Years have come and gone since the days we held weekly and almost daily correspondence; yet the years have not been able to obliterate the thought of you from my heart; and in fancy I often go back to the old farmhouse in AlbionEditorial Note: Albion, Maine as it was forty years ago with grandma Crosby the presiding spirit, ruling as with a rod, the rather too yielding nominal mistress of the household,- the brood of noisy children frolicing Corrected: frolicking from cellar to garret, the "hired girls" and "hired men" forming a little colony by themselves,

These form the background of a picture in which the central figures are two lone womenEditorial Note: Mary Baker Eddy and Sarah G. Crosby. The one, fired with the precience Corrected: prescience of a great mission, even in the depths of poverty, looking forth upon the world conscious of coming power;— the other, peering wistfully into a future that seemed full of shadows, yet with the aspirations of a young goddess.

Days and nights they sat in the little chamber of the one, or the nursery of the other, in such communion of soul as is seldom experienced by mortals; so full of tender love and sympathy for each other.

And then when the separation came, what loving letters came and went;— they would fill a volume, and I do not much wonder that Dr. Patterson declared it a pity that such epithets of aff [?] Unclear or illegible ection should not be wasted betwenCorrected:between women, when men might have revelled Corrected: reveled in them.

Now, I sit alone, live alone. Ellery lives in Montana, Ada May. a widow with two children, here, Bertie, the mischievous, lies in the churchyard cemetery here, Fred the baby when you were with me, has his home in California.

The wheel has kept turning. Then, I was in affluence, then you were struggling against great odds. Now, I am striving day by day to so economise Corrected: economize that I can live above dependence with the small means I have been able to save,- a mortgage of $2000Editorial Note: $2,000 in 1903 is the equivalent of $61,584.13 in 2021. on my home to pay the interest on, while you, are blessed with great wealth.

I am above envy and can thank God for your great success in life. and that in a small way, I made a few months of your life a little easier.

I have wondered Mary, whether from your great wealth you could lift the burden from my outward life; the one incubus that holds me too strongly to outward things?

I should be rejoiced to see a letter in your familiar handwriting. I have felt that our. Albert wanted me to write youEditorial Note: This is probably a reference to Crosby’s belief that Mary Baker Eddy’s deceased brother, Albert Baker, had in the past communicated with Crosby from beyond the grave. See L02012, L02013, and L02014. and I hope you will feel like answering your old friend,