The Seventy-fifth Birthday brought the customary festivities. The newspapers sent reporters; she had a word for each. To the representative of the "Advertiser," she said, "I think that I enjoy the coming of old age with its peacefulness, like the going down of the sun. It is very lovely! I am so glad to be remembered by so many. The twilight of life is indeed a pleasant season!" _To Maud_ 241 BEACON STREET, May 31, 1894. MY DEAREST CHILD,-- I send you a budget of tributes to my birthday. The "Springfield Republican" has a bit about it, with a good and gratifying poem from Sanborn. _Really_, dear, between you and me what a old humbug it is! But no matter--if people will take me for much better than I am, I can't help it, and must only try to live up to my reputation.... I received a good letter from you, "a little scolding at first," but "soft rebukes with blessings ended," as Longfellow describes the admonitions of his first wife.... At the Suffrage Festival, Governor Long presided, and in introducing me waved a branch of lilies, saying, "In the beauty of the lilies she is still, at seventy-five." Now that I call handsome, don't you?... Flossy had a very successful afternoon tea while I was with her. She had three ladies of the _Civitas_ Club and invited about one hundred of her neighbors to hear them read papers. It wasn't suffrage, but it was good government, which is about the same thing. The parlors looked very pretty. I should think seventy or eighty came and all were delighted. Did I write you that at Philadelphia she made the most admired speech of the occasion? She wore the brocade, finely made over, with big black velvet top sleeves and rhinestone comb, and they 'plauded and 'plauded, and I sat, grinning like a chessy cat, oh! so welly pleased. "_July 1._ [_Oak Glen._] Despite my severe fatigue went in town to church; desired in my mind to have some good abiding thought given me to work for and live by. The best thought that came to me was something like this: we are careful of our fortune and of our reputation. We are not careful enough of our lives. Society is built of these lives in which each should fit his or her place, like a stone fitly joined by the builder. We die, but _the life we have lived remains_, and helps to build society well or ill. Later on I thought that it sometimes seems as if a rope or chain of mercy would be let down to pull some of us out of sin and degradation, out of the Hell of passion. If we have taken hold of it and have been rescued, shall we not work to have others drawn up with us? At such moments, I remember my old wish to speak to the prisoners, never fully realized."