In 1848 she shows the first signs of growing tired of teaching and wonders if she is to follow it for a lifetime.  She says:  “I don’t know whether I am weary of well-doing, but oh, if I could only unstring my bow for a few short months, I think I could take up my work with renewed vigor.”  She is very homesick, after the two years’ absence, and so makes a visit to Rochester in August.  For this she gets “a drab silk bonnet shirred inside with pink, and her blue lawn and her brown silk made over, half low-necked.”  She has “a beautiful green delaine and a black braise [barege] which are very becoming.”  She wants a fancy hat, a $15 pin and $30 mantilla, every one of which she resolves to deny herself, but afterwards writes:  “There is not a mantilla in town like mine.”

In March, 1849, her beloved cousin Margaret, with whom she has been living for the past two years, gives birth to a child and she remains with her through the ordeal.  In a letter to her mother immediately afterwards, she expresses the opinion that there are some drawbacks to marriage which make a woman quite content to remain single.  She quotes a little bit of domestic life:  “Joseph had a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one for weeks.  ‘Oh,’ said the husband, ’mine is the real headache, genuine pain, yours is a sort of natural consequence.’” For seven weeks she is at Margaret’s bedside every moment when out of school, and also superintends the house and looks after the children.  There are a nurse and a girl in the kitchen, but the invalid will eat no food which Cousin Susan does not prepare; there is no touch so light and gentle as hers; her very presence gives rest and strength.  At the end of this time Margaret dies, leaving four little children.  Susan’s grief is as intense as if she had lost a sister, and she decides to remain no longer in Canajoharie.  She writes:  “I seem to shrink from my daily tasks; energy and stimulus are wanting; I have no courage.  A great weariness has come over me.”  In all the letters of the past ten years there has not been one note of discontent or discouragement, but now she is growing tired of the treadmill.  At this time the California fever was at its height, hundreds of young men were starting westward, and she writes:  “Oh, if I were but a man so that I could go!”

Soon after coming to Canajoharie Miss Anthony joined the society of the Daughters of Temperance and was made secretary.  Her heart and soul were enlisted in this cause.  She realized the immense task to be accomplished, and, even then, saw dimly the power that women might wield if they were properly organized and given full authority and sanction to work.  As yet no women had spoken in public on this question, and they had just begun to organize societies among themselves, called Daughters’ Unions, which were a sort of annex to the men’s organizations, but they were strongly opposed by most women as being unladylike and entirely out of woman’s sphere.