From the Journal of Margaret Fuller

November, Thanksgiving Day, 1831

If I were, in this moment, allowed to write only one more journal entry my whole life through; I would, without a second thought, instantly write what I am about to: what has just happened today!

This day began like any other; being Thanksgiving, I was obliged to attend church. Once there, seated in the cold, hard pew, I experienced what I had borne for years: a sense of detachment from the rest of the congregation, and my entire environment; and some disagreement with the preacher. Worse, yet, though: I was possessed of the sulkiest and most child-like of moods. The usual darkness and numbness was at its worst, and there was nothing I could do to shake it off.

At length, after the service was over, I stole away from my family and sought refuge in the frosty field that has become my secret haven. There I stopped before and stared at a little frozen stream. It seemed to be just as cold and hard as I, and I soon found myself close to drowning in my confusion and despair.

Suddenly the sun shone out with that transparent sweetness, like the last smile of a dying lover, which it will use when it has been unkind all a cold autumn day. And, even then, passed into my thought a beam from its true sun, from its native sphere, which has never since departed from me. I remembered how, a little child, I had stopped myself one day on the stairs, and asked, how came I here? How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller? What does it mean? What shall I do about it? I remembered all the times and ways in which the same thought had returned. I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space, and human nature; but I saw, also, that it MUST do it, - that it must make all this false true, - and sow new and immortal plants in the garden of God, before it could return again. I saw there was no self; that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance; that it was only because I thought self real that I suffered; that I had only to live in the idea of the ALL, and all was mine. This truth came to me, and I received it unhesitatingly; so that I was for that hour taken up into God…