Our house, though comfortable, was very ugly, and in a neighborhood which I detested, every dwelling and its appurtenances having a _mesquin_ and huddled look. I liked nothing about us except the tall graceful elms before the house, and the dear little garden behind. Our back-door opened on a high flight of steps, by which I went down to a green plot, much injured in my ambitious eyes by the presence of the pump and tool-house. This opened into a little garden, full of choice flowers and fruit trees, which was my mother’s delight and was carefully kept. Here I felt at home. A gate opened thence into the fields, a wooden gate made of boards, in a high unpainted board wall, and embowered in the clematis creeper. This gate I used to open to see the sunset heaven; beyond this black frame I did not step, for I liked to look at the deep gold behind it. How exquisitely happy I was in its beauty, and how I loved the silvery wreaths of my protecting vine! I never would pluck one of its flowers at that time, I was so jealous of its beauty, but often since I carry off wreaths of it from the wild wood, and it stands in nature to my mind as the emblem of domestic love. MARGARET FULLER: _Autobiographical Romance_ published in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,’ by R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1874. * * * * * [Sidenote: Margaret at thirteen.] My acquaintance with Margaret commenced in the year 1823, at Cambridge.... Margaret was then about thirteen,--a child in years, but so precocious in her mental and physical development, that she passed for eighteen or twenty. Agreeably to this estimate she had her place in society as a lady full-grown. [Sidenote: Personal appearance.] [Sidenote: A characteristic trait.]