A 809: etext transcription

A 809, by itself an extrageneric fragment or pensée, has links to three documents: it is an intermediate- or fair-copy draft and variant version of another late fragment composed around 1885 (THJ)(A 802); an early, variant draft of a message composed in late summer 1885 (THJ) and possibly sent to Sara Philips Colton Gillett (Oresman); and a trace (text altered) in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (BPL Higg 116) mailed in early August 1885 (THJ). Dickinson's handwriting is unusually large, ill-formed, and reckless, suggesting that she was ill at the time of the fragment's composition or that she was writing under unfavorable circumstances, in darkness, for instance, or under great stress. For other examples of distorted handwriting, see A 848 and A 879.