MANUSCRIPT: YUL. Pencil.

PUBLICATION: L (1894), 436-437; LL 379-380; L (1931) 428-429.

ED's aunt Elizabeth (Libbie), to whom this is addressed, died of cancer six months later, 10 October 1886. On 16 April Allen J. Adams was executed at Northampton for the murder of Moses Billings Dickinson of Amherst. The family of Miss Merrill, an aunt of ED's classmate of the same name, were suing her heir, a Dr. De Vore, a man living in her house to whom she left her estate. He was accused by neighbors of having poisoned her. The quotation is from Romeo and Juliet, V, i. 37.