Your servant is not dead but liveth.  Imagine me, day in and day out, watching, bathing, dressing, nursing and promenading the precious contents of a little crib in the corner of my room.  I pace up and down these two chambers of mine like a caged lioness, longing to bring nursing and housekeeping cares to a close.  Come here and I will do what I can to help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the puddings.  Let Antoinette and Lucy rest in peace and quietness thinking great thoughts.  It is not well to be in the excitement of public life all the time, so do not keep stirring them up or mourning over their repose.  You, too, must rest, Susan; let the world alone awhile.  We can not bring about a moral revolution in a day or a year.  Now that I have two daughters, I feel fresh strength to work for women.  It is not in vain that in myself I feel all the wearisome care to which woman even in her best estate is subject.

Together they ground out the address, taking turns at writing and baby tending, and then she went home.  It seemed to her that in order to prove the absolute equality of woman with man she ought to present this as an oration instead of reading it as an essay; so she labored many weary hours to commit it to memory, pacing from one end of the house to the other, and when these confines became too small rushing out into the orchard, but all in vain.  It was utterly impossible for her, then or ever, to memorize the exact words of anything.

The lecture, occupying an entire evening, was given before a large audience in Rand’s Hall, Troy, and cordially received.  At its close Mr. L. Hazeltine of New York, president of the association, took Miss Anthony by the hand, saying:  “Madam, that was a splendid production and well delivered.  I could not have asked for a single thing different either in matter or manner; but I would rather have followed my wife or daughter to Greenwood cemetery than to have had her stand here before this promiscuous audience and deliver that address.”  Superintendent Randall, of the city schools of New York, over-hearing the conversation, said:  “Father Hazeltine, I fully agree with the first part of your remark but dissent entirely from the latter.  I should be proud if I had a wife or daughter capable of either writing or reading that paper as Miss Anthony has done.”  She was invited by the Massachusetts teachers who were present to come to their State convention at Springfield and give the address, which she did.  It was afterwards delivered at a number of teachers’ institutes.  Mary L. Booth had written her: