ime she had
three private pupils, to one of whom, every day for ten weeks, she
taught Latin "orally,"--in other words, Latin conversation. In her
leisure, she "translated, one evening every week, German authors into
English for the gratification of Dr. Channing." It is to be hoped that
she was paid for this service, because she found it far from
interesting. "It is not very pleasant," she writes, "for Dr. Channing
takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine
people."

In the spring of 1837, Margaret accepted an invitation to teach in a
private academy in Providence, R. I.--four hours a day, at a salary of
$1,000. We are not told how this invitation came to her, but it is not
difficult to detect the hand of Mr. Emerson. The proprietor of the
school was an admirer of Emerson, so much so that he brought Emerson
from Concord in June following, to dedicate a new school building. His
relation to both parties makes it probable that Margaret owed her
second engagement, as she did her first, to the good offices of Mr.
Emerson.

She taught in this school with success, two years, "worshipped by the
girls," it is said, "but sometimes too sarcastic for the boys." The
task of teaching, however, was irksome to her, her mind was in
literature; she had from Mr. Ripley a definite proposition to write a
"Life of Goethe," a task of which she had dreamed many years; and she
resigned her position, and withdrew from the profession of
school-teacher, at the end of 1838. Her life of Goethe was never
written, but it was always dancing before her eyes and, more than
once, determined her course.

In the following spring, Margaret took a pleasant house in Jamaica
Plain, "then and perhaps now," Col. Higginson says, "the most rural
and attractive suburb of Boston." Here she brought her mother and the
younger children. Three years later, she removed with them to
Cambridge, and for the next five years, she kept the family together,
and made a home for them. In addition to the income of the estate, she
expected to meet her expenses by giving lessons. Two pupils came with
her from Providence, and other pupils came for recitations, by whom
she was paid at the rate of two dollars an hour.

With these resources the life in Jamaica Plain began very quietly and
pleasantly. To be quiet however was not natural to Margaret. Besides,
she had fallen upon what, intellectually, were stirring times. It was
at the high tide of the Trans