Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/29

Rh last being lawyers, — a monotony of occupation more common in those days than now. These sons were men of marked character, possessing many admirable and some unpleasing qualities, and these in sufficient uniformity to cause their being liked and disliked — especially the latter — in a body. Horace Mann, who was a person of rather vehement preferences, and who, as a lawyer, knew the brothers well, once said to me that if Margaret Fuller was unpopular, it was not from any prejudice against her as a woman, but because she probably combined “the disagreeableness of forty Fullers.” It was not true, for she had fortunately one of the sweetest mothers who ever lived, and her nature was thus tempered on the “spindle-side;” but the remark showed the traditions of the paternal race. Several of the Fuller brothers I can distinctly remember, and, to one thus recalling them, it is not difficult to comprehend just where Horace Mann’s dislike came in, although to some of the brotherhood he doubtless did injustice. They were in general men of great energy, pushing, successful, of immense and varied information, of great self-esteem, and without a particle of tact. My mother used to tell a characteristic story of Abraham Fuller, who was a frequent visitor at her house in Cambridge, and whom every Cantabrigian of that period must remember. Coming in and finding my mother darning her children’s stockings, he watched her a little while, and then said, abruptly, “You do not know