Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/105

Rh On the whole, it all pleased my eye; my fashionable fellow-creatures were very civil to me, and I went home, glad to have looked at this slide in the magic lantern also.”

Writing from Providence, August 14, 1837, she lays plans for her summer vacation, which is to begin with unmerciful tardiness on August 19. For her three weeks’ vacation she plans to visit, with her friend Caroline Sturgis, that delicious land of lotus-eating, Artichoke Mills, on the Merrimack, “there to be silent and enjoy daily wood-walks or boat excursions with her,” — or else to go to Concord. As to Providence, she writes: —

“I fear I have not much to tell that will amuse you. With books and pens I have, maugre my best efforts, been able to do miserably little. If I cannot be differently situated, I must leave Providence at the end of another term. My time here has been full of petty annoyances, but I regret none of them, they have so enlarged my practical knowledge. I now begin really to feel myself a citizen of the world. My plan lies clearer before my mind, and I have examined almost all my materials, but beyond this I have done nothing. I shall, however, have so soon an opportunity to tell you all that I will not now take time and paper. I attended last week, somewhat to the horror of Mr. Fuller, the Whig Caucus here, and heard Tristam Burges. It is rather the best thing I have done.”

Jefferson’s correspondence bearing fruit again! With that impressed upon her, and her businesslike father in her mind, she shrank from a merely