and America corrupted to connive at it. Margaret listened to these
woes with such patience and mercy, that she drew five hundred dollars,
which had been invested for her in a safe place, and put them in those
hapless hands, where, of course, the money was only the prey of new
rapacity, to be bewailed by new reproaches. When one of her friends
had occasion to allude to this, long afterwards, she replied:--

'In answer to what you say of ----, I wish, indeed, the little
effort I made for him had been wiselier applied. Yet these are
not the things one regrets. It will not do to calculate too
closely with the affectionate human impulse. We must consent
to make many mistakes, or we should move too slow to help our
brothers much. I am sure you do not regret what you spent on
Miani, and other worthless people. As things looked then, it
would have been wrong not to have risked the loss.'




TRUTH.


But Margaret crowned all her talents and virtues with a love of truth,
and the power to speak it. In great and in small matters, she was
a woman of her word, and gave those who conversed with her the
unspeakable comfort that flows from plain dealing. Her nature was
frank and transparent, and she had a right to say, as she says in her
journal:--

'I have the satisfaction of knowing, that, in my counsels, I