Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/57

Rh When these moods passed by, she was the gayest of companions, overflowing with wit, humor, anecdote, and only too ready sarcasm. This can best be seen in one of her letters to the correspondent with whom she was at her gayest, a brilliant and attractive woman long since dead, the wife of the Rev. D. H. Barlow, of Lynn, Mass., and the mother of General F. C. Barlow. To her Margaret Fuller writes thus, with girlish exuberance, at the age of seventeen; fully recognizing, as the closing words show, the ordeal of criticism through which she often had to make her way: —

“, November 19, 1830.&emsp; …“Many things have happened since I echoed your farewell laugh. Elizabeth [Randall] and I have been fully occupied. She has cried a great deal, painted a good deal, and played the harp most of all. I have neither fertilized the earth with my tears, edified its inhabitants by my delicacy of constitution, nor wakened its echoes to my harmony; yet some things have I achieved in my own soft feminine style. I hate glare, thou knowest, and have hitherto successfully screened my virtues therefrom. I have made several garments fitted for the wear of American youth; I have written six letters, and received a correspondent number; I have read one book, — a piece of poetry entitled, ‘Two Agonies,’ by M. A. Browne, (pretty caption, is it not?) — and J. J. Knapp's trial; I have given advice twenty times, — I have taken it once; I have gained two friends and recovered two; I have felt admiration four times, horror once, and disgust twice; I have been a journey, and