Rev. Anna Shaw and I have had a lovely week. Almost every day we drove out among the mountains; one day to the Ausable lakes, through beautiful woods, up ravines a thousand feet; another to Professor Davidson's summer school, high up on the mountainside. But the day of days was when we drove to the farm-home of old Captain John Brown at North Elba. We found a broad plateau, surrounded with mountain peaks on every side. We ate our dinner in the same dining-room in which the old hero and his family partook of their scanty fare in the days when he devoted his energies to teaching the colored men, who accepted Gerrit Smith's generous offer of a bit of real estate, which should entitle the possessor to a right to vote. Of all who settled on those lands, called the "John Brown opening," only one grayheaded negro still lives, though many of their old houses and barns yet stand, crumbling away on their deserted farms.
In front of the house is a small yard and occupying one-half of it is a grand old boulder with steps leading to the top, where one sees chiseled in large letters, "John Brown, December 2, 1859." At the foot is the grave of the martyr, marked by an old granite headstone which once stood at his grandfather's grave, and on it are inscribed the names of three generations of John Browns. The vandals visiting that sacred spot chipped off bits of the granite until it became necessary to make a cover and padlock it down, so that the farmer unlocks the cap and lifts it off for visitors now. Thus is commemorated that fatal day which marks the only hanging for treason against the United States Government. John Brown was crucified for doing what he believed God commanded him to do, "to break the yoke and let the oppressed go free," precisely as were the saints of old for following what they believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our government was by so much the greater as our light and knowledge are greater than those of two thousand years ago....
July 25 is to be Suffrage Day at Chautauqua, and dear Mrs. Wallace and Anna Shaw are to preach the gospel of equal rights. I do hope Bishop Vincent will be present and there learn from those two, who are surely "God's women," the law of love to thy neighbor—woman, as to thyself—man. I am hoping the gate receipts on that day will be greater than those of any other during the summer. Wouldn't that tell the story of the interest in this question?
In June she accepted the urgent invitation of the Ignorance Club to honor them by being their guest at their annual frolic on Manitou beach and respond to a toast which should allow her to say anything she liked. Three most enjoyable weeks were spent at home and during this time Miss Anthony addressed the W. C. T. U. She expressed herself in no uncertain tones as to the futility of third parties, declaring that the Prohibition party already had taken some of the best temperance men out of Congress, and made a speech so forcible that it lifted the bonnets of some of the timid sisters. The evening paper reported:
... Rev. C. B. Gardner said Miss Anthony had given the company some excellent political advice, but he inclined to the belief that the temperance reform could be brought about without woman suffrage. "The women would bring the men around in time; they could accomplish much by their moral influence; in this they resembled ministers." Miss Anthony wished to know if it would not be a good thing then, to disfranchise the ministers and let them depend entirely on their moral influence. She explained that in what she had said about prayer she meant prayer by action. She would not have it understood that she did not believe in prayer; she thought, however, that an emotion never could be equal to an action.
She went to Chautauqua July 25, when, for the first time in its history, woman suffrage was presented. Zerelda G. Wallace delivered a grand address and Rev. Anna Shaw gave "The Fate of Republics." Miss Anthony followed in a short speech, and the Jamestown Sunday News said: "Woman's Day was fully justified by the reception given to that intrepid Arnold Winkelreid of women." Frances Willard wrote a few days later from the assembly grounds: "Dearest Susan, I could sing hallelujah over you and our Anna Shaw and 'Deborah' Wallace! It was the best and biggest day Chautauqua ever saw. Do urge your suffragists to go in for this on next year's program."
Miss Anthony attended the golden wedding of John and Isabella Beecher Hooker, in Hartford, August 5; "a most beautiful occasion," she writes in her diary, "but to the surprise of all there was no speaking." An affair without speeches was to her what a feast without wine would have been to the ancients. On the 15th suffrage had a great day at Lily Dale, the famous Spiritualist camp meeting grounds, Miss Shaw and herself making the principal addresses. Miss Anthony thus speaks of the meeting in a letter:
... To Brother Buckley's assertion, made a short time before, that women should not be allowed to vote because the majority of Spiritualists, Christian Scientists and all false religions were women, Miss Shaw replied that there was a larger ratio of men in the audience before her than she had seen in any Methodist or temperance camp meeting or Chautauqua assembly this summer. When Mr. Buckley charged that women were too numerous in the false religions to vote, she would remind him that there were three women to one man in the Methodist church also; and she was quite willing to match the vast majorities of women in the various religions, false and true, with the vast majorities of men at the horse races, variety theaters, police stations, jails and penitentiaries throughout the country. She brought the house down with, "Too much religion unfits women to vote! Too much vice and crime qualifies men to vote!"
