# Margaret Fuller (Howe 1883)/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.
Among Margaret's life-long characteristics was a genuine love of little children, which sprang from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness of childhood. When she visited the homes of her friends, the little ones of their households were taken into the circle of her loving attention. Three of these became so especially dear to her that she called them her children. These were Waldo Emerson, Pickie Greeley, and Herman Clarke. For each of them the span of earthly life was short, no one of them living to pass out of childhood,
Waldo was the eldest son of Emerson, the child deeply mourned and commemorated by him in the well-known threnody:—
The hyacinthine boy for whom Morn well might break and April bloom. The gracious boy who did adorn The world whereinto he was born, And by his countenance repay The favour of the loving Day, Has disappeared from the Day's eye.
This death occurred 1841. Margaret visited Concord soon afterward, and has left in her journals a brief record of this visit, in which she made the grief of her friends her own. We gather from its first phrase that Emerson, whom she now speaks of as Waldo," had wished her to commit to writing some of her reminiscences of the dear one lately departed:—
“Waldo brought me at once the ink-horn and pen, I told him if he kept me so strictly to my promise I night lose ardour; however, I began at once to write for him, but not with much success Lidian came in to see me before dinner. She wept for the lost child, and I was tempted to do the same, which relieved much from the oppression I have felt since I cane. Waldo showed me all he and others had written about the child; there is very little from Waldo's own observation, though he was with him so much. He has not much eye for the little signs in children that have such great leadings. The little there is, is good.
"'Mamma, may I have this little bell which I have been making, to stand by the side of my bed?'
"'Yes, it may stand there.'
"'But, mamma, I am afraid it will alarm you. It may sound in the middle of the night, and it will be heard over the whole town. It will sound like some great glass thing which will fall down and break all to pieces; it will be louder than a thousand hawks; it will be hoard across the water and in all the countries, it will be heard all over the world.'
"I like this, because it was exactly so he talked, spinning away without end, and with large, beautiful, earnest eyes. But most of the stories are of short sayings.
"This is good in M. Russell's journal of him. She ​ had been telling him a story that excited him, and then he told her this: 'How his horse went out into a long, long wood, and how he looked through a squirrel's eyes and saw a great giant, and the giant was himself.' ******
"Went to see the Hawthornes; it was very pleasant, the poplars whisper so suddenly their pleasant tale, and everywhere the view is so peaceful. The house within I like, all their things are so expressive of themselves, and mix in so gracefully with the old furniture. H. walked home with me; we stopped some time to look at the moon. She was struggling with clouds. He said he should be much more willing to die than two months ago, for he had had some real possession in life; but still he never wished to leave this earth, it was beautiful enough. He expressed, as he always docs, many fine perceptions. I like to hear the lightest thing he says.
“Waldo and I have good meetings, though we stop at all our old places. But my expectations are moderate now; it is his beautiful presence that I prize far more than our intercourse. He has been reading me his new poems, and the other day at the end he asked me how I liked the little subjective twinkle all through.' ******
“Saturday. Dear Richard has been here a day or two, and his common sense and .homely affection are grateful after these fine people with whom I live at sword's points, though for the present turned down: wards. It is well to 'thee' and 'thou' it after talking with angels and geniuses. Richard and I spent the afternoon at Walden and got a great bunch of flowers. A fine thunder-shower gloomed gradually up ​ and turned the lake inky black, but no rain came till sunset.
Sunday. A heavy rain. I must stay at home. I feel sad. Mrs. Ripley was here, but I only saw her a while in the afternoon and spent the day in my room. Sunday I do not give to my duty writing, no indeed. I finished yesterday, after a rest, the article on ballads. Though a patchwork, thing, it has craved time to do it.”
We come now to the period of the famous conversations in which, more fully than in anght else, Margaret may be said to have delivered her message to the women of her time. The novelty of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may be imagined, and also the division of opinion concerning it in those social circles which consider themselves as charged with the guardianship of the taste of the community.
