his eyes searching everywhere to behold it; I wished he might collect into one burning point those withering, palsying convictions, which, in the ordinary routine of things, so gradually pervade the soul; that he might suffer, in brief space, agonies of disappointment commensurate with his unpreparedness and confidence. And I thought, thus thrown back on the representing pictorial resources I supposed him originally to possess, with such material, and the need he must feel of using it, such a man would suddenly dilate into a form of Pride, Power, and Glory, — a centre, round which asking, aimless hearts might rally, — a man fitted to act as interpreter to the one tale of many-languaged eyes!
‘What words are these! Perhaps you will feel as if I sought but for the longest and strongest. Yet to my ear they do but faintly describe the imagined powers of such a being.’
Margaret’s home at this time was in the mansion-house
formerly belonging to Judge Dana,— a large,
old-fashioned building, since taken down, standing about a
quarter of a mile from the Cambridge Colleges, on the
main road to Boston. The house stood back from the
road, on rising ground, which overlooked an extensive
landscape. It was always a pleasure to Margaret to
look at the outlines of the distant hills beyond the river,
and to have before her this extent of horizon and sky.
In the last year of her residence in Cambridge, her father
moved to the old Brattle place, — a still more ancient
edifice, with large, old-fashioned garden, and stately
rows of Linden trees. Here Margaret enjoyed the garden
walks, which took the place of the extensive view.
During these five years her life was not diversified by events, but was marked by an inward history.
