Artifacts of Life

We have a lot to cover this morning and not a moment to spare, dear reader, so pull up a chair and drop everything.  Well, “drop everything” unless you happen to be holding your delicious morning delectable of choice, say a scone or muffin or bread. I personally prefer a slice of banana bread, and I just so happen to live within mere miles of a local coffee shop that just so happens to bake the world’s best, so I start many a morning with a slice of said “world’s best” banana bread paired with a cold brew, black.  I do generally prefer cold brew to a cuppa hot joe – unless, say, winter temps are 32F or below – then I do turn to the hot stuff. But all of that is neither here nor there, and as I said, we have not a moment to spare.

At the right:  A slice of the world's best banana bread.

As you know, I’ve been chronicling my Dickinson-related stops on a recent trip to NYC, Boston, and Amherst, and with two stops to go, I’m nearing the end of the documentation of said trip.  Yesterday, I shared info and pics from my tour of the Evergreens, home to Emily Dickinson’s brother and his wife, Austin and Susan Dickinson, and just after that tour, I headed to the Frost Library on the campus of Amherst College.

Well, not “just after,” as once the tour of the Evergreens concluded my sister, my wife and I headed into town for lunch at Asian Taste.  

At the left:  Asian Taste on N. Pleasant Street in Amherst

What with the ongoing multistate Cyclospora parasite outbreak linked to various types of lettuce (causing explosive you-know-what), we’d felt compelled throughout our trip to eat non-salady meals, like mouthwatering burgers, juicy steaks, cheesy pasta dishes, and the like.  At this point in our travels, though, we were craving something with vegetables – and I must say Asian Taste hit our luncheon out of the park!  I know we don’t have a moment to spare this morning, dear reader, so let me just interject quickly that that establishment served up a delicious mid-day meal with some of the best sauteed green beans I’ve ever tasted -- dare I say, the “world’s best"?  LOL.. 

Okay, let me get back on track. 

After devouring lunch, we headed to the Frost Library, and there, downstairs in the Archives and Special Collections area, we observed a display case with various Dickinson artifacts – the core of my laser-like-focus today.

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The scrap above  includes a two-line poem included in Franklin (F1452) and Miller (M608), but not in Johnson:

Incredible the Lodging
But limited the Guest
 
The online archive states this, “About 1877, in pencil, on a fragment of stationery used earlier for practice signatures in ink, later for three revised lines of "After all birds have been investigated" in pencil.”   
 
The lines on the reverse read (pictured below -- from the archive), "Her gallant note / Endows us like a friend / When summer cleaves away.”

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J1287:
 
In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much – how little – is
Within our power 
​ 

F1292 & M570:
 
In this short Life that only* lasts an hour
How much – how little – is within our power 
 
*merely

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F1518:
 
Glass was the Street – in Tinsel Peril
Tree and Traveller stood.
Filled was the Air with merry venture
Hearty with Boys the Road.
 
Shot the lithe Sleds like Shod vibrations
Emphacized and gone
It is the Past’s supreme italic
Makes the Present mean –
 
 
Hmm…notice that in line 6, Franklin spells “emphasized” with a “c.”  An “s” is used in both Johnson and Miller, and the letter on Dickinson’s paper sure looks like an “s” to me.

Oddly, enough – and maybe this is a typo? – one version of the poem on the archive uses a “z":

What do you think Dickinson’s letter is – an “s,” a “c,” or a “z”?

On the bottom right quadrant of Dickinson’s page, there are also lines from F1519, “It came his turn to beg”:

It came his turn to beg-
The begging for the life
Is different from another Alms
'Tis Penury in Chief-
I scanned his narrow Realm
I gave him leave to live
Lest Gratitude revive the snake
Though – smuggled my – Reprieve

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These pages are of Dickinson’s “I noticed people disappeared” (J1149; F1154, M545):

I noticed people disappeared
When but a little child –
Supposed they visited remote
Or settled Regions wild –
Now know I – They both visited
And settled regions wild –
But did because they died
A fact withheld the little child –
 

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F1346
 
I send you a decrepit flower
That nature sent to me
At parting – she was going south
And I designed to stay –

Her motive for the souvenir
If sentiment for me
Or circumstances prudential
Withheld invincibly –
 
And what’s that at the bottom of Dickinson’s page?  Turn it over, and there is Emily’s father’s signature.  

