Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/53

Rh was fortunately in Cambridge at that time a group of highly cultivated ladies, most of whom belonged to the college circle, and who in turn won her ardent loyalty. My elder sister can well remember this studious, self-conscious, overgrown girl as sitting at my mother's feet, covering her hands with kisses and treasuring her every word. It was the same at another time with my aunt, Miss Ann G. Storrow, a person of great wit and mental brilliancy; the same with Mrs. J. W. Webster, a most winning and lovely woman, born at the Azores and bearing a tropic softness and sweetness in her manners. Most of these ladies were too much absorbed in their own duties to give more than a passing solicitude to this rather odd and sometimes inconvenient adorer; but she fortunately encountered one friend who resolutely took her in hand.

This lady was the wife of the Harvard professor of astronomy; a woman of uncommon character and cultivation, who had lived much in Europe, and who, with no children of her own, did many good services for the children of her friends. She was Mrs. Eliza Farrar, or, as she always preferred to call herself on her title-pages, Mrs. John Farrar. Having myself resided for some time beneath this lady's roof, I can certify to her strong and well-balanced nature, and her resolute zeal in moulding the manners as well as morals of the young. She was one of our first and best writers for children; her “Young Lady's Friend” was almost