It takes two sorts of people to make a reform: One who become public speakers and bear the brunt of obloquy, and the other who in obscurity lend their assistance to the work. There are hundreds of this latter class that the world never hears about. It is the blessed silent side of life, and it seems to me that Mary is the very incarnation of the quiet majority of this great reform which is yet to celebrate its triumphs. In after years, when the story is written of this political equality movement, men will say that the battle was won by the two sisters, because there never could have been a Susan abroad if it had not been for a Mary at home.
If there ever was a time when Miss Anthony was speechless from supreme satisfaction it was on this occasion. All the honors ever bestowed upon herself had not afforded her the joy of this testimonial to her gentle, unassuming but strong and helpful sister, on whom she leaned far more than the world could ever know.
MARY S. AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY, 1897.
Miss Anthony assisted at the elegant golden wedding celebration of Mr. and Mrs. James Sargent, April 29; not one in the receiving line under seventy, and yet not one broken or enfeebled by age. The men erect and vigorous, the women beautifully dressed and full of animation, formed a striking illustration of the changed physical and social conditions of the last half-century.
Early in June Miss Anthony, Rev. Anna Shaw, Miss Emily Howland and Mrs. Harper went to Auburn to visit Eliza Wright Osborne, with whom Mrs. Stanton and her daughter, Mrs. Lawrence, were spending the summer. The days were delightfully passed, driving through the shaded streets of that "loveliest village of the plain" and walking about the spacious park and gardens surrounding the Osborne mansion; while in the evenings the party gathered in the large drawing-room and listened to chapters from the forthcoming biography, followed with delightful reminiscences by the two elder ladies and Mrs. Osborne, whose mother, Martha C. Wright, was one of their first and best-beloved friends and helpers. It was a rare and sacred occasion, and those who were present ever will cherish the memory of those two grand pioneers, sitting side by side—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony—the one just beyond, the other nearing the eightieth milestone of life, both having given to the world fifty years of unremitting service, and yet both as strong in mind, as keen in satire, as brimming with cheerfulness, as in those early days when they set about to revolutionize the prejudices and customs of the ages.[129]
The correspondence this year seemed heavier than ever before, letters pouring in from all parts of the United States and Europe. Even from far-off Moscow, in conservative Russia, came the cry of women for help. Pages written by the pen of another could not give so accurate an idea of Miss Anthony's opinions on various topics as single paragraphs culled from copies of her own letters, preserved, alas, only during the past few years since she has employed a stenographer. One scarcely knows which to select. To a newspaper inquiry she answered: "The 'greatest compliment' ever paid me was, that by my life-work I had helped to make the conditions of the world better for women." She wrote to an exasperated Ohio woman:
The plan you propose, of our getting all the members of suffrage clubs, and all individual women outside, in each State, to march to the polls every election day and attempt to deposit their ballots, sounds very well. But, my dear, it is impossible thus to persuade the women, after the Supreme Court of the United States has declared they have no right to vote under the National Constitution. Your suggestion means a revolution which women will not create against their own fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. A whole race of men under a foreign or tyrannical government, like the Cubans, may rise in rebellion, but for women thus to band themselves against the power enthroned in their own households is quite another matter. Hundreds have recommended your plan, so it is nothing new, but it is utterly impractical. There can be but one possible way for women to be freed from the degradation of disfranchisement, and that is through the slow processes of agitation and education, until the vast majority of women themselves desire freedom. So long as mothers teach their sons and daughters, by acquiescence at least, that present conditions need no improving, you can not expect men to change them. Therefore do not waste a single moment trying to devise any sort of insurrectionary movement on the part of the women.
In a letter to Mrs. Stanton she said:
Mrs. Besant lunched with us, and I heard her last evening for the second time. She is master of the English language, and whether or not one can believe she sees and hears from the world of the disembodied what she feels she does, one can not but realize that she is a great woman and has a wonderful theory of how human souls return to earth. But I tell her that it seems to me repellent that we have to come back here through Dame Nature's processes, after a period of such great freedom in the occult world, and again go through with teething, mumps, measles, and similar inflictions. The truth is, I can no more see through Theosophy than I can through Christian Science, Spiritualism, Calvinism or any other of the theories, so I shall have to go on knocking away to remove the obstructions in the road of us mortals while in these bodies and on this planet; and leave Madam Besant and you and all who have entered into the higher spheres, to revel in things unknown to me.... I will join you at Mrs. Miller's Saturday, and we'll chat over men, women and conditions—not theories, theosophies and theologies, they are all Greek to me.