exhibition" which far surpasses
anything ever before seen in Canajoharie. She writes: "Can you begin to
imagine my excitement? The nights seemed lengthened into days; the
hopes, the fears that filled my mind are indescribable. Who ever
thought that Susan Anthony could get up such an affair? I am sure I
never did, but here I was; it was sink or swim, I made a bold effort
and won the victory."[10]

In June she attends her first circus, "Sands, Lent & Co., Proprietors."
About this time she writes of being invited to a military ball and
says: "My fancy for attending dances is fully satiated. I certainly
shall not attend another unless I can have a total abstinence man to
accompany me, and not one whose highest delight is to make a fool of
himself." She says in this letter: "The town election has just been
held and the good people elected a distiller for supervisor and a
rumseller for justice of the peace."

In 1848 she shows the first signs of growing tired of teaching and
wonders if she is to follow it for a lifetime. She says: "I don't know
whether I am weary of well-doing, but oh, if I could only unstring my
bow for a few short months, I think I could take up my work with
renewed vigor." She is very homesick, after the two years' absence, and
so makes a visit to Rochester in August. For this she gets "a drab silk
bonnet shirred inside with pink, and her blue lawn and her brown silk
made over, half low-necked." She has "a beautiful green delaine and a
black braise [barege] which are very becoming." She wants a fancy hat,
a $15 pin and $30 mantilla, every one of which she resolves to deny
herself, but afterwards writes: "There is not a mantilla in town like
mine."

In March, 1849, her beloved cousin Margaret, with whom she has been
living for the past two years, gives birth to a child and she remains
with her through the ordeal. In a letter to her mother immediately
afterwards, she expresses the opinion that there are some drawbacks to
marriage which make a woman quite content to remain single. She quotes
a little bit of domestic life: "Joseph had a headache the other day and
Margaret remarked that she had had one for weeks. 'Oh,' said the
husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine pain, yours is a sort of
natural consequence.'" For seven weeks she is at Margaret's bedside
every moment when out of school, and also superintends the house and
looks after the children. There are a nurse and a girl in the kitchen,
but th