The only daughter of Gerrit Smith, Elizabeth Smith Miller, is a remarkable woman, possessing many of the traits of her noble father.  She has rare executive ability, as shown in the dispatch of her extensive correspondence and in the perfect order of her house and grounds.  She has done much in the way of education, especially for the colored race, in helping to establish schools and in distributing literature.  She subscribes for many of the best books, periodicals, and papers for friends not able to purchase for themselves.  We cannot estimate the good she has done in this way.  Every mail brings her letters from all classes, from charitable institutions, prisons, Southern plantations, army posts, and the far-off prairies.  To all these pleas for help she gives a listening ear.  Her charities are varied and boundless, and her hospitalities to the poor as well as the rich, courteous and generous.  The refinement and artistic taste of the Southern mother and the heroic virtues of the father are happily blended in their daughter.  In her beautiful home on Seneca Lake, one is always sure to meet some of the most charming representatives of the progressive thought of our times.  Representatives of all these generations now rest in the cemetery at Peterboro, and as in review they passed before me they seemed to say, “Why linger you here alone so long?”

My son Theodore arrived from Paris in September, 1895, and rendered most important service during the preparations for my birthday celebration, in answering letters, talking with reporters, and making valuable suggestions to the managers as to many details in the arrangements, and encouraging me to go through the ordeal with my usual heroism.  I never felt so nervous in my life, and so unfitted for the part I was in duty bound to perform.  From much speaking through many years my voice was hoarse, from a severe fall I was quite lame, and as standing, and distinct speaking are important to graceful oratory, I felt like the king’s daughter in Shakespeare’s play of “Titus Andronicus,” when rude men who had cut her hands off and her tongue out, told her to call for water and wash her hands.  However, I lived through the ordeal, as the reader will see in the next chapter.

After my birthday celebration, the next occasion of deep interest to me was the Chicago Convention of 1896, the platform there adopted, and the nomination and brilliant campaign of William J. Bryan.  I had long been revolving in my mind questions relating to the tariff and finance, and in the demands of liberal democrats, populists, socialists, and the laboring men and women, I heard the clarion notes of the coming revolution.