ho fed his own ambition by gratifying
her scholarly tastes, teaching her the Greek alphabet when she was six
years old and continuing her training in collegiate subjects until she
was forced by failing sight to give up her reading.

When she was ten the family removed to Germantown, where her father
had charge of the Manual Labor School, and Margaret enjoyed the
advantages at that time afforded by the city of Philadelphia,
gathering bright memories which irradiated her somewhat sombre life
then and lightened her coming years.

In Lafayette, a new college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin soon
found opportunity to carry on his system of training for practical and
religious life and here Margaret spent sixteen happy and busy
years--happy but for the gray veil that fell between her and her loved
studies before those years had passed. She was obliged to prepare her
Greek lessons at night, and the only time her father had for hearing
her recitations was in the early morning before breakfast, which in
that household meant in the dim candlelight of the period; not a
wholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant
seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room,
and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton
that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the
result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted
her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the
beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic
glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth of
forests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of the
Delaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawns
and glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination to
melodious effort. Of Margaret as she was in the Easton days in 1836, a
Lafayette freshman thus writes:

A taste for literary pursuits soon drew us together and a warm
friendship sprang up, which continued unbroken to the day of her
death. Her remarkable poetic talent had even then won the
admiration of her associates, and to have been admitted into the
charmed circle of which she was the center, where literature and
literary work were discussed, admired and appreciated, I have
ever counted a high privilege.

Her next home, in Oxford, Ohio, where Dr. Junkin had been elected to
the presidency of Mi