rage to
persevere in the arduous path of duty. Do not think me unhappy with my
fate, no not so. I am only a little tired and a good deal lazy. That
is all. Do write very soon. Tell about the strawberries and peaches,
cherries and plums.... Tell me how the yard looks, what flowers are in
bloom and all about the farming business."[26]

* * * * *

During her visits in Albany with Lydia Mott, who was now an active
abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this
time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform
movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the
country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help,
but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting
that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off
when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance
societies, and then, growing bolder, announced themselves as Daughters
of Temperance.

Canajoharie had its Daughters of Temperance, and Susan, long an
advocate of temperance, gladly joined the crusade, and made her first
speech when the Daughters of Temperance held a supper meeting to
interest the people of the village. Few women at this time could have
been persuaded to address an audience of both men and women, believing
this to be bold, unladylike, and contrary to the will of God; but the
young Quaker, whose grandmother and aunts had always spoken in
Meeting when the spirit moved them, was ready to say her word for
temperance, taking it for granted that it was not only woman's right
but her responsibility to speak and work for social reform.

About two hundred people assembled for the supper, and entering the
hall, Susan found it festooned with cedar and red flannel and to her
amazement saw letters in evergreen on one of the walls, spelling out
Susan B. Anthony.

"I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly
regard,"[27] she confided to her family.

She had carefully written out her speech and had sewn the pages
together in a blue cover. Now in a clear serious voice, she read its
formal flowery sentences telling of the weekly meetings of "this now
despised little band" which had awakened women to the great need of
reform.

"It is generally conceded," she declared, "that our sex fashions the
social and moral state of society. We do not assume that females
possess unbounded power in abolishin