Mr. Anthony felt this very keenly.  He said:  “For one of the best acts of my life I have been turned out of the best religious society in the world;” but he had kept his wife, his cloak and his ideas of right, and was justified by his conscience.  He continued to attend Quaker meeting but grew more liberal with every passing year and, long before his death, had lost every vestige of bigotry and believed in complete personal, mental and spiritual freedom.  In early life he had steadfastly refused to pay the United States taxes because he would not give tribute to a government which believed in war.  When the collector came he would lay down his purse, saying, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocket-book, thee can do so.”  But he lived to do all in his power to support the Union in its struggle for the abolition of slavery and, although too old to go to the front himself, his two sons enlisted at the very beginning of the war.

Mr. Anthony had the name Hardscrabble changed to Center Falls, and was made postmaster.  Susan and Hannah secured schools, and Daniel R., then not sixteen, went into the mill with his father.  Susan had several schools offered her and finally accepted one at New Rochelle.  She went down the Hudson by the steamboat American Eagle, her father going with her as far as Troy.  She speaks in her journal of several Louisiana slaveholders being on board, the discussion which took place in the evening and her horror at hearing them uphold the institution of slavery.  The pages of this little book show that this question and those of religion and temperance were the principal subjects of conversation in these days.  One entry reads:  “Spent the evening at Mr. Burdick’s and had a good visit with them, our chief topic being the future state.”  Then she comments:  “Be the future what it may, our happiness in the present is far more complete if we live an upright life.”  From the time she was seventeen is constantly expressed a detestation of slavery and intemperance.  Her life from the beginning seems to have had a serious purpose.  When asked, during the writing of this biography, why her journals were not full of “beaux,” as most girls’ were, she replied:  “There were plenty of them, but I never could bring myself to put anything about them on paper.”  There are many references to their calling, escorting her to parties, etc., but scarcely any expression of her sentiments toward them.  One, of whom she says:  “He is a most noble-hearted fellow; I have respected him highly since our first acquaintance,” goes to see a rival, and she writes:  “He is at ——­’s this evening.  O, may he know that in me he has found a spirit congenial with his own, and not suffer the glare of beauty to attract both eye and heart.”