n saw much of Margaret
during these years and that she was frequently his guest. "The day,"
he says, "was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory; and I,
who knew her intimately for ten years,--from July, 1836, till August,
1846, when she sailed for Europe,--never saw her without a surprise at
her new powers." She was as busy as he, and they seldom met in the
forenoon, but "In the evening, she came to the library, and many and
many a conversation was there held," he tells us, "whose details, if
they could be preserved, would justify all encomiums. They interested
me in every manner;--talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic
play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the
future, each followed each in full activity, and left me, I remember,
enriched, and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my guest."

She was "rich in friends," and wore them "as a necklace of diamonds
about her neck." "She was an active and inspiring companion and
correspondent, and all the art, the thought and nobleness of New
England seemed, at that moment, related to her and she to it. She was
everywhere a welcome guest.... Her arrival was a holiday, and so was
her abode ... all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to
catch the favorable hour, in walking, riding, or boating to talk with
this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories,
tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad relations to so many
fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who
carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had
been finally referred."

At a later day, when Margaret was in Italy, reports came back that she
was making conquests, and having advantageous offers of marriage. Even
Mr. Emerson expressed surprise at these social successes in a strange
land, but a lady said to him, "There is nothing extraordinary in it.
Had she been a man, any one of those fine girls of sixteen, who
surrounded her here, would have married her: they were all in love
with her."

"Of personal influence, speaking strictly,--an efflux, that is, purely
of mind and character," Mr. Emerson thinks she had more than any other
person he ever knew. Even a recluse like Hawthorne yielded to this
influence. Hawthorne was married to Miss Sophia Peabody in 1842, and
began housekeeping in the Old Manse in Concord. The day following
their engagement Miss Peabody wrote Miss Fuller addressing her "Dear,
most noble Ma