Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/24

16 who cared more for doing good than for fortune and success, — more for the one risen from the dead than for fleshly life, — more for the Being in whom we live and move than for King Agrippa.

‘Among this band of candidates for the mad-house, I found the young poet who valued insight of nature's beauty, and the power of chanting to his fellow-men a heavenly music, above the prospect of fortune, political power, or a standing in fashionable society. At the division of the goods of this earth, he was wandering like Schiller's poet. But the difference between American and German regulations would seem to be, that in Germany the poet, when not “with Jove,” is left at peace on earth; while here he is, by a self-constituted police, declared “mad.”

‘Another of this band was the young girl who, early taking a solemn view of the duties of life, found it difficult to serve an apprenticeship to its follies. She could not turn her sweetness into “manner,” nor cultivate love of approbation at the expense of virginity of heart. In so called society she found no outlet for her truest, fairest self, and so preferred to live with external nature, a few friends, her pencil, instrument, and books. She, they say, is “mad.”

‘And he, the enthusiast for reform, who gives away fortune, standing in the world, peace, and only not life, because bigotry is vow afraid to exact the pound of flesh as well as the ducats, — he, whose heart beats high with hopes for the welfare of his race, is “mad.”

‘And he, the philosopher, who does not tie down his speculation to the banner of the day, but lets the wings of his thought upbear him where they will, as if they were stronger and surer than the balloon let off for the