The trustees of the Methodist church said I could have it for my meeting, but the minister protested and put the key into his saintly pocket.  Brown Stafford said to him, “Keep that key, if you dare!  I guess Uncle Read and Uncle John Stafford and I have done enough to build and sustain that church to warrant us in having our say about it full as much as you, sir;” and he was compelled to give up the key.  Uncle Read went to aunt and said:  “I have not thought of going to an evening meeting in a long time, but I will go tonight if it kills me.”  So they went, also the very best of the folks from both sides of the river, and I seldom have spoken better.  Uncle seemed very much pleased, and when Aunt Mary and the trustees urged me to take the school again, he said:  “No, some one ought to go around and set the people thinking about the laws and it is Susan’s work to do this.”

Miss Anthony reached home, October 1, after seven months’ constant travel and hard work, and on the 17th went to the National Woman’s Rights Convention at Philadelphia and gave the report for New York.  It was through her determined efforts, overcoming the objection that she was an atheist and declaring that every religion or none should have an equal right on their platform, that Mrs. Rose was made president.  She met here for the first time Anna and Adeline Thomson, Sarah Pugh and Mary Grew, and was the guest of James and Lucretia Mott, who entertained twenty-four visitors in their hospitable house during all the convention.  This is the quaint invitation sent her by Mrs. Mott:  “It will give us pleasure to have thy company at 338 Arch street, where we hope thou wilt make thy home.  We shall of course be crowded, but we expect thee and shall prepare accordingly.  We think such as thyself, devoted to good causes, should not have to seek a home.”  Wm. Lloyd Garrison sat at her right hand at table and Miss Anthony at her left.  At the conclusion of each meal she had brought in to her a little cedar tub filled with hot water and washed the silver, glass and fine china, Miss Anthony drying them with the whitest of towels, while the brilliant conversation at the table went on uninterrupted.

At the close of 1854, Miss Anthony decided to make a thorough canvass of every county in New York in the interest of the petitions to the Legislature, a thing no woman ever had dreamed of doing.  Most of the papers responded cordially to her request that they publish her notices.  Mr. Greeley wrote:  “I have your letter and your programme, friend Susan.  I will publish the latter in all our editions, but return your dollars.  To charge you full price would be too hard and I prefer not to take anything.”  As she had not a dollar of surplus left from her year’s work she went in debt, with her father as security, for the hand-bills which she had printed to announce her meetings.  These were folded and addressed by her brother Merritt and a young relative, Mary