Margaret's attitude in view of this undertaking appears to have been a modest and sensible one. She found herself, in the first place, under the necessity of earning money for her own support and in aid of her family. Her greatest giſt, as she well knew, was in conversation. Her rare eloquence did not much avail her at her desk, and though all that she wrote had the value of thought and of study, it was in living speech alone that her genius made itself entirely felt and appreciated. What more natural than that she should have proposed to make this rare gift available for herself and others? The reasons which she herself gives for undertaking the experiment are so solid and sufficient as to make us blush retrospectively for the merriment in which the thoughtless world sometimes ​ indulged concerning her. Her wish was "to pass in review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavour to place them in due relation to one another in our minds; to systematize thought, and give a precision, and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive." In fine, she hoped to be able to throw some light upon the momentous questions, "What were we born to do, and how shall we do it?"
In looking forward to this effort, she saw one possible obstacle in “ that sort of vanity which wears the garb of modesty," and which, she thinks, may make some women fear “to lay aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art of coterie criticism," and the “delicate disdains of good society,” even to obtain a nearer view of truth itself. “Yet,” she says, as without such generous courage nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many capable of it."
The twofold impression which Margaret made is to be remarked in this matter of the conversations, as elsewhere. Without the fold of her admirers stood carping, unkind critics; within were enthusiastic and grateful friends.
The first meeting of Margaret's Conversation Class was held at Miss Peabody's rooms, in West Street, Boston, on the 6th of November 1839. Twenty-five ladies were present, who showed themselves to be of the elect by their own election of a noble aim. These were all ladies of superior position, gathered by a common interest from very various belongings of creed and persuasion. At this, their first coming together, Margaret prefaced her programme by some remarks on the deficiencies in the education given to women, ​ defects which she thought that later study, aided by the stimulus of mutual endeavour and interchange of thought, might do much to remody. Her opening remarks are as instructive to-day as they were when she uttered them:
"Women are now taught, at school, all that men are. They run over, superficially, even more studies, without being really taught anything. But with this difference: men are called on, from a very early period, to reproduce all that they learn. Their college exercises, their political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes of display. It is to supply this defect that these conversations have been planned.”
Margaret had chosen the Greek Mythology for the subject of her first conversations. Her reasons for this selection are worth remembering:
“It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is serious without being solemn, and without excluding any mode of intellectual action; it is playful as well as deep. It is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the cultivation of a nation. It is also generally known, and associated with all our ideas of the arts."
In considering this statement it is not difficult for us at this day to read, as people say, between the lines. The religious world of Margaret's youth was agitated by, oppositions which rent assunder the heart of Christendom. Margaret wished to lead her pupils beyond 'all discord, into the high and happy unity. Her own nature was both fervent and religious, but she could not accept intolerance either in belief or in dig ​ belief. To study with her friends the 'ethics of an ancient faith, too remote to become the occasion of personal excitement, seemed to her a step in the direction of freer thought and a more unbiassed criticism. The Greek mythology, instinct with the genius of a wonderful people, afforded her the desired theme. With its help she would introduce her pupils to a sphere of serenest contemplation, in which Religion and Beauty had become wedded through immortal types.
Margaret was not able to do this without awakening some orthodox suspicion. This she knew how to allay: for when one of the class demurred at the supposition that a Christian nation could have anything to envy in the religion of an heathen one, Margaret said that she had no desire to go back, and believed we have the elements of a deeper civilization; yet the Christian was in its infancy, the Greek in its maturity, nor could she look on the expression of a great nation's intellect as insignificant. These fables of the gods were the result of the universal sentiments of religion, aspiration, intellectual action, of a people whose political and æsthetic life had become immortal.
Margaret's good hopes were justified by the success of her undertaking. The value of what she had to impart was felt by her class from the first. It was not received in a passive and compliant manner, but with the earnest questioning which she had wished to awaken, and which she was so well able both to promote and to satisfy.
In the first of her conversations ten of the twenty-five persons present took part, and this number continued to increase in later meetings. Some of these ladies had been bred in the ways of liberal thought, ​ some held fast to the formal limits of the old theology. The extremes of bigotry and scepticism were probably not unrepresented among them. From these differences and dissidences Margaret was able to combine the elements of a wider agreement. A common ground of interest was found in the range of topics presented by her, and in her manner of presenting them. The enlargement of a new sympathy was made to modify the intense and narrow interests in which women, as a class, are apt to abide.
