MANUSCRIPT: destroyed.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 296-297; LL 345-346; L (1931) 267-268.

This letter responds to a note of sympathy after the death of Judge lord. The Norcross sisters were especially fond of Maria Whitney, Fanny Norcross was now working as librarian at the Harvard Divinity School, and commuting daily between Concord and Cambridge. ED tries in this letter to recall lines from Browning's "Love Among the Ruins," which opens with the lines: "Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles/ Miles and miles." Stanzas 9 and 10 contain the lines: "And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve/ Smiles to leave . . . That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair/ Waits me there."