Recitative (from A Visit with Emily)

 

            A large country lawyer's house, brown brick, with great trees & a garden – I sent up my card. A parlor dark & cool & stiffish, a few books & engravings & an open piano – Malbone and OD [Out Door] Papers among other books.

            A step like a pattering child’s in entry & in glided a little plain woman with two small bands of reddish hair & a face a little like Belle Dove’s; not plainer – with no good feature – in a very plain & exquisitely clean white pique & a blue net worsted shawl. She came to me with two day lilies which she put in a sort of childlike way into my hand and said “These are my introduction” in a soft frightened breathless childlike voice - & added under her breath Forgive me if I am frightened; I never see strangers & hardly know what I say – but she talked soon and thenceforward continuously - & deferentially – sometimes stopping to ask me to talk instead of her – but readily commencing.

— Thomas W. Higginson (a letter to his wife describing his first visit to Emily Dickinson)