Margaret's journal and letters to friends give some accounts of the first meetings. She finds her circle, from the start, devoutly thoughtful, and feels herself, not "a paid Corinne," but a teacher and a guide. The bright minds respond to her appeal, as half-kindled coals glow beneath a strong and sudden' breath. The present, always arid if exclusively dwelt in, is enriched by the treasures of the past, and animated by the great hopes of the future.
Reports from some of Margaret's hearers show us how she appeared to them:—
"All was said with the most captivating address and grace, and with beautiful modesty. The position in which she placed herself with respect to the rest was entirely lady-like and companionable."
Another writer finds in the séance “the charm of a Platonic dialogue," without pretension or pedantry. Margaret, in her chair of leadership, appeared positively beautiful in her intelligent enthusiasm. Even her dress, was glorified by this influence, and is spoken of as sumptuous, although it is known to have been characterized by no display or attempted effect.
In Margaret's plan the personages of the Greek Olympus were considered as types of various aspects of ​ human character. Prometheus became the embodiment of pure reason. Jupiter stood for active, Juno for passive will, the one representing insistence, the other resistance. Minerva pictured the practical power of the intellect. Apollo became the symbol of genius, Bacchus that of geniality. Venus was instinctive womanhood, and also a type of the Beautiful, to the consideration of which four conversations were devoted. In a fifth, Margaret related the story of Cupid and Psyche in a manner which indelibly in- pressed itself upon the minds of her hearers. Other conversations presented Neptune as circumstance, Pluto as the abyss of the undeveloped, Pan as the glow and play of nature, etc. Thus in picturesque guise the great questions of life and of character were passed in review. A fresh and fearless analysis of human conditions showed, as a discovery, the grandeur and beauty of man's spiritual inheritance.
All were cheered and uplifted by this new outlook, sharing for the time and perhaps thenceforth what Emerson calls “the steady elevation of Margaret's aim."
These occasions, so highly prized and enjoyed, sometimes brought to Margaret their penalty in the shape of severe nervous headache. During one of these attacks a friend expressed anxiety lest she should continue to suffer in this way. Margaret replied: "I feel just not such a separation from pain and illness, such a consciousness of true life while suffering most, that pain has no effect but to steal some of my time."
In accordance with the urgent desire of the class the conversations were renewed at the beginning of the following winter, Margaret having in the meantime profited by a season of especial retirement which was not without influence upon her plan of thought and ​ of life. From this interval of religious contemplation she returned to her labours with the feeling of a new power. In opening the first meeting of this second series, on November 22, 1840, Margaret spoke of great changes which had taken place in her way of thinking. These were of so deep and sacred a character that she could only give them a partial expression, which, however, sufficed to touch her hearers deeply. “They all, with glistening eyes, seemed melted into one love." Hearts were kindled by her utterance to one enthusiasm of sympathy which set out of sight the possibility of future estrangement.
In the conversations of this winter (1840–41) the fine arts held a prominent place.
Margaret stated, at the beginning, that the poetry of life would be found in the advance" from objects to law, from the circumference of being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to the centre. This poetry was "the only path of the true soul," life's prose being the deviation from this ideal way. The fine arts she considered a compensation for this prose, which appeared to her inevitable. The beauties which life could not embody might be expressed in stone, upon canvas, or in music and verse. She did not permit the search for the beautiful to transcend the limits of our social and personal duties. The pursuit of æsthetic pleasure might, lead us to fail in attaining the higher beauty. A poetic life was not the life of a dilettante.
Of sculpture and music she had much to say, placing them above all other arts. Painting appeared to her inferior to sculpture, because it represented a greater variety of objects, and thus involved more prose. Several conversations were, nevertheless, devoted to ​ Painting, and the conclusion was reached that colour was consecrate to passion and sculpture to thought; while yet in some sculptures, like the Niobe, for example, feeling was recognized, but on a grand, universal scale.
The question “What is life?” occupied one meeting and brought out many differences of view, which Margaret at last took up into a higher' ground, beginning with God as the eternally loving and creating life, and recognizing in human nature a kindred power of love and of creation, through the exercise of which we also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and, leaving behind us ignorance and sin, become god-like in the ability to give, as well as to receive, happiness.
With the work of this winter was combined a series of evening meetings, five in number, to which gentlemen were admitted. Emerson was present at the second of these, and reports it as having been somewhat encumbered by the headiness or incapacity of the men," who, as he observes, had not been trained in Margaret's method.
