The Times-Democrat and Daily States also gave full and favorable reports of her visit and lectures. The two weeks allowed for this holiday sped quickly away and Miss Anthony left for the North on March 20, laden with luncheon, flowers and many tokens of affection from the women of New Orleans. At Marshall, Tex., she dined with President and Mrs. Culver, of Bishops' University, and reached St. Louis Sunday evening, where she was the guest of her nephew, Arthur A. Mosher, and his wife. The next four or five weeks were spent in the lecture field at hard work, under the management of the Slayton Bureau. In answer to her letter of regret at not meeting Mrs. J. Ellen Foster at an Iowa convention, as she had requested, Mrs. Foster wrote: "I was sorry enough not to see you but I gave the people your message in the evening. Dear soul, how long you have stood for the truth delivered unto you! God bless your words and works. I do not see creeds and dogmas just as you see them, I do not believe in all that you do, but I believe in you!"
The last of April came the long-expected summons to Boston to receive the legacy of Mrs. Eddy, the courts having sustained the will. While eastward bound, crossing the State of Illinois, newspapers were brought on the train announcing the death of Grant, and she writes: "The weather is lovely and springlike today, but how still and solemn it seems out here on these broad prairies with that great general gone forever!" The case had been in litigation three years, Benjamin F. Butler appearing for Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone. His fees were very reasonable but several thousand dollars were swallowed up in the suit. The legacy, in first-class securities, stocks, bonds, etc., was paid April 27, each receiving $24,125.[26] Miss Anthony gives an amusing account, in one of her letters, of the awful nightmare she had on board the sleeper going home, when she dreamed that a woman was at the head of her berth stifling her while a man knelt in front, his hand cautiously creeping toward the inside pocket where she had sewed the money and bonds. She awoke with a scream and did not go to sleep again.
If this bequest had been left to Miss Anthony for her own personal use, she could not have felt one-half the joy she now experienced in having the means to carry on the work which always had been so seriously impeded for lack of funds. Of course its receipt was heralded far and wide by the papers, and appeals began to pour in from all sides, nor were they always appeals, but often demands. Scores of women considered themselves entitled to a share because the money had been left to further the cause of woman. One wanted it to help lift a mortgage on her home, others to educate their children, to pay a debt, to reward them for the valuable services they had given to woman suffrage, to start a paper, to carry one already started, and so on without end. The men also were willing to relieve her of a portion. "I am terribly oppressed by it all," Miss Anthony writes, "and nothing would make me happier than to respond to every one, but my money would melt away in a month." It was ludicrous and yet pitiful to see certain persons who had repudiated her in days gone by because she was too radical and too aggressive, discovering all at once how much they always had valued her and how anxious they had been for a long time to renew the old friendship—the common story, ancient as the world.
The one thing she was determined to do first of all was to complete the History of Woman Suffrage, upon which she and Mrs. Stanton had spent all the days that could be spared for nearly ten years. The work had been delayed by the many other demands upon their time, by their trips abroad, but more than all else by lack of money. The authors were to pay for composition, stereotyping, the making of the plates for the engravings and the printing of the same; Fowler & Wells for the paper, press-work, binding and advertising. Miss Anthony and her co-workers were to receive only 12½ per cent. commission on the sales. It readily may be seen that she did not go into this as a money-making scheme. Her only thought, her only desire, was to collect the facts in connection with the movement to secure the rights of women, before they should be scattered and lost, and to preserve and put them into shape for reference.
In preparing the first two volumes she had used every dollar she had been able to earn and all she could obtain from generous friends, and there were still large unpaid bills. Now, with plenty of money at her command, she bought out the rights of Fowler & Wells, and engaged Charles Mann, of Rochester, to print the third volume. Mrs. Stanton had returned to Tenafly, and there Miss Anthony again sent all the trunks and boxes of precious documents. She completed her lecture engagements and the first of June, 1885, found the two women once more hard at work.
"I really think of you with pity these hot midsummer days," wrote Mrs. Sewall to Mrs. Stanton, "under the lash of blessed Susan's relentless energy; but the reflection that she applies it with the most vigor to her own back enables one to regard that instrument, after all, with more admiration than terror." It was indeed true that Mrs. Stanton's luxury and ease-loving nature required much urging,[27] and while Miss Anthony took upon herself all the drudgery possible and all the financial anxiety and burden, she was compelled to keep Mrs. Stanton keyed up to do a great portion of the literary work. "It is the one drawback at every turn," she writes, "that I have not the faculty to frame easy, polished sentences. If I could but do this, I would finish up the History without asking aid of anyone." And again: "It has been the bane of my life that I am powerless to put on paper the glimpses of thoughts which come and go like flashes of lightning." As has been said before in these pages, she is a perfect critic and delightful letter-writer, but finds difficulty in doing what is called "literary work." Practice undoubtedly would have enabled her to overcome this, but she felt always that her chief strength lay in executive ability.
MISS ANTHONY AND MRS. STANTON.
Writing the History of Woman Suffrage.
Early in June Miss Anthony slipped away from the work long enough to go to the Progressive Friends' meeting at Kennett Square, Penn., where she was the guest of Deborah Pennock and met, for the first time, Sarah J. Eddy. In her diary she says: "Last evening as I sat on the sofa Miss Eddy put her arms around me and said, 'I am so glad I love you; I should have felt very sorry if I had not.' And so should I, for the sake of her dear mother and grandfather, who had so much confidence in me." The two went on to New York together and then over to Mrs. Stanton's for a little visit, and the friendship formed at that time has been maintained ever since. Later when Miss Eddy was going to Rochester to a convention, Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Hallowell: "I am sure you would be glad to entertain her; she is a sweet, lovely little woman; thoroughly sympathizing with everything and everybody that suffers injustice. I am very sorry that sister Mary and I must be away and can not have the dear girl with us."
Miss Anthony experienced a great disadvantage in being so far away from her publisher, the more especially as she had to send a chapter at a time, read proofs of each as soon as it was set up, send back corrected proof, get the revises, etc., and she soon found it necessary to spend about half her time in Rochester. The women who were preparing the chapters for their respective States delayed the work, neglecting to send them when promised; many occupied twice as much space as had been assigned them and were highly indignant when Mrs. Stanton used the blue pencil unsparingly on their productions. They vented their feelings on Miss Anthony, knowing that nothing they could say would ruffle Mrs. Stanton's equipoise, and she writes in her diary: "To decide between the two has almost torn me in twain. People who can write are so tenacious, each thinking her own style better than any other, while poor I don't know which is the best."