to her the manuscripts of famous writers, before publication, and when he entertained Canon Kingsley, Bret Harte, Charles Dickens, or any other author of note, he would share his impressions of them first-hand with her; often reading her notes to him to those he considered able to follow her meteoric flights. She counted him among her brightest beacons, and when his Life and Letters was about to be published in 1885 wrote—
Dear Sue:
It seems like a memoir of the sun when the Noon is gone! You remember his swift way of wringing and flinging away a theme, and others picking it up and gazing bewildered after him; and the prance that crossed his eyes at such times was unrepeatable.
Emily was a fond reader of Ik Marvel. On receiving a copy of "Dream Life" from her brother she wrote back:
It is not nearly so great a book as "Reveries of a Bachelor," yet I think it full of the very sweetest fancies, and more exquisite language I defy any man to use. On the whole I enjoyed it very much, but I can't help wishing that he had been translated like Enoch of old, after his bachelor reverie, and chariot of fire and the horsemen thereof were all that had been seen of him ever after.
In the winter of 1857, Emerson was her brother's guest. There is no mention of their having met—inexplicable as it seems—but in a note to her Sister Sue after his departure she says, "It must have been as if he had come from where dreams are born!"
She wrote to Sister Sue as if it were perfectly probable:
Dreamed of your meeting Tennyson at Ticknor and Fields last night. Where the treasure is the heart is also.
When Howells first appeared in the magazine of which Dr. Holland was editor, Emily wrote:
