Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/43

28 her own power, but also the excellence of her aims in life.

Of one of these dark hours Margaret's journal gives a vivid description, from which some passages may be quoted. The occasion was a New England Thanksgiving, a day on which her attendance at church was almost compulsory. This church was not to her a spiritual home, and on the day now spoken of the song. of thanksgiving made positive discord in her ears. She felt herself in no condition to give thanks.. Her feet were entangled in the problem of life. Her soul was agonized by its unreconciled contradictions.

“I was wearied out with mental conflicts. I felt within myself great power and generosity and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever voluntarily to have done wrong thing, and my aspiration seemed very high."

Looking about in the church, she envied the little children for their sense of dependence and protection. She knew not, she says, "that none could have any father but God,” knew not that she was "not the only lonely one, the selected Œdipus, the special victim of an iron law."

From this intense and exaggerated self-consciousness, the only escape was in fleeing from self. She sought to do this, as she had often done, by a long quick walk, whose fatigue should weary out her anguish, and enable her to return home "in a state of prayer." On this day this resource did not avail her.

“All seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if I could never return to a world in which I had