late February 1874

TO: Louise and Frances Norcross
FROM: ED

Dear Children,

Father is ill at home. I think it is the "Legislature" reacting on an otherwise obliging constitution. Maggie is ill at Tom's - a combination of cold and superstition of fever - of which her enemy is ill - and longing for the promised land, of which there is no surplus. "Apollyon" and the "Devil" fade in martial lustre beside Lavinia and myself. "As they day is so shall thy" stem "be." We can all of us sympathize with the man who wanted the roan horse to ride to execution, because he saod 'twas a nimble hue, and 'twould be over sooner. . . .

Dear Loo, shall I enclose the slips, or delay till father? Vinnie advises the later. I usually prefer formers, latters seeming to me like Dickens's hero's dead mamma, "too some weeks off" to risk. Do you remember the "sometimes" of childhood, which invariably never occurred? . . .

Be pleased you have no cat to detain from justice. Ours have taken meats, and the wife of the "general court" is trying to lay them out, but as she has but two wheels and they have four, I would accept their chances. Kitties eat kindlings now. Vinnie thinks they are "cribbers." I wish I could make you as long a call as De Quincey made North, but that morning cannot be advanced.

          Emily.