She never fails to take each morning, regardless of the weather, a cold sponge bath from head to foot, followed by a brisk rubbing, which puts the skin in excellent condition. She has a good appetite, drinks tea and coffee moderately and eats always the simplest food, cereals, bread and butter, vegetables, eggs, milk, a little meat once a day, plenty of fruit at every meal, whatever is in season, and never can be tempted by rich salads, desserts or fancy dishes. Whenever it is possible she rests a short time after each meal, and lies down for an hour during the afternoon, even if she can not sleep; retires at nine or ten and rises at six or seven. She travels by night, when convenient, as she thus can avoid much of the fatigue of the journey. When travelling in the daytime she reads very little, never writes or dictates letters on the train, as many busy people do, but makes herself comfortable and dozes and rests.
An invariable rule, with which nothing is allowed to interfere, is plenty of fresh air and exercise, and she regards these as the mainspring of her long years of health and activity. If she has been on the cars all day, she walks from the station to her stopping-place. After a speech, she walks home. When in Rochester she often writes until nearly 10 o'clock at night, then puts on a long cloak, ties a scarf over her head, goes out to the mail box, and walks eight or ten blocks, returning in a warm glow; gives herself a thorough rubbing, and is ready for a night's rest in a room where the window is open at all seasons. The policemen are accustomed to the late pedestrian and often speak a word of greeting as she passes. It is not an unusual thing for her to take up a broom, when it has been snowing all the evening, and sweep the walks around and in front of the house, just before going to bed. While not an adherent of any special "sciences" or "cures," she believes thoroughly in not dwelling upon either mental or bodily ills; giving disagreeable things and people only such attention as is absolutely necessary, and then putting them out of mind; observing the laws of hygiene with regard to the body and then banishing it also from the thoughts. Over and above all else is she an advocate of work, employment for mind and body, as a means of salvation.
In dress Miss Anthony is extremely particular. She considers it poor economy to wear cheap material, always buys the best fabrics, linings and trimmings, and employs a competent dressmaker. She has one gown a year and often this is a present from some loving friend. While she wears only black silk or satin in public, she loves color and her house dress is usually maroon or soft cardinal. Her laces and few pieces of jewelry are gifts from women. The slender little ring, worn on the "wedding finger," was placed there thirty years ago by her devoted friend, Dr. Clemence Lozier. She never in a lifetime has changed the style of wearing her hair, once dark brown, glossy and abundant, now thin and fine and shining like spun silver, which is always evenly parted, combed over the ears and coiled low at the back, thus showing the fine contour of her head. In all the details of the toilet she is most fastidious, and a rent, a missing button or a frayed edge is considered almost an unpardonable sin.
Miss Anthony attends Unitarian church but retains her membership in the Society of Quakers. On the rare occasions when she needs a physician, she consults some woman of the homeopathic school, but she is opposed to much medicine, believing that proper diet and exercise are the best cure for most maladies. Although pleased always to welcome callers, she makes few visits, except to the faithful friends of olden times whose names so often have been mentioned in these pages. She finds the days all too short and too few for the great work whose demands increase with every year. While Miss Anthony feels an abiding interest in household affairs, the details and management necessarily devolve upon her sister Mary, who also looks carefully after the finances, to see that the modest income is not all appropriated to the cause of woman suffrage. In matters of a material nature she is the needed complement to the life of her gifted sister. On all vital questions, suffrage, religion, the various reforms, the two are in perfect accord and, as they sit together in the quiet home for the usual twilight chat before the lamps are lighted, there is none of that dwelling in the past, to which old people are so prone, but all is of the present, the live topics of the day, and the plans and hopes which they share alike.
The Anthony home in Rochester stands in Madison street, one of the nicely paved, well-shaded avenues in the western part of that beautiful city. It is a plain, substantial two-and-a-half story brick house of thirteen rooms, with modern conveniences, and belongs to Miss Mary. It is furnished with Quakerlike simplicity but with everything necessary to make life comfortable. In the front parlor are piano, easy chairs and many pictures and pieces of bric-a-brac, given by friends. Over the mantel hangs a fine, large painting of the Yosemite, presented to Miss Anthony in 1896 by William Keith, the noted artist of California. Beneath it stand three fine photographs, Mary Wollstonecraft, Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass. Between the windows is the very mahogany table upon which were written the call and resolutions for the first woman's rights convention ever held—the gift of Mrs. Stanton. In the back parlor the most conspicuous object is the library table strewn with the papers and magazines which come by every mail. This is surrounded with arm-chairs, tempting one to pause awhile and enjoy this luxury of literature. On one side are the bookcases, and on the walls large engravings of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and a handsome copy of Murillo's Madonna, while in one corner stands the mother's spinning-wheel. Opening out of this room is Miss Mary's study, the big desk filled with work pertaining to the Political Equality Club of 200 members, whose efficient president she has been for a number of years; and here she spends several hours every day looking after her own work and relieving her sister of a part of hers. There is a sewing-machine here also, and a big, old-fashioned haircloth sofa, suggesting a nap and a dream of bygone days.
