throw a light on the sympathies between the human mind and nature. I feel as if I should some time attain a precise notion of the meaning of Nature’s most beautiful display, the undulatory motion.”[1]
Margaret Fuller made great sacrifices for her own household while living in Groton; and showed a self-devotion that undoubtedly told severely on her health. She not only had the courage to do this, but the courage to let it be known by those for whom it was done, when it was best that they should know it. Feminine self-sacrifice is a very common fruit on every soil, and certainly on that of New England; but it often spoils its object by leading to selfishness and then dying unrevealed, — all from a mistaken sense of duty. To make this devotion, by revealing it, a means of elevating the person for whom it is made, — this is a far rarer thing, and requires absolute frankness and a wholly generous heart. To stimulate the brother to do the work which the sister for his sake left undone is to extract the very finest aroma of gratitude. He to whom the following letter was addressed — the Rev. Arthur Fuller — did not adopt that literary career to which his sister would fain have led him; but his was a life of unwearied labor and great practical usefulness; and when, after the resignation of his army chaplaincy, he took a musket from the hands of a wounded soldier, saying, “I must do something for my country,” and went forward to his death at the battle
- ↑ MS.
