Hoar, of whom Emerson once wrote: “Elizabeth consecrates; I have no friend whom I more wish to be immortal than she.” A letter has already been quoted from this noble woman, describing her first impressions of Margaret Fuller at Concord; and the following fragment gives her maturer opinion: —
“Her friends were a necklace of diamonds about her neck. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them; the honor of the conversations was the high tone of sincerity and culture from so many consenting individuals, and Margaret was the keystone of the whole. She was, perhaps, impatient of complacency in people who thought they had claims, and stated their contrary opinion with an air. For such she had no mercy. But, though not agreeable, it was just. And so her enemies were made.”[1]
To show that Margaret Fuller encountered among her friends and pupils natures as heroic as her own, I will yield to the temptation of quoting a passage from another letter of this same lady; a bit of philosophy as fine as any that one finds in Epictetus or Antoninus, — stoicism in this case softened and enriched by Christianity without losing a fibre of its force: —
“When I was a little one I suffered agonies of terror at the barking of a dog, yet was ashamed to run away and avoid passing him. It suddenly occurred to my thought, ‘What is it to fear? That the dog should bite me — should inflict just so much pain as a dog’s bite
- ↑ MS.
