After her return to America, Miss Shaw was called as pastor to a church at East Dennis, Cape Cod, and a few months later she was asked to hold services at another church about three miles distant. These two charges she held for seven happy years, rich in the opportunity for real service.
Feeling the need of knowing how to minister to the bodily needs of those she labored among, Miss Shaw took a course at the Boston Medical School, going to the city for a part of each week and graduating with the degree of M.D. in 1885. When some one who knew about her untiring work as leader and helper of the people to whom she preached, asked her how it had been possible for her to endure so great a strain, she replied cheerfully, "Congenial work, no matter how much there is of it, has never yet killed any one."
During the time of her medical studies when Miss Shaw was serving as volunteer doctor and nurse to the poor in the Boston slums, she became interested in the cause of woman suffrage—"The Cause" it was to her always in the years that succeeded. A new day had come with new needs. She saw that everywhere there were changed conditions and grave problems brought about by the entrance of women into the world of wage-earners; and she became convinced that only through an understanding and sharing of the responsibilities of citizenship by both men and women could the best interests of each community be served. She, therefore, gave up her church work on Cape Cod to become a lecturer in a larger field. For a while she devoted part of her time to the temperance crusade until that great leader of the woman's movement, Susan B. Anthony—"Aunt Susan," as she was affectionately called—persuaded her to give all her strength to the Cause.
Without an iron constitution and steady nerves, as well as an unfailing sense of humor, she could never have met the hardships and strange chances that were her portion in the years that succeeded. In order to meet the appointments of her lecture tours she was constantly traveling, often under the most untoward circumstances—now finding herself snow-bound in a small prairie town; now compelled to cross a swollen river on an uncertain trestle; now stricken with an attack of ptomaine poisoning while "on the road," with no one within call except a switchman in his signal-tower.
Perhaps more appalling than any or all of these tests was the occasion when she arrived in a town to find that the lecture committee had advertised her as "the lady who whistled before Queen Victoria," and announced that she would speak on "The Missing link." When she ventured to protest, the manager remarked amiably that they had "mixed her up with a Shaw lady that whistles."
"But I don't know anything about the 'missing link'!" continued Miss Shaw.
"Well, you see we chose that subject because they have been talking about it in the Debating Society, and we knew it would arouse interest," she was assured. "Just bring in a reference to it every now and then, and it'll be all right."
"Open the meeting with a song so that I can think for a minute and then I'll see what can be done," said Miss Shaw pluckily. As the expectant audience, led by the chairman, sang with patriotic fervor "The Star Spangled Banner" and "America," the shipwrecked lecturer managed to seize a straw of inspiration that turned in her grasp magically into a veritable life-preserver. "It is easy," she said to herself. "Woman is the missing link in our government. I'll give them a suffrage speech along that line."
Miss Shaw has labored many years for the Cause. She worked with courage, dignity, and unfailing common sense and good humor, in the day of small things when the suffrage pioneers were ridiculed by both men and women as a band of unwomanly "freaks" and fanatics. She has lived to see the Cause steadily grow in following and influence, and State after State (particularly those of the growing, progressive West) call upon women to share equally with men many of the duties of citizenship and social service. She has seen that in such States there is no disposition to go back to the old order of things, and that open-minded people freely admit that it is only a question of time until the more conservative parts of the country will fall into line and equal suffrage become nation wide.
Her days have been rich in happy work, large usefulness, and inspiring friendships. Many honors have been showered upon her both in her own country and abroad; but she has always looked upon the work which she has been privileged to do as making the best—and the most honorable—part of her life.