friend Mr. ——­, sitting with me.  She looked at him attentively, and hardly seemed to know him.  In the afternoon, he invited her to go with him to Cambridge.  The next, day she said to me, ’You fancy that you know—.  It is too absurd; you have never seen him.  When I found him here, sitting like a statue, I was alarmed, and thought him ill.  You sit with courteous, unconfiding smile, and suppose him to be a mere man of talent.  He is so with you.  But the moment I was alone with him, he was another creature; his manner, so glassy and elaborate before, was full of soul, and the tones of his voice entirely different.’  And I have no doubt that she saw expressions, heard tones, and received thoughts from her companions, which no one else ever saw or heard from the same parties, and that her praise of her friends, which seemed exaggerated, was her exact impression.  We were all obliged to recall Margaret’s testimony, when we found we were sad blockheads to other people.

I find among her letters many proofs of this power of disposing equally the hardest and the most sensitive people to open their hearts, on very short acquaintance.  Any casual rencontre, in a walk, in a steamboat, at a concert, became the prelude to unwonted confidences.

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1843.—­’I believe I told you about one new man, a Philistine, at Brook Farm.  He reproved me, as such people are wont, for my little faith.  At the end of the first meeting in the hall, he seemed to me perfectly hampered in his old ways and technics, and I thought he would not open his mind to the views of others for years, if ever.  After I wrote, we had a second meeting, by request, on personal relations; at the end of which, he came to me, and expressed delight, and a feeling of new light and life, in terms whose modesty might have done honor to the wisest.’

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’This afternoon we met Mr. ——­ in his wood; and he sat down and told us the story of his life, his courtship, and painted the portraits of his father and mother with most amusing naivete.  He says:—­“How do you think I offered myself?  I never had told Miss ——­ that I loved her; never told her she was handsome; and I went to her, and said, ’Miss ——­, I’ve come to offer myself; but first I’ll give you my character.  I’m very poor; you’ll have to work:  I’m very cross and irascible; you’ll have everything to bear:  and I’ve liked many other pretty girls.  Now what do you say?’ and she said, ’I’ll have you:’  and she’s been everything to me.”

’"My mother was a Calvinist, very strict, but she was always reading ‘Abelard and Eloisa,’ and crying over it.  At sixteen I said to her:  ’Mother, you’ve brought me up well; you’ve kept me strict.  Why don’t I feel that regeneration they talk of? why an’t I one of the elect?’ And she talked to me about the potter using his clay as he pleased; and I said:  ’Mother, God is not a potter:  He’s a perfect being; and he can’t treat the vessels he makes, anyhow, but with perfect justice, or he’s no God.  So I’m no Calvinist.’"’

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