ns the stranger to Margaret that she was to
him. She had sat under his preaching during his pastorate at the
Second Church in Boston, and "several of his sermons," so she wrote to
a friend, "stood apart in her memory like landmarks in her spiritual
history." It appears that she had failed to come to close quarters
with this timid apostle. A year after he left his pulpit, she wrote of
him as the "only clergyman of all possible clergymen who eludes my
acquaintance."

When, at length, she was invited to Concord, it was as Mrs. Emerson's
guest, not as his: "she came to spend a fortnight with my wife."
However, at last she was under his roof. "I still remember," he says,
"the first half hour of her conversation.... Her extreme plainness,--a
trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,--the nasal tone
of her voice--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get
far.... I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked.... She
had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give
an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain
at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy
and superabundant life."

The practical outcome of the visit was an engagement to teach in Mr.
Alcott's school. Under date of August 2, 1836, Mr. Alcott writes,
"Emerson called this morning and took me to Concord to spend the day.
At his house, I met Margaret Fuller ... and had some conversation with
her about taking Miss Peabody's place in my school." That is to say,
Mr. Emerson had in his house a brilliant young lady who, by stress of
circumstances, wanted a situation; he had a friend in Boston in whose
school there was a vacancy; Mr. Emerson, at some pains to himself,
brought the parties together. Nor was this the last time that Mr.
Emerson befriended Margaret.

It appears from Mr. Alcott's diary that Miss Fuller began her
engagement with January, that she taught Latin and French at the
school, and French, German, and Italian to private classes. For a
class of beginners, she "thought it good success," she says, "when at
the end of three months, they could read twenty pages of German at a
lesson, and very well." An advanced class in German read Goethe's
Hermann and Dorothea, Goetz von Berlichingen, Iphigenia, and the first
part of Faust, "three weeks of thorough study," she calls it, "as
valuable to me as to them."

The class in Italian went at an equal pace. At the same t