e
attitude of most men toward the suffrage question; but in any
event it is clear that this great agitation, carried on by the
association now in session, has been of serious importance and
not without palpable fruits.

The advocates of woman's enfranchisement never were brighter, happier
or more hopeful and courageous. All of the States but four were
represented by the 173 delegates in attendance. Some of them were
white-haired and wrinkled and had been coming to Washington for the
whole thirty-two years. Others were in the prime and vigor of life and
had entered the movement after the heaviest blows had been struck and
the hardest battles had been won, but now they had enlisted until the
end of the war. And now there were a large number of beautiful and
highly-educated young women, graduates of the best colleges, filled
with the zeal of new converts, bringing to the work well-trained and
thoroughly-equipped minds and giving to the old members the comforting
assurance that the vital cause would still be carried forward when
their own labors were ended.

The _Woman's Journal_ in recounting the gains for suffrage concluded:
"In this year, 1900, the woman suffragists, after a half-century of
unbroken national organization, can go before Congress and claim the
support of members from four States who were elected in part by the
votes of women. They can enforce their pleas before presidential
nominating conventions with the concrete fact that thirteen members of
the electoral college have a constituency of women voters."

Miss Anthony presided at three public sessions daily and at all the
executive and business meetings, went to Baltimore and held a
one-day's conference and made a big speech, addressed a parlor
meeting, attended several dinners and receptions, participated in her
own great birthday festivities, afternoon and evening, and remained
for nearly a week of Executive Committee meetings after the convention
had closed.

As she rose to open the convention, clad as usual in soft black satin,
with duchesse lace in the neck and sleeves and the lovely red crepe
shawl falling gracefully from her shoulders, there were many a moist
eye and tightened throat at the thought that this was the last time.
Her fine voice with its rich alto vibrations was as strong and
resonant as fifty years ago, and her practical, matter-of-fact speech,
followed by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw's lively stories, soon dispelle