Into the Arctic regions of our lives,
    Where little else than life itself survives. 
    For age is opportunity no less
    Than youth itself, though in another dress,
    And as the evening twilight fades away
    The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.’”

On December 21, 1892, we celebrated, for the first time, “Foremothers’ Day.”  Men had celebrated “Forefathers’ Day” for many years, but as women were never invited to join in their festivities, Mrs. Devereux Blake introduced the custom of women having a dinner in celebration of that day.  Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker spent two days with me, and together we attended the feast and made speeches.  This custom is now annually observed, and gentlemen sit in the gallery just as ladies had done on similar occasions.

My son Theodore arrived from France in April, 1893, to attend the Chicago Exposition, and spent most of the summer with me at Glen Cove, Long Island, where my son Gerrit and his wife were domiciled.  Here we read Captain Charles King’s stories of life at military posts, Sanborn’s “Biography of Bronson Alcott,” and Lecky’s “History of Rationalism.”

Here I visited Charles A. Dana, the Nestor of journalism, and his charming family.  He lived on a beautiful island near Glen Cove.  His refined, artistic taste, shown in his city residence in paintings, statuary, and rare bric-a-brac, collected in his frequent travels in the Old World, displayed itself in his island home in the arrangement of an endless variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers, through which you caught glimpses of the Sound and distant shores.  One seldom meets so gifted a man as the late editor of the Sun.  He was a scholar, speaking several languages; an able writer and orator, and a most genial companion in the social circle.  His wife and daughter are cultivated women.  The name of this daughter, Zoe Dana Underhill, often appears in our popular magazines as the author of short stories, remarkable for their vivid descriptions.

I met Mr. Dana for the first time at the Brook Farm Community in 1843, in that brilliant circle of Boston transcendentalists, who hoped in a few years to transform our selfish, competitive civilization into a Paradise where all the altruistic virtues might make co-operation possible.  But alas! the material at hand was not sufficiently plastic for that higher ideal.  In due time the community dissolved and the members returned to their ancestral spheres.  Margaret Fuller, who was a frequent visitor there, betook herself to matrimony in sunny Italy, William Henry Channing to the Church, Bronson Alcott to the education of the young, Frank Cabot to the world of work, Mr. and Mrs. Ripley to literature, and Charles A. Dana to the press.  Mr. Dana was very fortunate in his family relations.  His wife, Miss Eunice MacDaniel, and her relatives sympathized with him in all his most liberal opinions.  During the summer at Glen Cove I had the pleasure of several long conversations with Miss Frances L. MacDaniel and her brother Osborne, whose wife is the sister of Mr. Dana, and who is now assisting Miss Prestona Mann in trying an experiment, similar to the one at Brook Farm, in the Adirondacks.