Her last public appearance in Boston was at a hearing in the State House, where she came to plead for the cause of pure milk. This was on the 23rd of May, 1910, four days before her ninety-first birthday. There had been a great deal about the Pure Milk Crusade in the newspapers, the Boston Journal had made a special question of it and one of the reporters had already interviewed her on the subject. The Chairman of the Massachusetts Milk Consumer’s Association had asked her to give her name as honorary president of the league. This she was glad to do, but this was not enough, she wanted to do more. I was called up once or twice on the ’phone and asked if I thought Mrs. Howe was able to speak before the legislative committee at one of the hearings. I thought that with the birthday festivities so near and the fatigue of moving down to Newport before her, this would be a little too much, and consequently “begged off.” In these days there was a meeting in Cambridge in memory of Margaret Fuller. She was invited to be present, and was determined to go. “They have not asked me to speak,” she said more than once. “Of course they will ask you when they see you,” I assured her. “I have my poem on Margaret written for her Centenary,” she said. “Take it with you,” I advised. “Of course you will be asked to say something, and then you will have your poem in your pocket and be all prepared.” I was unable to go with her to the meeting, a young lady who came to read aloud to her going in my place. They came back late in the afternoon; the meeting had been long and I saw immediately that she was very tired. The cause of this soon appeared. “They did not ask me to speak,” she said, “and I was the only person present who had known Margaret and remembered her.” I was deeply troubled about this. I saw that she had been hurt, and I knew that if I had gone to the meeting I could have managed to let it be known that she had brought her poem to read. For a very little time she was a good deal depressed by the incident--felt she was out of the race, no longer entered on the card for the running. Very soon after this they telephoned me that there would be another hearing on the milk question at half past ten, and that it would probably go on all the morning. She had been very bright when she came down to breakfast and made a capital meal. When I went into her room, I found her at her desk all ready for the day’s campaign, though I knew that the Margaret Fuller incident still rankled. “There’s to be a hearing at the State House on the milk question; they want you dreadfully to speak.” She was all alert and full of interest in a moment. “What do you say, shall we go?” “Give me half an hour!”