To reach Del Norte Miss Anthony rode sixty-five miles by stage over a vast, arid tract evidently once the bed of an inland sea, but the terrible discomforts of the journey were almost overlooked in the enjoyment of the magnificent scenery. She travelled all the next night; at Wagon Wheel Gap the stage stopped for a while and, taking a cup, she went alone down to the river, drank of its icy waters and stood a long time absorbed in the glory of the moonlight on the mountain peaks. In all this weary journey of two days, she was the only woman in a stage filled with men. When she reached Lake City she was delightfully entertained, finding her hostess to be a college graduate, and spoke in the evening from a dry-goods box on the courthouse steps to an enthusiastic audience of a thousand persons. Ouray was the next place marked on the route sent her, but to reach it would require a ride of fifty miles over a dangerous mountain trail or a three days' journey of 150 miles around, for which she must hire a private conveyance, so she gave it up.
She rested one whole day and night and started at 6 A.M. on a buckboard for the next place, wound around the mountainsides by the picturesque Gunnison river, and reached her destination at 5 o'clock. She found a disbeliever of equal rights in her landlady, whom she describes as "a weak, silly woman and a wretched cook and housekeeper." To be an opponent of suffrage and a poor housekeeper Miss Anthony always regarded as two unpardonable sins. The husband, however, intended to vote for it. At the next stopping-place her hostess was a cultured woman, her house neatly kept and meals well-cooked, and she wanted to vote. The husband in this case was violently opposed and expected to cast his ballot against the amendment. Thus it is that wives are "represented by their husbands."
On she went, over mountain and through canyon, across the "great divide," sometimes having large audiences, more often only a handful, and enduring every possible hardship in the way of travel, sleep and food. At Oro City she lectured in a saloon, as she had done at a number of places, and Governor Routt, happening to be in town, stood by her and spoke also in favor of woman suffrage. At many places she slept on a straw-filled tick laid on planks, with sometimes a "corded" bed for a luxury. A door with a lock scarcely ever was found. Once she had a room with a board partition which extended only half-way up, separating it from one adjoining where half a dozen men slept. It is hardly necessary to say that this was a wakeful night and the dawn was hailed with rejoicing. At Leadville the gold fever was at its height and she spoke in a big saloon to the roughest crowd she had encountered. They were good-natured, however, and when they saw she was coughing from the tobacco smoke, put out their pipes and made up for the sacrifice by more frequent drinks. At Fair Play she found the Democratic editor had placarded the town with bills announcing in big letters: "A New Version! Suffrage! Free Love in the Ascendency. Anthony! On the Gale Tonight." The citizens were indignant, there was a large and respectful audience, Miss Anthony was introduced by Judge Henry and resolutions were unanimously passed denouncing the posters.
On election day, her work finished, she started on a stage ride of eighty-five miles to Denver. The collections at her twenty-four meetings amounted to $165. Her fare to Colorado and return, exclusive of some passes furnished by her brother and including sleeper and meals, was $100, and her expenses during the tour more than used up the other $65, so it hardly could be called a good financial speculation. Soon afterwards she received from Mr. and Mrs. Israel Hall, of Ann Arbor, Mich., a deed for 320 acres of well-timbered land in St. Francis county, Ark., "as a tribute to her life-work for woman suffrage and especially her hard campaign in Colorado." There came also a letter from the ever-generous and faithful Mrs. Knox Goodrich, of San Jose, Cal., with a draft for $50 "to be used for your campaign expenses;" and in her diary Miss Anthony writes: "It is a great comfort, after all these years of financially unrequited work, to receive such marks of appreciation."
At Denver she met Margaret Campbell, of Iowa, and Matilda Hindman, of Pennsylvania, who also had been campaigning in Colorado. They had an amusing time comparing notes, but as Mrs. Campbell had travelled in her own carriage with her husband, and Miss Hindman had spoken mostly in towns along the railroad, their experiences had been less picturesque and less harrowing. She also met here Abby Sage Richardson, who was giving a course of readings in Denver. It was in this locality that her sister Hannah had spent many weary weeks the year before, seeking for health, and Miss Anthony hunted up every person who had known her, hoping each would recall some incident of her stay; visited every spot her sister had loved, and felt the whole place haunted with her hallowed memory.
Dr. Alida C. Avery was going East for some time, but was to leave two young women medical students in her house and she invited Miss Anthony to stay there while she remained in Denver. She was soon installed in the large, airy front chamber of this lovely home, looking down on a grassy and well-irrigated lawn and outward towards the rugged and massive Rocky mountains. It was an inspiring spot and, as she had promised a new lecture for the Slayton Bureau, she decided to remain and write it here. Her surroundings recalled the many charming homes made and maintained by unmarried women whom she had visited, and so in the three weeks that she enjoyed Dr. Avery's hospitality, she wrote her lecture, "Homes of Single Women." During this time she spoke at Boulder; and also in the opera house at Denver under the auspices of a committee, receiving $100.
She started, October 23, on a long lecture tour arranged for her through Nebraska,3 Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, which lasted the remainder of the year. She almost perished with cold and fatigue before it was finished but found some compensation in the $30 a night which the lectures yielded. At this time she received an urgent request from a San Francisco lecture committee to come to that State, but was unable to accept. "If I only could have sister Mary with me over Sunday in these dull and lonely little towns, I could stand it the rest of the week," she wrote; and to a friend who sent her an account of a visit to her mother: "I am very glad you do go occasionally to see dear mother, sitting there in her rocking-chair by the window as life ebbs out and out. O, how I fear the final ebb will come when I am away, but still I hope and trust it may not, and work and work on."
As Miss Anthony was still under contract with the lecture bureau, she was once more compelled to forego the satisfaction of attending the annual convention in Washington, January 8 and 9, 1878, but as in 1876 she sent $100 of the money she had worked so hard to earn. "It is not quite just to myself to do it," she wrote a friend, "but if the women of wealth and leisure will not help us, we must give both the labor and the money." While this convention was a success as to numbers and enthusiasm, several things occurred which the ladies thought might have been avoided if Miss Anthony had been in command with her cool head and firm hand. Especially was this true in regard to a prayer meeting which some of the religious zealots, in spite of the most urgent appeals from the other members, persisted in holding in the reception room of the Capitol directly after a morning session of the convention. The affair itself was most inopportune but, to make it still worse, the cranks and bores who always are watching for an opportunity, gained control and turned it into a farce.
In her disgust and wrath Mrs. Stanton wrote Miss Anthony: "Mrs. Sargent and I did not attend the prayer meeting. As God has never taken a very active part in the suffrage movement, I thought I would stay at home and get ready to implore the committee, having more faith in their power to render us the desired aid." Mrs. Sargent, with her usual calm and beautiful philosophy, wrote: "Do not let yourself be troubled. We can not take down and rebuild without a great deal of dirt and rubbish, and we must endure it all for the sake of the grand edifice that is to appear in due time. Work and let work, each in her own way. We can not all work alike any more than we can look alike. We must not require impossibilities. All action helps us, it shows life; inaction, we know, means death. I hope you can be with us next convention. The women of this country and of the world owe you a debt they never can repay. I know, however, that you will get your reward."
Virginia L. Minor sent this earnest plea: "Can not you and Mrs. Stanton, before another convention, manage in some way to civilize our platform