ut it will
not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the
neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid. I made a
brave experiment, the other night, to see how it would feel to shock a
crowd with these unseasonable clothes, and also to see how long it might
take the crowd to reconcile itself to them and stop looking astonished
and outraged. On a stormy evening I made a talk before a full house, in
the village, clothed like a ghost, and looking as conspicuously, all
solitary and alone on that platform, as any ghost could have looked; and
I found, to my gratification, that it took the house less than ten
minutes to forget about the ghost and give its attention to the tidings
I had brought.

I am nearly seventy-one, and I recognize that my age has given me a good
many privileges; valuable privileges; privileges which are not granted
to younger persons. Little by little I hope to get together courage
enough to wear white clothes all through the winter, in New York. It
will be a great satisfaction to me to show off in this way; and perhaps
the largest of all the satisfactions will be the knowledge that every
scoffer, of my sex, will secretly envy me and wish he dared to follow my
lead.

That mention that I have acquired new and great privileges by grace of
my age, is not an uncalculated remark. When I passed the seventieth
mile-stone, ten months ago, I instantly realized that I had entered a
new country and a new atmosphere. To all the public I was become
recognizably old, undeniably old; and from that moment everybody assumed
a new attitude toward me--the reverent attitude granted by custom to
age--and straightway the stream of generous new privileges began to flow
in upon me and refresh my life. Since then, I have lived an ideal
existence; and I now believe what Choate said last March, and which at
the time I didn't credit: that the best of life begins at seventy; for
then your work is done; you know that you have done your best, let the
quality of the work be what it may; that you have earned your holiday--a
holiday of peace and contentment--and that thenceforth, to the setting
of your sun, nothing will break it, nothing interrupt it.

[_Dictated January 22, 1907._] In an earlier chapter I inserted some
verses beginning "Love Came at Dawn" which had been found among Susy's
papers after her death. I was not able to say that they were hers, but I
judged that they might be, for the rea