MANUSCRIPT: The copy reproduced above is incorporated in a letter (BPL Higg 99) written to T. W. Higginson in January 1879. Another copy identical in text, now lost, seems to have concluded a letter to Maria Whitney.

PUBLICATION: In Letters (ed. 1894), 339, and in LL (1924), 320, it is part of the letter to Maria Whitney, dated 1879. In Letters (ed. 1931), 312, it is part of the letter to Higginson, placed here for the first time. In this edition it is omitted from the letter to Maria Whitney (pages 328-329), where a footnote refers the reader to the Higginson letter.