suffrage and who is still the life of a
great work. At the close of the session men and women rushed forward,
eager to clasp her hand and pay homage to her. There are many famous
delegates present at this convention, women whose names are known in
every civilized nation on the globe, but none shines with the luster
which surrounds Miss Anthony." She began by recalling her visit in
1871, when Mrs. Duniway and she made a speaking tour of six weeks in
the State; the long stage rides over the corduroy roads, the prejudice
encountered but personal friendliness and large audiences everywhere,
and continued:

I am delighted to see and hear in this church today the women
representatives of so many organizations and it is in a measure
compensation for the half-century of toil which it has been my
duty and privilege to give to this our common cause. The sessions
of this convention will be treated by the press of America
exactly as it would treat any national gathering which was
representative in character and had an object worthy of serious
attention. The time of universal scorn for woman suffrage has
passed and today we have strong and courageous champions among
that sex the members of which fifty years ago regarded our
proposals as part of an iconoclasm which threatened the very
foundation of the social fabric.... Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I
made our first fight for recognition of the right of women to
speak in public and have organizations among themselves. You who
are younger cannot realize the intensity of the opposition we
encountered. To maintain our position we were compelled to attack
and defy the deep-seated and ingrained prejudices bred into the
very natures of men, and to some of them we were actually
committing a sin against God and violating His laws. Gradually,
however, the opposition has weakened until today we meet far less
hostility to equal suffrage itself than then was manifested
toward giving women the right of speaking in public and
organizing for mutual advantage.

The opening exercises closed with an address by the Rev. Thomas L.
Eliot, a Unitarian minister, who with his wife had encouraged Miss
Anthony during that visit of 1871. He said his mother's great-aunt,
Abigail Adams, had probably uttered the first declaration for woman
suffrage on American soil, and paid a warm tribute to Mrs. Dun