’and I am so unwell, that I can scarcely keep up the spring of my spirits, and sometimes fear that I cannot go through with the engagements of the winter.  But I have never stopped yet in fulfilling what I have undertaken, and hope I shall not be compelled to now.  How farcical seems the preparation needed to gain a few moments’ life; yet just so the plant works all the year round for a few days’ flower.’

But in brighter mood she says, again:—­

’I congratulate myself that I persisted, against every persuasion, in doing all I could last winter; for now I am and shall be free from debt, and I look on the position of debtor with a dread worthy of some respectable Dutch burgomaster.  My little plans for others, too, have succeeded; our small household is well arranged, and all goes smoothly as a wheel turns round.  Mother, moreover, has learned not to be over-anxious when I suffer, so that I am not obliged to suppress my feelings when it is best to yield to them.  Thus, having more calmness, I feel often that a sweet serenity is breathed through every trifling duty.  I am truly grateful for being enabled to fulfil obligations which to some might seem humble, but which to me are sacred.’

And in mid-summer comes this pleasant picture:—­

’Every day, I rose and attended to the many little calls which are always on me, and which have been more of late.  Then, about eleven, I would sit down to write, at my window, close to which is the apple-tree, lately full of blossoms, and now of yellow birds.  Opposite me was Del Sarto’s Madonna; behind me Silenus, holding in his arms the infant Pan.  I felt very content with my pen, my daily bouquet, and my yellow birds.  About five I would go out and walk till dark; then would arrive my proofs, like crabbed old guardians, coming to tea every night.  So passed each day.  The 23d of May, my birth-day, about one o’clock, I wrote the last line of my little book;[A] then I went to Mount Auburn, and walked gently among the graves.’

As the brothers had now left college, and had entered or were entering upon professional and commercial life, while the sister was married, and the mother felt calls to visit in turn her scattered children, it was determined to break up the “Home.”  ‘As a family,’ Margaret writes,

’we are henceforth to be parted.  But though for months I had been preparing for this separation, the last moments were very sad.  Such tears are childish tears, I know, and belie a deeper wisdom.  It is foolish in me to be so anxious about my family.  As I went along, it seemed as if all I did was for God’s sake; but if it had been, could I now thus fear?  My relations to them are altogether fair, so far as they go.  As to their being no more to me than others of my kind, there is surely a mystic thrill betwixt children of one mother, which can never cease to be felt till the soul is quite born anew.  The earthly family is the scaffold