MANUSCRIPT: AC. Ink. Dated: Monday morning. Envelope addressed: Wm Austin Dickinson/Boston./Mass. The letter was delivered by hand.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 102-104, in part; LL 172-173, in part; L (1931) 100-101, in part; Home 208-210, entire, where it is dated January 12.

Austin returned to Boston on Monday, December 1. The second Monday after his departure is recorded in Lavinia's diary as a "snowy, gloomy day." During the interval Abiah Root had been visiting her cousins the Palmers. The evening she spent at the Dickinsons' with Abby Wood and Martha Gilbert was Emily's twenty-first birthday. "Miss Mary" was Mary Warner. Martha Humphrey died on 10 December, aged twenty.