Written on receipt of a beautiful boat presented by Christian

Scientists in Toronto, for the little pond at Pleasant View. The

boat displays, among other beautiful decorations, a number of

masonic symbols. [10]

Beloved Students and Friends:—Accept my thanks

for the beautiful boat and presentation poem. Each day

since they arrived I have said, Let me write to the donors,

—and what?

My first impression was to indite a poem; my second, [15]

a psalm; my third, a letter. Why the letter alone? Be-

cause your dear hearts expressed in their lovely gift such

varying types of true affection, shaded as autumn leaves

with bright hues of the spiritual, that my Muse lost her

lightsome lyre, and imagery of thought gave place to [20]

chords of feeling too deep for words.

A boat song seemed more Olympian than the psalm in

spiritual strains of the Hebrew bard. So I send my

answer in a commonplace letter. Poor return, is it

not? [25]

The symbols of freemasonry depicted on the boat

wakened memory, touched tender fibres of thought, and

I longed to say to the masonic brothers: If as a woman

I may not unite with you in freemasonry, nor you with

me in Christian Science, yet as friends we can feel the [30]