letters from dickinson to higginson


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?


thomas johnson's note on letter 653 | index to dickinson/higginson letters

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Maintained by Lara Vetter <lv26@umail.umd.edu>
Last updated on September 25, 1998