Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/214

Rh new struggle for her own. She had looked this, necessity bravely in the face, and with resolute band had worked at a history of recent events in Italy, hoping thus to make a start in the second act of her life-work. The two volumes which she had completed by this time seemed to her impaired in value by the intense personal suffering which halt lain like a weight upon ber. Such leisure as the care of Angelo left her, while in Florence, was employed in the continuation of this work, whose 1988 we deplore the more for the intense personal feeling which must have throbbed through its pages. Margaret had hoped to pass this winter without any enforced literary labour, learning of her child, as she wisely says, and as no doubt she did, whatever else she may have found it necessary to do. In the chronicle of her days he plays an important part, his baby laugh "all dimples and glitter," his contentment in the fair scenc about him when, carried to the Cascine, he lies back in her arms, smiling, singing to himself, and moving his tiny feet. The Christmas holidays are dearer to her than ever before, for his sake. In the evening, before the bright little fire, he sits on his stool between father and mother, reminding Margaret of the days in which she had been 80 seated between her own parents. He is to her a source of ineffable joys, far purer, deeper, than anything I ever felt before."

As Margaret's husband was destined to remain a tradition only to the greater number of her friends, the hints and outlines of him given here and there in her letters are important, in showing us what companionship she had gained in return for her great sacrifice.

Ongoli seems to have belonged to a type of character to