Miss Anthony, visibly affected, responded:  “Mrs. President and Friends:  I am not accustomed to demonstrations of gratitude or of praise.  I don’t know how to behave tonight.  Had you thrown stones at me, had you called me hard names, had you said I should not speak, had you declared I had done women more harm than good and deserved to be burned at the stake; had you done anything, or said anything, against the cause which I have tried to serve for the last thirty years, I should have known how to answer, but now I do not.  I have been as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to this movement.  I know nothing and have known nothing of oratory or rhetoric.  Whatever I have done has been done because I wanted to see better conditions, better surroundings, better circumstances for women.  Now, friends, don’t expect me to make any proper acknowledgments for such a demonstration as has been made here tonight.  I can not; I am overwhelmed.”

As the association wished to continue Mrs. Stanton at the head, they created the office of vice-president-at-large and elected Miss Anthony to fill it.  Senator Sargent’s term having expired, he returned with his family to San Francisco, and Mrs. Jane H. Spofford was elected national treasurer in place of Mrs. Sargent, who had served so acceptably for six years.  Her return to California was deeply regretted by Miss Anthony.  From the time of their first acquaintance, on that long snow-bound journey in 1871, they had been devoted friends, and on all her annual trips to Washington she was a guest at the spacious and comfortable home of the Sargents.  The senator always was a true and consistent friend of suffrage, and frequently said to Miss Anthony:  “Tell my wife what you want done and, if she indorses it, I will try to bring it about.”  Mrs. Sargent was of a serene, philosophical nature, with an unwavering faith in the evolution of humanity into a broader and better life.  She was thoroughly without personal ends to serve, ready to receive new ideas and those who brought them, weigh them carefully in her well-balanced mind and pronounce the judgment which was usually correct.  The closing of their Washington house was a severe loss to the many who had enjoyed their free and gracious hospitality.

On May 24, 1879, Miss Anthony received notice of the death of her old and revered fellow-laborer, Wm. Lloyd Garrison.  She could not attend the funeral but wrote at once, saying in part: 

The telegrams of the last few days had prepared us for this morning’s tidings that your dear father and humanity’s devoted friend had passed on to the beyond, where so many of his brave co-workers had gone before; and where his devoted life-companion, your precious mother, awaited his coming....  It is impossible for me to express my feelings of love and respect, of honor and gratitude, for the life, the words, the works, of your father; but you all know, I trust, that few mortals had greater veneration for him than