“_Posce fortem animum._” Ask for a strong mind! The motto of her English friend, Edward Twistleton, known and loved by her generation of Bostonians. Ask for a strong mind; ask earnestly enough and you will get it, will learn to laugh at that old-fashioned bogey, the fear of being considered “strong-minded.” Long ago, when a silly acquaintance demanded if it was true she was a strong-minded woman, she parried with the counter thrust: “Is it not better to be strong-minded than to be weak-minded?” If you want a strong mind or a strong body there is only one way to get it, by faithful exercise. There is no royal road, no easy short cut to either goal. The wise friend, the good physician can point out the way, you yourself must tread it! She always read her letters and the newspapers (history in the making) immediately after breakfast. Then came the morning walk, a bout of calisthenics, or a game of ball; after this she settled to the real serious business of the day; ten o’clock saw her at her desk. She began the morning with study, took up the hardest reading she had on hand. In her youth she read Goethe; in her middle life, when she was deep in the study of German philosophy, Kant, Fichte or Hegel. For years Kant was the most intimate companion of her thought. In the early sixties, when she was in the forties, her diary was filled with Kant’s philosophy. Sometimes she differs with his conclusions, sometimes amplifies them, oftenest endorses them. “One chosen lover, one chosen philosopher!” was her motto. While she owed much to Spinoza and records in her journal that Kant does not do him justice, her philosopher par excellence was Immanuel Kant. On her seventieth birthday the Saturday Morning Club of Boston gave her a beautiful jewel with seven moonstones and one topaz. At a dinner soon after she wore this jewel to pin a lace scarf. The conversation at table turned on Kantian philosophy and she was asked some question concerning it. “Do you think I wear the Categorical Imperative on my left shoulder?” she cried. “Is this the Categorical Imperative?” asked Mrs. Whitman, pointing to the jewel that held the lace. After that the club’s jewel went by the name of one of the toughest nuts in Kant’s philosophy. When she was fifty years old she learned Greek; from the time she could read it fluently, the Greek philosophers, historians, and dramatists shared with the Germans those precious hours of morning study. In the end the Hellenes routed the Teutons, and remained her most cherished intimates. At luncheon she would tell us what she had been studying, an excellent way to teach children history. I shall never forget the day when she had read in Xenophon’s Anabasis the account of the retreat of the Greeks, who formed part of the expedition of Cyrus. She came dancing into the dining room, where the children were waiting for their soup, waving her beautiful hands and crying: