Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/101

Rh The Civil War, for which Amherst furnished a proud quota, must have crashed in on the seclusion of Emily's thought, thrilling her as drum and fife—but the personal realization of it did not come to her until Fraser Stearns, son of President Stearns, was killed at the battle of Newbern in 1862.

This was her first intimate reaction to the universal tragedy, and she wrote poignantly of it to more than one friend; also of trying to do all in her power to comfort his family—especially the young sister, Ella (afterward Mrs. James Lee, of Boston), of whom she was always devotedly fond.

It was in 1862 also that her literary philandering with Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson began through a stray note of admiration from her for his article in the "Atlantic Monthly" on the "Procession of the Flowers," sent her by Sister Sue. Her family viewed the ensuing correspondence between them as a diverting interlude rather than a serious instruction, for, though she addressed him as "Dear Master" with an outward show of docile humility, she never changed one line to please him. He heard from her in camp during the Civil War, which he entered in a volunteer regiment in 1863, and it was in the September of that same year that her eyes necessitated her going to Boston for serious treatment, which abbreviated her correspondence almost to entire elimination for some time.

From the close of the war until 1868 their relations seem to have remained as a comedy version of Browning's "Statue and the Bust." Their letters were all they knew of each other. For one reason or another he was prevented from visiting Amherst and she was disinclined to