le provocation to break forth in
exuberant sallies, that drew around her a knot of listeners, and made
her the central attraction of the hour. Rarely did she enter a company
in which she was not a prominent object.

"I have spoken of her conversational talent. It continued to develop
itself in these years, and was certainly her most decided gift.
One could form no adequate idea of her ability without hearing her
converse. She did many things well, but nothing so well as she talked.
It is the opinion of all her friends, that her writings do her very
imperfect justice. For some reason or other, she could never deliver
herself in print as she did with her lips. She required the stimulus
of attentive ears, and answering eyes, to bring out all her power. She
must have her auditory about her.

"Her conversation, as it was then, I have seldom heard equalled. It
was not so much attractive as commanding. Though remarkably fluent
and select, it was neither fluency, nor choice diction, nor wit, nor
sentiment, that gave it its peculiar power, but accuracy of statement,
keen discrimination, and a certain weight of judgment, which
contrasted strongly and charmingly with the youth and sex of the
speaker. I do not remember that the vulgar charge of talking 'like
a book' was ever fastened upon her, although, by her precision, she
might seem to have incurred it. The fact was, her speech, though
finished and true as the most deliberate rhetoric of the pen, had
always an air of spontaneity which made it seem the grace of the
moment,--the result of some organic provision that made finished
sentences as natural to her as blundering and hesitation are to
most of us. With a little more imagination, she would have made an
excellent improvisatrice.

"Here let me say a word respecting the character of Margaret's mind.
It was what in woman is generally called a masculine mind; that is,
its action was determined by ideas rather than by sentiments. And yet,
with this masculine trait, she combined a woman's appreciation of the
beautiful in sentiment and the beautiful in action. Her intellect was
rather solid than graceful, yet no one was more alive to grace. She
was no artist,--she would never have written an epic, or romance, or
drama,--yet no one knew better the qualities which go to the making
of these; and though catholic as to kind, no one was more rigorously
exacting as to quality. Nothing short of the best in each kind would
content her.