While in Boston, January, 1900, in charge of the exhibition of Tissot’s paintings, “The Life of Christ,” and also a course of lectures by the Dean of Ely, I sent invitations to Mrs. Livermore, expressing surprise at not seeing her at either place. She wrote me: * * * * * “MELROSE, MASS., January 7, 1900. “DEAR MR. POND: “You are very kind to remember me so generously, and I appreciate it. The time has been when wild horses could not have held me back from an exhibition of the ‘Tissot Paintings,’ nor from the admirable lectures of Dean Stubbs. But I am an old woman now--I shall be eighty on my next birthday, and while I am in remarkable health, and rarely know a sick day, yet since my husband’s death the heart has gone out of me forever. I keep steadily at work, omitting nothing that I ought to do, but it is the stern compulsion of duty now that moves me. I rarely get beyond what I ought to do, and that consumes my time very thoroughly. The joy of work, the pleasure of doing, the delight in seeing and hearing new things have gone from me. I am not sorrowful, nor desolate, and I thank God that I was permitted to accompany my husband to the very verge of the life beyond, and that he was conscious and serene to the last moment. I have only a hand’s breadth of life before me, and shall not live long enough to get once more into my old touch with the life of to-day. “I sent two of my pretty granddaughters to the Exhibition of Paintings, who took with them a picture of you, to help them identify you, if you were present. They came home, declaring that ‘they had stared every man at the show out of countenance,’ but they did not find you. They would have introduced themselves to you, if they had found ‘a man to match their picture.’ They were enthusiastic over the paintings. ‘They were as exquisite as miniatures,’ they said. Yesterday, my oldest granddaughter and namesake, just graduated from Wellesley, went with her betrothed to see the paintings. I haven’t yet heard their report. “Oh, my dear friend, nobody dies of ‘rheumatism,’ nor of asthma. People afflicted with those perennial ailments live to kill everybody that helps take care of them. So, buy a cane, or a pair of crutches, according to the sort of rheumatism you have, and keep on hobbling round. I thought I had rheumatism for two years, and doctored for it, and anathematized it--when it turned out to be a broken tendon. I had neglected it so long that it was past cure when I consulted a specialist, and now--now I wear a cane, and all my friends add to my collection of canes on my birthdays and at Christmas. “Once more thanking you for your kindness, I remain, “Yours very truly, “MARY A. LIVERMORE.” * * * * *