Anthony's duties kept her almost entirely from the lecture field. After three years of toil and worry, and the accumulation of a debt of ten thousand dollars, Miss Anthony set bravely about the task of earning money to pay the debt. Every cent of this was duly met from the earnings of her lectures.
The most dramatic event of Miss Anthony's life was her arrest and trial for voting at the presidential election of 1872. Owing to the mistaken advice of her counsel, who was unwilling that she should be imprisoned, she gave bonds which prevented her taking her case to the Supreme Court, a fact she always regretted. When asked by the judge, "You voted as a woman did you not?" She replied, "No sir, I voted as a citizen of the United States." The date and place of trial being set, Miss Anthony thoroughly canvassed her county so as to make sure that all of the jurors were instructed in citizens' rights. And yet, at the trial, after the argument had been presented, the judge took the case out of their hands, saying, "It is a question of law and not of fact," and he pronounced Miss Anthony guilty, fining her a hundred dollars and costs. She said to the judge, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, and I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim," and she gloried in the fact that she never did.
Miss Anthony was always in great demand on the platform, and she had probably lectured in every city that can be marked. She made constitutional arguments before Congressional Committees, and spoke impromptu to assemblies in all sorts of places. Whether it was a good word in introducing a speaker, or a short speech to awaken a convention, or the closing appeal to set people to work, or, again, the full hour address of argument or helpful talk at suffrage meetings she always said just the right thing and never wearied her audience. A fine sense of humor pervaded her arguments, and often by reductio ad absurdum she disarmed and won her opponents.
