work was new and somewhat irksome to her.
She was accustomed indeed to labor in season and out of season, and in
so doing to struggle with bodily pain and weariness. But to take up the
pen at the word of command, without the interior bidding of the divine
afflatus, was a new necessity, and one to which she found it difficult
to submit. Mr. Greeley prized her work highly, though with some
drawbacks. He could not always command it at will, for the reason that
she could not. He found her writing, however, terse, vigorous, and
practical, and considered her contributions to the "Tribune" more solid
in merit, though less ambitious in scope, than her essays written
earlier for the "Dial." Margaret herself esteemed them but moderately,
feeling that she had taken up this new work at a time when her tired
faculties needed rest and recreation.

In a brief memorial of Margaret, Mr. Greeley gives us the titles of the
most important of these papers. They are as follows: "Thomas Hood,"
"Edgar A. Poe," "Capital Punishment," "Cassius M. Clay," "New Year's
Day," "Christmas," "Thanksgiving," "St. Valentine's," "Fourth of July,"
"The First of August"--which she commemorates as the anniversary of
slave-emancipation in the British West Indies.

In looking over the volumes which contain these and many others of
Margaret's collected papers, we are carried back to a time in which
issues now long settled were in the early stages of their agitation, and
in which many of those whom we now most revere in memory were living
actors on the stage of the century's life. Hawthorne and Longfellow were
then young writers. The second series of Mr. Emerson's "Essays" is
noticed as of recent publication. At the time of her writing, it would
seem that Mr. Emerson had a larger circle of readers in England than in
his own country. She accounts for this on the ground that "our people,
heated by a partisan spirit, necessarily occupied in these first stages
by bringing out the material resources of the land, not generally
prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that require
attention and reflection, are still more injured by a large majority of
writers and speakers who lend all their efforts to flatter corrupt
tastes and mental indolence." She permits us, however, to "hail as an
auspicious omen the influence Mr. Emerson has obtained" in New England,
which she recognizes as deep-rooted, and, over the younger part of the
community, far greater than tha