Miller includes this bit of info about the poem in her collection: “Written on a signed flyleaf from her father’s copy of Washington Irving’s Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon; the 1824 edition was in two volumes and hence had two flyleaves; Edward Dickinson signed both of them.”

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This paper reads, “It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy – a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.”

Okay, are you ready for this, dear reader?

First, I looked for a poem that began, “It is essential…”   Nothing.

Next, I searched for poems at the archive with the word “essential.”    There were ten results representing three poems – but nothing with these lines.

Then, I checked A Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson.  “Essential” was used in three poems – the very same poems documented on the archive – but again, nothing with these lines.

Next, I searched on Google, and I typed in, “It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy,” and I got this:

“The line "It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy" is often misattributed on the internet to Emily Dickinson, but it is actually a quote by the writer and essayist Hilaire Belloc.”

Okay, I'll admit that I’ve never heard of Hilaire Belloc – and maybe, just maybe, Dickinson read an essay by Belloc, was impressed by the line and jotted it down to remember it.

I then looked up Belloc.  The opening line in Wikipedia states, “Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc[a] (27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953) was a French-English writer and political activist.”

Did you catch that year of his birth?  1870.  Dickinson died in 1886 – so for Dickinson to have read and been impressed by a line by Belloc he would have had to have written and published it by age 15 or 16.   Well, Mozart wrote his first symphony at age eight, so I suppose this was possible – but I continued my research.

To make a long story short, in Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell’s The Letters of Emily Dickinson, there is a section in the back of the book entitled, “Writing Notes.”  It begins, “What Johnson and Ward called ‘Prose Fragments’ we call ‘Writing Notes’ (WN), as explained in the introduction.”

I turned to the Introduction:  “Our editorial presentation also differs significantly from that of the 1958 Letters in our treatment of Dickinson’s many retained pieces of writing.  Johnson and ward refer to these writings as prose fragments.  Except for the previously unpublished second fragment of WN60, our edition’s Writing Notes do not include new material but a reconception of the material so radical as to alter our understanding of Dickinson’s writing process.”

I turned to page 840, WN 56:  

Nuff said. 

There are a few more artifacts to discuss, dear reader, but I will pause for now.  My brain is full, and my stomach is not.  I do believe I require a fill of some banana bread -- the world's greatest.  

More from the Frost Library tomorrow. 

More info and pics are on my travelogue, "Dial 'Em' for Emily," HERE. 

More posts from my trip are here:

08.04.2026:  ONE GOOD TOUR DESERVES ANOTHER, CLICK HERE.
08.03.2026:  ENETER THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, CLICK HERE.
08.02.2026:  FUN WITH JIM AND EMILY, CLICK HERE. 
08.01.2026:  THE BIG SLEEP, CLICK HERE. 
07.31.2026:  A WICKED ADVENTURE IN THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE, CLICK HERE. 
07.30.2026:  PAINT BY BLUNDERS, CLICK HERE. 
07.29.2026:  YABBA DABBA DO BE DO BE DO WOP BOP A LOO BOP A LOP BAM BOOM DEE AY, CLICK HERE. 
07.28.2026: NOT YOUR GARDEN VARIETY, CLICK HERE. 
07.27.2026: THE TROUBLES WITH EMILY, CLICK HERE. 
07.26.2026: THE MAN WHO BLOGGED TOO MUCH, CLICK HERE. 
07.25.2026:  STRANGE TURNS ON A TRAIN, CLICK HERE. 
07.24.2026:  HOW SWEETEST IT IS, CLICK HERE. 
07.23.2026:  A DATE WITH DESTINY, CLICK HERE.
07.22.2026:  THIS – IS THE BLOG POST – ​THE SUNSET WASHES, CLICK HERE.
07.21.2026:  DOUBLE ETERNITY, CLICK HERE. 
07.20.2026:  THE ORACLE WORE A WHITE DRESS -- PART DEUX, CLICK HERE.
07.19.2026:  ALL THINGS MATTER, CLICK HERE. 
07.18.2026:  INTRODUCTORY PLOG POST ABOUT "DIAL 'EM' FOR EMILY," CLICK HERE.