nd with her whole literary
future trembling, as she thought, in the scale, Margaret prayed only
that she might make the right decision. This soon became clear to her,
and she determined, in spite of the entreaties of her family, to remain
with her careworn mother, and not to risk the possibility of encroaching
upon the fund necessary for the education of her brothers and sister.

Of all the crownings of Margaret's life, shall we not most envy her that
of this act of sacrifice? So near to the feast of the gods, she prefers
the fast of duty, and recognizes the claims of family affection as more
imperative than the gratification of any personal taste or ambition.

Margaret does not seem to have been supported in this trial by any sense
of its heroism. Her decision was to her simply a following of the
right, in which she must be content, as she says, to forget herself and
act for the sake of others.

We may all be glad to remember this example, and to refer to it those
who find themselves in a maze of doubt between what they owe to the
cultivation of their own gifts, what to the need and advantage of those
to whom they stand in near relation. Had Margaret at this time forsaken
her darkened household, the difference to its members would have been
very great, and she herself would have added to the number of those
doubting or mistaken souls who have been carried far from the scene of
their true and appointed service by some dream of distinction never to
be fulfilled. In the sequel she was not only justified, but rewarded.
The sacrifice she had made secured the blessings of education to the
younger members of her family. Her prayer that the lifting of her moral
nature might not lower the tone of her intellect was answered, as it was
sure to be, and she found near at hand a field of honor and usefulness
which the brilliant capitals of Europe would not have offered her.

* * * * *

Margaret's remaining days in Groton were passed in assiduous reading,
and her letters and journals make suggestive comments on Goethe,
Shelley, Sir James Mackintosh, Herschel, Wordsworth, and others. Her
scheme of culture was what we should now call encyclopedic, and embraced
most, if not all, departments of human knowledge. If she was at all
mistaken in her scope, it was in this, that she did not sufficiently
appreciate the inevitable limitations of brain power and of bodily
strength. Her impatience of such consider