I remember the pleasure with which my poet-friend, Frederic Lawrence Knowles, told me of a kind invitation to call on Mr. Aldrich, and the yet more enthusiastic delight with which he afterward described the interview. He found his gracious and graceful host to be so wise, sympathetic, hopeful, and suggestive, all that he had hoped for and more. I think every young poet who had the happiness of meeting him could bear similar testimony.

I saw him last on the twelfth of January, 1907, so short a time before his death, and yet he seemed so alert and alive, so interesting, so entirely what he was when I knew him first that one could not have dreamed that the end was near. The only consolation for a loss that will be so widely felt is in the legacy he has left to the world of immortal charm and beauty,—the work that will not die.

Yours most sincerely,

Louise Chandler Moulton.

The last sonnet which Mrs. Moulton wrote was for the birthday of Mrs. Howe.

TO JULIA WARD HOWE

On her Eighty-seventh Birthday, May 27, 1907

Youth is thy gift—the youth that baffles Time,
And smiles derisively at vanished years.
Since the long past the present more endears,
And life but ripens in its golden prime,
Who knows to what proud heights thou still may'st climb—
What summoning call thy listening spirit hears—
What triumphs wait, ere conquering death appears—
What magic beauty thou may'st lend to rhyme?
Sovereign of Love and May, we kiss the hand
Such noble work has wrought, and add our bays
To those with which the world has crowned thy brow:
Thy subjects we, in this the happy land,
Thy presence gladdens, and thy gracious ways
Enchant—Queen of the Long-Ago and Now.

During the summer Mrs. Moulton was for the most part in her morning-room, surrounded by her favorite books, her papers, her letters, attended by the faithful Katy, and remembered constantly with flowers and tokens from friends. She cherished until quite midsummer the hope of joining the Schaefers, who were in Europe; but in reply to their urgent wish to return and be with her, she begged that they would not cut short their trip, as it would distress her to feel that they were in Boston during the hot weather. To a friend who remained in town and who saw her every day, she said: "It would make me really ill to have Florence and Will come into this hot town. I should only feel how uncomfortable they must be, dear as they are to wish to come for my sake. With letters and the cable, we are in touch all the time."