000 tracts, with the result that along with
the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore
Parker, George William Curtis, and John Stuart Mill went
advertisements of Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and
patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to
attract the people of Kansas.

* * * * *

With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had had little time
to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to
Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for
several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to
Kansas.

On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a
congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton, she enjoyed every new
experience, particularly the new Palace cars advertised as the finest,
most luxurious in the world, costing $40,000 each. The comfortable
daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by
solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two
good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for
many a day.

As soon as they reached Kansas, they set out immediately on a two-week
speaking tour of the principal towns, and as usual Susan starred Mrs.
Stanton while she herself acted as general manager, advertising the
meetings, finding a suitable hall, sweeping it out if necessary,
distributing and selling tracts, and perhaps making a short speech
herself. The meetings were highly successful, but traveling by stage
and wagon was rugged; most of the food served them was green with soda
or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bedbugs. Susan
wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors"
out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.[197]

Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when
they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by
Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman,
had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a
rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly.
Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough
cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and
a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows....
Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very
scarce th