Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/64

46 accomplished under such difficulties and preoccupations that every book might almost be said to have cost her a drop of life-blood. “Teaching little Fullers,” as she called it, occupied much of her time; she had the sewing of four children also on her hands; her mother was often ill, her grandmother always; often they had no domestic; and she sometimes had pupils not of her own family. Three evenings in the week and odd hours during the day were all that this omnivorous student could command for herself. She worked herself ill at last, desperately ill; her life was saved with difficulty; and her father spoke to her, as she came back to life, such words of praise as his reticent lips had never before uttered. From this time the relation between her and her father grew tenderer, and that with her mother more intimate.

The earliest specimen of Margaret Fuller’s composition, so far as I have seen, is a single school exercise, corrected by her father and preserved by her for the sake of those corrections. It is upon the Latin motto, “Possunt quia posse videntur,” and it certainly has the vigor of the Roman temperament that she loved. It was written probably between the ages of twelve and sixteen, and her father’s few corrections are all in the direction of terseness and strength. The position she takes is that while men can, up to a certain point, do what they will to do, they are yet so liable to be overruled by the pressure of