A 840: etext transcription

This is one of a number of late manuscripts in which the opposite sides of the paper constitute separate textual spaces. The text on A 840a appears to be the remains of a canceled, rough-copy message-fragment, addressee unknown; the text on A 840 is a rough-copy, extrageneric fragment possibly destined for incorporation into a poem, a letter, or a longer pensée. The text on A 840a, most of which has been lost beyond the cut, appears to have been saved only because Dickinson recycled the other side of the paper to jot down the extrageneric fragment. Two intersecting pencil lines on A 840, one along the left edge of the paper and another along the bottom edge, indicate that Dickinson may have been bounding this fragment off from another text, now lost beyond the cut; if so, she may have cut the paper in an act of revision or as a way of ensuring the integrity of the extant fragment.