February 6, 1862
. . . Always after writing anything I immediately come upon
something which ought to have gone into it. Last Sunday I came in with a bird's
nest all full of ice and snow and showed it to Charlotte Hawes, who was here,
saying something about its having the wrong thing in it. “Oh,” said she
quickly, “snow is eggs, you know — in cookery.” . . . Then she also told
me of a little girl who said snow was popped rain, which I think
inimitable.
SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters
and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 114
