I like old places. I like to be on the oldest spot in this old, historic town, as you may easily imagine, remembering all my antiquarian enthusiasm when we were at school. Well, I have not outgrown it in the least, in spite of all my modern radicalism about many things. I wonder, dear, what all these ten years have brought to you. I have been sitting and thinking, as the sunset glow has faded in the western sky, all its glory turning so soon to dull, cold gray, how in these few minutes the past years seem typified. What glorious visions, what radiant achievements illumined the heavens when we looked at them with the eyes of eighteen! What would we not, what could we not, dream of doing then? I remember how you vowed that I was a genius, and were sure that ten years would not pass before I should win renown. And now, to-night, on my twenty-eighth birthday, I sit here as dull and prosy and commonplace a spinster as one can well find in this city of spinsters. After one is twenty-five and the birthdays begin to be a little unwelcome, I suppose one is apt to be made a little morbid by them, though I solace myself by thinking that since college girls in these days rarely finish their studies before twenty-two, twenty-eight does not seem so ancient as it was once thought to be. How strange that we should have known so little of each other, we who vowed that “ocean-sundered continents” should never make our girlhood’s love less warm! But after your change of name and transfer to the China Mission, while I was at Smith College, I lost sight of you, and, missing your letters, knew not where to write. So you will understand my long silence and know that the Mildred of ten years ago is the same Mildred to-day, only no longer a girl, but a woman. A woman, with many ambitions unsatisfied, with many heroes dethroned, but with the same loves and hopes and fears, and with the same ideals, although their attainment seems farther off with the growing years. I have slowly come to recognize and be reconciled to my mediocrity; to know that I have not had a thought but has been common to humanity; that I am no whit wiser or better than all my fellows; and that what you in girlish enthusiasm flattered me into believing was creative power was simply a capacity to appreciate and be moved by what was great. I have longed for power, but, believe me, not for name or fame. Simply to have had the consciousness in myself that the world was better and wiser for my having lived would have made all drudgery and toil a joy and privilege. But the blessedness of giving and doing in a large measure has not been granted to me. Not that I blame fate or circumstance or environment. I have had health and freedom and friends; no hindrances and no great sorrows since mother left me alone five years ago.