ody of women differed in no particular
form from any ordinary assembly of women. What it was to her one can
only realize by a careful perusal of her writings on club formation,
and the moral awakening that sounded the bugle note of progress when
women began to organize.

Once it came to the hearing of this gentle apostle of development,
that she had been said to represent a cult. The occasion was a
reception given in her honor by one of her clubs on her seventieth
birthday. There had been speeches and congratulations, and the scene
was one of general rejoicing. "Oh, she is the leader of a cult,"
whispered a guest, and the remark was repeated to Mrs. Croly. She
received it with a sorry smile of regret that any one should so
misinterpret the significance of the scene. As if the narrow and
exclusive word "cult" could be applied to an assembly that stood for
organization and human development, which, in her prophetic vision,
only needed time to unite races, and ultimately to extend around the
globe. To her it signified "the opening of the door, the stepping out
into the freedom of the outer air, and the sweet sense of fellowship
with the whole universe, that comes with liberty and light."

Few women carry their enthusiasm till past three-score-and-ten, as
Mrs. Croly did. With the failing of physical strength the wand of
power passed into the hands of younger women whom she hailed as her
successors, and whose growth and development were the blossoms
springing from the seed she herself had planted; and in the last years
of her noble life, when the glow of sunset was on the garden of her
activities, the love she bore her fellow-women was her unfailing joy
and inspiration.

At the time of life when people recognize the fact that their forces
are waning, and that a well-earned period of rest has arrived, Mrs.
Croly set for herself the last task of her busy life. She felt she had
something to tell about the success of her great idea, her message to
women, and she wrote the "History of the Woman's Club Movement in
America," a volume containing eleven hundred and eighty pages, which
told the story of nearly all the clubs in the General Federation. This
book will remain a monument to the founder of women's clubs. Into it
she put the skill and experience of her long years of editorship,
urging every faculty to the work, and applying herself with a degree
of industry that characterized the zeal of her best working years. And
it te