I am endeavoring now to put myself under treatment for the pain and weakness I feel when I try to walk (with sticks) in the street... Really yours, J.C. CROLY. 7 RUE D'ASSAS, PARIS, FRANCE, October 3, 1900. My very dear President and Friend: Your letter was most welcome. I have been in a quiet little country place since coming from Ober-Ammergau, and know no one. I thought much of you in those quiet days, and wished to write, but waited to hear, and the echoes did come in a way I understood, for I had letters before leaving America which were an indication of the general trend of thought and desire. Of course I never for a moment misunderstood your attitude in the matter of the election... You could not help your election. [Referring to the first vice-presidency of the General Federation.] I am very, very sorry the color question has been raised again. It almost made a split six years ago. It was, at the best, premature. It was a sacrifice of the greater to the less, of the real good we had attained and the ideal towards which we were working, to a theoretical possibility which had not yet presented itself. We have yet a thousand obstacles to overcome within ourselves; a thousand problems to solve; an ideal to work towards capable of infinite expansion. But we should not strain the limits while the centre still lacks order and form, and depends upon the wisdom with which it is guided for permanence. We have made some dreadful blunders,... but ideals are not stones in the street; they are stars in the sky. They are always beyond us; we cannot wear them as breast-pins but we can work towards them... Yours faithfully, J. C. CROLY. 82 GOWER STREET, BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON, W.C., April 10, 1901. My very dear Friend and President: How good it was of you to send me the beautiful souvenirs of the thirty-third Annual Breakfast. They took me straight back to you all through a mist of tears that were half pleasure, half pain; pleasure that I was not forgotten, pain that I was not there to see the loving glance, and share the hand-clasp. It is true I have many friends here, but none that seem quite like the old friends; and there is only one Sorosis--God's blessing be upon it for evermore! Yet wherever I go, God's blessing and His Spirit seem to me to have descended upon women. They show the most wonderful goodness and insight. They seem each one to be specially made; not the kind that are kept in stock, so to speak. Oh, I feel sometimes as if all my life had been partly a test, partly an experience of their goodness, and that it is a sufficient blessing, for nothing else has been left me.