One of the many brief extrageneric texts found among her late papers after her death, Dickinson's final intentions toward this fragment remain unknown. It may have been destined for incorporation into a poem, a letter, or another composition; alternatively, it may be an experiment in aphoristic form; or, possibly, a compressed lyric poem unrecognized as such because of the crudeness of its material container. The text is also a paraphrase—and revision—of Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Here Dickinson wrote against the blue rule of the stationery but fit her text into the odd space of the paper.