When Miss Anthony had her accounts audited by an expert, he stated that The Revolution was in a better financial condition than was the New York Independent at the end of its first five years.  She had just begun to realize her power as a lyceum lecturer and was in constant demand at large prices.  The last two months before giving up the paper, she sent in from her lectures, above all her expenses, $1,300.  She always felt that, with this source of revenue, she could have sustained and in time put it on a paying basis, as her subscription list was rapidly increasing, she had learned the newspaper business, and The Revolution was gaining the confidence of the public.  But the experience came too late and she was driven to the wall—­not a single friend would longer give her money, assistance or encouragement to continue the paper.  To this day, she will take up the bound volumes with caressing fingers, touch them with pathetic tenderness, and pore over their pages with loving reverence, as one reads old letters when the hands which penned them are still forever.

Miss Anthony did not waste a single day in mourning over her great disappointment.  In fact, between May 18, when she agreed to give up The Revolution, and May 22, when the transfer actually was made, she went to Hornellsville and lectured, receiving $150 for that one evening.  There are not many instances on record where a woman starts out alone to earn the money with which to pay a debt of $10,000.  Very few of the advocates of woman suffrage contributed a dollar toward the payment of this debt, which had nothing in it of a personal nature but had been made entirely in the effort to advance the cause.  Miss Anthony worked unceasingly through winter’s cold and summer’s heat, lecturing sometimes under private auspices, sometimes under those of a bureau, and herself arranging for unengaged nights.  As she had all her expenses to pay and continued to contribute from her own pocket whenever funds were needed for suffrage work, it was six years before “she could look the whole world in the face for she owed not any man.”

She started at once on a western tour, lecturing through Ohio, Kansas and Illinois, speaking in the Methodist church at Evanston, June 3, 1870.  Dr. E.O.  Haven, president of the university, (afterwards Bishop) in presenting her endorsed woman suffrage.  At Bloomington she held a debate with a young professor from the State Normal School.  The manager asked if she would take $100 instead of half the receipts, as agreed on.  She replied that if the prospects were so good as to warrant him in making this offer, she was just Yankee enough to take her chances.  This was a shrewd decision, as her half amounted to $250.  The professor opposed the enfranchisement of women because they could not fight.  As is the case invariably with men who make this objection, he was a very diminutive specimen, and Miss Anthony could not resist observing as she commenced her speech:  “The professor talks about the physical disabilities of women; why, I could take him in my arms and lift him on and off this platform as easily as a mother would her baby!” Of course this put the audience in a fine humor.