Writings by Susan Dickinson: Correspondence with Emily Fowler Ford

My dear Friends,

Returning suddenly from Paul's
among other sorrowful tidings I hear
that our youngest laddie, the pet
and pride of the house sleeps in his
grave. It's hard to believe that this
bright creature is but a memory on
earth, and that all the hopes a
child of promise awakens are cut off
for this life and perished in their
untimely end. But if by faith
you can transfer these hopes to
that other world he has entered and
believe in your souls that they will
all bloom with fairer blossoms
and ripen with sweeter nobler fruit,
it will help you to pass these first

hours of bitter anguish. The pain of
parting with a child is perhaps for
the time, the most poignant of pains.
The wound is of the tenderest sensibilities
and run beyond expression, but from the
immortal future of eternity, we can
summon joys and hopes and fulfillments
for consolation, even divine joys, angelic
hopes, fulfilled splendors of character,
such as could not possibly award him
here. Still the fact, the dreadful
fact remained that he is gone, and
oh! how you must miss him. It rea-
lly makes me ill to think of it - such
silence and desolation!

I hope that you and Austin and
the son and daughter left are well,
and that this sorrow has drawn you
more tenderly together than ever be-
fore. I heard of you very pleasantly
from Mabel who had a very happy

H bMS Am 1118.95, Box 9

visit this summer at Amherst. I suppose no one was sur-
prised when her engagement to Prof. Smith was announced,
and really it was very natural and congenial all around.
Remember me very affectionately to Emily and Vinnie. I
wish they could prevail on themselves to visit me sometime,
and I shall hope when we meet, that this fresh bleeding
[?] to all your hearts may be quietly healed through
the mercy of your heavenly Father
and the mystery of pain made clearer to your souls than it
possibly can be in these first hours of suffering -

Your attached friend,
Emily E. Ford.

Tuesday Nov 20, 1883.
97 Clark St. Brooklyn.


	Image reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Not to be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. Transcription and commentary copyright 1998 by Martha Nell Smith, Laura Elyn Lauth, and Lara Vetter, all rights reserved Maintained by Rebecca Mooney <rnmooney@umd.edu> Last updated on January 24, 2008