If I ask too much, you could please refuse. Shortness to live has made me bold.
Abroad is close to-night and I have but to lift my hands to touch the “Heights of Abraham.”
Dickinson.
When I said, at parting, that I would come again some time, she replied, “Say, in a long time; that will be nearer. Some time is no time.” We met only once again, and I have no express record of the visit. We corresponded for years, at long intervals, her side of the intercourse being, I fear, better sustained; and she sometimes wrote also to my wife, inclosing flowers or fragrant leaves with a verse or two. Once she sent her one of George Eliot’s books, I think “Middlemarch,” and wrote, “I am bringing you a little granite book for you to lean upon.” At other times she would send single poems, such as these:—
THE BLUE JAY
No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity