As soon as I reached New York I went to Dr. Lozier’s for lunch, then to see Mrs. Phelps.  All in despair about the decade meeting.  Went at once to consult Alice and Phoebe Cary; from them to Mrs. Winchester, found her just home from Europe; then to Julia Brown Bemis, and thence to Murray street to see Mr. Studwell; then to Tenafly on the evening train....  Back to New York the next morning, to Tilton’s, to Curtis’, to Mrs. Wilbour’s, and then to Providence to see Mrs. Davis.  Beached there late at night, woke her up and we talked till morning.  She was terribly distressed at the thought of giving up the decade and in the morning I telegraphed to New York that it must go on....  Went there by first train, had all the newspaper notices of its abandonment countermanded and new ones put in, and an item sent out by Associated Press.  Too late for last train to Tenafly and had to hire a carriage to take me there.

Her time was then divided between working on speeches with Mrs. Stanton and rushing over to New York to prepare for this meeting.  On October 19 she writes:  “Ground out the resolutions, and took the afternoon train for the city.  Met Martha Wright and Mrs. Davis at the St. James Hotel.”

There was a great reception the next afternoon in the hotel parlors, and the convention met at Apollo Hall, October 21, the whole of the arrangements having been made in three weeks.  Mrs. Davis presided, everybody had been brought into line and it was a notable gathering.  Cordial and approving letters to Mrs. Davis were read from Jacob Bright, Canon Kingsley, Frances Power Cobbe, Emily Faithfull, Mary Somerville, Emelie J. Meriman (afterwards the wife of Pere Hyacinthe), and other distinguished foreigners.  Miss Anthony spoke strongly against their identifying themselves with either of the parties until it had declared for woman suffrage, urging them to accept every possible help from both but to form no alliance, as had been proposed.  The feature of the occasion was “The History of the Woman’s Rights Movement for Twenty Years,” carefully prepared by Mrs. Davis.[56] In addition to this valuable work, she contributed $300 to the expenses of the meeting.  It was an unqualified success and her letters were full of warmest gratitude to Miss Anthony.

In November the latter resumed her lecturing tour which was arranged by Elizabeth Brown, who had been her head clerk in The Revolution office.  The first of December she attended the Northwestern Woman Suffrage Convention at Detroit.  Here she received a telegram to hasten home and arrived just in time to stand by the death-bed of a dear nephew, Thomas King McLean, twenty-one years old, brother of the beloved Ann Eliza who had died a few years before, and only son of her sister Guelma.  He was a senior of brilliant promise in Rochester University.  His death was a heavy blow to all the family and one from which his mother never recovered.