Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/23

8 the growth of her friend's pictures, and in listening to her music. Better still, they walked together in the quiet of the country. Like a guardian spirit, she led me through the fields and groves; and every tree, every bird, greeted me and said, what I felt, 'She is the first angel of your life.'"

Delight so passionate led to a corresponding sorrow. The lady, who had tenderly responded to the child's mute adoration, vanished from her sight, and was thenceforth known to her only through the interchange of letters.

"When this friend was withdrawn," says Margaret, "I fell into a profound depression. Melancholy enfolded me in an atmosphere, as joy had done. This suffering, too, was out of the gradual and natural course. Those who are really children could not know such love or feel such sorrow." Her father saw in this depression a result of the too great isolation in which Margaret had thus far lived. He felt that she needed change of scene and, still more, intercourse with girls of her own age. The remedy proposed was that she should be sent to school,—a measure which she regarded with dread and dislike. She had hitherto found little pleasure in the society of other girls. She had sometimes joined the daughters of her neighbours in hard play, but had not felt herself at home, with them. Her retired and studious life had, she says, given her cold aloofness, which could not, predispose them in her favour. Despite her resistance, however, her father persevered in his intention, and Margaret became an inmate of the Misses Prescotts school in Groton, Mass.

Her experience here, though painful in some respects, had an important effect upon her after life.