Status Updates From The Life and Letters of Emi...

“A promise is firmer than a hope. Hope never knew horizon.”

“Morning might come by accident, Sister,
Night comes by event—
To believe the final line of the card
Would foreclose Faith,
Faith is doubt, Sister.
Show me Eternity, and
I will show you memory—
Both in one package lain
And lifted back again.
Be Sue while I am Emily,
Be next what you have ever been—
Infinity.”

“Emily, in the darkest, entirest privacy, was terrified for the result of her experiment—the little white moth being almost fluttered to death, all a-tremble and ready to die of the experience and be found on the floor next morning a mere hint of winged dust! She seemed to know the world from intuition, but to shrink from that which sends the soft bright-eyed things flying from us in the forest.”

“There is no first or last in Forever. It is Centre there all the time. To believe is enough and the right of supposing.”

“From the time of her father's death she never left the house, except to flit about the porch at dusk to water her frail plants—set just outside in summer—looking in her white dress like just another moth fluttering in the twilights.”

“To be cherished as a temporary guest of the heart, already half an angel.”

“With what a menace of light.”

“Such soar, but never set. I see him in the star and meet his sweet velocity in everything that flies.”

“And during these years of increasing isolation it was to her work she turned for relief and renewal.”

“It seems like a memoir of the sun when the noon is gone!”

“Their visits also in the darkened library, hand in hand on the little sofa by the fire, and with them, two intellects met as equals.”

“Their partings overheard were like those of desperate final sundered souls; but both were dramatic of temperament and to Emily the darkness was denser always after the radiant passage of one of her chosen. Helen always preferred Emily in genius and power, and considered herself but a small spark beside her.”

“Her spirit found its own nectars in spite of her loneliness.”

“So busy missing you I have not tasted Spring.”

“I must wait a few days before seeing you. You are too momentous,—but remember dear, it is idolatry, not indifference.”

🥺💗

“To the faithful absence is condensed presence.”

“Opinion is a flitting thing
But truth outlasts the sun,
If then we cannot own them both,
Possess the oldest one.”

“She imperceptibly but increasingly withdrew from outside festivities and public appearances and became less accessible to all save her chosen few.”

Just like me for real.

“Fascination was her element. She was not daily bread, she was star dust. Her solitude made her and was part of her.”

“From this time on she clung more intensely to the tender shadows of her father’s house. She still saw her friends and neighbours from time to time, but even then her life had began to go on in hidden ways. “I am not at home,” she often said; or, “When I was at home”

—and only one faithful heart understood that love to her had been home for an instant, and that she lived in its remembrance.”

“Starving for a world she later shunned, with vague dread of its haunting power over her.”

“She put so much of her own supernatural imagination into a person or event or just the ordinary weather, that few if any minds could have conceived the voltage of her impressions or reactions.”

“Her angel nerves were ill adapted for any higher vibrations than the old house afforded with its safe routine, quite electric enough for her sensitive transmission.”

“Even from extreme youth her unconscious philosophy seems to have been one of renunciation before the temptation was presented; the fear of loving what she could not have driving her to self imposed abnegations. As if she knew by intuition all the possible devastation of love as well as all the loneliness without it.”

“You and I have been strangely silent upon one topic, Susie. We have often touched upon it and as quickly fled away,—as children shut their eyes when the sun is too bright for them. I have always hoped to know if you had no dear fancy illuminating all your life, no one of whom you murmured in the faithful ear of night, and at whose side you walked in fancy the livelong day.”