[Illustration: Facsimile of a portion of a letter written by Mrs.
Croly in October, 1900.]




222 WEST 23D STREET,
NEW YORK, Jan. 16, 1901.

My dear Friend:

Thank you very much for your letter and card. It was a great pleasure
to me to receive it, and to learn something about yourself and what
you are doing. The news was long belated. The letter was to have been
printed the week that I left, and I provided to have it sent to about
a dozen friends as a good-bye. But it was so long delayed by Transvaal
excitement and sad war news, that I did not expect it to appear at
all.

I had a wonderful celebration on my seventieth birthday in December;
poems written, cakes with seventy candles sent, and a great
spontaneous gathering in my honor, which really bothered me not a
little, for I do not pose worth a cent, and do not know where to look
or what to do when people compliment me.

However, one thing gratified me above all others. It was a "birthday
party" given me by the Daughters of 1812--the most exclusive of
patriotic societies that is restricted to lineal descendants. The