[70] In her letter describing the council Mrs. Margaret Bottome wrote of Miss Anthony: "I have met, since I have been in Washington, a woman whom I have heard of since I can remember anything. We are not of the same faith—she has devoted her life to what during the past I have shrunk from—and I met her here for the first time; but I shall carry with me always the impression of her spirit upon my own, of the Christ-life, the Christ-spirit. I got it before she had said five words to me, and I could have sat down at her feet and drank in the spirit of Jesus Christ that is in her, though she does not see him just as I do."
[71] After the convention Miss Balgarnie wrote: "It has been one of the most genuine pleasures of my life to meet you, my dear Miss Anthony. I felt 'strength go out of you,' as it were, directly you took my hand."
[72] Miss Anthony was equally generous in regard to speakers of less renown. She wrote to Mrs. Blake during this year: "I felt so happy to give half of my hour at Syracuse to Mrs. C., so that splendid audience might see and hear her. And I am always glad to surrender my time to any unknown speakers whom we find promising; but first they ought to have tried their powers at their home meetings and in rural districts."
CHAPTER XL.
IGNORED BY THE PARTIES—APPOINTED TO OFFICE.
1892.
On her way to the convention of 1892, Miss Anthony stopped in New York in response to an urgent letter from Mrs. Stanton, now comfortably ensconced in a pleasant flat overlooking Central Park, saying that unless she came and took her bodily to Washington she should not be able to go. "All the influences about me urge to rest rather than action," she wrote—exactly what Miss Anthony had feared. She was now in her seventy-seventh year and naturally her children desired that she should give up public work; but Miss Anthony knew that inaction meant rust and decay and, as her fellow-worker was in the prime of mental vigor, she was determined that the world should continue to profit by it. Her address this year was entitled "The Solitude of Self," considered by many one of her finest papers.
Mrs. Stanton received a great ovation at the opening session, January 16, but this proved to be her last appearance at a national convention. For more than forty years she had presided with a grace and dignity which never had been surpassed, and now she begged that the scepter, or more properly speaking the gavel, might be transferred to Miss Anthony, whose experience had been quite as extended as her own. The delegates yielded to her wishes and Miss Anthony was elected national president. The office of chairman of the executive committee was abolished; Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone were made honorary presidents, and Rev. Anna H. Shaw vice-president-at-large.