Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/125

Rh More seriously she exclaims:

Could character be more shrewdly epitomized than by this terse antithesis:

The Church dominated all life, social and public, in Amherst in the mid-century, but the religion of Emily Dickinson was not a blend of any she received by inheritance or instruction. The gentle belief of her mother in a God who would hold back the rain until after the hay was in, or who sent the undesirable showers to prove the faith of his meek followers in his chastening for their good, or the fear of God that sent her forth in her best shawl of a pleasant afternoon to collect the annual missionary money for her church; her minute abstinence from all labor on the seventh day, her punctilious conscientiousness in rectitude and mercy, in deeds of kindness and faithfully restrained tongue, was too limited, too earthbound for Emily. This guileless little being, timid, yet one of the most persevering of saints, gave little to her daughter which explains or defines. This pattern of a good and amiable housewife and mother had little exhibition in her offspring, except for the gentleness which was always a predominant characteristic, the supreme gentleness of action and feeling.

From her father there descended upon her the inward quality of her own outward grace. He was one of the