Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/211

Rh fragment, by a Boston bookseller (Burnham) in 1860. There is nothing in the reprint to indicate the double origin, but the point of transition between the two translations occurs at the end of the first letter on page 86; while this volume, as completed, retains Margaret Fuller’s original preface and an extract from her “Dial” essay. Mrs. Wesselhoeft informs me that she revised Miss Fuller’s part of the translation, but found nothing to correct save two or three colloquial idioms, pretty sure to be misinterpreted by one not a native of Germany.

Margaret Fuller’s first original work was the fruit of the only long journey she ever took, in her own country; a summer spent in traveling in what was then called “the far West” (May 25 to September 19, 1843) with her life-long friends, James Freeman Clarke and his sister Sarah, under the guidance of their brother, William H. Clarke, of Chicago. The last named was one of Margaret Fuller’s dearest friends; a man of rare gifts, a delightful out-door companion and thoroughly acquainted with the pioneer life to which he introduced his friends. Their mode of traveling seems of itself to mark a period a hundred years ago instead of forty; and is graphically described in a letter to Mr. Emerson, written on the return journey: —

&emsp; “We traveled in a way that left us perfectly free to idle as much as we pleased, to gather every flower and