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210 & 25 april 1898 ••••••••• 88 • SBA to Jane Lathrop Stanford Rochester, N.Y., April 25, 1898. My Dear Friend,— Your letter containing the autograph of your dear husband 1 came duly, and not only Mr.Stanford’s but yours also will go into my book.The nicely typewritten copy of the entire fifty chapters,together with the preface,were snugly packed in a box last Friday night and started on their way to the publisher, who says that it will take fully four months for me to see the end of the proof reading of the entire work, which as you see by the enclosed, 2 is to be in two volumes of nearly 500 pages each, and yet, the most severe task of the whole year’s work has been the cutting down of the incidents and the cutting out of every superfluous word in order to condense the story. I do hope the contents will be of some good to somebody, for both Mrs. Harper and myself have given one of the best years of our lives to the gathering and compiling of the contents. We have had two nice visits from San Francisco women this spring— Mrs. John F. Swift, 3 the president of your State Suffrage Society and Mrs. Austin Sperry,its treasurer,and next week I am expecting Mrs.Sargent and her daughter, Doctor Elizabeth, who have been spending the last year in Europe. They are to be with us during the celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Woman’s Rights movement, which is to be held in this city April 28th and 29th. 4 I hope the women in the different cities of California will celebrate this Fiftieth Anniversary. It will do us all good to speak a moment upon the progress that woman has made in every direction during the last fifty years. Tell President Jordan 5 it would be a nice thing for him to give the students a talk on this question, to make both the boys and the girls see and realize the great advantages of to-day as compared with those of half a century ago. I hope the next time you come east, you will pass through Rochester and make me a nice visit. It would do you good just to stop a little while in our humble home. You will see by the enclosed circular a scheme I have for the establishment of a press bureau, to help further the educational work for the ^ 211 elevation of woman. 6 Another and larger scheme I have is that of raising a standing fund, the interest of which shall be used in carrying forward our work. 7 This fund, which I hope will reach $100,000 or more, I propose to have placed in the hands of trustees, fifteen or twenty good business women, to invest, take care of, and appropriate it as in their judgment is best. You have doubtless read the report of the trustees of the George Peabody 8 fund, which was made last year, showing that the interest on Mr. Peabody’s million in the thirty years had amounted to $1,200,000, all of which had been expended in the schools of the South; mainly for colored children, and with all of that good work done the committee still have the interest of the million to continue to appropriate as best they may. I am perfectly willing to bequeath to the young women who are today taking up the suffrage work all of the labor, but I am not willing that they shall have to do the begging to pay for that work, which I have been compelled to do for the last fifty years. I verily believe that more than half of my spiritual, intellectual and physical strength has been expended in the anxiety over getting the money to pay for the Herculean work that has been done in our movement. The strain, of course, has not been so perfectly intense and immense as was your strain while the suit against your estate was pending,but nevertheless it has been so great that I am not willing that the next generation of women shall be compelled to endure it. 9 I tell you this not because I expect you to put $50,000 into the standing fund,because I know that your estate,every bit of it,is bound to go to make that University continue a power to the end, but I...

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