abroad, or the stars would hide their light, and the archive
remain a blank.

'For all the tides of life that flow within me, I am dumb and
ineffectual, when it comes to casting my thought into a form.
No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the
pleasure of creation would make it possible for me to write.
What shall I do, dear friend? I want force to be either a
genius or a character. One should be either private or public.
I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is at present too
straitly-bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as
a woman; at others, I should stifle; as, on the other hand, I
should palsy, when I would play the artist.'




HEROISM.


These practical problems Margaret had to entertain and to solve the
best way she could. She says truly, 'there was none to take up her
burden whilst she slept.' But she was formed for action, and addressed
herself quite simply to her part. She was a woman, an orphan,
without beauty, without money; and these negatives will suggest what
difficulties were to be surmounted where the tasks dictated by her
talents required the good-will of "good society," in the town where
she was to teach and write. But she was even-tempered and erect, and,
if her journals are sometimes mournful, her mind was made up, her
countenance beamed courage and cheerfulness around her. Of personal