'I do not wish to talk to you of my ill-health, except that I
like you should know when it makes me do anything badly, since
I wish you to excuse and esteem me. But let me say, once for
all, in reply to your letter, that you are mistaken if you
think I ever wantonly sacrifice my health. I have learned
that we cannot injure ourselves without injuring others; and
besides, that we have no right; for ourselves are all we know
of heaven. I do not try to domineer over myself. But, unless
I were sure of dying, I cannot dispense with making some
exertion, both for the present and the future. There is no
mortal, who, if I laid down my burden, would take care of
it while I slept. Do not think me weakly disinterested, or,
indeed, disinterested at all.'
Every one of her friends knew assuredly that her sympathy and aid
would not fail them when required. She went, from the most joyful of
all bridals, to attend a near relative during a formidable surgical
operation. She was here to help others. As one of her friends writes,
'She helped whoever knew her.' She adopted the interests of humble
persons, within her circle, with heart-cheering warmth, and her ardor
in the cause of suffering and degraded women, at Sing-Sing, was as
irresistible as her love of books. She had, many years afterwards,
scope for the exercise of all her love and devotion, in Italy, but
she came to it as if it had been her habit and her natural sphere. The
friends who knew her in that country, relate, with much surprise,
that she, who had all her lifetime drawn people by her wit, should
recommend herself so highly, in Italy, by her tenderness and large
affection. Yet the tenderness was only a face of the wit; as before,
the wit was raised above all other wit by the affection behind it.
And, truly, there was an ocean of tears always, in her atmosphere,
ready to fall.
There was, at New York, a poor adventurer, half patriot, half
author, a miserable man, always in such depths of distress, with
such squadrons of enemies, that no charity could relieve, and no
intervention save him. He believed Europe banded for his destruction,
and America corrupted to connive at it. Margaret listened to these
woes with such patience and mercy, that she drew five hundred dollars,
which had been invested for her in a safe place, and put them in those
hapless hands, where, of course, the money was only the prey of new
rapacity, to be bewailed by new reproaches. When one of her friends
had occasion to allude to this, long afterwards, she replied:--
'In answer to what you say of ----, I wish, indeed, the little
effort I made for him had been wiselier applied. Yet these are
not the things one regrets. It will not do to calculate too
closely with the affectionate human impulse. We must consent
to make many mistakes, or we should move too slow to help our
brothers much. I am sure you do not regret what you spent on
Miani, and other worthless people. As things looked then, it
would have been wrong not to have risked the loss.'