She put so much heart into
it that she bravely undertook to open, in the Dial, the subjects which
most attracted her; and she treated, in turn, Goethe, and Beethoven,
the Rhine and the Romaic Ballads, the Poems of John Sterling, and
several pieces of sentiment, with a spirit which spared no labor; and,
when the hard conditions of journalism held her to an inevitable day,
she submitted to jeopardizing a long-cherished subject, by treating it
in the crude and forced article for the month. I remember, after she
had been compelled by ill health to relinquish the journal into my
hands, my grateful wonder at the facility with which she assumed the
preparation of laborious articles, that might have daunted the most
practised scribe.

But in book or journal she found a very imperfect expression of
herself, and it was the more vexatious, because she was accustomed
to the clearest and fullest. When, therefore, she had to choose an
employment that should pay money, she consulted her own genius, as
well as the wishes of a multitude of friends, in opening a class
for conversation. In the autumn of 1839, she addressed the following
letter, intended for circulation, to Mrs. George Ripley, in which her
general design was stated:--

'My dear friend:--The advantages of a weekly meeting, for
conversation, might be great enough to repay the trouble of
attendance, if they consisted only in supplying a point of
union to well-educated and thinking women, in a city which,
with great pretensions to mental refinement, boasts, at
present, nothing of the kind, and where I have heard many, of
mature age, wish for some such means of stimulus and cheer,
and those younger, for a place where they could state their
doubts and difficulties, with a hope of gaining aid from the
experience or aspirations of others. And, if my office were
only to suggest topics, which would lead to conversation of
a better order than is usual at social meetings, and to
turn back the current when digressing into personalities or
common-places, so that what is valuable in the experience of
each might be brought to bear upon all, I should think the
object not unworthy of the effort.

'But my ambition goes much further. It is to pass in review
the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to
place them in due relation to one another in our minds. To
systematize thought, and give a prec