Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/170

 Margaret had passed her childhood and early youth in Woodbridge, the quiet New England town where the Ruysdales had lived, father and son, ever since the old original Ruysdale left the Dutch colony of Manhattan and took to himself a daughter of the Puritans, a century and a half ago. When Margaret was barely sixteen her father had taken her to Europe, where, for the next four years of her life, she had devoted herself—it would be nearer the truth to say that she had been devoted—to her art. Her artistic education had begun when she was scarcely out of her babyhood. She had worked so arduously that there had been little time in her life for society; and so it had come about that though she had been thrown almost exclusively with men, her relations with them had had little personality. Flirtation—that rock on which many an American girl's heart and life are splintered into a myriad pieces—was known to her by observation only. The hours and years, the talents and force, which so many of our young girls evaporate in that futile and unsatisfactory pursuit, had been devoted by Margaret to her art. It is not likely that this singleness of purpose could have developed itself so early in her had it not been for the strong influence of her father, who had wellnigh absorbed her life in his own. He had treated her, ever since