Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/227

Rh “Mr. Greeley I like, nay more, love. He is, in his habits, a — plebeian; in his heart, a noble man. His abilities, in his own way, are great. He believes in mine to a surprising extent. We are true friends.”

It was one result of the absorbing cares of her New York life that they left her, from the beginning, no space for the letters and diaries which before were so abundantly produced. Instead of soliloquizing or talking to her friends, she had to deal with the larger public of the “Tribune.” She indeed almost ceased letter-writing, as we know from this brief note to the younger brother to whom she had heretofore written so freely: —

“I am very busy, and I receive, now I am separated from all my friends, letters in great number, which I do not attempt to answer, except in urgent cases. Nor do they expect it, but write to me again and again. They know that if I had the time and strength, which I have not, I must not fritter away my attention on incessant letter-writing. I must bend it on what is before me, if I wish to learn or to do.”

We are therefore left to know her, at this period, mainly through the testimony of Horace Greeley, her chief and her first host. He never could overcome a slight feeling of professional superiority to the woman who could not write more than a column of matter to his ten; and who was sometimes incapacitated from work by headaches, whereas he plodded on, ill or well, doing always his daily share. But to her public spirit, her love