want to wish you
all beautiful and peaceful things this summer morning, and tell you
of a rare and genuine tribute to yourself which brought tears of
gladness to my own eyes when I heard it. In talking to some of the
old workers, I referred to your life-long sacrifice and wondered
how we could develop a similar spirit in our younger women, when
Mrs. Zerelda Wallace said with great impressiveness: "My dear
sisters, I want to say this, and to say it with a profound
realization of all that it means, that to me, the person who, next
to Jesus Christ himself, has shown to the world a life of perfect
unselfishness, is Susan B. Anthony." I tell you this, my dear
friend, because I believe such a tribute from such a woman will
lighten some of the burdens.

Many similar letters were now received every year, and were as sweet and
fragrant flowers in a pathway which had contained more thorns than
roses.

In the hot summer of 1881 Miss Anthony went again to Albany to spend the
last weeks with another friend, Phebe Hoag Jones, who passed away July
27. She was the intimate associate of Lydia Mott and the last of that
little band of Abolitionists so conspicuous in the Democratic stronghold
of Albany for many years preceding the war. At her death Miss Anthony
felt that she had no longer an abiding place in the State capital, and
expressed this feeling in a letter to Mrs. Spofford, who replied: "You
speak of no longer having a home in Albany. Why, the best homes in that
city should be gladly opened to you, and some day those people will wake
up and wonder why they did not take you in their arms and hearts and
help you in your work."[5]

All the letters during this summer are filled with sorrow over the
assassination, long suffering and death of President Garfield. After all
was ended Miss Anthony wrote to a friend:

In the reported death-bed utterances of our President, the only one
which has grated on my ears was that in answer to the query whether
he had made a will: "No, and he did not wish one, as he could trust
the courts to do justice to his wife and children." How little even
the best of men see and feel the dire humiliation and suffering to
the wife, the widow, who is left to the justice of the courts! My
heart aches because of man's insensibility to the cruelty of thus
leaving woman. How can we teach them the lesson that the wi