d
the sadness and put the audience in a cheerful mood. Miss Anthony
commenced by saying:

I have been attending conventions in Washington for over thirty
years. It is good for us to come to this Mecca, the heart of our
nation. Here the members of Congress from all parts of the
country meet together to deliberate for the best interests of the
whole government and of their respective States. So our delegates
assemble here to plan for the best interests of our cause in the
nation and in their respective States. We come here to study how
we may do more and more for the spread of the doctrine of
equality, but chiefly to study how to get the States to
concentrate their efforts on Congress. Our final aim is an
amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that no citizen
over whom the Stars and Stripes wave shall be debarred from
suffrage except for cause. I am always glad when we come to
Washington, and in our little peregrinations over the country I
have been more and more impressed with the conviction that, while
we should do all the good work we can in our own States, we ought
to hold our annual meeting in the national capital.

In beginning her vice-president's address, which as usual defied
reporting, Miss Shaw said:

Before giving my report I want to tell a story against Miss
Anthony. We suffragists have been called everything under the
sun, and when there was nothing else quite bad enough for us we
have been called infidels, which includes everything. Once we
went to hold a convention in a particularly orthodox city in New
York, and Miss Anthony, wishing to impress upon the audience that
we were not atheists, introduced me as "a regularly-ordained
orthodox minister, the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, _my right bower_!" That
orthodox audience all seemed to know what a "right bower" is, for
they laughed even louder than you do. After the meeting Miss
Anthony said to me, "Anna, what did I say to make the people
laugh so?" I answered, "You called me your right bower." She
said, "Well, you are my right-hand man. That is what right bower
means, isn't it?" And this orthodox minister had to explain to
her Quaker friend what a right bower is.

The chief event of last summer was the quinquennial meeting of
the International Council of Women in London. The Woman's