I still remember the first half hour of Margaret’s conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. 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. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship.... 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 that she made me laugh more than I liked.... She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life. This rumor was much spread abroad, that she was sneering, scoffing, critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual. It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent, the play of superabundant animal spirits.... Her mind presently disclosed many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each, that quite effaced this first impression, in the opulence of the following pictures. RALPH WALDO EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her circle of friends.] [Sidenote: Conversation.]