weather was difficult. Branch lines
were slow and connections poor. Often trains were delayed by
blizzards, and then to keep her engagements she was obliged to travel
by sleigh over the snowy prairies. There were long waits in dingy
dirty railroad stations late at night. Even there she was always busy,
reading her newspapers in the dim light or dashing off letters home on
any scrap of paper she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister
Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood
public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel
rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only
occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of
coffee."[316] She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her
unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too
generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their
services, sent out her own circulars soliciting engagements, and
arranged her own tours, proving to her satisfaction that a woman could
be as businesslike as a man and sometimes more so.[317]

Weighed down by worry over the illness of her sisters, Guelma and
Hannah, she felt a lack of fire and enthusiasm in her work. Anxiously
she waited for letters from home, and when none reached her she was in
despair. At such times, hotel rooms seemed doubly lonely and she
reproached herself for being away from home and for putting too heavy
a burden on her sister Mary. Yet there was nothing else to be done
until the _Revolution_ debt was paid, for some of her creditors were
becoming impatient.

* * * * *

As often as possible Susan returned to Rochester to be with her
family, and was able to nurse Guelma through the last weeks of her
illness. Heartbroken when she died, in November 1873, she resolved to
take better care of Hannah, sending her out to Colorado and Kansas for
her health. She then tried to spend the summer months at home so that
Mary could visit Hannah in Colorado and Daniel and Merritt in Kansas.

These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a
great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George
Eliot's _Middlemarch_ and Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_ of particular
interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions
which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case,
now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest
develop