her religiousness.  By power to quicken other minds, she showed how living was her own.  Yet more near were we brought by common attraction toward a youthful visitor in our circle, the untouched freshness of whose beauty was but the transparent garb of a serene, confiding, and harmonious soul, and whose polished grace, at once modest and naive, sportive and sweet, fulfilled the charm of innate goodness of heart.  Susceptible in temperament, anticipating with ardent fancy the lot of a lovely and refined woman, and morbidly exaggerating her own slight personal defects, Margaret seemed to long, as it were, to transfuse with her force this nymph-like form, and to fill her to glowing with her own lyric fire.  No drop of envy tainted the sisterly love, with which she sought by genial sympathy thus to live in another’s experience, to be her guardian-angel, to shield her from contact with the unworthy, to rouse each generous impulse, to invigorate thought by truth incarnate in beauty, and with unfelt ministry to weave bright threads in her web of fate.  Thus more and more Margaret became an object of respectful interest, in whose honor, magnanimity and strength I learned implicitly to trust.

Separation, however, hindered our growing acquaintance, as we both left Cambridge, and, with the exception of a few chance meetings in Boston and a ramble or two in the glens and on the beaches of Rhode Island, held no further intercourse till the summer of 1839, when, as has been already said, the friendship, long before rooted, grew up and leafed and bloomed.

II.

A clue.

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I have no hope of conveying to readers my sense of the beauty of our relation, as it lies in the past with brightness falling on it from Margaret’s risen spirit.  It would be like printing a chapter of autobiography, to describe what is so grateful in memory, its influence upon one’s self.  And much of her inner life, as confidentially disclosed, could not be represented without betraying a sacred trust.  All that can be done is to open the outer courts, and give a clue for loving hearts to follow.  To such these few sentences may serve as a guide.

’When I feel, as I do this morning, the poem of existence, I am repaid for all trial.  The bitterness of wounded affection, the disgust at unworthy care, the aching sense of how far deeds are transcended by our lowest aspirations, pass away as I lean on the bosom of Nature, and inhale new life from her breath.  Could but love, like knowledge, be its own reward!’

’Oftentimes I have found in those of my own sex more gentleness, grace, and purity, than in myself; but seldom the heroism which I feel within my own breast.  I blame not those who think the heart cannot bleed because it is so strong; but little they dream of what lies concealed beneath the determined courage.  Yet mine has been the Spartan sternness, smiling while it hides the wound.  I long rather for the Christian spirit, which even on the cross prays, “Father, forgive them,” and rises above fortitude to heavenly satisfaction.’

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