August 1880

Dear friend,

I was touchingly reminded of your little Louisa this Morning by an Indian Woman with gay Baskets and a dazzling Baby, at the Kitchen Door- Her little Boy "once died," she said, Death to her dispelling him - I asked her what the Baby liked, and she said "to step. The Prairie before the Door was gay with Flowers of Hay, and I led her in-She argued with the Birds-she leaned on Clover Walls and they fell, and dropped her-With jargon sweeter than a Bell, she grappled Buttercups-and they sank together, the Buttercups the heaviest-What sweetest use of Days!

'Twas noting some such Scene made Vaughn humbly say "My Days that are at best but dim and hoary"-

I think it was Vaughn-

It reminded me too of "Little Annie," of whom you feared to make the mistake in saying "Shoulder Arms" to the "Colored Regiment"- but which was the Child of Fiction, the Child of Fiction or of Fact, and is "Come unto me" for Father or Child, when the Child precedes?