"The place where we live is old and dilapidated, but in a situation of great natural loveliness. When there I am perfectly secluded, yet every one I wish to see comes to see me, and I can get to the centre of the city in half an hour. Here is all affection for me and desire to make me at home; and I do feel so, which could scarcely have been expected from such an arrangement. My room is delightful; how I wish you could sit at its window with me, and see the sails glide by!
"As to the public part, that is entirely satisfactory. I do just as I please, and as much and as little as I please, and the editors express themselves perfectly satisfied, and others say that my pieces tell to a degree I could not expect. I think, too, I shall do better and better. I am truly interested in this great field which opens before me, and it is pleasant to be sure of a chance at half a hundred thousand readers."
The enlargement spoken of above was found by Margaret in her more varied field of literary action, and in the society of a city which had, even at that date, a cosmopolitan, semi-European character.
New York has always, with a little grumbling,[142] conceded to Boston the palm of literary precedence. In spite of this, there has always been a good degree of friendly intercourse among its busy littérateurs and artists, who find, in the more vivid movement and wider market of the larger city, a compensation, if not an equivalent, for its distance from the recognized centres of intellectual influence.
In these circles Margaret was not only a welcome, but a desired guest. In the salons of the time she had the position of a celebrity. Here, as elsewhere, her twofold magnetism strongly attracted some and repelled others. Somewhat hypercritical and pedantic she was judged to be by those who observed her at a distance, or heard from her only a chance remark. Such an observer, admiring but not approaching, saw at times the look of the sibyl flash from beneath Margaret's heavy eyelids; and once, hearing her sigh deeply after a social evening, was moved to ask her why. "Alone, as usual!" was Margaret's answer, with one or two pathetic words, the remembrance of which brought tears to the eyes of the person to whom they were spoken.
In these days she wrote in her journal:—
"There comes a consciousness that I have no real hold on life,—no real, permanent connection with any soul. I seem a wandering Intelligence,[143] driven from spot to spot, that I may learn all secrets, and fulfil a circle of knowledge. This thought envelops me as a cold atmosphere."
From this chill isolation of feeling Margaret was sometimes relieved by the warm appreciation of those whom she had truly found, of whom one could say to her: "You come like one of the great powers of nature, harmonizing with all beauty of the soul or of the earth. You cannot be discordant with anything that is true or deep."
Other neighbors, and of a very different character, had Margaret in her new surroundings. The prisons at Blackwell's Island were on the opposite side of the river, at a distance easily reached by boat. Sing Sing prison was not far off; and Margaret accepted the invitation to pass a Sunday within its walls. She had consorted hitherto with the élite of her sex, the women attracted to her having invariably been of a superior type. She now made acquaintance with the outcasts in whom the elements of womanhood are scarcely recognized. For both she had one gospel, that of high hope and divine love. She seems to have found herself as much at home in the office of encouraging the fallen, as she had been when it was her duty to arouse the best spirit in women sheltered[144] from the knowledge and experience of evil by every favoring circumstance.
This was in the days in which Judge Edmonds had taken great interest in the affairs of the prison. Mrs. Farnum, a woman of uncommon character and ability, had charge of the female prisoners, who already showed the results of her intelligent and kindly treatment. On the occasion of her first visit, Margaret spoke with only a few of the women, and says that "the interview was very pleasant. These women were all from the lowest haunts of vice, yet nothing could have been more decorous than their conduct, while it was also frank. All passed, indeed, much as in one of my Boston classes."