Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare01fullrich).pdf/45

Rh others in their humors, but she never doubted of great indulgence from them.

‘Some singular habits she had, which, when new, charmed, but, after acquaintance, displeased her companions. She had by nature the same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim verses of others, or her own, or act many parts, with strange catchwords and burdens, that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearers with laughter, sometimes to melt them to tears. When her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to re-commence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to heaven or earth.

‘This excitement, as may be supposed, was not good for her. It usually came on in the evening, and often spoiled her sleep. She would wake in the night, and cheat her restlessness by inventions that teased, while they sometimes diverted her companions.

‘She was also a sleep-walker; and this one trait of her case did somewhat alarm her guardians, who, otherwise, showed the profound ignorance as to this peculiar being, usual in the overseeing of the young, They consulted a physician, who said she would outgrow it, and prescribed a milk diet.

‘Meantime, the fever of this ardent and too early stimulated nature was constantly increased by the restraints and narrow routine of the boarding-school. She was