sts upon having the whole heavenly life unpacked
upon the spot. Its to-day knows no to-morrow. Hence its common
impatience and almost inevitable quarrel with the older generation,
which in its eyes represents privation and correction.

The early plan of studies marked out for Margaret by her father was not
devised by any commonplace mind. Mr. Fuller had gained from his own
college life that love of culture which is valuable beyond any special
attainment. His own scholarship had been more than common, and it became
his darling object to transmit to his little daughter all that he
himself had gained by study, and as much more as his circumstances would
permit. He did indeed make the mistake, common in that day, of urging
the tender intellect beyond the efforts proper to its stage of growth.
Margaret says that the lessons set for her were "as many and various as
the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond my age." These lessons
were recited to her father after office hours; and as these hours were
often prolonged, the child's mind was kept in a state of tension until
long after the time when the little head should have rested serenely on
its pillow. In consequence of this, it often rested very ill, and the
youthful prodigy of the daytime was terrified at night by dreams and
illusions, and disturbed by sleep-walking. From these efforts and
excitements resulted, as she says, "a state of being too active and too
intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring me, although I
have learned to understand and to regulate my now morbid temperament, to
a premature grave."

This was unhappy, certainly. The keen, active temperament did indeed
acquire a morbid intensity, and the young creature thus spurred on to
untimely effort began to live and to learn at a pace with which the
slowness of circumstance was never able to keep abreast.

Even with the allowance which must be made for the notion of that time
as to what a child should be able to accomplish, it must grieve and
surprise us to find Margaret at the age of six years engaged in the
study of Latin and of English grammar. Her father "demanded accuracy
and clearness in everything." Intelligible statement, reasoned thought,
and a certainty which excluded all suppositions and reservations,--these
were his requirements from his young pupil. A certain _quasi_-dogmatic
mode of enunciation in later life, which may have seemed, on a
superficial view, to indicate an undue con