“I said she had no pretensions to beauty.  Yet she was not plain.  She escaped the reproach of positive plainness, by her blond and abundant hair, by her excellent teeth, by her sparkling, dancing, busy eyes, which, though usually half closed from near-sightedness, shot piercing glances at those with whom she conversed, and, most of all, by the very peculiar and graceful carriage of her head and neck, which all who knew her will remember as the most characteristic trait in her personal appearance.

“In conversation she had already, at that early age, begun to distinguish herself, and made much the same impression in society that she did in after years, with the exception, that, as she advanced in life, she learned to control that tendency to sarcasm,—­that disposition to ’quiz,’—­which was then somewhat excessive.  It frightened shy young people from her presence, and made her, for a while, notoriously unpopular with the ladies of her circle.

“This propensity seems to have been aggravated by unpleasant encounters in her school-girl experience.  She was a pupil of Dr. Park, of Boston, whose seminary for young ladies was then at the height of a well-earned reputation, and whose faithful and successful endeavors in this department have done much to raise the standard of female education among us.  Here the inexperienced country girl was exposed to petty persecutions from the dashing misses of the city, who pleased themselves with giggling criticisms not inaudible, nor meant to be inaudible to their subject, on whatsoever in dress and manner fell short of the city mark.  Then it was first revealed to her young heart, and laid up for future reflection, how large a place in woman’s world is given to fashion and frivolity.  Her mind reacted on these attacks with indiscriminate sarcasms.  She made herself formidable by her wit, and, of course, unpopular.  A root of bitterness sprung up in her which years of moral culture were needed to eradicate.

“Partly to evade the temporary unpopularity into which she had fallen, and partly to pursue her studies secure from those social avocations which were found unavoidable in the vicinity of Cambridge and Boston, in 1824 or 5 she was sent to Groton, where she remained two years in quiet seclusion.

“On her return to Cambridge, in 1826, I renewed my acquaintance, and an intimacy was then formed, which continued until her death.  The next seven years, which were spent in Cambridge, were years of steady growth, with little variety of incident, and little that was noteworthy of outward experience, but with great intensity of the inner life.  It was with her, as with most young women, and with most young men, too, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, a period of preponderating sentimentality, a period of romance and of dreams, of yearning and of passion.  She pursued at this time, I think, no systematic study, but she read with the heart, and was learning more from social experience than from books.