is summer: what a revelation of
English beauty it would be to you!

Thank you for your sympathy with my personal troubles. I am not
unhappy... The goodness of women to me is always and everywhere
miraculous. This alone makes life worth living...

I am rejoiced to hear of the Press Club's prosperity. Nothing could
give me greater pleasure than to know of its constant growth and
advancement.

With love, ever yours,
J. C. CROLY.

Letters to Mrs. Caroline M. Morse

HILL FARM COTTAGE, WALTON-ON-THAMES,
SURREY, ENGLAND, Dec. 13, 1898.

My dear friend:

I was sorry to know from Ethel's note, received day before yesterday,
that you had been ill, and were still unable to the task of writing. I
wished above all things that I could in some way help and comfort you,
having always in mind the help and comfort you were to me during the
trying days last summer that followed my accident, and the consequent
long and tedious illness. There are many people who feel
sympathetically, but so few are capable and who are ready or are
permitted to apply the act of sympathy. It is the friend in need that
is the friend we remember with a grateful, lasting love...

At this moment we are on the eve of removal to London where we are
taking rooms once occupied by the family of David Christie Murray. We
go to-morrow, and begin a new chapter in this most disastrous of
years. So many things seem to culminate toward the close of the
century--good fortune for some, evil fortune for others; hopes dashed
at the seeming moment of realization, as if all the forces in nature
were aiding to make an end of the century's efforts in any way that
would bring finality.

For my part I feel as if I had been forcibly brought to a standstill.
In a few days (the 19th) I shall have reached the milestone: I shall
be seventy. Sorosis would have made an occasion of it if I had been in
New York. As it is, I feel a little tinge of regret that my
annihilation last June was not more complete; that I did not leave,
along with my dear friend, Mrs. Demorest. Not that I am wholly
unhappy; I only feel somehow brought to an unfinished close; left in a
state of animated suspension. I seem to see everything from a
distance; separated by my inability to participate in the goings and
comings, the doings and pleasures of others. I feel the wall that
stands between those who still live and those who have passed from
this world; but alas, I sti