ample command of time and necessary conditions. In
a letter written to one of her brothers at this time,
Margaret says:—
“If our family affairs could now be so arranged that I might be tolerably tranquil for the next six or eight years, I should go out of life better satisfied with the page I have turned in it than I shall if I must still toil on. A noble career is yet before me, if I can be unimpeded by cares. I have given almost all any young energies to personal relations; but at present I feel inclined to impel the general stream of thought. Let. my nearest friends also wish that I should now take share in more public life.”
The opening now found for Margaret in New York, though fortunate, was by no means fortuitous. She had herself prepared the way thereunto by her good work in the Dial. In that cheerless editorial seat she may sometimes, like the Lady of Shalott, have sighed to see Sir Lancelot ride careless by, or with the spirit of an unrecogized prophet she may have exclaimed, "Who hath believed our report? But her word had found one who could hear it to some purpose.
Mr. Greeley had been, from the first, a reader of this periodical, and had recognised the fresh thought and new culture which gave it character. His attention was first drawn to Margaret by an essay of hers, published in the July number of 1843, and entitled "The Great Lawsuit,—Man versus Men, Woman vesus Women.” This essay, which at a later date expanded into the volume known as Woman in the Nineteenth Century, struck, Mr. Greeley as "the production of an original, vigorous, and earnest mind. Margaret's "Summer on the Lakes" appeared also in the Dial
