Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/44

20 moon and wished for you and heaven. You did not come darling, but a bit of heaven did—or so it seemed to me. As we walked silently side by side and wondered if that great blessedness which may be ours sometime is granted now to some. Those unions, dear Susie, by which two are one, this sweet and strange miracle. A perfectly normal young heart responding to the natural wondering of impending maturity.

She is perfectly natural, too, in her religious emotions, with all the literal childishness about heaven, reminding her Susie enviously in another letter, that while she has parents and a sister in heaven, Emily's are on earth, until, carried away by her imagination, she exclaims—"Oh, I wish I had so many dear friends as you in heaven!"—a naïve cry, quickly amended, "I could not spare them now, but to know they had got there safely and should suffer no more!" she explains, in a mood that was always her own in later years, longing to spare those she loved.

Of course at this stage she sentimentalizes as all young girls do and should, and pours out her soul to her girl friend:

I know I was naughty to write such things, and I know I could have helped it if I had tried hard enough, but I thought my heart would break and I knew of nobody here that cared anything about it—so I said to myself—we will tell Susie. You don't know what a comfort it was. Susie can count the big true hearts by clusters—full of bloom and blossoms amaranthine, because eternal.

At the close she adds:

I send you a kiss shyly—if there's anybody around, don't let them see.

Yet even these simplest outpourings have each some flash redeeming from mere commonplace of her age.