Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/93



a young American woman who wishes to support herself and educate her younger brothers and sisters, the natural refuge is still the desk of a school-teacher. In Margaret Fuller’s time this was even more true than now. After her father’s death she must seek a shorter path to self-support than was to be found in those alluring ways of literature and philosophy which she would have much preferred. An opening offered itself in the school of Mr. A. B. Alcott, in Boston, where Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody had been previously employed. Mr. Alcott’s unpublished diary gives the successive steps in the negotiation and enables me to present the beginning and the end together.

“1836, August 2d. Emerson called this morning and took me to Concord to pass the day. At his house I met Margaret Fuller (I had seen her once before this), and had some conversation with her about taking Miss Peabody’s place in my school.”

“December 17th. I have seen M. F., who, besides giving instruction in the languages, will report ‘the Conversations on the Gospels’ as they proceed.”