Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/47

32 fulness and tenacity of life. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Fler extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyc-lids, the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get far."

But Margaret greatly esteemed Emerson, and was intent upon cstablishing ae friendly relation with him. Her reputation for satire was well know to him, and was rather justified in his eyes by the first half-hour of her conversation with him.

“I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember that «she made me laugh more than I liked."

Passing into a happier vein, she unfolded her brilliant powers of repartee, expressed her own opinions, to discover those of her companion. Soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness; "and the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life." He now saw that "her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent," and as he learned to know her better, her plane of character rose constantly in his estimation, disclosing "many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each."

Emerson likens Margaret's relations with her friends to the wearing of a necklace of social brilliants of the first water. A dreaded waif among the merely fashionable, her relations with men and women of higher tastes were such that, as Emerson says, "All the art,