"The Yearly Meeting here would have been very large, had there not been a failure of the information of the conclusion for holding it here, reaching divers of the Quarterly Meetings, by which they were prevented from attending. The meeting was very orderly conducted, and the business managed in much harmony and condescension. The public meetings have been very large, favoured seasons, and all the meetings we have attended in our passing along have been generally very large. Seldom any houses were found large enough to contain the people. Often hundreds were under the necessity of standing out doors. Many of the people without came a great way to be at our meeting. Some ten, some twenty, and some thirty miles, and I have been informed since I have been here that the people in a town 120 miles below Cincinnati have given it in charge to Friends of that place to inform them when we came there, as a steam boat plies between the two places. The excitement is so great among the people by the false rumors circulated by the Orthodox, that they spare no pains to get an opportunity to be with us, and those who have attended from distant parts, informing the people the satisfaction they have had in being with us, in which they have found that the reports spread among them were generally false, it has increased the excitement in others to see for themselves." The yearly meeting over, Elias attended meetings _en route_ to Richmond, Ind., and was at the mid-week meeting in that place, Tenth month 8th. Several other meetings were attended, the only disturbance reported being at Orange, where the Orthodox "hurt the meeting very considerably." On the 19th he was in Cincinnati, and attended the regular meeting in the morning, and a large appointed meeting in the court-house in the afternoon. Both were pronounced "highly favored seasons." First-day, the 26th, he was at Fairfield, where the Orthodox revived the story that he was traveling without a minute. While Elias was speaking, the Orthodox left the meeting in a body. He remarks: "But Friends and others kept their seats, and we had a very solemn close, and great brokenness and contrition were manifest among the people; and to do away with the false report spread by the Orthodox, I had my certificates read, which gave full satisfaction to the assembly."[33] [33] Journal, p. 419. Elias then journeyed to Wheeling, his face being turned homeward. He held an appointed meeting in that city. It is suggestive that, notwithstanding the theological odium under which he was supposed to rest, the meeting was held in the Methodist church, which had been kindly offered for the purpose. This would seem to indicate that the Methodists had not yet taken any sides in the quarrel which had divided the Society of Friends.