Here where I am writing is a similar case. The baby is very sick with the whooping cough; the wife has dinner to get for all the boarders, and no help; husband standing around with his hands in his pockets. She begs him to hold the baby for just ten minutes, but before the time is up he hands it back to her, saying, "Here, take this child, I'm tired." Yet when we left he was on hand to receive the money and we had to give it to him. We paid a man a dollar to take us to the station, and saw the train pull out while we were stuck in a snowdrift ten feet deep, with a dozen men trying to shovel a path for us; so we had to come back. In spite of this terrible weather, people drive eight and ten miles to our meetings.
On January 20, Mrs. Gage was called home by illness in her family, leaving Miss Anthony to finish the campaign alone. This destroyed all plans for her work with the anti-slavery committee, as no inducement could have been offered which would cause her to abandon these woman's rights meetings after having advertised them. She requested Mr. May to release her and he did so, stipulating however that she should inform him as soon as she was at liberty. She begged various speakers to assist her but received no favorable replies. Lucy Stone wrote, "I wish you had a good husband; it is a great blessing." Her intense desire for help may be judged by a letter to Martha C. Wright in regard to a meeting which had been announced for Auburn: "Mrs. Gage has gone; now, dear Mrs. Wright, won't you give an address? Be brave and make this beginning. You can speak so much better, so much more wisely, so much more everything than I can; do rejoice my heart by consenting. I wish I could see you tonight; I'm sure I could prevail upon you. Yours beseechingly." She got no aid from any quarter, and went on alone through the dreary winter. To those who were to advertise her meetings she said: "I should like a particular effort made to call out the teachers, seamstresses and wage-earning women generally. It is for them rather than for the wives and daughters of the rich that I labor."
In February she returned to Rochester to look after Mr. Garrison's lecture and entertained him at her home. As it had been decided not to hold a convention at Albany she took this opportunity to go there and present the petitions to the Legislature. They were referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Samuel G. Foote, chairman. Mr. Foote was a lawyer, prominent in society, the father of daughters, and yet reported as follows on the petition asking that a woman might control her wages and have the custody of her children: