Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/183

Rh of the procrastination of others. To fill with first-class material a magazine which does not pay a dollar, and has only twelve free copies for all contributors put together, is not so easy. In case of gaps, she must supply them. In such event, at the last moment she must revert to her copious note-books, and do that from which every careful writer shrinks — treat hurriedly and superficially some theme that had been reserved for the careful elaboration of more fortunate months. Mr. Emerson testifies to his “grateful wonder” at the courage with which she could do this; and we see it recorded in such passages as the following, which is taken from a letter to her mother, written on Christmas Day, either in 1840 or 1841: —

“I am in a state of extreme fatigue; this is the last week of the ‘Dial,’ and, as often happens, the copy did not hold out, and I have had to write in every gap of time. M. and J. [two young ladies, her pupils] have been writing for me extracts, etc., but I have barely scrambled through, and am now quite unfit to hold a pen.”

She had one essential attribute of an editor, in a keen and impartial judgment of her contributors. “I wish,” she writes in her diary, “I could overcome my distrust of Mr. Alcott’s mind.” Of Theodore Parker she says: “He cannot be the leader of my journal, … but his learning and just way of thinking will make him a very valu-