Another chronicler, for whose truth Emerson vouches, speaks of the plan of these five evenings as a very noble one. They were spoken of as Evenings of Mythology, and Margaret, in devising them, had relied upon the more thorough classical education of the gentlemen to supplement her own knowledge, acquired in a legs systematic way. In this hope she was disappointed. The new-comers did not bring with them an erudition equal to hers, nor yet any helpful suggestion of ideas. The friend whom we now quote is so much impressed by Margaret's power as to say: "I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in, her presence. She distances all who talk with her." Even Emerson served ​ only to display her powers, his uncompromising idealism seeming narrow and hard when contrasted with her glowing realism. “She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Emerson does, but by comprehension, and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to hope and faith."
Margaret's classes continued through six winters. The number of those present varied from twenty-five to thirty. In 1841-42 the general subject was Ethics, under which head the Family, the School, the Church, Society, and Literature were all discussed, and with a special reference to "the influences on woman." In the printer next after this, we have notes of the following topics: Is the Ideal first or last, Divination or Experience? Persons who never awake to Life in this World; Mistakes; Faith; Creeds; Woman; Demonology; Influence; Roman Catholicism; The Ideal.
In the season of 1813-44, a number of themes were considered under the general head of Education. Among these were Culture, Ignorance, Vanity, Prudence, and Patience. These happy labours came to an end in April of the year 1844, when Margaret parted from her class with many'tokens of their love and gratitude. After speaking of affectionate words, beautiful gifts, and rare flowers, she says:—
How noble has been my experience of such relations now for six years, and with so many and so various minds! Life is worth living, is it not?”
Margaret had answered Mr. Mallock's question before it was asked. ​ Margaret's summer on the Lakes was the summer of 1843. Her first records of it date from Niagara, and give her impressions of the wonderful scene, in which the rapids impressed her more than the cataract itself, whether seen from the American or from the Canadian side.
“Slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered me. A choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, my blood ran rippling to my fingers’ends. This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me."
At Buffalo she embarked for a voyage on Lake Erie. Making a brief stop at Cleveland, the steamer passed on to the St. Clair River. The sight of an encampment of Indians on its bank gave Margaret her first feeling of what was then “ the West."
“The people in the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had brought with them their cautious manners, their love of pole. mics. It grieved me to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow, doctrinal way on these free waters. But that will soon cease. There is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine.
The following passage will show is the spirit which Margaret carried into these new scenes:—
“I came to the West prepared for the distaste I must experience at its mushroom growth, I know that where "Go ahead!' is the motto, the village ​ cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives and the gradations of experience involuntarily give.... The march of peaceful, is scarcely less wanton than that of war-like invention. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness.to distrust or defame. On the contrary, I trust by reverent faith to woo the mighty meaning of the scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos.”
Charles Dickens's American Notes may have been in Margaret's mind when she penned these lines, and this faith in her may have been quickened by the perusal of the pages in which he showed mostly how not to see a new country
Reaching Chicago, she had her first glimpse of the prairie, which at first only suggested to her "the very desolation of dulness."
“After sweeping over the vast monotony of the Lakes, to come to this monotony of land, with all around a limitless horizon—to walk and walk, but never climb! How the eye greeted the approach of a sail or the smoke of a steam-boat; it seemed that anything so animated must come from a better land, where mountains give religion to the scene. But after I had ridden'out and seen the flowers, and observed the sun set with that calmness seen only in the prairies, and the cattle winding slowly to their homes in the 'island groves, most peaceful of sights, I began to love, because I began to know, the scene, and shrank no longer from the encircling vastness."
Here followed an excursion of three weeks in a ​ strong waggon drawn by a stalwart pair of horses, and supplied with all that could be needed, as the journey was through Rock River valley, beyond the regions of trade and barter. Margaret speaks of " a guide cqually admirable as marshal and companion.” This was none other than a younger brother of James Free- man Clarke, William Hull Clarke by name, a man who then and thereafter made Chicago his home, and who lived and died an honoured and respected citizen. This journey with Margarct, in which his, own sister was of the party, always remained one of the poetic recollections of his early life. He had suffered much from untoward circumstances, and was beginning to lose the elasticity of youth under the burden of his dissourageinents., Margaret's sympathy divined the depth and delicacy of William Clarke's character, and her unconquerable spirit lifted him from the abyss of despondency into a cheerfulness and courage which nevermore forsook him.
