MANUSCRIPT: Rosenbach 1170/18 (8). Pencil. Unpublished.

The date is conjectured from the handwriting. The Sweetsers had moved into their new home during the previous year (letter no. 823), and ED is describing here their Amherst house. One of the Sweetser children evidently had a pet owl. George Eliot's "The Choir Invisible" is in The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (1874); for a later reference to it, see letter no. 1042. ED speaks here again of Howard Sweetser's singing (see letter no. 920).