MANUSCRIPT: HCL the first two pages; and BPL (Higg 117) the last two pages. Pencil.

PUBLICATION: AM CXXXIX (June 1927) 800; L (1931) 312-313.

Higginson's marriage to Mary Potter Thacher took place during the first week in February, 1879. The book she had written and to which he had alluded was a small collection of discursive essays, Seashore and Prairie, published in 1877. Higginson's Short Studies of American Authors, which contains a brief estimate of Hawthorne, Higginson sent to ED as soon as it was published, but it had not yet been written (see letter no. 622). He had published two earlier essays on Hawthorne: "An Evening with Mrs. Hawthorne," Atlantic Monthly, XXVIII (October 1871), 432-433; and "Hawthorne's Last Bequest," Scribner's Monthly, V (November 1872), 100-105. He had evidently alluded to one of these, probably to the second, since it deals more directly with Hawthorne. The quotation in the first paragraph is from Revelation 7.16: "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. . ."