According to the editor of Appleton's Journal "Only the Clothes That She Wore" are "tender and tragical lines [that] only just foreshadowed the death of their author." Shepherd took the lines to the magazine and "within a few hours after parting from us and receiving the price of his verses, he died from the effects of intemperance" on Saturday, May 22, 1869 (Once a Month 197).
The editor is said to have described Shepherd as "a well contributor to the magazines, and as a writer of fluent and often excellent poems, and distinguished in New York circles as a representative Bohemian" (Once a Month 197).
