are others also," she added, "just as true and devoted to the
cause--I wish I could name everyone--but with such women consecrating
their lives--" She hesitated a moment, and then in her clear rich
voice, added with emphasis, "Failure is impossible."[462]

* * * * *

In Rochester, in the home she so dearly loved, she spent her last
weeks, thinking of the cause and the women who would carry it on.
Longing to talk with Anna Shaw, she sent for her, but Anna, feeling
she was needed, came even before a letter could reach her. With Anna
at her bedside, Susan was content.

"I want you to give me a promise," she pleaded, reaching for Anna's
hand. "Promise me you will keep the presidency of the association as
long as you are well enough to do the work."[463]

Deeply moved, Anna replied, "But how can I promise that? I can keep it
only as long as others wish me to keep it."

"Promise to make them wish you to keep it," Susan urged. "Just as I
wish you to keep it...."

After a moment, she continued, "I do not know anything about what
comes to us after this life ends, but ... if I have any conscious
knowledge of this world and of what you are doing, I shall not be far
away from you; and in times of need I will help you all I can. Who
knows? Perhaps I may be able to do more for the Cause after I am gone
than while I am here."

A few days later, on March 13, 1906, she passed away, her hand in
Anna's.

* * * * *

Asked, a few years before, if she believed that all women in the
United States would ever be given the vote, she had replied with
assurance, "It will come, but I shall not see it.... It is inevitable.
We can no more deny forever the right of self-government to one-half
our people than we could keep the Negro forever in bondage. It will
not be wrought by the same disrupting forces that freed the slave, but
come it will, and I believe within a generation."[464]

[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1905]

She had so longed to see women voting throughout the United States, to
see them elected to legislatures and Congress, but for her there had
only been the promise of fulfillment in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and
Idaho, and far away in New Zealand and Australia.

"Failure is impossible" was the rallying cry she left with her "girls"
to spur them on in the long discouraging struggle ahead, fourteen more
years of campaigning until on August 26, 1920, women were e