Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/266



By a happy fatality, the only Italian papers of Margaret Ossoli’s that are preserved are the letters that passed between her and her husband, during their various separations, before and after the birth of their child. The originals are now, partially at least, in the possession of Miss Edith Fuller, in Cambridge; and a translation of the whole, made by Miss Elizabeth Hoar, is in my possession. I wish that they could all be published, for more loving and devoted letters never passed between husband and wife. Fragments of them appeared in the “Memoirs;” but I have avoided making use of any which are there printed, except in one or two cases where scattered portions alone have appeared. The preference has been given to those written about the time of her child’s birth, because there is no period which tests more deeply the depth and the heroism of conjugal affection than those anxious weeks. At the birth of a first child, every mother knows, and her husband knows, that she is to meet much the same sort of peril with any soldier who marches up to a battery; except that this danger is to be met alone,