of hot water, toiletrooms, steam-heated houses, gas and hundreds of comforts so common at the present time that one scarcely can realize they have not always existed, were comparatively unknown.  One of the greatest trials these travellers had to endure was the wretched cooking which was the rule and not exception among our much-praised foremothers.  In one of the old diaries is this single ejaculation, “O, the crimes that are committed in the kitchens of this land!” In those days the housewife could not step around the corner and buy for two cents a cake of yeast which insured good bread, but the process of yeast-making was long and difficult and not well understood by the average housekeeper, so a substitute was found in “salt risings,” and a heavy indigestible mass generally resulted.  White flour was little used and was of a poor quality.  Baking powder was unknown and all forms of cakes and warm bread were made with sour milk and soda, easily ruined by too much or too little of the latter.  In no particular did the table compare favorably with that of modern families.

[Illustration:  THE FARM-HOME NEAR ROCHESTER, N.Y., 1845-65.]

The anti-slavery and woman’s rights lecturers always accepted private hospitality when offered, for reasons of economy and, as many of the people who favored these reforms were seeking light in other directions also, they were very apt to find themselves the guests of “cranks” upon the food question and were thus made the subject of most of the experiments in vogue at that period.  On one occasion Miss Anthony, Aaron Powell and Oliver Johnson were entertained by prominent and well-to-do people in a town near New York, who had not a mouthful for any of the three meals except nuts, apples and coarse bran stirred in water and baked.  At the end of one day the men ignominiously fled and left her to stay over Sunday and hold the Monday meeting.  She lived through it but on Tuesday started for New York and never stopped till she reached Delmonico’s, where she revelled in a porterhouse steak and a pot of coffee.

During these winter meetings all of the men broke down physically and their letters were filled with complaints of their heads, their backs, their lungs, their throats and their eyes.  Garrison wrote at one time:  “I hope to be present at the meeting but I can not foresee what will be my spinal condition at that time, and I could not think of appearing as a ‘Garrisonian Abolitionist’ without a backbone.”  Miss Anthony never lost a day or missed an engagement, although it may be imagined that she had many hours of weariness when she would have been glad to drop the burden for a while.  On March 17 she writes:  “How happy I am to lay my head on my own home pillow once more after a long four months, scarcely stopping a second night under one roof.”  Mr. May wrote in behalf of the committee:  “We rejoice with you in the success of your meetings and in all your hopes for the upspringing of the good seed sown by the faithful joint labors of you and your gallant little band.  We have made the following a committee of arrangements for the annual meeting:  Garrison, Phillips, Quincy, Johnson and Susan B. Anthony.”