Journal 48, page 90

&a more today-last of the year-& then Isabel & I got together our New Year Letter to the [the entry continues on over space for 1/1,1/2,/1/5,/1/7,1/9 ] BWTA women asking them to celebrate the 20th Crusade Anniversary in January because they are too busy with the English Christmas ever to make much of it on its own date-Dec. 23. I feel that no end of good will come out of this letter which asks for a general movement in founding an Industrial Woman's Home as a memorial of the Crusade. Isabel & Hannah (dear, helpful "Han") are now copying the speech-which goes into the first number of the paper. I shall also send it to the Union Signal & to all our leaders for its publication. Isabel insists on putting my autobiography-revised for England-into her paper. I wish to register the fact here that I urged off about publishing or preparing it but was over-persuaded (because "it would help the WTPA"). the national Convention in Nashville requested it officially in 1887-1 shut myself up 6 weeks in Caroline's Court, a family hotel in Chicago & put the thing together as best I could-never leaving my room during that time & mother not daring to know where I was less I should be interrupted. I used dumb bells ever so much to get exercise but never put my head outdoors or was seen save by Nan Gordon, my stenographer& such as that."

I also wish to put it on record-for I can not tell how long I shall keep a journal-that the only reason the National WCTU Convention held in Battery in Chicago in 1889 (my 50th Birthday) did not congratulate me or refer to the bock it had ordered which had been bro't out that year (50 thousand copies sold in 2 years or thereabouts to my astonishment) was because under the influence of Elizabeth Scovel's peculiar views I utterly forbade any allusion of the kind. (See my Annual Address that year for a revelation of my mind.) But later knowledge & developments have changed my views of E.J. Scovel's teachings. I regard her as a woman of remarkable abilities, noble aspirations in many respects and a great native & acquired geniality and kindness. But I do notlook upon her as in any sense an oracle& I regard the emphasis placed by her upon doctrines as tending to undermine the faith of those she fain would bless. Wherever she is this night I invoke upon her the best that Heaven has to give but I am more grieved than I can tell for the hallucinations of 1888S-'90 when "the evangelists" seemed to some of us-notably our dear Yolande & me-the end of the law-& the gospel. How my wise, blessed Mother stayed & anchored me as best she could in those curious days that seemed so sad today!

I am writing all this as a sort of making up the log, at 10 P.M on the last night of the Year. It is a curious sight-dear Hannah standing on one side of me, by the glowing fireplace & Isabel on the other, like a pair of guardian angels and hurrying me to bed- while I, thinking of Mother & Nan & Yolande, am inclined to scratch away with what they call "the tireless little hand." Well, God have mercy on us all & bring us through the rapids to the sheltered harbor & give us "with the dawn" those presences so loved & lost so long-and best of all for me, my Mother's great,