Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/779

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

THE DEATH OF MRS. STANTON.

From the address of an old and valued friend, the Rev. Moncure D. Conway of Virginia, who was many years at the head of the Ethical Culture Society of London, at the funeral of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her home in New York City, Oct. 28, 1902.

A lighthouse on the human coast is fallen. To vast multitudes the name Elizabeth Cady Stanton does not mean so much a person as a standard inscribed with great principles. Roses will grow out of her ashes: individual characters will give a resurrection to her soul and genius, but the immortality she has achieved is that of her long and magnificent services to every cause of justice and reason. Beginning her career amid ridicule and obloquy, all the worth she put into her life has not only been returned to her personally in the love and friendship which have surrounded her and made life happy even to her last day, but has been returned to her tenfold in the successes of her cause. Could I utter to her my farewell I would say: Revered and beloved friend, you pass to your rest after a brave and beautiful life; you have journeyed by a path of unsullied light. If ever there shall be established in America a republic-a Constitution and Government free from all caste and privilege, whether of color, creed or sex-its founders will he discovered not in those who purchased by their valor and blood mere independence of territory in which a government allied with slavery was founded, but among those who, while faithful to heart and home, toiled unweariedly for an ideal civilization.

A few touching words were spoken by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell. a contemporary in the early days of the movement for woman suffrage. At Woodlawn Cemetery the committal to earth was pronounced by the Rev. Phoebe A. Hanaford, another companion in the long contest.

 

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miss anthony's last birthday letter to mrs. stanton, written a few days before her sudden death.

My Dear Mrs. Stanton:—

I shall indeed be happy to spend with you November 12, the day on which you round out your four-score and seven, over four years ahead of me. but in age as in all else I follow you closely. It is fifty-one years since first we met and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women. The older we grow the more keenly we feel the humiliation of disfranchisement and the more vividly we realize its disadvantages in every department of life and most of all in the labor market.

We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, with business experience with the fully admitted right to speak in public-all of which were denied to women fifty years ago They have practically hut one point to gain—the suffrage: we had all These strong, courageous, capable young women will take our place and

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