The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-04-28

friends to set their faces like flint
against obstacles to success and to
puSh on like her toward a definite goal.
Without money and in her youth eX-
tremely unprepO5sessing in appearance,
she nevertheless by sheer force of per-
sOnal magnetism Influenced or directed
the thought of her day.
In his Fables for Critics Lowell,
who felt his budding genius unappre-
ciated by this versatile woman, refers
quiZZically- to her whimsical seff-eS-
TEEN in the following lines:
For a woman must surely see well. if
she try,
The whole of whose beings a capital
Emerson, at first repealed by her I'M
pleasant voice, promptly admitted that
soon her wit had effaced the impress
sion of her personal unattractivenes SIS,
and the eyes, which were so plain at
first, swan with fun and droIeries,
and the very tides of jos and super
abundant life. Her satire was
only the paStime and necessity of her
talent Her plane Of character rose con-
soanitly in my estimation, disclosing
many moods and powers in successive
platforms or terraces, each above
| each. Horace Greeley, while admiring
I her epigramnatic terSenesS and liter
airy finish, nevertheless felt predeter-
mined not to like her, and avoided her
even after he had invited her into his
own household, but he soon acknowl-
| edged that her irresistible individual
/ ity had vanquished his prejudice. Car
| lyle, the cross grained, wrote to Emer-
son of her books as ''undeniable utter
ances of a truly heroic mind, altogether
/ unique so fer as / know, among the
writing women of this generation, rare
enough, too, God knows, among the
writing men, Honor TO Mar
garet, ard more and more good speed
| TO her." Poe considered her literary
style the best that he knew; and it was
/ Margaret Fuller who introduced Robert
/ Browning TO the enthusiasm Of Ameri-
/ can readers. Although Emerson, Clarke,
! Claiming, Higginson and Harriet
/ BeeCher Stowe have written her bio
! graphy, after all her trueSt biography
/ is yet to be compiled from the diaries,
/ letters and memoranda of the most dis
! tinguished persons of her day, their
! scattered sentence testifying to the
hsensia of personal Uplift, stimulus or il
/ Elimination exercised throughout her
/ concentrated life.
To her father, Timothy Fuller, a
/ scholarly but impecunious lawyer. Mar
/ garet was indebted for the broad de-
velopment of her precOciOUs powers,
which he expanded prematurely at the
! expense of her health. Determined that
Margaret, his oldest child, should en-
/ joy the same educational privileges as
/ her brothers, he decided to give her
1 himself the advantages of the college
! course then denied to women. To this
! end he made great personal sacrifices,
! teaching the child after the exhaustion
I of his days work and never realizing
/ that this late overtenS-On was sapping
/ the nervous strength of the little g.
! year-old. Soon nightmare and Sleep
/ walking sounded their unavailing
warming and it is therefore not sur
prising to learn that a few years later
/ the overtaxed child-life lay lowering
! betweer life ard death. The stern, re-
morseful father, realizing at last the
slender thread from which her life was
( suspended, came to her bedside and
4 said: My dear, y have been thinking
| of you in the night and l cannot re-
member that you have any faults. You
have defects, of course, as all mortals
have, but l do not know that you have
a single fault"
The student win readily appreciate
! that the abnormal child mind was
( there, and would have ultimately as
serted itself without parental forcing,
when he learns that Margaret Fuller
/ read Latin at before she could read
English; that she wrote a Latin poem
at s, read Tasso and AriCtsto in the or
| iginal at 10 and in three months mas
tered the German language so that she
could read with ease Korner, Richter
Schiller and Goethe's Faust" and
'Iphigenia." Greek and music and a
/ devOufng love of reading filed in the
/ interstiCes. Shakespeare, Cervantes and
/! MOliere were her fayorites before she
was TO- and in her teens she supple
mented them with exhaustive study of
| Nine de Stael. EpictetuS. Milton. Ra-
cine. the CaStillian ballads and the ell
/ der Italian poets, Berni, Pulci and Pol
titan. Delving thus into the deepest
thought of many natiOnalities. she en-
riched her English writing, expressed
4, herself with flexibility and felicity. and
become the acknowledged best trans
/ later of her day.
While Margaret Fuller was recover
| ing from her critical illness her fathe.
suddenly sickened with cholera and
| died Relinquishins at once a long