a cold autumn day.  And, even then, passed into my thought a beam from its true sun, from its native sphere, which has never since departed from me.  I remembered how, a little child.  I had stopped myself one day on the stairs, and asked, how came I here?  How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller?  What does it mean?  What shall I do about it?  I remembered all the times and ways in which the same thought had returned.  I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space, and human nature; but I saw, also, that it MUST do it,—­that it must make all this false true,—­and sow new and immortal plants in the garden of God, before it could return again.  I saw there was no self; that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance; that it was only because I thought self real that I suffered; that I had only to live in the idea of the ALL, and all was mine.  This truth came to me, and I received it unhesitatingly; so that I was for that hour taken up into God.  In that true ray most of the relations of earth seemed mere films, phenomena. * *

’My earthly pain at not being recognized never went deep after this hour.  I had passed the extreme of passionate sorrow; and all check, all failure, all ignorance, have seemed temporary ever since.  When I consider that this will be nine years ago next November, I am astonished that I have not gone on faster since; that I am not yet sufficiently purified to be taken back to God.  Still, I did but touch then on the only haven of Insight.  You know what I would say.  I was dwelling in the ineffable, the unutterable.  But the sun of earth set, and it grew dark around; the moment came for me to go.  I had never been accustomed to walk alone at night, for my father was very strict on that subject, but now I had not one fear.  When I came back, the moon was riding clear above the houses.  I went into the churchyard, and there offered a prayer as holy, if not as deeply true, as any I know now; a prayer, which perhaps took form as the guardian angel of my life.  If that word in the Bible, Selah, means what gray-headed old men think it does, when they read aloud, it should be written here,—­Selah!

’Since that day, I have never more been completely engaged in self; but the statue has been emerging, though slowly, from the block.  Others may not see the promise even of its pure symmetry, but I do, and am learning to be patient.  I shall be all human yet; and then the hour will come to leave humanity, and live always in the pure ray.

’This first day I was taken up; but the second time the Holy Ghost descended like a dove.  I went out again for a day, but this time it was spring.  I walked in the fields of Groton.  But I will not describe that day; its music still sounds too sweetly near.  Suffice it to say, I gave it all into our Father’s hands, and was no stern-weaving Fate more, but one elected to obey, and love, and at last know.  Since then I have suffered, as I must suffer again, till all the complex be made simple, but I have never been in discord with the grand harmony.’

GROTON AND PROVIDENCE.