Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/85

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FINDING A FRIEND.
67

“And that he will no more plague himself with the mysteries of another sphere from his.”[1]

Her visits to Concord not only established intimacy with Mr. Emerson, but with all the members of his family. She writes to her mother, during her first visit, “The baby here is beautiful. … I play with him a good deal and he comes so natural after Dante and other poems.”[2] The cordial gayety of all her interchange of messages in her letters to the Concord household shows clearly the friendliness of her relations with all. “Good love to Mrs. Emerson: I hope the baby has not grown too large for me to hold.” Then in another letter, “What does Waldo say? and what has Ellen learnt?” and again, “Say to little Waldo that I have thought since I came away of a hundred witty things I forgot to say to him, and he must want to see me again.” In her diary she has much to say of this remarkable child, who will always have an interest for all lovers of poetry as having occasioned Emerson’s “Threnody.”

‘It has been my privilege to examine a long series of unpublished letters that passed thenceforward from Margaret Fuller to Emerson. Franker and truer letters never went from woman to man; they were written under all circumstances and from all places; in one case from his own library, while he was away. How much Mr. Emerson valued them is plain from the fact that in some cases where a letter is missing there is substituted

  1. Fuller MSS. iii. 175, 176.
  2. Fuller MSS. i. 83.