Perhaps no better
opportunity or place than this may ever arise to correct this
impression so for us it is wrong. It is true that my father had a very
high standard of scholarship, and did expect conformity to it in his
children. He was not stern toward them.
It is doubtless true, also, that he did not perfectly comprehend the
rare mind of his daughter, or see for some years that she required no
stimulating to intellectual effort, as do most children, but rather
the reverse. But how many fathers are there who would have understood
at once such a child as Margaret Fuller was, or would have done even
as wisely as he? And how long is it since a wiser era has dawned upon
the world (its light not yet fully welcomed), in which attention first
to physical development to the exclusion of the mental, is an axiom in
education! Was it so deemed forty years ago? Nor has it been
considered that so gifted a child would naturally, as she did,
_seek_ the companionship of those older than herself, and not of
children who had little in unison with her. She needed, doubtless, to
be _urged_ into the usual sports of children, and the company of
those of her own age; if _not_ urged to enter these she was never
excluded from either.
Pages:
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406