On March 9, 1960, Alice M. Jordan died peacefully in her sleep. She had just written, “I have had a good winter without colds or other ills. I am going strong in my ninetieth year.”

Thus a quiet, beloved, and widely influential woman passed out of life in the fullness of years, with her faculties unimpaired. Alice Jordan went to the Boston Public Library in 1902 as one of the first children’s librarians in the United States and in 1917 became Supervisor of Children’s Work.

She retired November 30, 1940, and it is of her years of retirement that I want to write for they were remarkable years. She and her older sister had a pleasant home at 61 Sparks Street, Cambridge, with windows along Brewster Street. There was a charming air of tradition and dignity about it. An oil painting of the Pride of the Port, their father’s ship, hung over the fireplace in the living room. After her sister’s death in April, 1958, Alice Jordan lived on alone there with calmness and courage. She continued to make the long journey to their cottage on Grand Manan for summers.

She had a wealth of resources within herself. At a time when many people feel lost and confused, Alice Jordan had strength and steadfast faith. She was keenly interested in today’s generation and was sought after by her young grand-nephews and their wives. Her connection with her church was an active one and she had been at her weekly sewing appointment there the afternoon before her death. She kept up her connection with the New England Round Table of Children’s Librarians and with her friends at the Boston Public Library. She had been concerned about the fate of valuable historical children’s books in the Boston Public Library’s Treasure Room and was planning to cooperate with Miss Harriet Swift in a labor of love to classify and catalogue those books. She read endlessly.

Alice Jordan knew much of the natural world, of birds, flowers, rocks, minerals and stars. In earlier years we had been together on holidays where I had opportunity to enjoy this knowledge: at Monhegan; at our camp, Mount Airy, in Rockport; at the Jordan summer cottage on Grand Manan. In later years she paid many visits to our home in Ashburnham, visits which were enjoyed by my husband as much as by me. She spoke of the steadiness lent to life by daily housekeeping duties.

Alice Jordan’s friendship was an important factor in my life for more than forty-five years. It was an integral part of those golden years of The Bookshop for Boys and Girls, continuing with The Horn Book. She guided me in my study of children’s books for a year before the Bookshop opened. Her rare sense of balance and proportion, her humor, her discriminating judgment, her calm and quietness have meant more than I can say.

“Life within us, life outside us, life beyond us — there is no end to any of them until the life that is within us for earthly purposes, itself comes to an end: only to begin again, as it is believed.”^*

*Walter de la Mare in his Introduction to Animal Stories. Scribner, 1940.

From the June 1960 issue of the Horn Book Magazine.