smaker, and took her to make calls and on
journeys." Margaret was an apt pupil, and the good training of these
many Cambridge mothers was apparent when, ten years later, Mr. Emerson
made her acquaintance. "She was then, as always," he says, "carefully
and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession."

The seven years in Cambridge, from Margaret's fifteenth to her
twenty-third year, though uneventful, were, considering merely the
pleasure of existence, the most delightful of her life. She was a
school-girl as much or as little as she cared to be; her health, when
not overtaxed, was perfect; her family though not rich, were in easy
circumstances; her father was distinguished, having just retired from
Congress after eight years of creditable service; and, partly perhaps
from her father's distinction, she had access to the best social
circles of Cambridge. "In our evening reunions," says Dr. Hedge, "she
was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed but
little 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." Her conversational talent "continued to develop
itself in these years, and was certainly" he thinks, "her most decided
gift. One could form no adequate idea of her ability without hearing
her converse.... For some reason or other, she could never deliver
herself in print as she did with her lips." Emerson, in perfect
agreement with this estimate says, "Her pen was a non-conductor." The
reader will not think this true in her letters, where often the words
seem to palpitate. Doubtless the world had no business to see her love
letters, but one will find there a woman who, if she could speak as
she writes, must have poured herself out in tidal waves.

Dr. Hedge was struck by two traits of Margaret's character, repeatedly
mentioned by others, but to which it is worth while to have his
testimony. The first was a passionate love for the beautiful: "I have
never known one who seemed to derive such satisfaction from beautiful
forms"; the second was "her intellectual sincerity. Her judgment took
no bribes from her sex or her sphere, nor from custom, nor tradition,
nor caprice."

Margaret was nineteen years old when Dr. James Freeman Clarke, then a
young man in college, made her acquaintance. "We both lived in
Cambridge," he says, "and fro