her.  She was to me the embodiment of wisdom and tenderness.  I heard her converse, and, in the rich and varied intonations of her voice, I recognized a being to whom every shade of sentiment was familiar.  She knew, if not by experience then by no questionable intuition, how to interpret the inner life of every man and woman; and, by interpreting, she could soothe and strengthen.  To her, psychology was an open book.  When she came to Brook Farm, it was my delight to wait on one so worthy of all service,—­to arrange her late breakfast in some remnants of ancient China, and to save her, if it might be, some little fatigue or annoyance, during each day.  After a while she seemed to lose sight of my more prominent and disagreeable peculiarities, and treated me with affectionate regard.”

Being a confirmed Socialist, I often had occasion to discuss with Margaret the problems involved in the “Combined Order” of life; and though unmoved by her scepticism, I could not but admire the sagacity, foresight, comprehensiveness, and catholic sympathy with which she surveyed this complicated subject.  Her objections, to be sure, were of the usual kind, and turned mainly upon two points,—­the difficulty of so allying labor and capital as to secure the hoped-for cooeperation, and the danger of merging the individual in the mass to such degree as to paralyze energy, heroism, and genius; but these objections were urged in a way that brought out her originality and generous hopes.  There was nothing abject, timid, or conventional in her doubts.  The end sought she prized; but the means she questioned.  Though pleased in listening to sanguine visions of the future, she was slow to credit that an organization by “Groups and Series” would yield due incentive for personal development, while ensuring equilibrium through exact and universal justice.  She felt, too, that Society was not a machine to be put together and set in motion, but a living body, whose breath must be Divine inspiration, and whose healthful growth is only hindered by forcing.  Finally, while longing as earnestly as any Socialist for “Liberty and Law made one in living union,” and assured in faith that an era was coming of “Attractive Industry” and “Harmony,” she was still for herself inclined to seek sovereign independence in comparative isolation.  Indeed, at this period, Margaret was in spirit and in thought preeminently a Transcendentalist.

[Footnote A:  This was a transitional arrangement only.]

IX.

CREDO.

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