The health of Miss Anthony’s mother was now so precarious that she did not dare go far from home and a course of lectures was arranged for her through Pennsylvania by Rachel Foster, a young girl of wealth and distinction, who was growing much interested in the cause of woman and very devoted to Miss Anthony personally.  Frequent trips were made to the home in Rochester through the inclement weather, and toward the last of March she saw that the end was near and did not go away.  The beloved mother fell asleep on the morning of April 3, 1880, the two remaining daughters by her side.  She was in her eighty-seventh year, her long life had been passed entirely within the immediate circle of home, but her interest in outside matters was strong.  The husband and children, in whatever work they were engaged, felt always the encouragement of her sanction and sympathy.  Her ambition was centered in them, their happiness and success were her own; she was content to be the home-keeper, to have the house swept and garnished and the bountiful table ready for their return, finding a rich reward in their unceasing love and appreciation.  She was extremely fond of reading, had read the Bible from cover to cover many times, and could give the exact location and wording of many texts of Scripture.  She enjoyed history, was familiar with the works of Dickens and Scott and knew by heart The Lady of the Lake.  In old age, when memory failed, she lived among historical personages and characters in books and would speak of them as persons she had known in her youth.  As the four children gathered about the still form and looked lovingly upon the placid face, they could not remember that she ever had spoken an unkind word.  And so, with tenderness and affection, they laid her to rest by the side of the husband whose memory she had so faithfully cherished for eighteen years.

A month later Miss Anthony again set forth on the weary round, leaving her sister Mary in the lonely house with two young nieces, Lucy and Louise, whose education she was superintending.  Just before going she wrote to Rachel Foster:  “Yes, the past three weeks are all a dream—­such constant watching and care and anxiety for so many years all taken away from us!  But my mother, like my father, if she could speak would bid us ‘go forward’ to greater and better work.  She never asked me to stop at home when she was living, not even after she became feeble, but always said, ‘Go and do all the good you can;’ and I know my highest regard for her and for my father and sisters gone before will be shown by my best and noblest doing.”

[Footnote 94:  In 1874, when a bill was pending to establish the Territory of Pembina, Senator Sargent wished to so amend it as to incorporate woman suffrage.  After he had finished a matchless argument, in which he was supported by Senators Stewart, of Nevada, and Carpenter, of Wisconsin, Senator Morton made one of those grand speeches for which he was famous.  He based his demands for woman suffrage on the Declaration of Independence, whose principles, he declared, did not apply to man alone but to the human family; and he demonstrated that no man or woman could “consent” to a government except through a vote.