A decade of unparalleled prosperity, with its resultant speculation and expansion of business, was followed by heavy losses, failures and panic.

The whole year of 1857 was one continued struggle and vain effort to ward off the impending crisis.

To make the situation still more trying the winter was one of great severity, so it is not surprising, accustomed though she was to hardships and disappointments, that Miss Anthony should have found this series of meetings the most disheartening experience of her life.

She engaged Stephen and Abby Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Aaron M.
Powell, Benjamin and Elizabeth Jones, Charles Remond and his sister Sarah, the last two educated and refined colored people; marked out routes, planned the meetings, kept three companies of speakers constantly employed, and spared herself no labor, no exposure, no annoyance.

She found that envy, jealousy and other disagreeable traits were not confined to one sex, but that it required quite as much tact and judgment to deal with men as with women.