She was concerned for her old and faithful horse, Baba; and, when one night he was out in pasture and it turned somewhat cold, she could not sleep, but got up at four o’clock in the morning, fed Baba a full feed of corn, and some fruit from the table, and went back to bed. Her diaries of 1907 had been neglected. She tried to bring them up to date from her pencil notes: It seems to have been a hard year for me. It makes me tired to read it. That spring she trimmed the rosebushes and set out flowers. A fire broke out in her room; the floor grew hot from the burning-out of the soot in a sheet-iron drum; and she got water and wet the floor till the chimney and pipe had burned out. She mourned over the death of Mark Twain: We have lost something very precious in his rich vein of humor. There are losses that are never made good. We have not another Whittier, or another Mark Twain. The diary for 1911 begins with the multitude of Christmas greetings received and sent. The process took her several days and left her very weary. This led her to reflect that she was kept so busy with inconsequential writing that she had no time to do the writing she so much wanted to do, her Life and the story of her work. She had an invitation from the “Review of Reviews” to write an article on “Hospitals and Hospital Nurses of the Civil War.” She declined, on the ground that she knew nothing about the subject! She had not been a nurse, and did not pretend to write as if she had been. This was in January, 1911, and in February she had pneumonia, but recovered. That summer she had two or more visits from a man who expressed himself with great emphasis on the subject of the immodesty of woman’s dress; she agreed with him, but felt it was hardly fair to talk to her as if she were to blame or needed to be convinced. “But really, he is not without provocation. Huge hats, dangerous hatpins, hobble and harem skirts, and the conduct of the Suffragettes are hard to defend.” Most of her visitors just ran in from Washington, and ran away, hurrying back to the city. One day an old friend came and spent the afternoon and the night: This day has been extremely social. It is really refreshing to see a man who has a little time, and not always in a rush with a watch in his hand to catch the next train. I fail to believe that these nervous persons accomplish the most, or are actually the best business men. Hurry is a habit with them. They make every one uncomfortable with their own selfish plans, and all are relieved to get them off and see them go. In April she began to feel that she could take up and finish her History of the Red Cross. In that month, Dr. Hubbell was grafting trees. She had always coveted the learning of that art; so she took lessons in tree-grafting. Also, she began to learn the use of the typewriter, at the age of eighty-nine.