Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/58

34 before he will respect and speak with proper deference of this majestic garment.

There were the inevitable, inescapable family visits, too, already mentioned, when any hour of any day might behold a chaise at the door and helplessness within the house before the impending calamity. On one occasion when a family of four descended upon them without warning, Emily expressed her feelings as to the sweetness of the young daughters, and the tediousness of their father, concluding:

Cousin P. says he might stay round a month visiting old acquaintances if it wasn't for his business. Fortunate indeed for us that his business feels the need of him or I think he would never go. He is a kind of mixture of Deacon Haskell, Calvin Merill, and Morton Dickinson; you can easily guess how much we enjoy his society.

It was one autumn evening, when the Hollands had driven over unexpectedly to pass the night, that her mother, anxious for their every comfort, offered one solicitous suggestion after another, until Emily, always exasperated by repetition, cried —"O Mrs. Holland, don't you want to hear me say the Lord's prayer? Shouldn't you like me to repeat the Declaration of Independence? Shan't I recite the Ten Commandments?"

She had a cousin who came over from Sunderland to spend a day—"Father and Mother being on a little journey"—when just such deviations from regularity were apt to occur. Her friend Vaughn Evans, the Southerner who brought a warmer note into her life, stayed on after Commencement, and they had many long talks; and the brilliant young Henry Root—an uncle of the present President of Johns Hopkins University—whose charm and handsome grace was a fable that followed