eceive
them is stupidity, rather than frankness. But in this case,
I alone am not concerned. Therefore, dear James, give heed
to the subject. You have received a key to what was before
unknown of your friend; you have made use of it, now let it
be buried with the past, over whose passages profound and
sad, yet touched with heaven-born beauty, "let silence stand
sentinel."'

I shall endeavor to keep true to the spirit of these sentences in
speaking of Margaret's friendships. Yet not to speak of them in
her biography would be omitting the most striking feature of her
character. It would be worse than the play of Hamlet with Hamlet
omitted. Henry the Fourth without Sully, Gustavus Adolphus without
Oxenstiern, Napoleon without his marshals, Socrates without his
scholars, would be more complete than Margaret without her friends.
So that, in touching on these private relations, we must be
everywhere "bold," yet not "too bold." The extracts will be taken
indiscriminately from letters written to many friends.

The insight which Margaret displayed in finding her friends, the
magnetism by which she drew them toward herself, the catholic range
of her intimacies, the influence which she exercised to develop the
latent germ of every character, the constancy with which she clung
to each when she had once given and received confidence, the delicate
justice which kept every intimacy separate, and the process of
transfiguration which took place when she met any one on this mountain
of Friendship, giving a dazzling lustre to the details of common
life,--all these should be at least touched upon and illustrated, to
give any adequate view of her in these relations.

Such a prejudice against her had been created by her faults of manner,
that the persons she might most wish to know often retired from her
and avoided her. But she was "sagacious of her quarry," and never
suffered herself to be repelled by this. She saw when any one
belonged to her, and never rested till she came into possession of her
property. I recollect a lady who thus fled from her for several years,
yet, at last, became most nearly attached to her. This "wise sweet"
friend, as Margaret characterized her in two words, a flower hidden
in the solitude of deep woods, Margaret saw and appreciated from the
first.

See how, in the following passage, she describes to one of her friends
her perception of character, and her power of attracting it,