Many other toasts were proposed which space forbids quoting, but the following by one of the gentlemen deserves a place: 

The Daughters—­Our characters they elevate,
Our manners they refine;
Without them we’d degenerate
To the level of the swine.

It is curious how willing men have been, through all the centuries, to admit that only the influence of women saves them from being brutes and how anxious to confine that influence to the narrowest possible limits.

[Autograph: 

Very truly and affectionately
Abby K. Foster]

In the winter of 1851 Miss Anthony attended an anti-slavery meeting in Rochester, conducted by Stephen and Abby Kelly Foster.  This was her first acquaintance with Mrs. Foster, who had been the most persecuted of all the women taking part in the anti-slavery struggle.  She had been ridiculed, denounced and mobbed for years; and, for listening to her on Sunday, men and women had been expelled from church.  Her strong and heroic spirit struck an answering spark in Miss Anthony’s breast.  She accompanied the Fosters for a week on their tour of meetings in adjoining counties, and was urged by them to go actively into this reform.

The following May she went to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary in Syracuse.  This convention had been driven out of New York by Rynders’ mob in 1850 and did not dare go back.  On the way home she stopped at Seneca Falls, the guest of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, to hear again Wm. Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson, the distinguished Abolitionist from England, who had stirred her nature to its depths.  Here was fulfilled her long-cherished desire of seeing Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Their meeting is best described in that lady’s own words:  “Walking home with the speakers, who were my guests, we met Mrs. Bloomer with Miss Anthony on the corner of the street waiting to greet us.  There she stood with her good, earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray delaine, hat and all the same color relieved with pale-blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety.  I liked her thoroughly from the beginning.”  Both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Bloomer on this occasion wore what is known as the Bloomer costume.  In the summer Miss Anthony went to Seneca Falls to a meeting of those interested in founding the People’s College.  Horace Greeley, Lucy Stone and herself were entertained by Mrs. Stanton.  The three women were determined it should be opened to girls as well as boys.  Mr. Greeley begged them not to agitate the question, assuring them that he would have the constitution and by-laws so framed as to admit women on the same terms as men, and he did as he promised, making a spirited fight.  Before the college was fairly started, however, it was merged into Cornell University.

This was Miss Anthony’s first meeting with Lucy Stone and may be called the commencement of her life-long friendship with Mrs. Stanton.  These women who sat at the dinner-table that day were destined to be recorded in history for all time as the three central figures in the great movement for equal rights.  There certainly was nothing formidable in the appearance of the trio:  Miss Anthony a quiet, dignified Quaker girl; Mrs. Stanton a plump, jolly, youthful matron, scarcely five feet high; and Lucy Stone a petite, soft-voiced young woman who seemed better fitted for caresses than for the hard buffetings of the world.