She "went down with cheerfulness," but what was her astonishment to see Deborah with the intercepted letter open in her hand! Susan closes her account of the interview by saying, "Little did I think, when I was writing that letter, that I was committing such an enormous crime." Learning that a young friend had married a widower with six children, she comments in her diary, "I should think any female would rather live and die an old maid." She has a cold and cough for which Deborah gives her a "Carthartick," followed by some "Laudanum in a silver spoon." "The beautiful spring weather," she says, "inhales me with fresh vigor." She sees some spiderwebs in the schoolroom and, her domestic habits asserting themselves, gets a broom and mounts the desks to sweep them down, "little thinking of the mortification and tears it was to occasion." Finally she steps upon Deborah's desk and breaks the hinges on the lid.

That personage is informed by an assistant teacher and arrives on the scene: "Deborah, I have broken your desk." She appeared not to notice me, walked over, examined the desk and asked the teacher who broke it.
"What! Susan Anthony step on my desk! I would not have set a child upon it," she said, and much more which I can not write.

"How came you to step on it ?" she asked, but I was too full to speak and rushed from the room in tears.

That evening, after we read in the Testament, she said that where there was no desire for moral improvement there would be no improvement in reading.

There was one by the side of her who had not desired moral improvement and had made no advancement in Literature.
This deliberate cruelty to one whose heart was bursting with sorrow and regret! "Never will this day be forgotten," says the diary.