Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[210] of children, her generous attitude to all comers, he bears explicit testimony in his “Recollections.” He describes the involuntary testimony paid to her by the women who visited the Greeley house; the naturalness with which she took the lead among them without exciting jealousy, and the “almost oriental adoration” which she often inspired among them. He expresses constant amazement at the way in which those who had known her but a day insisted on telling her their secrets and asking counsel. “I judge,” he says, “that she was the repository of more confidences than any contemporary, and I am sure no one had ever reason to regret the imprudent precipitancy of these trusts.” Chambermaids and seamstresses came to her and unburdened their souls; and all children loved her. “As the elephant's trunk,” Mr. Greeley says, “serves either to rend a limb from the oak or pick up a pin, so her wonderful range of capacities, of experiences, of sympathies, seemed adapted to every condition and phase of humanity.” He speaks especially of her “marvelous powers of personation and mimicry;” thinks she might, had she chosen, have been the first actress of the century, but declares that she seemed quite absorbed, while living, in the simple effort to leave some small corner of the world better than she found it.¹

She did not, however, dwell permanently at the house of Horace Greeley, but afterwards at several