MANUSCRIPT: AC. Pencil.

PUBLICATION: NEQ XXVIII (1955) 297-298.

This is the rough draft of a letter which perhaps was never sent, since no fair copy of it is among the Higginson papers.

ED here expresses in a series of quatrains a condensation of the thoughts that followed her conversation with Higginson in August. The letter replies to one from him, received since her last was written, in which he evidently suggested that the essay of his she might have in mind was "A Shadow" (Atlantic Monthly, July 1870). She here makes clear that she has read "A Shadow."