Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/109

Rh unsympathizing, unhelpful, wise, good man that you are, to do several things for me. I hear you are to deliver one of your lectures again in Boston. I would have you do it while I am there. I shall come on Wednesday next, and stay till the following Monday. Perhaps you will come to see me, for, though I am not as good as I was, yet, as I said before, I am better than most persons I see, and, I dare say, better than most persons you see. But perhaps you do not need to see anybody, for you are acting, and nobly. If so, you need not come yourself, but send me your two lectures on ‘Holiness’ and ‘Heroism.’ Let me have these two lectures, at any rate, to read while in Boston.”

But her prediction was fulfilled; if she followed her literary longings she must leave Providence, and so she did. Mr. Ripley had suggested to her to write a life of Goethe, but it ended in a translation of Eckermann’s “Conversations” with that great man, prefaced by one of her “Dial” essays on the subject and published in Ripley’s series of “Specimens of German Authors,” probably without compensation. Her plans and purposes on retiring from her school are best stated in a letter to the Rev. W. H. Channing, not before published: —

&emsp; “I am on the point of leaving Providence, and I do so with unfeigned delight, not only because I am weary and want rest, because my mind has so long been turned outward and longs for concentration and leisure for tranquil thought, but because I have here been always in a false position, and my energies been consequently