Returning to Chicago, Margaret once more embarked for lake travel, and her next chapter describes Wisconsin, at that time "a Territory, not yet a State; still nearer the acorn than we were."
Milwaukee was then a small town, promising, as she says, "to be, some time, a fine one." The yellow brick, of which she found it mostly built, pleased her, as it has pleased the world since. No railroads with mysterious initials served, in those days, the needs of that vast region. The steamer, arriving once in twenty four hours, brought mails and travellers, and a little stir of novelty and excitement. Going a day's journey into the adjacent country, Margaret and her companions found such accommodation as is here mentioned:—
“The little log-cabin where we slept, with its flower​ garden in front, disturbed the scene no more than a lock upon a fair cheek. The hospitality of that house I may well call princely; it was the boundless hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a palace for the guest, does him still greater service by the freedom of its bounty to the very last drop of its powers."
In the Western immigration Milwaukee was already a station of importance. “Here, on the pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old legendary lore, of modern wonder, they have already plauted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence that rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian that the very oak-tree will not know them apart, will not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a Winnebago oak.”
Margaret reached the island of Mackinaw late in August, and found it occupied by a large representation from the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes, who came there to receive their yearly pension from the Government at Washington. Arriving at night, the steamer fired some rockets, and Margaret heard with a sinking heart the wild cries of the excited Indians, and the pants and snorts of the departing steamer. She walked "with a stranger to a strange hotel,” her late companions having gone on with the boat. She found such rest as she could in tho room which served at once as sitting and as dining room. The early morning revealed to her the beauties of the spot, and with these the features of her new neighbours.
"With the first rosy streak I was out among my Indian neighbours, whose lodges honeycombed the ​ beautiful beach. They were already on the alert, the children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge, the women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on their pipes. I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at anyone's fancying it a melody. But now, when I heard the notes in their true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison with the sweetest bird-song; and this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate. The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no more thinks of playing the flute than one of the settled-down members of our society would of choosing the purple light of love as dye-stuff for a surtout.”
Of the island itself Margaret writes:—
"It was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these wild forms adorned it, as looking 80 at home in it."
The Indian encampment was constantly enlarged by new arrivals, which Margaret watched from the window of her boarding-house.
“I was never tired of seeing the canoes come in, and the new arrivals set up their temporary dwellings. The women ran to set up the tent-poles and spread the mats on the ground. The men brought the chests, kettles, and so on. The mats were then laid on the outside, the cedar boughs strewed on the ground, the blanket hung up for a door, and all was completed in less than twenty minutes. Then they began to prepare the night meal, and to learn of their neighbours the news of the day,"
In these days, in which a spasm of conscience touches the American heart with a sense of the wrongs ​ done to the Indian, Margaret's impressions concerning our aborigines acquire a fresh interest and value. She found them in occupation of many places from which. they have since been driven by what is called the march of civilization. We may rather call it a barbarism better armed and informed than their own. She also found among their white neighbours the instinctive dislike and repulsion, which are familiar to us. Here, in Mackinaw, Margaret could not consort with them without drawing upon herself the censure of her white acquaintances.
“Indeed, I wonder why they did not give me up, as they certainly looked upon me with great distaste for it. 'Get you gone, you Indian dog!' was the felt, if not the breathed, cxpression towards the hapless owners of the soil; all their claims, all their sorrows, quite forgot in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices the whites have taught them."
Missionary zeal seems to have been at a standstill just at this time, and the hopelessness of converting those heathen to Christianity was held to excuse further effort to that end. Margaret says:—
“Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence, have been civilized and made a valuable ingredient in the new State, I will not say; but this we are sure of, the French Catholics did not harm them, nor disturb their minds merely to corrupt them. The French they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle and the college, with their niggard conceptions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experiment.
Margaret naturally felt an especial interest in observing the character and condition of the Indian women. She says, truly enough, “The observations ​ of women upon the position of women are always more valuable than those of men."
Unhappily, this is a theme in regard to which many women make no observation of their own, and only repeat what they have heard from men.
