t, but who can speak the right word at the right
moment, qualify the selfish and hypocritical act with its real name,
and, without any loss of serenity, hold up the offence to the purest
daylight. Such a truth-speaker is worth more than the best police, and
more than the laws or governors; for these do not always know their
own side, but will back the crime for want of this very truth-speaker
to expose them. That is the theory of the newspaper,--to supersede
official by intellectual influence. But, though the apostles establish
the journal, it usually happens that, by some strange oversight,
Ananias slips into the editor's chair. If, then, we could be provided
with a fair proportion of truth-speakers, we could very materially and
usefully contract the legislative and the executive functions. Still,
the main sphere for this nobleness is private society, where so
many mischiefs go unwhipped, being out of the cognizance of law,
and supposed to be nobody's business. And society is, at all times,
suffering for want of judges and headsmen, who will mark and lop these
malefactors.

Margaret suffered no vice to insult her presence, but called the
offender to instant account, when the law of right or of beauty was
violated. She needed not, of course, to go out of her way to find the
offender, and she never did, but she had the courage and the skill to
cut heads off which were not worn with honor in her presence. Others
might abet a crime by silence, if they pleased; she chose to clear
herself of all complicity, by calling the act by its name.

It was curious to see the mysterious provocation which the mere
presence of insight exerts in its neighborhood. Like moths about a
lamp, her victims voluntarily came to judgment: conscious persons,
encumbered with egotism; vain persons, bent on concealing some
mean vice; arrogant reformers, with some halting of their own; the
compromisers, who wished to reconcile right and wrong;--all came and
held out their palms to the wise woman, to read their fortunes, and
they were truly told. Many anecdotes have come to my ear, which show
how useful the glare of her lamp proved in private circles, and what
dramatic situations it created. But these cannot be told. The valor
for dragging the accused spirits among his acquaintance to the stake
is not in the heart of the present writer. The reader must be content
to learn that she knew how, without loss of temper, to speak with
unmistakable plainness t