"I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his brie..." — Emily Dickinson

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother - but... when she became our child, the affection came.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.