Soon after my return to Omaha, the editor of the Woman’s Tribune, Mrs. Clara B. Colby, called and lunched with us one day.  She announced the coming State convention, at which I was expected “to make the best speech of my life.”  She had all the arrangements to make, and invited me to drive round with her, in order that she might talk by the way.  She engaged the Opera House, made arrangements at the Paxton House for a reception, called on all her faithful coadjutors to arouse enthusiasm in the work, and climbed up to the sanctums of the editors,—­Democratic and Republican alike,—­asking them to advertise the convention and to say a kind word for our oppressed class in our struggle for emancipation.  They all promised favorable notices and comments, and they kept their promises.  Mrs. Colby, being president of the Nebraska Suffrage Association, opened the meeting with an able speech, and presided throughout with tact and dignity.

I came very near meeting with an unfortunate experience at this convention.  The lady who escorted me in her carriage to the Opera House carried the manuscript of my speech, which I did not miss until it was nearly time to speak, when I told a lady who sat by my side that our friend had forgotten to give me my manuscript.  She went at once to her and asked for it.  She remembered taking it, but what she had done with it she did not know.  It was suggested that she might have dropped it in alighting from the carriage.  And lo! they found it lying in the gutter.  As the ground was frozen hard it was not even soiled.  When I learned of my narrow escape, I trembled, for I had not prepared any train of thought for extemporaneous use.  I should have been obliged to talk when my turn came, and if inspired by the audience or the good angels, might have done well, or might have failed utterly.  The moral of this episode is, hold on to your manuscript.

Owing to the illness of my son-in-law, Frank E. Lawrence, he and my daughter went to California to see if the balmy air of San Diego would restore his health, and so we gave up housekeeping in Omaha, and, on April 20, 1889, in company with my eldest son I returned East and spent the summer at Hempstead, Long Island, with my son Gerrit and his wife.

We found Hempstead a quiet, old Dutch town, undisturbed by progressive ideas.  Here I made the acquaintance of Chauncey C. Parsons and wife, formerly of Boston, who were liberal in their ideas on most questions.  Mrs. Parsons and I attended one of the Seidl club meetings at Coney Island, where Seidl was then giving some popular concerts.  The club was composed of two hundred women, to whom I spoke for an hour in the dining room of the hotel.  With the magnificent ocean views, the grand concerts, and the beautiful women, I passed two very charming days by the seaside.

My son Henry had given me a phaeton, low and easy as a cradle, and I enjoyed many drives about Long Island.  We went to Bryant’s home on the north side, several times, and in imagination I saw the old poet in the various shady nooks, inditing his lines of love and praise of nature in all her varying moods.  Walking among the many colored, rustling leaves in the dark days of November, I could easily enter into his thought as he penned these lines: