Yet, as this reserve was superficial, and rather ignorance than arrogance, it produced no deep dislike.  Besides, the girls supposed me really superior to themselves, and did not hate me for feeling it, but neither did they like me, nor wish to have me with them.  Indeed, I had gradually given up all such wishes myself; for they seemed to me rude, tiresome, and childish, as I did to them dull and strange.  This experience had been earlier, before I was admitted to any real friendship; but now that I had been lifted into the life of mature years, and into just that atmosphere of European life to which I had before been tending, the thought of sending me to school filled me with disgust.

’Yet what could I tell my father of such feelings?  I resisted all I could, but in vain.  He had no faith in medical aid generally, and justly saw that this was no occasion for its use.  He thought I needed change of scene, and to be roused to activity by other children.  “I have kept you at home,” he said, “because I took such pleasure in teaching you myself, and besides I knew that you would learn faster with one who is so desirous to aid you.  But you will learn fast enough wherever you are, and you ought to be more with others of your own age.  I shall soon hear that you are better, I trust."’

SCHOOL-LIFE.

The school to which Margaret was sent was that of the Misses Prescott, in Groton, Massachusetts.  And her experience there has been described with touching truthfulness by herself, in the story of “Mariana."[A]

’At first her school-mates were captivated with her ways; her love of wild dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and of wit.  She was always new, always surprising, and, for a time, charming.

’But after a while, they tired of her.  She could never be depended on to join in their plans, yet she expected them, to follow out hers with their whole strength.  She was very loving, even infatuated in her own affections, and exacted from those who had professed any love for her the devotion she was willing to bestow.

’Yet there was a vein of haughty caprice in her character, and a love of solitude, which made her at times wish to retire apart, and at these times she would expect to be entirely understood, and let alone, yet to be welcomed back when she returned.  She did not thwart others in their humors, but she never doubted of great indulgence from them.

’Some singular habits she had, which, when new, charmed, but, after acquaintance, displeased her companions.  She had by nature the same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East.  Like them she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action.  Pausing, she would declaim, verses of others, or her own, or act many parts, with strange catchwords and burdens,