call myself eighteen. It seems
impossible that I can be so old, and even at this age I find myself
possessed of no more knowledge than I ought to have had at twelve.
Dr. Allen, a Phrenologist, gave us a short lecture this morning and
examined a few heads, mine among them. He described only the good
organs and said nothing of the bad. I should like to know the whole
truth.

Susan relates with a good deal of satisfaction that she has written a
letter to a schoolmate at home, without putting it on the slate for the
teacher to see. A few days later Deborah sends for her. She "went down
with cheerfulness," but what was her astonishment to see Deborah with
the intercepted letter open in her hand! Susan closes her account of
the interview by saying, "Little did I think, when I was writing that
letter, that I was committing such an enormous crime."

Learning that a young friend had married a widower with six children,
she comments in her diary, "I should think any female would rather live
and die an old maid." She has a cold and cough for which Deborah gives
her a "Carthartick," followed by some "Laudanum in a silver spoon."
"The beautiful spring weather," she says, "inhales me with fresh
vigor." She sees some spiderwebs in the schoolroom and, her domestic
habits asserting themselves, gets a broom and mounts the desks to sweep
them down, "little thinking of the mortification and tears it was to
occasion." Finally she steps upon Deborah's desk and breaks the hinges
on the lid. That personage is informed by an assistant teacher and
arrives on the scene:

"Deborah, I have broken your desk." She appeared not to notice me,
walked over, examined the desk and asked the teacher who broke it.
"What! Susan Anthony step on my desk! I would not have set a child
upon it," she said, and much more which I can not write. "How came
you to step on it?" she asked, but I was too full to speak and
rushed from the room in tears. That evening, after we read in the
Testament, she said that where there was no desire for moral
improvement there would be no improvement in reading. There was one
by the side of her who had not desired moral improvement and had
made no advancement in Literature.

This deliberate cruelty to one whose heart was bursting with sorrow and
regret! "Never will this day be forgotten," says the diary. In speaking
of this incident Miss Anthony said: "Not once, in all