Once with sweets smuggled over to them came these laconic instructions:
Omit to return box. Omit to know you received box.
At another like occasion:
The joys of theft are two; first theft; second superiority to detection. How inspiring to the clandestine mind. "We thank thee, Lord, that Thou hast hid these things!"
She did a deal of brilliant trifling apropos of local events. On the death of the wife of a doctor she disliked she writes:
Dear Sue—
I should think she would rather be the Bride of the Lamb than that old pill box!
With a cape jasmine sent to a guest of her niece as yet unknown to her (Sara Colton Gillett) she writes:
M. will put this little flower in her friend's hand. Should she ask who sent it, tell her—as Desdemona did when they asked who slew her—Nobody—Myself.
After the death of a strictly dull acquaintance with no vital spark visible she writes:
Now I lay thee down to sleep,
I pray the Lord thy dust to keep,
If thou should live before thou wake,
I pray the Lord thy soul to make!
This scrap is Emily at her most audacious:
My Maker, let me be
Enamoured most of Thee—
But nearer this
I more should miss!
In a panic lest some cherished plan fall through she sent this:
