movement. She had sent the most peremptory orders to
Mrs. Stanton not to make a lecture engagement before December 1, so
that in August, September, October and November they might prepare this
history. She then shipped to Mrs. Stanton's home several large trunks
and boxes full of letters, reports and various documents which she had
carefully preserved during the past quarter of a century, and the first
day of August they set to work. The entries in the diary for the next
two months give some idea of her state of mind: "I am immersed to my
ears and feel almost discouraged.... The work before me is simply
appalling.... The prospect of ever getting out a satisfactory history
grows less each day.... Would that the good spirits in my own brain
would come to the rescue!... O, these old letters! It makes me sad and
tired to read them over, to see the terrible strain I was under every
minute then, have been ever since, am now and shall be, I think, the
rest of my life."[90]

On August 24 occurred the death of Paulina Wright Davis and, at the
husband's request, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the funeral.
The former felt that again she had lost a friend who never could be
replaced. Mrs. Davis was a woman of beauty, culture, wealth and social
position and a life-long advocate of woman suffrage. In October the
dear cousin Anson Lapham passed away, and in the diary that night was
written: "No man except my father ever gave me such love and
confidence, and his acts were equal to his faith."

[Autograph:

With truest and tenderest friendship for my co-workers, I am as ever,
Pauline Wright Davis.]

Work was pressing upon her from every side. In the spring of this year
she had been engaged by the editors of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia
to write the chapter on suffrage and prepare the biographies of a
number of eminent women. Amidst all the other cares of the summer and
fall, she had been endeavoring to collect the materials for these
sketches, having the usual experience. Some failed to answer; others
wrote asking a score of questions; many sent four times as many words
as were requested, with the statement that not one single line could be
cut out; while a number forwarded a mass of unintelligible matter and
requested her to make a good sketch out of it. The history also was
occupying her waking and sleeping thoughts, and the depleted condition
of her pocket-book foreshadowed the necessity of another lecture tour.
M