What a hospitality, rest and peace there was in the dear "house by the side of the road," and a never-failing kindness and love. What cheer at Thanksgiving and Christmas festivals when friends and neighbors came in to bring greetings, and stayed for friendly chat or a game of cards. In the first years of our friendship, I made close acquaintance with the woods of Beverly Farms, for we lived our summer afternoons mostly out of doors in those days. We had two favorite places under the trees, one, on a little hill deep in the pines, the other, with glimpses of the sea, and we took our choice of these from day to day. Here in the company of books, birds and squirrels we used to sit, read and sew till the last beams of sunlight crept up to the tops of the pines, then gathered up books and work and went home. I learned much of book-lore in those days from my friend, much also of wood-lore. She knew the places where the spring flowers were hidden, hepeticas, violets, blood-root, the nodding columbines, and all the others, and we searched them out together. The memory of those first years at Beverly Farms, and of all the following years are among the most precious possessions that I hold. S. E. M. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS WRITTEN TO MR. DOW _From Mrs. Cora Haynes Crosby_: "I have known and loved her, our dear wonderful friend who has left us, ever since I can remember, and what a friend she has been. Not only was she dear to father and mother, but just as precious with her great, noble, beautiful spirit to all of us younger ones, for she was no older than we. That happy outlook on life, her love of everything beautiful and fine in nature, books and people, made her an inspiration to all who knew her." _From a letter by Mrs. Margaret Haynes Pratt_: "Ever since I was a little girl, Molly has been almost a member of our household. As a child, her visits were as much a joy to me as to mother and father. I never thought of her as old, even then--and a child generally marks off the years in relentless fashion, for Molly was always young to me, as she must have been to everyone who knew her. It is wonderful to have had a nature that so helps all who knew her to believe that life is immortal." End of Project Gutenberg's Old Days at Beverly Farms, by Mary Larcom Dow