'About putting beautiful verses in your Magazine, I have no
feeling except what I should have about furnishing a room. I
should not put a dressing-case into a parlor, or a book-case
into a dressing-room, because, however good things in
their place, they were not in place there. And this, not in
consideration of the public, but of my own sense of fitness
and harmony.'
The next extract is from a letter written to me in 1842, after a
journey which we had taken to the White Mountains, in the company of
my sister, and Mr. and Mrs. Farrar. During this journey Margaret had
conversed with me concerning some passages of her private history and
experience, and in this letter she asks me to be prudent in speaking
of it, giving her reasons as follows:--
'_Cambridge, July 31, 1842._--... I said I was happy in having
no secret. It is my nature, and has been the tendency of my
life, to wish that all my thoughts and deeds might lie, as
the "open secrets" of Nature, free to all who are able to
understand them. I have no reserves, except intellectual
reserves; for to speak of things to those who cannot receive
them is stupidity, rather than frankness.
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