nion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am
all at sea--but the Laws of Nature are still going on--with no shadow
or turning--what a wonder it is--it goes right on and on--no matter
who lives or who dies."[440]

* * * * *

National woman suffrage conventions were still red-letter events to
Susan and she attended them no matter how great the physical effort,
traveling to New Orleans in 1903. Of particular concern was the 1904
convention because of Mrs. Catt's decision at the very last moment not
to stand for re-election on account of her health. Looking over the
field, Susan saw no one capable of taking her place but Anna Howard
Shaw. Not to be able to turn to Mrs. Stanton's capable daughter,
Harriot Stanton Blatch, at this time was disappointing, but Harriot's
long absence in England had made her more or less of a stranger to the
membership of the National American Association, and for some reason
she did not seem to fit in, lacking her mother's warmth and
appeal.[441]

[Illustration: Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony]

"I don't see anybody in the whole rank of our suffrage movement to
take her [Mrs. Catt's] place but you," Susan now wrote Anna Howard
Shaw. "If you will take it with a salary of say, $2,000, I will go
ahead and try to see what I can do. We must not let the society down
into _feeble_ hands.... Don't say _no_, for the _life_ of _you_, for
if Mrs. Catt _persists_ in going out, we shall simply _have_ to
_accept it_ and we must _tide over_ with the _best material_ that we
have, and _you are the best_, and would you have taken office _four
years ago_, you would have been elected over-whelmingly."[442]

Anna could not refuse Aunt Susan, and when she was elected with Mrs.
Catt as vice-president, Susan breathed freely again.

It warmed Susan's heart to enter the convention on her eighty-fourth
birthday to a thundering welcome, to banter with Mrs. Upton who called
her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There
now, girls, that's enough."[443] Nothing could have been more
appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she
presided and which gave irrefutable evidence of the success of woman
suffrage in that state. There was rejoicing too over Australia, where
women had been voting since 1902 and over the new hope in Europe, in
Denmark, where women had chosen her birthday to stage a demonstration
in favor of the