When she came to Concord, she was already rich in friends, rich in experiences, rich in culture.  She was well read in French, Italian, and German literature.  She had learned Latin and a little Greek.  But her English reading was incomplete; and, while she knew Moliere, and Rousseau, and any quantity of French letters, memoirs, and novels, and was a dear student of Dante and Petrarca, and knew German books more cordially than any other person, she was little read in Shakspeare; and I believe I had the pleasure of making her acquainted with Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Herbert, Chapman, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with Bacon, and Sir Thomas Browne.  I was seven years her senior, and had the habit of idle reading in old English books, and, though riot much versed, yet quite enough to give me the right to lead her.  She fancied that her sympathy and taste had led her to an exclusive culture of southern European books.

She had large experiences.  She had been a precocious scholar at Dr. Park’s school; good in mathematics and in languages.  Her father, whom she had recently lost had been proud of her, and petted her.  She had drawn at Cambridge, numbers of lively young men about her.  She had had a circle of young women who were devoted to her, and who described her as “a wonder of intellect, who had yet no religion.”  She had drawn to her every superior young man or young woman she had met, and whole romances of life and love had been confided, counselled, thought, and lived through, in her cognizance and sympathy.

These histories are rapid, so that she had already beheld many times the youth, meridian, and old age of passion.  She had, besides, selected, from so many, a few eminent companions, and already felt that she was not likely to see anything more beautiful than her beauties, anything more powerful and generous than her youths.  She had found out her own secret by early comparison, and knew what power to draw confidence, what necessity to lead in every circle, belonged of right to her.  Her powers were maturing, and nobler sentiments were subliming the first heats and rude experiments.  She had outward calmness and dignity.  She had come to the ambition to be filled with all nobleness.

Of the friends who surrounded her, at that period, it is neither easy to speak, nor not to speak.  A life of Margaret is impossible without them, she mixed herself so inextricably with her company; and when this little book was first projected, it was proposed to entitle it “Margaret and her Friends,” the subject persisting to offer itself in the plural number.  But, on trial, that form proved impossible, and it only remained that the narrative, like a Greek tragedy, should suppose the chorus always on the stage, sympathizing and sympathized with by the queen of the scene.

Yet I remember these persons as a fair, commanding troop, every one of them adorned by some splendor of beauty, of grace, of talent, or of character, and comprising in their band persons who have since disclosed sterling worth and elevated aims in the conduct of life.