Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/780

 Mr. Blackwell presented a resolution in favor of Municipal Suffrage for women in the Resolutions Committee of the Republican State Convention, October 6. It was warmly advocated by the Hon. John D. Long, Samuel Walker McCall, M. C., Mayor Fairbanks of Quincy, and others, and would possibly have been passed but for the strenuous opposition of the chairman, ex-Gov. George D. Robinson, who said he would decline to read the platform to the convention if the resolution was adopted. It was finally lost by 4 yeas, 7 nays.

On Oct. 18, 1893, occurred the death of Lucy Stone at her home in Dorchester. She said with calm contentment, "I have done what I wanted to do; I have helped the women." Her last whispered words to her daughter were, "Make the world better." The funeral was held in James Freeman Clarke's old church in Boston. Hundreds of people stood waiting silently in the street before the doors were opened. The Rev. Charles G. Ames said afterward that, "the services were not like a funeral but like a solemn celebration and a coronation." The speakers were Mr. Ames, Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Cheney, the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, Mrs. Chant, the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer of Providence, Mary Grew of Philadelphia, with a poem by Mrs. Howe. A strong impetus was given to the suffrage movement by the wide publication in the papers of the facts of Lucy Stone's simple and noble life, and by the universal expression of affection and regret. A life-long opponent declared that the death of no woman in America had ever called out so general a tribute of public respect and esteem.

The State association again held its annual meeting in December. Among the resolutions adopted was the following:

In the passing away of Lucy Stone, our president, the beloved pioneer of woman suffrage, who has been, ever since 1847, its mainstay and unfailing champion, the cause of equal rights in this State and throughout the Union has suffered an irreparable loss.

Her daughter closed the report of the year's work by saying? "Let all those who held her dear show their regard for her memory in the way that would have pleased and touched her most — by doing their best to help forward the cause she loved so well."

Mrs. Mary A. Livermore was elected president.