Again, in 1832:—­

’Conversation is my natural element.  I need to be called out, and never think alone, without imagining some companion.  Whether this be nature or the force of circumstances, I know not; it is my habit, and bespeaks a second-rate mind.’

I am disposed to think, much as she excelled in general conversation, that her greatest mental efforts were made in intercourse with individuals.  All her friends will unite in the testimony, that whatever they may have known of wit and eloquence in others, they have never seen one who, like her, by the conversation of an hour or two, could not merely entertain and inform, but make an epoch in one’s life.  We all dated back to this or that conversation with Margaret, in which we took a complete survey of great subjects, came to some clear view of a difficult question, saw our way open before us to a higher plane of life, and were led to some definite resolution or purpose which has had a bearing on all our subsequent career.  For Margaret’s conversation turned, at such times, to life,—­its destiny, its duty, its prospect.  With comprehensive glance she would survey the past, and sum up, in a few brief words, its results; she would then turn to the future, and, by a natural order, sweep through its chances and alternatives,—­passing ever into a more earnest tone, into a more serious view,—­and then bring all to bear on the present, till its duties grew plain, and its opportunities attractive.  Happy he who can lift conversation, without loss of its cheer, to the highest uses!  Happy he who has such a gift as this, an original faculty thus accomplished by culture, by which he can make our common life rich, significant and fair,—­can give to the hour a beauty and brilliancy which shall make it eminent long after, amid dreary years of level routine!

I recall many such conversations.  I remember one summer’s day, in which we rode together, on horseback, from Cambridge to Newton,—­a day all of a piece, in which my eloquent companion helped me to understand my past life, and her own,—­a day which left me in that calm repose which comes to us, when we clearly apprehend what we ought to do, and are ready to attempt it.  I recall other mornings when, not having seen her for a week or two, I would walk with her for hours, beneath the lindens or in the garden, while we related to each other what we had read in our German studies.  And I always left her astonished at the progress of her mind, at the amount of new thoughts she had garnered, and filled with a new sense of the worth of knowledge, and the value of life.

There were other conversations, in which, impelled by the strong instinct of utterance, she would state, in words of tragical pathos, her own needs and longings,—­her demands on life,—­the struggles of mind, and of heart,—­her conflicts with self, with nature, with the limitations of circumstances, with insoluble problems, with an unattainable desire.  She seemed to feel relief from the expression of these thoughts, though she gained no light from her companion.  Many such conversations I remember, while she lived in Cambridge, and one such in Groton; but afterwards, when I met her, I found her mind risen above these struggles, and in a self-possessed state which needed no such outlet for its ferment.