James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[181] and how we may make best use of our means for building up the life of thought upon the life of action.

These conversations lasted during several successive Winters, with much the same participants, numbering from twenty to thirty. These were all ladies. During one brief series, the experiment of admitting gentlemen was tried, and it seems singular that this should have failed, since many of her personal friends were of the other sex, and certainly men and women are apt to talk best when together. In this exceptional course, the subject was mythology, and it was thought that the presence of those trained in classical studies might be useful. But an exceedingly able historian of the enterprise adds, “All that depended on others entirely failed. . . . Even in the point of erudition on the subject, which Margaret did not profess, she proved the best informed of the party, while no one brought an idea, except herself. Take her as a whole,” adds this lady, “she has the most to bestow upon others by conversation of any person I have ever known. I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her.”

It is said by all her friends that no record of her conversation does it any justice. I have always fancied that the best impression now to be obtained of the way she talked when her classes called her “inspired,” must be got by reading her sketch of the Roman and Greek characters, in her autobiographic fragment. That was written when her conversations most flourished, in 1840, and a marvellous thing it is. It is something to read and re-read, year after year, with ever new delight. Where else is there a statement, so vivid, so brilliant, so profound, of the total influence exerted on a thoughtful child by those two mighty teachers? No attempted report of her conversation gives such an impression of what it must have been, as this self-recorded reverie. If on