t of all who had served under Miss
Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan
was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency
that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the
proceedings.[437]

Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well
satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume
of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ on which she and Mrs. Harper had
been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late
in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than
satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her
happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom
saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by
letter.

In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and
planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's
eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "It
is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through
every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of
women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a
century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle
to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to
know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education,
with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in
public--all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These
strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and
complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a
handful...."[438]

Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a
telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair.
Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours,
trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy
which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself
at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to
speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to
describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."[439]

From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in
anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved
to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs.
Stanton's opi