“You may remain seated, Mrs. Howe,” said the Chairman.
“I prefer to stand,” was the answer. So, standing in the place where, year after year, she had stood to ask for the full rights of citizenship, for the right to vote, she made her last thrilling appeal for justice. Her keen wit, her power of hitting the nail on the head, were never used to better purpose. The hearing had been long and tedious. There had been many speeches, the farmers who produce the milk, the dealers who sell it, worthy citizens who were trying to improve the quality of the milk supply, experts whose testimony showed the far from ideal conditions under which the milk of the great city is brought to its consumers. Everything had been proper, commonplace, prosaic, deadly dull. Her speech was short and to the point, giving in a few words the whole crux of the matter. Her presence, the presence of the old Sybil, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother was extraordinarily romantic, it lifted the whole occasion out of the realm of the commonplace into that of the poetic. Her speech followed in substance the notes she had prepared, but it was enhanced with touches of eloquence such as this:
“We have heard a great deal about the farmers’ and the dealers’ side of this case. We want the matter settled on the ground of justice and mercy; it ought not to take long to settle what is just to all parties: justice to all! Let us stand on that. There is one deeply interested party however, of whom we have heard nothing. He cannot speak for himself, I am here to speak for him, the infant!”
The impression made was overwhelming. This ancient Norn, grave and beautiful as the elder Fate, claiming Justice for the infant in the cradle! The effect upon the audience was electrical. The roughest “hayseed” in the chamber “sat up;” the meanest dealer was moved, the sleepiest legislator awoke. The silence in that place of creaking chairs, and coughing citizens, was amazing. All listened as to a prophetess as, step by step, she unfolded the case of the infant as against farmer and dealer. When Mr. Arthur Dehon Hill, the Counsel for the Association, led her from the room he said:
“Mrs. Howe, you have scored our first point.”
The friend, who had called in her help, was one of the strongest “Anti-Suffragists.” This was a very characteristic happening. Whenever any great question of public interest, not connected with Woman Suffrage, came up, the “antis” were continually coming to ask her help. If the cause was a good one she always gave it. She was no respecter of persons; the cause was the thing. Over and over again she was appealed to by those who were moving heaven and earth to oppose her in Suffrage, to help some of their lesser ends. She was always ready; always hitched her rope to their mired wagon and helped pull with a will. Her wagon was hitched to a star, the force celestial in her tow rope was at the service of all who asked for it in a good cause.
A few days after the State-house hearing, she fell in her own room and broke a rib. She recovered from the effects of this and in the last days of June moved down to her place at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where she passed nearly four happy months with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren about her. Three weeks before her death she wrote to the Reverend Ada Bowles:
“I have it in mind to write some open letters about Religion and to publish them in the Woman’s Journal.”
She was at work upon the first of these, a definition of true Religion, when the end came. Her last Tuesday on earth, she presided at the Papeterie, a social club of Newport ladies, in whose meetings she delighted. She was in splendid vein; that gay company of clever women gathered around her as pretty butterflies hover about a queen rose, still fascinated, still entranced by this belle of ninety years. She wore over her pretty white dress the hood she had received from Brown University, the year before, when she was given the degree of Doctor of Literature. She was as usual the central figure at the meeting, and gave the Club a vivid account of her visit to Smith College, whither she had gone the week before to receive another degree. The next morning she worked at her “Definition of True Religion;” five days later, the summons came. Leaving the task unfinished, as she would have said, “the iron to cool upon the anvil,” she passed on to the larger task that now absorbs her ardent spirit.
During her last years she received many letters, even printed documents, with minute inquiries touching her method of life. A society of Nonogenarians sent a set of questions about her habits of body, and mind, with a postscript asking especially to what she attributed her unusually prolonged activity. Though I am sure she must have answered, for she was faithful beyond belief in such matters, we have found no record of her answer. Now she has left us, her children are often asked the same sort of question about her: