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Show 271 I was called to go to Washington, D. C. with notable women to represent the women of Utah in the National Council of Women, where I read a paper on the care and training of children. Here I made the acquaintance of the greatest women of this generation - Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth C. Stanton, Clara Barton, and a host of others, including women of high station from foreign countries. In later years the privilege came to me of entertaining numbers of these notable women in my home at 75 Center Street. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara Weeks Shaw and others, while I was president of the Utah Women's Press Club. My near and dear friend, Emmeline B. Wells, at that time in the zenith of her public activities, exerted a blessed influence for my progression along literary and other lines. No woman could find better and more unselfish friends than I had in thess wonderful women, together with Eliza R. Snow, Zina D. Young, and all those able workers with whom I associated. In their homes I often had the honor of ministering to the physical needs of their families as a physician.5 One cannot help but feel a sense of sorrow regarding Milford. In his declining years, when he perhaps most needed affirmations of his worth, his wives were busily living their own lives, energetically providing for their own needs, and all that Milford could claim, even from their successes, was that he had facilitated their training and thereby kept them from having to "take in washing or clean offices." Poor dear-he had barely done that. Their own separate and combined efforts pretty largely accomplished it without him. In this sensitive area, and with these excellent people, one hesitates to create postulates; but we surmise that the women stepped into their careers only after they were quite certain that their survival depended upon it. Would it have made a significant difference if he had studied the law and/or medicine for the purpose of using his knowledge? The enigma of Milford shall always be: why did he not intend to |