In the dining-room is a handsomely carved mahogany sideboard, a family heirloom, containing china and silver which belonged to mother and grandmother, and here hang very old steel engravings of Washington and Lincoln. The large, light kitchen, with its hard coal range, is a favorite apartment, and Miss Anthony especially enjoys sitting there in a low rocking-chair while she reads the morning paper. The front room upstairs, with little dressing-room attached, is the guest chamber. It contains a great chest of drawers, a dressing-table and mirror which were part of the mother's wedding outfit over eighty years ago, a mahogany bedstead and a modern writing-desk and rocking-chairs. On the walls are several paintings, the work of loved hands long since at rest, and two engravings, over one hundred years old, such as used to hang in every Abolitionist's parlor in early days. They are copies of paintings by G. Morland, engraved in 1794, by "J. R. Smith, King St., Covent Garden, engravers to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales." One is entitled "African Hospitality," and represents a ship wrecked off the coast of Africa with the white passengers rescued and tenderly cared for by the natives; the other is named "The Slave Trade," and shows these same negroes loaded with chains and driven aboard ship by the white men whom they had saved. These pictures have little meaning to the present generation, but one can imagine how they must have fired the hearts of those who were laboring to eradicate the curse of slavery from the nation.
Back of the guest chamber, in this interesting home, is Miss Mary's sleeping-room, with quaint old furniture and family pictures; then the maid's room, another guest chamber and, in the southwest corner, next the bathroom, the pleasant bedroom of Miss Anthony with the pictures of those she loves best, and the dresser littered with the little toilet articles of which she is very fond. The most attractive room in the house, naturally, is Miss Anthony's study in the south wing on the second floor. It is light and sunshiny and has an open gas fire. Looking down from the walls are Benjamin Lundy, Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Frances Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Abby Kelly Foster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucy Stone, Lydia Maria Child and, either singly or in groups, many more of the great reformers of the past and present century. On one side are the book shelves, with cyclopedia, histories and other volumes of reference; on another an inviting couch, where the busy worker may drop down for a few moment's repose of mind and body. By one window is the typewriter, and by the other the great desk weighted with letters and documents.
Each morning, as soon as the postman arrives, Miss Anthony sits down at her desk and, going over the piles of letters, puts to one side those which can wait, dictates replies to those requiring the longest answers and, while they are being typewritten, plunges with her pen into the rest. Many hours every day and often into the night she writes steadily, but the pile never diminishes. As president of the National-American Association not only must she direct the work for suffrage, which is being carried on in all parts of the country to a much greater extent than the public imagines, but she also must keep in touch with the hundreds of individuals each of whom is helping in a quiet but effective way. There are few days that do not bring requests from libraries, associations, colleges, high schools or clubs for literature and other information concerning woman suffrage, which is now the subject of debate from the great universities down to the cross roads schoolhouse. In past years libraries have been very deficient in matter upon this question because there was no general call for it, but now the demand is so large that it scarcely can be supplied, and all instinctively turn to Miss Anthony for information.
Some idea has been given of the scope of her correspondence of a public nature, but it hardly would be possible to describe the private letters. Standing for half a century as the friend and defender of women, and known so widely through her travels and newspaper notices, she is overwhelmed with appeals for advice and assistance. From the number of wives, and husbands also, who pour the tale of their domestic grievances into her ears, she would be fully justified in believing marriage a failure. She is daily requested to sign petitions for every conceivable purpose, and begged for letters of recommendation by people of whom she never heard. Women entreat her to obtain positions for their husbands and children and to help themselves get pensions, or damages, or wages out of which they have been defrauded. Girls and boys want advice about their plans for the future. Women, and men too, without education or experience, insist upon being placed as speakers on the suffrage platform. Authors send books asking for a review. People write of their business ventures, their lawsuits, their surgical operations, their diseases and those of all their family, and of every imaginable household matter. Scores of letters ask for a "word of greeting" on all sorts of occasions. Editors of papers and pamphlets, advocating every ology and ism under the sun, send them with the entreaty that she will examine and express an opinion, each insisting that "it will take only a few hours of her time." She is besieged to dress dolls and make aprons for fairs, to write her name upon pieces to be used for quilts and cushions, and to furnish scraps of her gowns for the same purpose. Babies are named for her and she is asked to send a letter of acknowledgment and a little keepsake. Requests for autographs outnumber the days of the year.
She is constantly importuned to examine MSS., and not only to do this but to secure a publisher. During the year 1897 one man sent an article of sixty-eight closely typewritten pages of legal cap, asking that she give it a careful reading, revise it, and send it where it would be published; and no postage stamps accompanied this nervy request. A woman whose grammar and rhetoric were most defective announced that she had written a book called "The Intemperate Life of my Father;" also two stories and a play. She would send all of them to Miss Anthony, to 'fix up just as if they were her own and help her sell them; she wanted the proceeds to assist her brothers who had failed in business.' It is a common occurrence for persons to ask, without so much as enclosing a stamp, that she prepare an address on woman suffrage and send for them to read as their own production. One enthusiastic poem begins: