Page:Eminent women of the age.djvu/362

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EMINENT WOMEN OF THE AGE.


MRS. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

BY THEODORE TILTON.

I ONCE watched an artist while he tried to transfer to hifl cauvas the lustre of a precious stone. His picture, after bis utmost skilly was dull. A radiant and sparkling woman, full of wit, reason, and fancy, is a whole crown of jewels. A poor, opaque copy of her is the most that one can render ia a biographical sketch. Elizabeth Cady, daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston, was born November 12th, 1816, in Johnstown, New York, — forty miles north of Albany. Birthplace is a secondary parentage, and transmits charac- ter. Elizabeth*s birthplace was more famous half a century ago than since ; for then, though small, it was a marked in- tellectual centre; and now, though large, it is an uumarked manufacturing town. Before her birth, it was the vice-ducal seat of Sir William Johnson, the famous English negotiator with the Indians. During her girlhood, it was an arena for the intellectual wrestlings of Kent, Tompkins, Spencer, Elisha Williams, and Abraham Van Vechten, who, as lawyers, were among the chiefest of their time. It is now devoted mainly to the fabrication of steel springs and buckskio gloves. So, like Wordswjprth's early stiir, " it has faded into the ligW of common day." A Yankee said that his chief ami ition was to become inoi«