one
hour and fifteen minutes. I began my address at a quarter of twelve and
left the hall at midnight. Later I learned that the last speaker began
her remarks at a quarter past one in the morning.

It may be in order to add here that Vienna did for me what Berlin had
done for Susan B. Anthony--it gave me the ovation of my life. At the
conclusion of my speech the great audience rose and, still standing,
cheered for many minutes. I was immensely surprised and deeply
touched by the unexpected tribute; but any undue elation I might have
experienced was checked by the memory of the skeptical snort with which
one of my auditors had received me. He was very German, and very, very
frank. After one pained look at me he rose to leave the hall.

"THAT old woman!" he exclaimed. "She cannot make herself heard."

He was half-way down the aisle when the opening words of my address
caught up with him and stopped him. Whatever their meaning may have
been, it was at least carried to the far ends of that great hall, for
the old fellow had piqued me a bit and I had given my voice its fullest
volume. He crowded into an already over-occupied pew and stared at me
with goggling eyes.

"Mein Gott!" he gasped. "Mein Gott, she could be heard ANYWHERE."

The meeting at Budapest was a great personal triumph for Mrs. Catt. No
one, I am sure, but the almost adored president of the International
Suffrage Alliance could have controlled a convention made up of women
of so many different nationalities, with so many different viewpoints,
while the confusion of languages made a general understanding seem
almost hopeless. But it was a great success in every way--and a
delightful feature of it was the hospitality of the city officials and,
indeed, of the whole Hungarian people. After the convention I spent
a week with the Contessa Iska Teleki in her chateau in the Tatra
Mountains, and a friendship was there formed which ever since has been
a joy to me. Together we walked miles over the mountains and along
the banks of wonderful streams, while the countess, who knows all the
folk-lore of her land, told me stories and answered my innumerable
questions. When I left for Vienna I took with me a basket of tiny
fir-trees from the tops of the Tatras; and after carrying the basket to
and around Vienna, Florence, and Genoa, I finally got the trees home
in good condition and proudly added them to the "Forest of Arden" on my
place at Moylan.

XVII. VALE!