Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
W. H. Channing, Ed.

[2075] am accustomed to deference, however, and need it for the boldness and animation which my part requires, I did not speak with as much force as usual. Still, I should like to have to face all this; it would have the same good effects that the Athenian assemblies had on the minds obliged to encounter them.

Sunday. A glorious day;—the woods full of perfume. I was out all the morning. In the afternoon, Mrs. R. and I had a talk. I said my position would be too uncertain here, as I could not work. —— said:—‘They would all like to work for a person of genius. They would not like to have this service claimed from them, but would like to render it of their own accord.’ ‘Yes,’ I told her; ‘but where would be my repose, when they were always to be judging whether I was worth it or not. It would be the same position the clergyman is in, or the wandering beggar with his harp. Each day you must prove yourself anew. You are not in immediate relations with material things.’

We talked of the principles of the community. I said I had not a right to come, because all the confidence in it I had was as an experiment worth trying, and that it was a part of the great wave of inspired thought. ——declared they none of them had confidence beyond this; but they seem to me to have. Then I said, ‘that though I entirely agreed about the dignity of labor, and had always wished for the present change, yet I did not agree with the principle of paying for services by time;¹ neither did I believe in the hope of excluding evil, for that was a growth of ’