MANUSCRIPT: destroyed.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 298-299; LL 368-369; L (1931) 269-270.

The death of Schuyler Colfax, on 13 January 1885, fixes the date of this letter. The photograph to which ED refers (HCL - Dickinson collection) was one taken in San Francisco in 1865. The three others (not two_ in the group were Bowles's companions on the trip: Colfax, then Speaker of the House of Representatives (and later Vice President); William Bross, Lieutenant Governor of Illinois; and Albert D. Richardson, Civil War correspondent and staff member of the New York Tribune.

The Norcross sisters moved to Cambridge during 1884, so that Fanny would be nearer to the Divinity School library. Called Back (1883), by British novelist Frederick John Fargus ("Hugh Conway"), was widely popular in its day (see letter no. 1046). Holmes's Ralph Waldo Emerson was published in 1885.