Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/45

a lawyer and congressman, was as good as anybody’s. There was a prejudice against him politically, no doubt, he being a Democrat when the ruling classes in Massachusetts were Federalists; but his social position was unimpaired. Neither he nor his wife had the attribute of personal elegance or grace; but he evidently took pains to fill the prominent place to which he was justly entitled; and an entertainment given by him to John Quincy Adams, the President, in 1826, was one of the most elaborate affairs of the kind that had occurred in Cambridge since the ante-revolutionary days of the Lechmeres and Vassalls. He was then residing in a fine old mansion, built by Chief Justice Dana, on what is still called Dana Hill, — a house destroyed by fire in 1839, — and his guests were invited from far and near to a dinner and a ball. Few Cambridge hosts would then have attempted so much as this; but had Mr. Fuller’s social prominence been far less than it was, he would have been the very last person to find out the deficiency. Had he lived next door to an imperial palace, he would have thought that it was he who did the favor by mingling with his neighbors. As to his daughter, he took pride in her precocious abilities, and enjoyed her companionship in his favorite studies; that tells the whole story. Stimulating, even flattering, his companionship might be; but tender, wise, considerate, it could not be. On that side — and it was with her the important side — she cast herself against