People came from far and near. Fully 3,000 were assembled in that beautiful amphitheater decorated with the yellow and the red, white and blue.... There hanging by itself was our national suffrage flag, ten by fourteen feet, with its regulation red and white stripes, and in the center of its blue corner just one great golden star, Wyoming, blazing out all alone. Every cottage in the camp was festooned with yellow, and when at night the Chinese lanterns on the piazzas were lighted, Lily Dale was as gorgeous as any Fourth of July, all in honor of Woman's Day and her coming freedom and equality.
Our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Skidmore, are the center of things at Lily Dale, and right royal are they in their hospitality as well as their love of liberty for all. This camp has been in existence twelve summers, there has been no police force, and no disturbance ever has occurred. Every one is left to his own sense of propriety of behavior and every one behaves properly.
Miss Anthony still intended, however, to remain at home and in the intervals when she was not coaxed away no bride ever enjoyed more fully her first experiment at housekeeping. All the forty years of travelling up and down the face of the earth had not eradicated from her nature the domestic tastes, and she loved every nook and corner of the old home made new, going from room to room, putting the finishing touches here and there, and fairly revelling in the sense of possession. Hospitality was her strongest instinct, and during all these years she had accepted so much from her friends in Rochester and elsewhere without being able to return it, that now she wanted to entertain everybody and all at once. The diary speaks often of ten and twelve at the table for dinner or tea, and Miss Mary, who constituted the committee of ways and means, was quite overwhelmed with the new regime. The story in the journal runs like this:
Our dear old friends, Sarah Willis and Mary Hallowell, shared our first Sunday dinner with us.... Our old Abolition friends, Giles B. and Catharine F. Stebbins and three or four others took tea with us tonight.... My old friend Adeline Thomson has come to stay several weeks with us. How nice to have my own home to entertain my friends.... Anna Shaw and niece Lucy came today and we had five others to dinner. A very pleasant thing to be able to ask people to stop and dine.... Brother D. R., sister Anna and niece Maud came today for a week. It is so good to receive them in our own home. D. R. enjoys the fire on the hearth.... Had Maria Porter, Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf and eleven altogether to tea this evening. How I do enjoy it!... Who came this day? O, yes, Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley, of Chicago, her son and her mother, Mrs. Susan Look Avery, of Louisville, Ky. It makes me so happy to return some of the courtesies I have had in their beautiful home.... Just before noon Mrs. Greenleaf popped into the woodshed with a great sixteen-quart pail full of pound balls of the most delicious butter, and we made her stay to dinner. The girl was washing and I got the dinner alone: broiled steak, potatoes, sweet corn, tomatoes and peach pudding, with a cup of tea. All said it was good and I enjoyed it hugely. How I love to receive in my own home and at my own table!
She went to Warsaw September 17 to help the Wyoming county women hold their convention. The 23d had been set apart as Woman's Day at the Western New York Fair, held at the Rochester driving park. Mrs. Greenleaf presided; Miss Anthony and Rev. Anna Shaw were the speakers. The former spoke briefly, insisting with her usual generosity that the honors of the occasion should belong to Miss Shaw.[72] In the course of her few remarks she said: "We who represent the suffrage movement ask not that women be like men, but that they may be greater women by having their opinions respected at the ballot-box. Only men's opinions have prevailed in this government since it was founded. Enfranchisement says to every man outside of the State prisons, the insane and idiot asylums: 'Your judgment is sound; your opinions are worthy of being crystallized in the laws of the land.' Disfranchisement says to all women: 'Your judgment is not sound; your opinions are not worthy of being counted,' Man is the superior, woman the subject, under the present condition of political affairs, and until this great wrong is righted, ignorant men and small boys will continue to look with disdain on the opinion of women."