re spoken.

In these days she wrote in her journal:--

"There comes a consciousness that I have no real hold on life,--no real,
permanent connection with any soul. I seem a wandering Intelligence,
driven from spot to spot, that I may learn all secrets, and fulfil a
circle of knowledge. This thought envelops me as a cold atmosphere."

From this chill isolation of feeling Margaret was sometimes relieved by
the warm appreciation of those whom she had truly found, of whom one
could say to her: "You come like one of the great powers of nature,
harmonizing with all beauty of the soul or of the earth. You cannot be
discordant with anything that is true or deep."

Other neighbors, and of a very different character, had Margaret in her
new surroundings. The prisons at Blackwell's Island were on the opposite
side of the river, at a distance easily reached by boat. Sing Sing
prison was not far off; and Margaret accepted the invitation to pass a
Sunday within its walls. She had consorted hitherto with the _elite_ of
her sex, the women attracted to her having invariably been of a superior
type. She now made acquaintance with the outcasts in whom the elements
of womanhood are scarcely recognized. For both she had one gospel, that
of high hope and divine love. She seems to have found herself as much at
home in the office of encouraging the fallen, as she had been when it
was her duty to arouse the best spirit in women sheltered from the
knowledge and experience of evil by every favoring circumstance.

This was in the days in which Judge Edmonds had taken great interest in
the affairs of the prison. Mrs. Farnum, a woman of uncommon character
and ability, had charge of the female prisoners, who already showed the
results of her intelligent and kindly treatment. On the occasion of her
first visit, Margaret spoke with only a few of the women, and says that
"the interview was very pleasant. These women were all from the lowest
haunts of vice, yet nothing could have been more decorous than their
conduct, while it was also frank. _All passed, indeed, much as in one of
my Boston classes._"

This last phrase may somewhat startle us; but it should only assure us
that Margaret had found, in confronting two circles so widely
dissimilar, the happy words which could bring high and low into harmony
with the true divine.

Margaret's second visit to the prison was on the Christmas soon
following. She was invited to address the women in their ch