about 1881?

TO: Louise and Frances Norcross
FROM: ED

. . . The look of the words [stating the death of George Eliot] as they lay in print I shall never forget. Not their face in the casket could have had the eternity to me. Now, my George Eliot. The gift of belief which her greatness denied her, I trust she receives in the childhood of her kingdom of heaven. As childhood is earth's confiding time, perhaps having no childhood, she lost her way to the early trust, and no later came. Amazing human heart, a syllable can make to quake like jostled tree, what infinite for thee? . . .