ecturing at over three-score and
ten," she observed, "mainly because I have always worked and loved
work.... As machinery in motion lasts longer than when lying idle, so
a body and soul in active exercise escapes the corroding rust of
physical and mental laziness, which prematurely cuts off the life of
so many women."[395]

Yet she did slow up a little, refusing an offer from the Slayton
Lecture Bureau for a series of lectures at $100 a night, and she
engaged a capable secretary, Emma B. Sweet, to help her with her
tremendous correspondence. "Dear Rachel" had given her a typewriter,
and now instead of dashing off letters at her desk late at night, she
learned to dictate them to Mrs. Sweet at regular hours. As requests
came in from newspapers and magazines for her comments on a wide
variety of subjects, she answered those that made possible a word on
the advancement of women.

Bicycling had come into vogue and women as well as men were taking it
up, some women even riding their bicycles in short skirts or bloomers.
What did she think of this? "If women ride the bicycle or climb
mountains," she replied, "they should don a costume which will permit
them the use of their legs." Of bicycling she said, "I think it has
done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I
rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a
feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her
seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."[396]

[Illustration: Ida Husted Harper]

* * * * *

Susan returned to California in February 1896. Through the generosity
and interest of two young Rochester friends, her Unitarian minister,
William C. Gannett, and his wife, Mary Gannett, she was able to take
her secretary with her. Making her home in San Francisco with her
devoted friend, Ellen Sargent, she at once began to plan speaking
tours for herself and her "girls," many of whom, including her niece
Lucy, had come West to help her. She appealed successfully to Frances
Willard to transfer the national W.C.T.U. convention to another state,
for she was determined to keep the issue of prohibition out of the
California campaign.

With the press more than friendly and several San Francisco dailies
running woman suffrage departments, she realized the importance of
keeping newspapers fed with readable factual material and enlisted the
aid of a young journalist, Ida