Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/413

 all the executive and business meetings, went to Baltimore and held a one-day's conference and made a big speech, addressed a parlor meeting, attended several dinners and receptions, participated in her own great birthday festivities, afternoon and evening, and remained for nearly a week of Executive Committee meetings after the convention had closed.

As she rose to open the convention, clad as usual in soft black satin, with duchesse lace in the neck and sleeves and the lovely red crepe shawl falling gracefully from her shoulders, there were many a moist eye and tightened throat at the thought that this was the last time. Her fine voice with its rich alto vibrations was as strong and resonant as fifty years ago, and her practical, matter-of-fact speech, followed by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw's lively stories, soon dispelled the sadness and put the audience in a cheerful mood. Miss Anthony commenced by saying:

I have been attending conventions in Washington for over thirty years. It is good for us to come to this Mecca, the heart of our nation. Here the members of Congress from all parts of the country meet together to deliberate for the best interests of the whole government and of their respective States. So our delegates assemble here to plan for the best interests of our cause in the nation and in their respective States. We come here to study how we may do more and more for the spread of the doctrine of equality, but chiefly to study how to get the States to concentrate their efforts on Congress. Our final aim is an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that no citizen over whom the Stars and Stripes wave shall be debarred from suffrage except for cause. I am always glad when we come to Washington, and in our little peregrinations over the country I have been more and more impressed with the conviction that, while we should do all the good work we can in our own States, we ought to hold our annual meeting in the national capital.

In beginning her vice-president's address, which as usual defied reporting, Miss Shaw said:

Before giving my report I want to tell a story against Miss Anthony. We suffragists have been called everything under the sun, and when there was nothing else quite bad enough for us we have been called infidels, which includes everything. Once we went to hold a convention in a particularly orthodox city in New York, and Miss Anthony, wishing to impress upon the audience that we were not atheists, introduced me as "a regularly-ordained orthodox minister, the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, my right bower!" That orthodox audience all seemed to know what a "right bower" is, for they