summer 1875

TO: Louise and Frances Norcross
FROM: ED

Dear Children,

I decided to give you one more package of lemon drops, as they only come once a year. It is fair that the bonbons should change hands, you have so often fed me. This is the very weather that I lived with you those amazing years that I had a father. W[illie] D[ickinson']s wife came in last week for a day and a night, saying her heart drove her. I am glad that you loved Miss Whitney on knowing her nearer. Charlotte Bronte said "Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, match the expectation."

The birds that father rescued are trifling in his trees. How flippant are the saved! They were even frolicking at his grave, when Vinnie went there yesterday. Nature must be too young to feel, or many years too old.

Now children, when you are cutting the loaf, a crumb, peradventure a crust, of love for the sparrow's table. . . .