Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/125

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN.
107

a better time; it was indeed for him the fullness of time; but it is sad that we shall see him no more, — meet no more the pale benignant countenance, be greeted no more by the gentle formal courtesy; nay, it is even sad that we shall be catechised no more for great truths to feed his earnest mind.”[1]

The Fuller family resided at Jamaica Plain from the spring of 1839 to that of 1842, when Margaret took the responsibility of purchasing a house in Ellery Street, Cambridge (now No. 8), not far from the site of her old abode, the Dana House. Here they lived until July, 1843, when the house was sold; but the family, now greatly lessened, bought another house on Prospect Street, which they occupied[2] until after Margaret had transferred herself to New York, in the autumn of 1844, to begin what she called her “business life.” But before passing to that, we must consider the various literary and other enterprises which engrossed her about this time; and meanwhile this record of suburban life may well close with a graphic description of her as she seemed, at this period of her career, to a childish neighbor, who writes thus to me: —

“I had known Miss Fuller in my childhood when she was our next-door neighbor in Ellery Street, Cambridge. She made a pet of me; and the isolated little German girl was indebted to her for a thousand trifles that make a child happy. I often sat by her and looked

  1. Fuller MSS. i. 425.
  2. Compare Memoirs, i. 319, 371, 382; ii. 120.