Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 139.djvu/802

in the spring of 1879, to a niece of Longfellow's 'Being Beauteous.'

Dear friend,

To congratulate the Redeemed is perhaps superfluous for Redemption leaves nothing for earth to add—It is very sweet and serious to suppose you at Home, and reverence I cannot express is all that remains, I have read of Home in the Revelations—'Neither thirst any more'—You speak very sweetly of the Stranger—I trust the phantom Love that enrolls the 'Sparrow,' enfolds her softer than a Child—

Dear friend,

I am tenderly happy that you are happy—Thank you for the Whisper—If I dared to give the Madonna my love—

The thoughtfulness I may not accept is among my Balms—Grateful for the kindness, I enclose those you allow—Adding a fourth, lest one of them you might think profane—

They are Christ's Birthday—Cupid's Sermon—A Humming-Bird—and My Country's Wardrobe—Reprove them as your own—To punish them would please me, because the fine conviction I had so true a friend—

Your Scholar

Of the poems mentioned I have been unable to find the first two, under these titles or any other. The last two appeared in the second series of poems, published in 1891.

[February 1880]

Dear friend,

I am very glad of the Little Life, and hope it may make no farther flight than its Father's Arms—Home and Roam in one—I know but little of Little Ones, but love them very softly—They seem to me like a Plush Nation or a Race of Down—

If she will accept a vicarious kiss, please confide it to her—Does she coo with 'discraytion'? I am very grateful for the delight to you and Mrs. Higginson—I had thought of your Future with soft fear—I am glad it has come—

'Go travelling with us!'
Her Travels daily be
By routes of Ecstasy
To Evening's Sea.

Your Scholar

The reference to 'discraytion' is from a story of Carlyle which Colonel Higginson always told with delight. He was once walking with Carlyle and James Anthony Froude in Kensington Gardens, when some small boys who were turning somersaults on a piece of greensward hard by asked Carlyle somewhat fearsomely if they might continue.

'Yes, my little fellow,' said Carlyle, with his fine Scotch burr, 'you may r-r-roll with discr-r-raytion!'

The following letter was written on the death of the beloved child for whom, for almost forty years, my father had hungered. (His first marriage was in 1847.)

Dear friend,

Most of our Moments are Moments of Preface—'Seven weeks' is a long life—if it is all lived—

The little Memoir was very touching—I am sorry she was not willing to stay—The flight of such a fraction takes all our Numbers Home—

'Room for One More'^[1] was a plea for Heaven—I misunderstood—Heaven must be a lone Exchange for such a parentage—

These sudden intimacies with Immortality, are Expanse—not Peace—as Lightening at our feet, instills a foreign Landscape. Thank you for the Portrait—it is beautiful, but intimidating—I shall pick 'Mayflowers' more furtively, and feel new awe of 'Moonlight.'

The route of your little Fugitive must be a tender wonder—and yet

A Dimple in the Tomb
Makes that ferocious Room
A Home—

Your Scholar