MANUSCRIPT: missing.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 172-174; L (1931) 167-168; LH 57-58.

It was in her letter of February 20 (no. 202) that ED first called Mrs. Holland her "sister." In New England the wild gentian blooms in August, and it here is alluded to as a harbinger of the season's end. On Saturday, 6 August 1859, the Hollands attended an excurstion to Amherst of the American Assocation for the Advancement of Science. Mrs. Dickinson's sister Lavinia Norcross, fatally ill, lived until the following April (see letter no. 217).