Page:Eminent women of the age.djvu/195

Rh MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. BY T. W. HIGOINSON.

Tbatellino by rail in Michigan, some ten years ag I, I found myself seated next to a young Western girl, wiih a very intelligent face, who soon began to talk with me about literary subjects. She afterwards gave me, as a reason for her confidence, that I ^looked like one who would enjoy Margaret Fuller's writings," — these being, as I found, the object of her special admiration. I certainly took the remark for a compliment ; and it was, at any rate, a touching tribute to the woman whose intellectual influence thus brought strangers together. Margaret Fuller is connected, slightly but firmly, with my earliest recollections. We were bom and bred in the sama town (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and I was the playmate of her younger brothers. Their family then lived at the old dens, though the great buildings of the University Press now cover the site of the old-fashioned garden, whose formal fish- ponds and stone spring-house wore an air of European state- liness to our home-bred eyes. There I dimly remember the discreet elder sister, book in hand, watching over the gambols of the lovely little Ellen, who became, long after, the wife of my near kinsman, Ellery Channing. This later connection cemented a new tie, and led to a few interviews in maturer years with Margaret Fuller, and to much intercourse with
 * • Brattle House," which still stands behind its beautiful lin-