Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/72

54 died October 1. His widow used to tell the story, to the end of her days, how Margaret brought the younger children together around the lifeless form of her father, and, kneeling, pledged herself to God that if she had ever been ungrateful or unfilial to her father, she would atone for it by fidelity to her brothers and sisters. This vow she surely kept.

She wrote thus to her friend Mrs. Barlow, after her father’s death: —

&emsp; … “I returned into life to bear a sorrow of which you know the heaviness. But my hard-won faith has not deserted me, and I have so far preserved a serenity which might seem heartlessness to a common observer. It was indeed sad when I went back, in some sort, into the world, and felt myself fatherless. Yet I gave no sign, and hope to preserve more or less fortitude.”

Her father had made no will; his property was sorely involved, and she has told her keen regret at that absence of business education which left her unable to take direct charge of the family affairs. They were placed finally under the care of her uncle Abraham, the narrowest and most arbitrary of all the paternal race. The estate was probably well managed, as it finally yielded two thousand dollars to each of the children; but this success was bought at a great cost of dictatorial domineering on the part of the bachelor uncle, — the same man who gave my mother les-