In the following letter, we see my mother making her annual pilgrimage to the State House to attend the suffrage hearing. Neither the bitter winter weather nor the infirmities of age could restrain her dauntless spirit. _March 7th, 1905._ MY DEAR DAVID,— ... Tell Flossy that I have passed the morning at a State House hearing in behalf of a bill to have the school committee here appointed by the Mayor, instead of being elected by the people. I spoke against the bill, and hope you would have done so in my place. My husband was greatly delighted with my mother’s _Reminiscences_ and wrote her as follows: 31 PINE STREET, NEW YORK, _February 15th, 1901_. DEAR MRS. HOWE,—Though I was a long time getting to it, when once I started in to read your _Reminiscences_ I was obliged to finish them at as nearly _one sitting_ as the exigencies of the “wrastle for hash” would permit. I have not been so fascinated with any book since the old days when as a boy I used to sit up half the night to finish one of the Waverly Novels. I had but two regrets when late last evening I read the beautiful lines with which the book concludes:—the first that there was not another volume, and the second that, charming as it all is, it is after all such an inadequate presentation of the life which is of such inexpressible value to us all. May I add that I hope you will take better care of it than you have recently been taking? With best love Ever very affectionately D. P. HALL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XVII “I TAKE MY PEN IN HAND” _Following the Family Tradition.—“Demorest’s” and “Jennie June.”—Marion Crawford and the Little Green Parlor.—Town and Country Club.—Charles Dudley Warner.—How I Came to Write About Manners.—Life of Laura Bridgman.—Helen Keller at the Perkins Institution.—A Luncheon at “Boothden,” the Home of Edwin Booth.—Joseph Jefferson and William Warren._ THE five children of our parents have all written and published books. We have thus followed their example and an hereditary impulse which made writing an easy method of expression for us. My father published a history of the Greek revolution while he was still under thirty. Although essentially a man of action, he was accustomed throughout his long life to write reports, pamphlets and letters to the newspapers—in a word, to elicit the interest and good-will of his fellow-men in his work.