Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

These books have made me for the first time think I might write into such shapes what I know of human nature. I have always thought that I would not, that I would keep all that behind the curtain, that I would not write, like a woman, of love and hope and disappointment, but like a man, of the world of intellect and action. But now I am tempted, and if I can but do well my present work and show that I can write like a man, and if but the wild gnomes will keep from me with their shackles of care for bread in all its shapes of factitious life, I think I will try whether I have the hand to paint, as well as the eye to see. But I cannot but feel that I have seen, from the mouth of my damp cave, stars as fair, almost as many, as this person from the “ Fleche of the Cathedral,” where she has ascended at such peril. But I dare boast no more; only, please fate, be just and send me an angel out of this golden cloud that comes after the pelting showers I have borne so long.¹