Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

dear friend,--I was touchingly reminded of [a child who had died] this morning by an Indian woman with gay baskets and a dazzling baby, at the kitchen door. Her little boy “once died,” she said, death to her dispelling him. I asked her what the baby liked, and she said “to step.” The prairie before the door was gay with flowers of hay, and I led her in. She argued with the birds, she leaned on clover walls and they fell, and dropped her. With jargon sweeter than a bell, she grappled buttercups, and they sank together, the buttercups the heaviest. What sweetest use of days! 'T was noting some such scene made Vaughan humbly say,--

My days that are at best but dim and hoary.

I think it was Vaughan. ...