One cold day, the mother being detained at home, ten-year-old Susan received permission to go with her father.  When the business meeting began, she curled up quietly in a corner by the stove, thinking to escape detection, but was spied out by one of the elders, a woman with green spectacles, who tip-toed down from the “high seat” and said, “Is thee a member?” “No, but my father is,” replied Susan.  “That will not do, thee will have to go out.”  “My mother told me to stay in.”  “Thy mother doesn’t manage things here.”  “But my father told me to stay in.”  “Neither thy father nor thy mother can say what thee shall do here; thee will have to go out;” and taking the child by the arm she led her into the cold vestibule.  After remaining there until almost frozen, Susan decided to go to the nearest neighbor’s.  When she opened the gate a big dog sprung fiercely upon her.  Her screams brought out the family and she was taken into the house, where it was found the only injury was a large piece bitten out of the new Scotch plaid cloak which she had gone to meeting on purpose to exhibit.  The affair created considerable excitement, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony were very indignant, and it ended in the father’s making a “request” that his children be made members of the Society, which was done.

Daniel Anthony was by nature a broad, progressive man, and his family were not brought up according to the strictest and narrowest requirements of Quaker doctrine; while his wife, remembering the liberal teachings of her Universalist father and her own girlish love of youthful pastimes, went still further in making life pleasant for the children.  Through her influence the daughters secured many a pretty article of wearing apparel, and, when there was a party whose hours were later than the father approved, the mother managed to have them spend the night with girls in the neighborhood.

When the family first moved to Battenville the children went to the little old-fashioned district school taught by a man in winter and a woman in summer.  None of the men could teach Susan “long division” or understand why a girl should insist upon learning it.  One of the women maintained discipline by means of her corset-board used as a ferule.  As soon as Mr. Anthony finished the brick store he set apart one room upstairs for a private school, employed the best teachers to be had and admitted only such children as he wished to associate with his own.  When the new house was built a large room was devoted to school purposes.  This was the first in that neighborhood to have a separate seat for each pupil, and, although only a stool without a back, it was a vast improvement on the long bench running around the wall, the same height for big and little.  The girls were taught sewing as carefully as reading and spelling, and Susan was noted for her skill with the needle.  A sampler is still in existence which she made at the age of eleven, a fine specimen of needle-work with the family record surrounded by a