Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/82

56

And in the early days of the very last spring of her life, to Gib the characteristic lines: Not at home to callers Says the naked tree— Jacket due in April. Wishing you good day.

There are still endless little notes sent in every possible phase of her mood. Comments on books she read, cries of the heart, dashes of wit; and when her habit of writing became confirmed, poems for suggestion, or criticism. From the time Emily had taken the dare of thirty, that "frightful age" spoken of with bated breath in their teens by her sister Lavinia, the notes were often those same poems afterward published, sent either as an expression of an emotion she wished to share, or with a request for criticism.

In an article upon her unpublished letters to her brother's family, which appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," it has been told of her that these notes

The following brief note is quoted from the same source: