Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/111

Rh but eighteen, signed "Emilie": after the whim of her girlhood.

The poem entitled "The Master," as written "To Sue," reads, "He fumbles at your soul," line first; in line first of the second stanza, "Prepares your brittle nature"; adding two lines at the end: When winds take forests in their paws, The Universe is still.

The critical estimate of Emily's thought and her ultimate place in American literature must be left to one more wise, better qualified, and less near her actual bewildering personality. It may be pardonable to hint at her sagacity of words, in a few instances, since George Meredith says, "We are in truth indebted for expression to those who phrase us." She sorted and tested them as a wine-taster in his cellar. They came, for the most part, but often another came too; they came tandem and in pairs, shouting at her to be chosen. The joy of mere words was to her like red and yellow balls to the juggler. The animate web for the inanimate thing, the ludicrous adjective that turned a sentence mountebank in an instant, the stringing of her meaning like a taut bow with just the economy of verbiage possible, the unusual phrase redeemed from usage by her single selected specimen of her vocabulary—all this was part of her zestful preoccupation. For example: