nthusiastic support, while I, too,
in my continued office of vice-president, did my utmost to help her
in every way. In 1904, however, Mrs. Catt was elected president of the
International Suffrage Alliance, as I have mentioned before, and that
same year she resigned the presidency of our National Association, as
her health was not equal to the strain of carrying the two offices.

Miss Anthony immediately urged me to accept the presidency of the
National Association, which I was now most unwilling to do; I had lost
my ambition to be president, and there were other reasons, into which I
need not go again, why I felt that I could not accept the post. At last,
however, Miss Anthony actually commanded me to take the place, and there
was nothing to do but obey her. She was then eighty-four, and, as it
proved, within two years of her death. It was no time for me to rebel
against her wishes; but I yielded with the heaviest heart I have
ever carried, and after my election to the presidency at the national
convention in Washington I left the stage, went into a dark corner of
the wings, and for the first time since my girlhood "cried myself sick."

In the work I now took up I found myself much alone. Mrs. Catt was
really ill, and the strength of "Aunt Susan" must be saved in every way.
Neither could give me much help, though each did all she should have
done, and more. Mrs. Catt, whose husband had recently died, was in a
deeply despondent frame of mind, and seemed to feel that the future was
hopelessly dark. My own panacea for grief is work, and it seemed to
me that both physically and mentally she would be helped by a wise
combination of travel and effort. During my lifetime I have cherished
two ambitions, and only two: the first, as I have already confessed, had
been to succeed Miss Anthony as president of our association; the second
was to go around the world, carrying the woman-suffrage ideal to every
country, and starting in each a suffrage society. Long before the
inception of the International Suffrage Alliance I had dreamed this
dream; and, though it had receded as I followed it through life, I had
never wholly lost sight of it. Now I realized that for me it could never
be more than a dream. I could never hope to have enough money at my
disposal to carry it out, and it occurred to me that if Mrs. Catt
undertook it as president of the International Suffrage Alliance the
results would be of the greatest benefit to the Cause