A 808: etext transcription

This fragment appears in part as a trace (text altered) in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (BPL Higg 106) composed in June 1878 (THJ, RWF). In this case the opening passage of the text—"If ever you lost | a friend - Master - | you remember you | could not begin | again because there | was no world -"—constitutes the trace, and, possibly, a trial beginning to the letter. The concluding passage of the text—"A breathless Death | is not so cold as | a Death that breathes"—does not reappear as a trace in this letter or in any other extant composition, and Dickinson's final intentions toward the passage are unknown. Less personal or "occasional" than the lines directly addressed to Higginson, the final lines of the text suggest a change of direction of or intention towards the fragment. Dickinson may have omitted the lines from the final draft of the letter to Higginson in order to preserve its consolatory tone.