Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/68

Rh sincerity made corrupt by spiritual pride." The poet, Richard H. Dana, in those days gave a course of readings from the English dramatists, beginning with Shakespeare. Margaret writes:—

“The introductory was beautiful....All this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate grace; but a man of such genuine refinement undervalues the cannon-blasts and rockets which arc needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar. His naive gestures, the rapt expression of his face, his introverted eye, and the almost child-like simplicity of his pathos carry one back into a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth's fresh emotions." Her résumé of him ends with these words: “Mr. Dana has the charms and the defects of one whose object in life has been to preserve his individuality unprofaned."

Margaret's connection with the Green Street School in Providence lasted two years. Her success in this work was considered very great, and her brief residence in Rhode Island was crowned with public esteem and with many valued friendships.

Her parting from the pupils here was not without tears on both sides. Although engaged to teach the elder girls, Margaret's are had extended over the younger ones, and also over some of the boys. With all she exchanged an affectionate farewell, in which words of advice were mingled. To the class of girls which had been her especial charge she made a farewell address, whose impressive sentences must have been long remembered. Here arc some of them:—

"I reminded them of the ignorance in which some of them had been found, and showed them how all my efforts had necessarily been directed to stimulating their minds, leaving undone much which, under other