"To-day, Monday, I have been to a public school (a primary) and to Stewart's mansion. I asked the majordomo to take us through the rooms on the lower floor, which he did. I know of no palace which comes up to it. The palaces always have a look as if at some point they needed refurbishing up. I suppose that Mrs. Stewart uses that dining-room, but it did not look as if it was made to eat in. I still like Gérôme's 'Chariot Race' better than anything else of his. The 'Horse Fair' was too high up for me to enjoy it, and a little too mixed up.
"1873. St. Petersburg is another planet, and, strange to say, is an agreeable planet. Some of these Europeans are far ahead of us in many things. I think we are in advance only in one universal democracy of freedom. But then, that is everything.
"Nov. 17, 1875. I think you are right to decide to make your home pleasant at any sacrifice which involves only silence. And you are so all over a radical, that it won't hurt you to be toned down a little, and in a few years, as the world moves, your family will have moved one way and you the other a little, and you will suddenly find yourself on the same plane. It is much the way that has been between Miss —— and myself. To-day she is more of a women's rights woman than I was when I first knew her, while I begin to think that the girls would better dress at tea-time, though I think on that subject we thought alike at first, so I'll take another example.
"I have learned to think that a young girl would better not walk to town alone, even in the daytime. When I came to Vassar I should have allowed a child to do it. But I never knew much of the world—never shall—nor will you. And as we were both born a little deficient in worldly caution and worldly policy, let us receive from others those, lessons,—do as well as we can, and keep our heart unworldly if our manners take on something of those ways.
"Oct. 25, 1875…. I have scarcely got over the tire of the congress [Footnote: The annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Women, of which Miss Mitchell was president. It was held at Syracuse, N.Y., in 1875.] yet, although it is a week since I returned. I feel as if a great burden was lifted from my soul. You will see my 'speech' in the 'Woman's Journal,' but in the last sentence it should be 'eastward' and not '_earth_ward.' It was a grand affair, and babies came in arms. School-boys stood close to the platform, and school-girls came, books in hand. The hall was a beautiful opera-house, and could hold at least one thousand seven hundred. It was packed and jammed, and rough men stood in the aisles. When I had to speak to announce a paper I stood very still until they became quiet. Once, as I stood in that way, a man at the extreme rear, before I had spoken a word, shouted out, 'Louder!' We all burst into a laugh. Then, of course, I had to make them quiet again. I lifted the little mallet, but I did not strike it, and they all became still. I was surprised at the good breeding of such a crowd. In the evening about half was made up of men. I could not have believed that such a crowd would keep still when I asked them to.
"They say I did well. Think of my developing as a president of a social science society in my old age!"
Miss Mitchell took no prominent part in the woman suffrage movement, but she believed in it firmly, and its leaders were some of her most highly valued friends.
"Sept. 7, 1875. Went to a picnic for woman suffrage at a beautiful grove at Medfield, Mass. It was a gathering of about seventy-five persons (mostly from Needham), whose president seemed to be vigorous and good-spirited.
"The main purpose of the meeting was to try to affect public sentiment to such an extent as to lead to the defeat of a man who, when the subject of woman suffrage was before the Legislature, said that the women had all they wanted now—that they could get anything with 'their eyes as bright as the buttons on an angel's coat.' Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Rev. Mr. Bush, Miss Eastman, and William Lloyd Garrison spoke.
"Garrison did not look a day older than when I first saw him, forty years ago; he spoke well—they said with less fire than he used in his younger days. Garrison said what every one says—that the struggle for women was the old anti-slavery struggle over again; that as he looked around at the audience beneath the trees, it seemed to be the same scene that he had known before.