In the midst of her exacting duties and many annoyances, Miss Anthony found time to write numerous letters and obtain a testimonial for Ernestine L. Rose, who was about to return with her husband to England, after having given many years of valuable service to the women of America.  She secured a handsome sum of money and a number of presents for her, and Mrs. Rose went on board ship laden with flowers and very happy and grateful.  Miss Anthony wrote to Lucretia Mott:  “Was it not a little funny that this unsentimental personage should have suggested the thing and stirred so many to do the sentimental, and yet could not even take the time to go to the wharf and say good-by?  I spent Sunday evening with her and it is a great comfort to me that I helped others contribute to her pleasure.”  On the back of this letter, which was sent to her sister, Martha Wright, Mrs. Mott penned:  “Think of the complaints made of Susan when she does so much and puts others up to doing, and always keeps herself in the background.”

In the summer of 1869, under the auspices of the National Association, large and successful conventions were held at Saratoga and Newport in the height of the season.  Of the former The Revolution said:  “That a woman suffrage convention should have been allowed to organize in the parlors of Congress Hall, that those parlors should have been filled to their utmost capacity by the habitual guests of the place, that such men as ex-President Fillmore, Thurlow Weed, George Opdyke and any number of clergymen from different parts of the country, should have been interested lookers-on, are significant facts which may well carry dismay to the enemies of the cause.  That the whole convention was conducted by women in a dignified, orderly and business-like manner, is a strong intimation that in spite of all which has been said to the contrary, women are capable of learning how to manage public affairs.”

The following comment was made by Mrs. Stanton on the Newport convention:  “So, obeying orders, we sailed across the Sound one bright moonlight night with a gay party of the ‘disfranchised,’ and found ourselves quartered on the enemy the next morning as the sun rose in all its resplendent glory.  Although trunk after trunk—­not of gossamers, laces and flowers, but of suffrage ammunition, speeches, petitions, resolutions, tracts, and folios of The Revolution—­had been slowly carried up the winding stairs of the Atlantic, the brave men and fair women, who had tripped the light fantastic toe until the midnight hour, slept heedlessly on, wholly unaware that twelve apartments were already filled with the strong-minded invaders....  The audience throughout the convention was large, fashionable and as enthusiastic as the state of the weather would permit.”

The Fourth of July was celebrated by the association in a beautiful grove in Westchester county, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Judge E.D.  Culver and others making addresses.  Weekly meetings of as many of its members as were in New York were held at the Woman’s Bureau, a large number of practical questions relating to women were brought forward, and there was constant agitation and discussion.  A note from the tax collector called forth this indignant answer from Miss Anthony: