Crowded house at Port Byron. I tried to say a few words at opening, but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is a terrible martyrdom for me to speak.... Very many Abolitionists have yet to learn the A B C of woman’s rights.... The Boston Congregationalist has a scurrilous article. Shall write the editor.... It is discouraging that no man does right for right’s sake, but everything to serve party.... I find such comfort in Aurora Leigh when I am sorely pressed.... Heard Stephen A. Douglas today; a low spectacle for both eye and ear.... Gave my lecture on “The True Woman” at Penn Yan teachers’ institute. Some strange gentleman present supported my plea for physical culture for girls.... Had a talk with Frederick Douglass. He seems to have no faith in simple and abstract right.... Lost patience this morning over a lamp and suffered vastly therefor. Why can I not learn self-control?... Company came and found me out in the garden picking peas and blackberries—and hoopless.... A fine-looking young colored man on train presented me with a bouquet. Can’t tell whether he knew me or only felt my sympathy.... Am reading Buckle’s History of Civilization and Darwin’s Descent of Man. Have finished his Origin of Species. Pillsbury has just given me Emerson’s poems....
Miss Anthony did not fail to put aside everything long enough to attend the State Teachers’ Convention at Syracuse. The right of women to take part had now become so well established that it needed no further defense, but she still fought for equal pay for equal services, and equal advantages of education for colored children, and each year found her views gaining a stronger support from both men and women. After this convention she continued her meetings, anti-slavery and woman’s rights, and during the summer visited again her birthplace at Adams, Mass., writing home:
Found grandfather working in the oat field, just think of it, ninety-and-a-half years old! But in honor of my arrival he remained home and visited all the afternoon. How hard the women here work, and how destitute they are of all the conveniences. It is perfectly barbarous when they have plenty of money. I borrowed a calico dress and sunbonnet and with the cousins climbed to the very top of Old Greylock. Later I visited the “Daniel House,” as grandfather calls our old home. I rambled through the orchard, but the spice-apple tree is dead and the little tree in the corner that we children loved so well. I visited the old spring up in the pasture, and thought how many times the tired feet of mother and grandmother had trod those paths—and the little brook runs over the stones as merry and beautiful as ever.
From here she went to Boston to attend a meeting of the Hovey fund committee and urged them to establish a “depository” at Albany with Lydia Mott in charge, which was done. This depot of supplies of literature, etc., for the anti-slavery cause,