thony's health was failing. Her
visits to Germany and England the previous year, triumphant though they
had been, had also proved a drain on her vitality; and soon after her
return to America she entered upon a task which helped to exhaust her
remaining strength. She had been deeply interested in securing a fund of
$50,000 to enable women to enter Rochester University, and, one morning,
just after we had held a session of our executive committee in her
Rochester home, she read a newspaper announcement to the effect that
at four o'clock that afternoon the opportunity to admit women to the
university would expire, as the full fifty thousand dollars had not been
raised. The sum of eight thousand dollars was still lacking.

With characteristic energy, Miss Anthony undertook to save the situation
by raising this amount within the time limit. Rushing to the telephone,
she called a cab and prepared to go forth on her difficult quest; but
first, while she was putting on her hat and coat, she insisted that her
sister, Mary Anthony, should start the fund by contributing one thousand
dollars from her meager savings, and this Miss Mary did. "Aunt Susan"
made every second count that day, and by half after three o'clock
she had secured the necessary pledges. Several of the trustees of the
university, however, had not seemed especially anxious to have the
fund raised, and at the last moment they objected to one pledge for a
thousand dollars, on the ground that the man who had given it was very
old and might die before the time set to pay it; then his family, they
feared, might repudiate the obligation. Without a word Miss Anthony
seized the pledge and wrote her name across it as an indorsement. "I am
good for it," she then said, quietly, "if the gentleman who signed it is
not."

That afternoon she returned home greatly fatigued. A few hours later the
girl students who had been waiting admission to the university came to
serenade her in recognition of her successful work for them, but she
was too ill to see them. She was passing through the first stage of what
proved to be her final breakdown.

In 1906, when the date of the annual convention of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association in Baltimore was drawing near, she became
convinced that it would be her last convention. She was right. She
showed a passionate eagerness to make it one of the greatest conventions
ever held in the history of the movement; and we, who loved her