d, we must think that the immense extent of ground gone
over involved too rapid a study of the separate works comprised in it.
Here was given a synopsis of literary work which, properly performed,
would fill a lifetime. It was no doubt valuable to her pupils through
the vivifying influence of her enthusiastic imagination, which may have
enabled some of them, in after years, to fill out the sketch of culture
so boldly and broadly drawn before their eyes. Yet, considered as
instruction, it must, from its very extent, have been somewhat
superficial.

Our dismay would regard the remorseless degree in which Margaret, at
this time, must have encroached upon the reserves of her bodily
strength. Some physicists of to-day ascribe to women a peculiar power of
concentrating upon one short effort an amount of vital force which
should carry them through long years, and which, once expended, cannot
be restored. Margaret's case would certainly justify this view; for,
while a mind so vigorous necessarily presupposes a body of uncommon
vigor, she was after this time always a sufferer, and never enjoyed that
perfect equipoise of function and of power which we call health.

* * * * *

In the spring of the year 1837 Margaret was invited to fill an important
post in the Greene Street School, at Providence, R. I. It was proposed
that she should teach the elder girls four hours daily, arranging
studies and courses at her own discretion, and receiving a salary of one
thousand dollars per annum.

Margaret hesitated to accept this offer, feeling inclined rather to
renew her classes of the year just past, and having in mind also a life
of Goethe which she greatly desired to write, and for which she was
already collecting material. In the end, however, the prospect of
immediate independence carried the day, and she became the "Lady
Superior," as she styles it, of the Providence school. Here a nearer
view of the great need of her services stimulated her generous efforts,
and she was rewarded by the love and reverence of her pupils, and by the
knowledge that she did indeed bring them an awakening which led them
from inert ignorance to earnest endeavor.

Margaret's record of her stay in Providence is enlivened by portraits of
some of the men of mark who came within her ken. Among these was Tristam
Burgess, already old, whose baldness, she says, "increases the fine
effect of his appearance, for it seems as if the lo