oton, whither
her father removed in 1833. Here he died suddenly of cholera in 1835.
Now she was taught the miserable perplexities of a family that has
lost its head, and was called to tread a path for which, as she says,
she had no skill and no call, except that it must be trodden by some
one, and she alone was ready. In 1836 she went to Boston, to teach
Latin and French in an academy of local repute; and in the ensuing
year she accepted a 'very favourable offer,' to become 'lady-superior'
in an educational institution at Providence, where she seems to have
exercised an influence analogous to that of Dr Arnold at
Rugby--treating her pupils as ladies, and thus making them anxious to
prove that they deserved to be so treated.

By this time, she had attracted around her many and devoted friends.
Her conversational powers were of a high order, by common consent. Mr
Hedge describes her speech as remarkably fluent and correct; but
deriving its strength not from fluency, choice diction, wit, or
sentiment, but from accuracy of statement, keen discrimination, and a
certain weight of judgment; together with rhetorical finish, it had an
air of spontaneity which made it seem the grace of the moment: so that
he says, 'I do not remember that the vulgar charge of talking "like a
book" was ever fastened upon her, although, by her precision, she
might seem to have incurred it.' The excitement of the presence of
living persons seems to have energised her whole being. 'I need to be
called out,' are her words, 'and never think alone, without imagining
some companion. It is my habit, and bespeaks a second-rate mind.' And
again: 'After all, this writing,' she says in a letter, 'is mighty
dead. Oh, for my dear old Greeks, who talked everything--not to shine
as in the Parisian saloons, but to learn, to teach, to vent the heart,
to clear the head!' Mr Alcott of Boston considered her the most
brilliant talker of the day. Miss Martineau was fascinated by the same
charm. It is thus characterised by the author of _Representative Men_:
'Talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic play, religion, the
finest personal feeling, the aspects of the future, each followed each
in full activity, and left me, I remember, enriched and sometimes
astonished by the gifts of my guest.' Her self-complacency staggered
many at first--as when she spoke, in the quietest manner, of the girls
she had formed, the young men who owed everything to her, the fine
compan