to-day. She does not sit still long enough to be "taken." I see a lively
girl in pretty short dresses and very long stockings,—quite a Tom-boy,
if I remember rightly. She paddles a raft, she climbs a tree, she skates
and tramps and coasts, she is usually very muddy, and a little torn.
There is apt to be a pin in her gathers; but there is sure to be a laugh
in her eyes. Wherever there is mischief, there is Gypsy. Yet, wherever
there is fun, and health, and hope, and happiness,—and I think,
wherever there is truthfulness and generosity,—there is Gypsy, too.

And now, the publishers tell me that Gypsy is thirty years old, and that
girls who were not so much as born when I knew the little lady, are her
readers and her friends to-day.

Thirty years old? Indeed, it is more than that! For is it not thirty
years since the publication of her memoirs? And was she, at that time,
possibly sixteen? Forty-six years? Incredible! How in the world did
Gypsy "grow up?" For that was before toboggans and telephones, before
bicycles and electric cars, before bangs and puffed sleeves, before
girls studied Greek, and golf-capes came in. Did she go to college? For
the Annex, and Smith, and Wellesley were not. Did she have a career? Or
take a husband? Did she edit a Quarterly Review, or sing a baby to
sleep? Did she write poetry, or make pies? Did she practice medicine, or
matrimony? Who knows? Not even the author of her being.

Only one thing I do know: Gypsy never grew up to be "timid," or silly,
or mean, or lazy; but a sensible woman, true and strong; asking little
help of other people, but giving much; an honor to her brave and loving
sex, and a safe comrade to the girls who kept step with her into middle
life; and I trust that I may bespeak from their daughters and their
scholars a kindly welcome to an old story, told again.