To one who was in deep grief she said in an affectionate letter: "Do assure me that you are beginning to think of your dear one as he was when well and moving about in his always helpful and cheering manner. To get far enough from the sickness, the suffering and the death of our friends, so as to be able to have only the thought of them in their full vigor of life, is the greatest joy which possibly can come to those who have lost their beloved."
While Miss Anthony was thus constantly giving out from the vast wealth of her heart and brain, she was receiving, also, from all parts of the country the strong and loving tributes of noble souls. A beautiful one which shines on the pages of 1896 was pronounced by the eloquent Dr. H. W. Thomas, of Chicago, in the course of a Sunday sermon entitled "Progressive Greatness," delivered to a large audience assembled in McVicker's Theater:
A Washington and a Lincoln have come in our great century, and between their birthdays was born a Susan B. Anthony, whose grand life has been given to a noble cause; once the target for the cruel and bitter shafts of ridicule; now deemed the noblest among women. The task of Washington and Lincoln could not be complete till the crown was placed on the brow of woman as well as man; and when the angels shall call Susan B. Anthony to the life immortal, her name, her memory on earth should and will take its place among the martyrs and saints of liberty, not for man alone, but for woman and child."
To watch the old year out and the New Year in, Miss Anthony went to Geneva, and here spent a few days very pleasantly with Elizabeth Smith Miller and her guest, Harriot Stanton Blatch. Among the New Year's remembrances were $50 from Mrs. Elda A. Orr, of Reno, Nev.; $150 from Mrs. Gross, of Chicago; and $300 from Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey, of Orange, N. J. The usual number of congratulatory letters were received from all classes of people, high and low, old and young, white and colored.
To show their wide range two or three may be given. From Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs: "I send to you on the New Year a fraternal greeting and my best wishes that this may prove for you and the interests you represent, a year of fulfillment. We are all serving the same cause and we are surely among the happy ones of earth that we are enabled to assist, by even a slight impetus, the 'power which makes for righteousness.' ... Therefore I send you today my heartfelt wishes for the continued success of your cause and the peace and prosperity of your life."
Her friend of fifty years, John W. Hutchinson, the last of that never-equalled family of singers, sent his New Year's greetings and added: "I bless you and your work. Wonderful possibilities will be the result of this great movement, which you have led, for equal rights and the franchise for women." The president of the National Council of Women, Mary Lowe Dickinson, an earnest, efficient worker for humanity, said in the course of a long letter dated January 9:
I pray that all strength and blessing of every kind may crown this coming year of your life; and O, how earnestly I hope that in it you may see the fruition of some of the work that you have been struggling with these many, many years. When I run over in my mind the present situation of the cause you represent—which seems to me more and more the one cause which must succeed if we are going to have genuine success anywhere else—I see what ground you have for encouragement and what a vast advance has been made; but I see, too, how slow it must seem to you, and how weary of waiting you must become. I know no courage like yours, and I do that courage full honor.
She had received a telegram of greeting from Frances E. Willard as soon as she arrived home from California, and January 5 accepted her urgent invitation for a little visit with her at the sanitarium of Dr. Cordelia Green, Castile; and while there addressed a parlor gathering of the patients. On January 15 she was guest of honor at a luncheon given by the Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester, at the Genesee clubhouse, to the State executive committee of the Federation of Clubs. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson spent a few days with her, and she arranged for her to hold Sunday evening services in the Unitarian church. On January 20 the two ladies, with Miss Mary, started for the twenty-ninth annual convention of the national association, which was to be held this year at Des Moines, Ia. The thermometer was 15° below zero, the snow very deep, and Miss Anthony's friends saw her set forth on the journey to this cold western city with much anxiety. All their protests, however, were not sufficient to keep her at home; but she thought with much longing of the clean, beautiful streets of Washington, the mild climate, the Congressional committees, the crowds of visitors there from various parts of the country who always came to the convention, and she felt more strongly than ever that it was a serious mistake to take it away from the national capital.
She stopped at Chicago for a few days, and a characteristic little entry in her diary says: "I slept on a $6,000 bed last night; my! how much good suffrage work could have been done with that money." On the afternoon of January 23, Miss Anthony addressed a large meeting of the Woman's Club and in the course of her remarks paid a tribute to that organization, in which she said: "This is the banner club of the United States, not because it has such nice women for members, and not even because it is located in Chicago, but because it is a club which does a large amount of practical work."
Mrs. Foster Avery joined the party at Chicago and they reached Des Moines January 24, where they found the rest of the executive board, and all were entertained in the suburban mansion of James and Martha C. Callanan. The meetings were held in the Central Christian church, whose pastor, Rev. H. O. Breeden, extended a cordial greeting. Notwithstanding the extreme severity of the weather, 24° below zero, the audience-room was crowded to its capacity at every public session, and overflow meetings were held. The convention was officially welcomed by Governor Francis M. Drake and Mayor John McVicar; Mrs. Adelaide Ballard, State president, made the opening address, and Mrs. Macomber spoke in behalf of the women's clubs of the city. State Senator Rowan was one of the speakers. Among the letters of greeting was one from Miss Kitty Reed, daughter of Speaker Thomas B. Reed. The memorial services showed that never in any previous year had so long a list of friends to the cause passed away as in 1896. There were thirty-seven names mentioned in the resolutions.[126]