it, and so must answer with my own proper care and nursing for its new life. Perhaps it is a great folly in me who have little adroitness in turning off work to assume this sure vexation, but the ‘Dial’ has certain charms to me as an opportunity, which I grudge to destroy. Lately at New York I found it to be to a certain class of men and women, though few, an object of tenderness and religion. You cannot believe it?”[1]
It is to be noticed that Emerson in his printed letters to Carlyle habitually speaks of the magazine as “Margaret Fuller’s,” and speaks of giving his lectures to her for publication rather than make any other use of them.[2] His loyalty to it seemed inseparably connected with his loyalty to her, and this seems to have been true in a measure with all its contributors. She continued to write much for it even after her editorship had ceased; but is sometimes found so discontented with her own work as to withhold it. After the death of Dr. Channing she thus writes to Mr. Emerson (November 8, 1842): —
“Should you write some notice of Dr. C. for your ‘Dial’ if I did not? I have written, but the record seems best adapted for my particular use, and I do not know whether I shall come to anything more general. If you should not write more than you have, will you send me your one stroke on the nail-head for me to look at?”[3]
Nothing could be better than this recognition
