The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1901-06-01

w. ACK in the eighties summer
people tarrying at the old
Surf House, Fire island, had
two objects of interest point
ed out to them in the neigh
borhood. In early morning
after storm they were told to go down
to the great lighthouse and see the dead
birds that lay all around the base
maddened mites that had dashed their
little brains out against the heavy glass
which covered the revolving lamps. On
pleasant mornings when the air was
good for a long walk the summer people
went northward along the beach four
miles to look at the black nasts of
ship which thrust themselves up
through the ever foaming breakers
sl1eletonlike and tragic, like fingers
pointing slxyward the souls Of those
who went down in that ship, the Eliza
beth, bound from Leghorn, Italy, to
New York.
She was wrecked in a terrific storm
July IS, 1850, and in it, so old Fire is
landers told the summer guests, perish
ed Warehouses Margaret Fuller Ossoli,
her Italian husband and their beautiful
boy Angelo They told us-for I was
one of the fitting summer people-that
Margaret Fuller could have been saved
or her husband could have been saved
or the little boy. There was a chance
for one more, but only one, among the
few that escaped from the ship with
their lives. Well. Margaret would not
go and leave the marquis, he refused to
survive while she persisted; so the
whole devoted family went to death to-
gether.
Years moved on. and little by little
the melancholy masts crumbled away
I don't know just when they finally dis
appeared, but when I revisited Fire is
land in 1897 they were no longer visible.
But the sandy, mosquito haunted,
scrub woods covered shore opposite the
scene of the tragedy was now called
Point o Woods, and it held the Begin
nings of a thriving summer colony,
made up of aesthetic and intellectual in
dividuals devoted to the -highah Gull
chah some giving 1t out, others abb
sorbing it. One of the prominent sum-
mer residents was and is that distln-
guished lady, Mrs. Lille Devereux
Blake of New York. She it is who is a
the head of the movement to erect at
Point O. Woods, opposite the spot where
the Elizabeth was wrecked memorial
to Margaret Fuller. Funds viii be rails
ed by subscription, and the enterprise
will be in charge of the Point o. Woods
Village Improvement society. of which
Mrs. Blake is president. The monu-
ment viii consist of an artistic pavilion
facing the breakers and viii bear
suitable inscription
1t is time there should be materialized
some sort of remembrance of one of the
greatest women America has produced. .
In all the continent there is to this day
not a stone to mark her memory except
a small tablet in church at Cam
But that she was cut Off at 40 Mar
garet Fullers name would have stood
in literature with the names of George
sand and George Eliot. AS it is, her
book Woman In the Nineteenth Cen
tury., is the ablest work on the rights
and Intellectual development Of the
feminine sex ever penned this side Of
the Atlantic. It is almost out of print
now more's the pity, for it is fit to
stand alongside Mary Wollstonecraft's
Flights Of Woman" and John Stuart
Mills Liberty" 1t is an inspira ton 10
all women who have anything in them
to be inspired
The gifted New England woman seer
and poet was born in 1910. A wave of
great souls washed all around the earth
in 1S09-1o and left upon the shore Of life
Gladstone. Darwin and Leo XIII among
others in Europe Here Lincoln. Oliver
Wendell Holmes and Margaret Fuller
were some of those it gave US.
Like many another genius and some
who are not geniuses, Margaret was
born with expensive tastes and very
poor She was so extraordinarily gifted
in mind that al the age of 6 she read
Latin, and a she was wont to slip off
alone and read Shakespeare and other
heavy litera ture hours at a time She
was not altogether a pleasant child to
live with in those days, being frealSish
and subject to long fits Of what in ordi-
nary persons are known as the dumps
but in geniuses is called melancholy"