r this heavy and exacting
task. It seemed to Miss Anthony that the one who had recently
completed her Biography, in its preparation arranging and classifying
her papers of the past sixty years, and who necessarily had made a
thorough study of the suffrage movement from its beginning, should
share with her this arduous undertaking. The invitation was accepted
with much reluctance because of a full knowledge of the great labor
and responsibility involved. It must be confessed that even a strong
sense of obligation to further the cause of woman's enfranchisement
would not have been a sufficient incentive, but personal devotion to a
beloved and honored leader outweighed all selfish considerations. It
is to Miss Anthony, however, that the world is indebted for this as
well as the other volumes. It was she who conceived the idea; through
her came the money for its publication; for several years her own home
has been given up to the mass of material, the typewriters, the coming
and going of countless packages, the indescribable annoyances and
burdens connected with a matter of this kind. In addition she has
borne from her private means a considerable portion of the expenses,
and has endured the physical weariness and mental anxiety at a time
when she has earned the right to complete rest and freedom from care.
There is not a chapter which has not had the inestimable benefit of
her acute criticism and matured judgment.

The peculiar difficulties of historical work can be understood only by
those who have experienced them. General information is the easiest of
all things to obtain--exact information the hardest, and a history
that is not accurate has no practical utility. If a reader discover
one mistake it vitiates the whole book. Every historian knows how
common it is to find several totally different statements of the same
occurrence, each apparently as authentic as the others. He also knows
the eel-like elusiveness of dates and the flat contradictions of
statistics which seem to disprove absolutely the adage that "figures
do not lie." He has suffered the nightmare of wrestling with proper
names; and if he is conscientious he has agonized over the attempt to
do exact justice to the actors in the drama which he is depicting and
yet not detract from its value by loading it with trivial details, of
vital moment to those who were concerned in them but of no importance
to future readers. All of these embarrassments are intensified