Proof touched with white and inscribed with artist's directions to the engraver: The woman's dress is coursely engraved it should have been a delicate gray beside the dark figure of the boy. Split the lines on the woman's dress where I have marked and gray the dark in the background so that the woman's head will appear a black supported by a gray , not as you have made it all black together nearly.
Touched India paper proof of a wood engraving by Swain after an illustration by W. Small for a poem of the same title published in The Quiver, 1878, p. 305.
Illustration shows a young mother kissing her son good-bye as he departs for school.