miss Shaw and herself at the Hotel Livingston by the Political Equality Club. Mary Lewis Gannett was toast-mistress and about 250 guests were seated at the tables. This was followed by the State convention at Rochester. After a few days' rest Miss Anthony went to the home of Mrs. Catt, near New York, where a business meeting was held of the national executive board. With Mrs. Avery she then took one of the great Sound steamers for Boston to attend a meeting of the National Woman's Council. A reception was given by Mrs. Charles W. Bond, of Commonwealth Avenue, and one at the Hotel Vendome. She ran up to Concord, N. H., for a few days' visit with her aged friends, Mr. and Mrs. Parker Pillsbury and Mrs. Armenia S. White. Then back again to the Garrisons', and out to Medford for a day with Mrs. Edward M. Davis, the daughter of Lucretia Mott.
She left Boston December 9, to fulfill a promise made to Elizabeth Buffum Chace, to spend her ninetieth birthday at her home in Valley Falls, R. I. Mrs. Chace had written a number of letters with her own trembling hand to arrange for this visit. It was only a family party, but the diary tells of the cake with ninety little candles, and other birthday features. Anna Shaw came in time for the supper, and the next day Mrs. Chace sent them in her carriage to Providence to attend the State convention. Here they were guests in the handsome old Eddy homestead, and Miss Anthony addressed a large audience in the evening. She stopped a day in New York to tell Mrs. Stanton about the California campaign, and Sunday morning reached her own dear home. Her old and loved friend, Maria Porter, had died the preceding night, and she attended the funeral services next day. On December 23 she went to Niagara Falls with her stenographer to secure reminiscences from her cousin, Sarah Anthony Burtis, aged eighty-six, who was a teacher in the home school at Battenville over sixty years before.
The year just closed had been busy but pleasant. It had brought the usual number of tokens of appreciation, one of which was notice of election as honorary member of the Chicago Woman's Club. Among the scores of invitations on file were one from Judge George F. Danforth to meet the justices of the appellate court at his home; and one to the golden wedding of her old fellow-laborers, Giles B. and Catharine F. Stebbins, at Detroit, the latter one of the secretaries of that famous first convention of 1848. Major James B. Pond, the well-known lecture manager, wrote Miss Mary Anthony: "Thank you for your kind letter and the excellent photograph of your great sister, whom I have admired and hoped and prayed for since I was a poor boy out in Kansas. I still believe she will be spared to witness a general triumph of her noble cause." The letter contained an offer of $100 for a parlor lecture by Miss Anthony at Jersey City.
A few of Miss Anthony's own letters, taken almost at random from copies on her file, will illustrate the vast scope of her correspondence and her peculiarly trenchant mode of expression. To one who wanted a testimonial from her that she might show in vindication of certain accusations, she wrote:
I went through all the fire of charges of stealing, and of every other crime in the whole calendar, twenty-five years ago—charges made, too, by people of vastly more influence than any of the women who are talking and writing today about you. I never made a public denial of one of them, through all the years of the bitterest kind of persecution, and believe I was greatly the gainer by working right on and ignoring them. It will be the mistake of your life if you go into print in your own defence. Your denial will reach a new set of people and start them to talking, while the ones who read the original charges will never see the refutation of them.
To one of the newly-enfranchised women of Utah: