In her early girlhood she mixed much in the college society at Cambridge, and would have been taken for a much older person than she really was. She was not handsome, but her animated countenance made its own impression, and awakened interest in almost all who saw her. She made some of her life-long friends at this time. Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing were among them. With Emerson she made acquaintance a little later, through Miss Martineau, then visiting in this country. She was not at this time an agreeable person. She was much derided for her self-esteem by people who knew her slightly, and was also accused of hauteur and arrogance. Even Lowell was thus impressed by her, and put her in the pillory in the "Fable for Critics." He proposes to establish new punishments for criminals, thus:-- "I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such terms, short or long, As by statute in such cases made and provided Shall be by our wise legislators decided: Thus:--Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ----." And again:-- "For a woman must surely see well, if she try, The whole of whose being's a capital I." And still further:-- "Phoebus! you know That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe, As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl, Since the day I was born, with the Infinite Soul." But people who knew her well soon lost this unfavorable impression, and she was almost idolized by her real friends. Mr. Emerson thus records his first impressions of her: "She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity of life. . . . She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing pre-possessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice,--all repelled; and I said to myself, 'We shall never get far.'" He adds: "I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember she made me laugh more than I liked." But, "soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness, and the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries and the very tides of joy and superabundant life," and he saw "that her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent;" and as he came to know her better, "her plane of character rose constantly in my estimation, disclosing many moods and powers in successive platforms or terraces, each above each." All superior women were drawn to her at once, and even those noted only for beauty or social talent vied in their devotion to her. A few years later, it was for this circle that her famous conversation classes were held in