But of Margaret's impressions a few sentences will give us some idea:—
“With the women I held much communication by signs. They are almost invariably coarse and ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with, a peculiarly awkward gait, and forms bent by burdens. This gait, so different from the steady and noble step of the men, marks the inferior position they occupy."
Margaret quotes from Mrs. Schoolcraft and from Mrs. Grant passages which assert that this inferiority does not run 'through the whole life of an Indian woman, and that the drudgery and weary service imposed upon them by the men are compensated by the esteem and honour in which they are held. Still, she says:—
“Notwithstanding the homage paid to women, and the consequence allowed them in some cases, it is impossible to look upon the Indian women without feeling that they do occupy a lower place than women among the nations of European civilization. Their decorum and delicacy are striking, and show that, where these are native to the mind, no habits of life make any difference. Their' whole gesture is timid, yet self-possessed. They used to crowd round me to inspect little things I had to show them, but never press near; on the contrary, would reprove and keep off the children, Anything they took from my hand was held with care, then shut or folded, and returned with an air of lady-like precision." ​ And of the aspect of the Indian question in her day Margaret writes:—
“I have no hope of liberalizing the missionary, of humanizing the sharks of trade, of infusing the conscientious drops into the flinty bosom of policy, of saving the Indian from immediate degradation and speedy death. Yet, let every man look to himself how far this blood shall be required at his hands. Let the missionary, instead of preaching to the Indian, preach to the trader who ruins him, of the dreadful account which will be demanded of the followers of Cain. Let every legislator take the subject to heart, and, if he cannot undo the effects of past sin, try for that clear view and right sense that may save us from sinning still more deeply."
Margaret's days in Mackinaw were nine in number, She went thence by steamer to the Sault Ste. Marie. On the way thither, the steamer being detained by a fog, its captain took her in a small boat to visit the island of St. Joseph, and, on it, the remains of an old English fort. Her comments upon this visit, in itself of little interest, are worth quoting:—
“The captain," though he had been on this trip hundreds of times, had never seen this spot, and never would but for this fog and his desire to entertain me. He presented a striking instance how men, for the sake of getting a living, forget to live. This is a common fault among the active men, the truly living, who could tell what life is. It should not be so, Literature should not be left to the mere literati, eloquence to the mere orator. Every Cæsar should be able to write his own Commentary. We want a more equal more thorough, more harmonious development, and there is nothing to hinder the men of this country ​ from it, except their own supineness or sórdid views."
At the Sault Margaret found many natural beauties, and enjoyed, among other things, the descent of the rapids in a canoe. Returning to Mackinaw, she was joined by her friends, and has further chronicled only her safe return to Buffalo.
The book which preserves the record of this journey saw the light at the end of the next year's summer. Margaret ends it with a little Envoi to the reader. But for us, the best envoi will be her own description of the last days of its composition:—
“Every day I rose and attended to the many little calls which are always on me, and which have been more of late... Then, about eleven, I would sit down to write at my window, close to which is the apple-tree, lately full of blossoms, and now of yellow-birds.
"Opposite me was Del Sarto's Madouna; behind me, Silenus, holding in his arms the infant Pan. I felt very content with my pen, my daily bouquet, and my yellow-birds. About five I would go out and walk till dark; then would arrive my proofs, like crabbed old guardians, coming to tea every night. So passed each day. The 23rd of May, my birthday, about one d'clock, I wrote the last line of my little book. Then I went to Mount Auburn, and walked gently among the graves."
And here ends what we have to say about Margaret's New England life. From its close shelter and intense relations she was now to pass into scenes more varied and labours of a more general scope. She had become cruelly worn by her fatigues in teaching and in writing, and in the year 1844 was induced, by liberal offers, to accept a permanent position on the staff of the New ​ York Tribune, then in the hands of Messrs. Greeley and McElrath. This step involved the breaking of home ties, and the dispersion of the household which Margaret had done so much to sustain and to keep together. Margaret's brothers had now left college, and had betaken themselves to the pursuits chosen as their life work. Her younger sister was married, and it was decided that her mother should divide her time among these members of her family, leaving Margaret free to begin , new season of work under circumstances which promised her greater freedom from care and from the necessity of unremitting exertion.
Layout 2