Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/229

Rh eral different abodes, nearer the “Tribune” office. She resided, for a month or two, in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Cranch; having, during a part of this time, the companionship of a favorite friend, Miss Caroline Sturgis, with whom she enjoyed to the utmost the social and artistic delights of New York. We find her writing in the “Tribune” about picture-galleries, the theatre, the Philharmonic concerts, the German opera, Ole Bull’s performances on the violin, and Mr. Hudson’s lecture on Shakespeare. Later she had lodgings for a long time at the house of Mrs. McDowell, where she had opportunity to give receptions to her literary friends and to preside as a gracious hostess with a white japonica in her hair. She did most of her writing and proof-reading at home, not keeping regular office-hours: and she evidently worked very hard in her own way, which was not always Mr. Greeley’s method. Her researches into poverty and crime took many of her leisure hours; and she sometimes, in the prosecution of these researches, stayed a day or two with Mrs. Child, who, like herself, was equally ready to be absorbed in the music of the spheres and in the sorrows of the streets. Her practical aims were at this time well described in a letter written to her old friend Miss Mary Rotch of New Bedford, Massachusetts, one of those saints who are “Aunt Mary” to a wide circle: —