The Memoirs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Eighty Years and More. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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СКАЧАТЬ his nose, gently, as she intended, but alas! she took the skin off, and John's beauty, for the remainder of the festivities, was marred with a black patch on that prominent feature. One can readily imagine the fun that must have transpired where so many amateur cooks were at work round one table, with all manner of culinary tools and ingredients.

      As assistant-at-large I was summoned to the cellar, where Mrs. Cornelia Barclay of New York was evolving from a pan of flour and water that miracle in the pie department called puff paste. This, it seems, can only be accomplished where the thermometer is below forty, and near a refrigerator where the compound can be kept cold until ready to be popped into the oven. No jokes or nonsense here. With queenly dignity the flour and water were gently compressed. Here one hand must not know what the other doeth. Bits of butter must be so deftly introduced that even the rolling pin may be unconscious of its work. As the artist gave the last touch to an exquisite lemon pie, with a mingled expression of pride and satisfaction on her classic features, she ordered me to bear it to the oven. In the transit I met Madam Belle. "Don't let that fall," she said sneeringly. Fortunately I did not, and returned in triumph to transport another. I was then summoned to a consultation with the committee on toasts, consisting of James Cochrane, John Miller, and myself. Mr. Miller had one for each guest already written, all of which we accepted and pronounced very good.

      Strange to say, a most excellent dinner emerged from all this uproar and confusion. The table, with its silver, china, flowers, and rich viands, the guests in satins, velvets, jewels, soft laces, and bright cravats, together reflecting all the colors of the prism, looked as beautiful as the rainbow after a thunderstorm.

      Twenty years ago I made my last sad visit to that spot so rich with pleasant memories of bygone days. A few relatives and family friends gathered there to pay the last tokens of respect to our noble cousin. It was on one of the coldest days of gray December that we laid him in the frozen earth, to be seen no more. He died from a stroke of apoplexy in New York city, at the home of his niece, Mrs. Ellen Cochrane Walter, whose mother was Mr. Smith's only sister. The journey from New York to Peterboro was cold and dreary, and climbing the hills from Canastota in an open sleigh, nine hundred feet above the valley, with the thermometer below zero, before sunrise, made all nature look as sombre as the sad errand on which we came.

      Outside the mansion everything in its wintry garb was cold and still, and all within was silent as the grave. The central figure, the light and joy of that home, had vanished forever. He who had welcomed us on that threshold for half a century would welcome us no more. We did what we could to dissipate the gloom that settled on us all. We did not intensify our grief by darkening the house and covering ourselves with black crape, but wore our accustomed dresses of chastened colors and opened all the blinds that the glad sunshine might stream in. We hung the apartment where the casket stood with wreaths of evergreens, and overhead we wove his favorite mottoes in living letters, "Equal rights for all!" "Rescue Cuba now!" The religious services were short and simple; the Unitarian clergyman from Syracuse made a few remarks, the children from the orphan asylum, in which he was deeply interested, sang an appropriate hymn, and around the grave stood representatives of the Biddles, the Dixwells, the Sedgwicks, the Barclays, and Stantons, and three generations of his immediate family. With a few appropriate words from General John Cochrane we left our beloved kinsman alone in his last resting place. Two months later, on his birthday, his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, passed away and was laid by his side. Theirs was a remarkably happy union of over half a century, and they were soon reunited in the life eternal.

Chapter V.

       Our Wedding Journey.

       Table of Contents

      My engagement was a season of doubt and conflict—doubt as to the wisdom of changing a girlhood of freedom and enjoyment for I knew not what, and conflict because the step I proposed was in opposition to the wishes of all my family. Whereas, heretofore, friends were continually suggesting suitable matches for me and painting the marriage relation in the most dazzling colors, now that state was represented as beset with dangers and disappointments, and men, of all God's creatures as the most depraved and unreliable. Hard pressed, I broke my engagement, after months of anxiety and bewilderment; suddenly I decided to renew it, as Mr. Stanton was going to Europe as a delegate to the World's Anti-slavery Convention, and we did not wish the ocean to roll between us.

      Thursday, May 10, 1840, I determined to take the fateful step, without the slightest preparation for a wedding or a voyage; but Mr. Stanton, coming up the North River, was detained on "Marcy's Overslaugh," a bar in the river where boats were frequently stranded for hours. This delay compelled us to be married on Friday, which is commonly supposed to be a most unlucky day. But as we lived together, without more than the usual matrimonial friction, for nearly a half a century, had seven children, all but one of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered, clothed, and fed, enjoying sound minds in sound bodies, no one need be afraid of going through the marriage ceremony on Friday for fear of bad luck. The Scotch clergyman who married us, being somewhat superstitious, begged us to postpone it until Saturday; but, as we were to sail early in the coming week, that was impossible. That point settled, the next difficulty was to persuade him to leave out the word "obey" in the marriage ceremony. As I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation, that point, too, was conceded. A few friends were invited to be present and, in a simple white evening dress, I was married. But the good priest avenged himself for the points he conceded, by keeping us on the rack with a long prayer and dissertation on the sacred institution for one mortal hour. The Rev. Hugh Maire was a little stout fellow, vehement in manner and speech, who danced about the floor, as he laid down the law, in the most original and comical manner. As Mr. Stanton had never seen him before, the hour to him was one of constant struggle to maintain his equilibrium. I had sat under his ministrations for several years, and was accustomed to his rhetoric, accent, and gestures, and thus was able to go through the ordeal in a calmer state of mind.

      Sister Madge, who had stood by me bravely through all my doubts and anxieties, went with us to New York and saw us on board the vessel. My sister Harriet and her husband, Daniel C. Eaton, a merchant in New York city, were also there. He and I had had for years a standing game of "tag" at all our partings, and he had vowed to send me "tagged" to Europe. I was equally determined that he should not. Accordingly, I had a desperate chase after him all over the vessel, but in vain. He had the last "tag" and escaped. As I was compelled, under the circumstances, to conduct the pursuit with some degree of decorum, and he had the advantage of height, long limbs, and freedom from skirts, I really stood no chance whatever. However, as the chase kept us all laughing, it helped to soften the bitterness of parting.

      Fairly at sea, I closed another chapter of my life, and my thoughts turned to what lay in the near future. James G. Birney, the anti-slavery nominee for the presidency of the United States, joined us in New York, and was a fellow-passenger on the Montreal for England. He and my husband were delegates to the World's Anti-slavery Convention, and both interested themselves in my anti-slavery education. They gave me books to read, and, as we paced the deck day by day, the question was the chief theme of our conversation.

      Mr. Birney was a polished gentleman of the old school, and was excessively proper and punctilious in manner and conversation. I soon perceived that he thought I needed considerable toning down before reaching England. I was quick to see and understand that his criticisms of others in a general way and the drift of his discourses on manners and conversation had a nearer application than he intended I should discover, though he hoped I would profit by them. I was always grateful to anyone who took an interest in my improvement, so I laughingly told him, one day, that he need not make his criticisms any longer in that roundabout way, but might take me squarely in hand and polish me up as speedily as possible. Sitting in the saloon at night after a game of chess, in which, perchance, I had been the victor, I felt complacent and would sometimes say:

      "Well, what have I said or done to-day open to criticism?"

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