My actual life is yet much clogged and impeded, but I have at last got me an oratory; where I can retire and pray.  With your letter, vanished a last regret.  You did not act or think unworthily.  It is enough.  As to the cessation of our confidential inter course, circumstances must have accomplished that long ago; my only grief was that you should do it with your own free will, and for reasons that I thought unworthy.  I long to honor you, to be honored by you.  Now we will have free and noble thoughts of one another, and all that is best of our friendship shall remain.’

II.

CONVERSATION.—­SOCIAL INTERCOURSE.

  “Be thou what thou singly art, and personate only thyself. 
  Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature, and live but one
  man.”

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

  “Ah, how mournful look in letters
  Black on white, the words to me,
  Which from lips of thine cast fetters
  Bound the heart, or set It free.”

  GOETHE, translated by J.S.  Dwight.

  “Zu erfinden, zu beschliessen,
  Bleibe, Kunstler, oft allein;
  Deines Wirkes zu geniessen
  Eile freudig zum Verein,
  Hier im Ganzen schau erfahre
  Deines eignes Lebenslauf,
  Und die Thaten mancher Jahre
  Gehn dir in dem Nachbar auf.”

  GOETHE, Artist’s Song.

* * * * *

When I first knew Margaret, she was much in society, but in a circle of her own,—­of friends whom she had drawn around her, and whom she entertained and delighted by her exuberant talent.  Of those belonging to this circle, let me recall a few characters.

The young girls whom Margaret had attracted were very different from herself, and from each other.  From Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Brookline, they came to her, and the little circle of companions would meet now in one house, and now in another, of these pleasant towns.  There was A——­, a dark-haired, black-eyed beauty, with clear olive complexion, through which the rich blood flowed.  She was bright, beauteous, and cold as a gem,—­with clear perceptions of character within a narrow limit,—­enjoying society, and always surrounded with admirers, of whose feelings she seemed quite unconscious.  While they were just ready to die of unrequited love, she stood untouched as Artemis, scarcely aware of the deadly arrows which had flown from her silver bow.  I remember that Margaret said, that Tennyson’s little poem of the skipping-rope must have been written for her,—­where the lover expressing his admiration of the fairy-like motion and the light grace of the lady, is told—­

  “Get off, or else my skipping-rope
  Will hit you in the eye.”

Then there was B——­, the reverse of all this,—­tender, susceptible, with soft blue eyes, and mouth of trembling sensibility.  How sweet were her songs, in which a single strain of pure feeling ever reminded me of those angel symphonies,—­