 In the Blythe Dale of this volume, many readers will probably suspect a faint and not very faithful shadowing of Brookfarm in Roxbury, which, now a little more than ten years ago, was occupied and cultivated by a company of socialists. The author does not wish to deny that he had this community in his mind, and that having had the good fortune for a time to be personally connected with it, he has occasionally availed himself of his actual reminiscences in the hope of giving a more lifelike tint to the fancy sketch in the following pages. He begs it to be understood, however, that he has considered the institution itself as not less fairly the subject of fictitious handling than the imaginary personages whom he has introduced there. His whole treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of the romance, nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to illustrate a theory or elicit a conclusion favourable or otherwise in respect to socialism. In short, his present concern with the socialist community is merely to establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives. In the old countries, with which fiction has long been conversant, a certain conventional privilege seems to be awarded to the romancer. His work is not put exactly side by side with nature, and he is allowed a license with regard to everyday probability in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce thereby. Among ourselves on the contrary, there is as yet no such fairyland so like the real world that in a suitable remoteness one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere is what the American romancer needs. In its absence the beings of imagination are compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually living mortals, a necessity that generally renders the paint and paste board of their composition but too painfully discernible. With the idea of partially obviating this difficulty, the sense of which has always pressed very heavily upon him, the author has ventured to make free with his old and affectionately remembered home at Brook Farm as being certainly the most romantic episode of his own life essentially a daydream and yet a fact, and thus offering an available foothold between fiction and reality. Furthermore, the scene was in good keeping with the personages whom he desired to introduce there. These characters, he feels it right to say, are entirely fictitious. It would indeed, considering how few amiable qualities he distributes among his imaginary progeny, be a most grievous wrong to his former excellent associates, were the author to allow it to be supposed that he has been sketching any of their likenesses. Had he attempted it they would at least have recognized the touches of a friendly pencil, but he has done nothing of the kind. The self-concentrated philanthropist, the high-spirited woman bruising herself against the narrow limitations of her sex, the weakly maiden whose tremulous nerves endow her with sibiline attributes, the minor poet beginning life with strenuous aspirations which die out with his youthful fervor, all these might have been looked for at Brook Farm but by some accident never made their appearance there. The author cannot close his reference to this subject without expressing a most earnest wish that some one of the many cultivated and philosophic minds which took an interest in that enterprise might now give the world its history, ripply with whom rests the honourable paternity of the institution, Dana, Dwight, Channing, Burton, Parker for instance, with others whom he dares not name because they veil themselves from the public eye, among these is the ability to convey both the outward narrative and the inner truth and spirit of the whole affair, together with the lessons which those years of thought and toil must have elaborated for the Behoofa future experimentalists. Even the brilliant Hawaji might find as rich a theme in his youthful reminiscences of Brook Farm and a more novel one close at hand as it lies than those which he has since made so distant a pilgrimage to seek in Syria and along the current of the Nile. CHAPTER 1 OLD MOODY The evening before my departure for Blythdale I was returning to my bachelor apartments after attending the wonderful exhibition of the veiled lady when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street. Mr. Coverdale said he softly, Can I speak with you a moment? As I have casually alluded to the veiled lady it may not be amiss to mention for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted with her now forgotten celebrity that she was a phenomenon in the Mesmeric line, one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice, nor in fact has any one of them come before the public under such skillfully contrived circumstances of stage effect as those which at once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the lady in question. Nowadays in the management of his subject, clairvoyant or medium, the exhibitor affects the simplicity and openness of scientific experiment, and even if he professed to tread a step or two across the boundaries of the spiritual world, yet carries with him the laws of our actual life and extends them over his preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago on the contrary all the arts of mysterious arrangement of picturesque disposition and artistically contrasted light and shade were made available in order to set the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the case of the veiled lady, moreover, the interest of the spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity and an absurd rumour probably set afloat by the exhibitor and at one time very prevalent that a beautiful young lady of family and fortune was enshrouded within the misty drapery of the veil. It was white with somewhat of a subdued silver sheen like the sunny side of a cloud, and falling over the wearer from head to foot was supposed to insulate her from the material world, from time and space, and to endow her with many of the privileges of a disembodied spirit. Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or otherwise, have little to do with the present narrative, except indeed that I had propounded for the veiled lady's prophetic solution a query as to the success of our Blythe Dale Enterprise. The response by the Blythe was of the true Sibylene stamp, nonsensical in its first aspect, yet on closer study unfolding a variety of interpretations, one of which has certainly accorded with the event. I was turning over this riddle in my mind and trying to catch its slippery purport by the tail when the old man above mentioned interrupted me. Mr. Coverdale, Mr. Coverdale, said he, repeating my name twice, in order to make up for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which he uttered it. I ask your pardon, sir, but I hear you are going to Blythe Dale to-morrow. I knew the pale elderly face with the red tipped nose and the patch over one eye, and likewise saw something characteristic in the old fellow's way of standing under the arch of a gate, only revealing enough of himself to make me recognize him as an acquaintance. He was a very shy personage, this Mr. Moody, and the trait was the more singular as his mode of getting his bread necessarily brought him into the stir and hub above the world more than the generality of men. Yes, Mr. Moody, I answered, wondering what interest he could take in the fact. It is my intention to go to Blythe Dale to-morrow. Can I be of any service to you before my departure? If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale, said he, you might do me a very great favour. A very great one, repeated I, in a tone that must have expressed but little alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the old man any amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself. A very great favour, do you say? My time is brief, Mr. Moody, and I have a good many preparations to make, but be good enough to tell me what you wish. Ah, sir, replied old Moody, I don't quite like to do that, and on further thoughts, Mr. Coverdale, perhaps I had better apply to some older gentleman or to some lady, if you would have the kindness to make me known to one who may happen to be going to Blythe Dale, you are a young man, sir. Does that fact lessen my availability for your purpose, ask-die? However, if an older man will suit you better, there is Mr. Hollingsworth, who has three or four years the advantage of me in age, and is a much more solid character and a philanthropist to boot. I am only a poet, and so the critics tell me no great affair at that. But what can this business be, Mr. Moody? It begins to interest me, especially since your hint that a lady's influence might be found desirable. Come, I am really anxious to be of service to you. But the old fellow in his civil and demure manner was both freakish and obstinate, and he had now taken some notion or other into his head that made him hesitate in his former design. I wonder, sir, said he, whether you know a lady whom they call Zenobia? Not personally, I answered, although I expect that pleasure to-morrow, as she has got the start of the rest of us and is already a resident at Blythe Dale. But have you a literary turn, Mr. Moody? Or have you taken up the advocacy of women's rights? Or what else can have interested you in this lady? Zenobia, by the by, as I suppose you know, is merely her public name, the sort of mask in which she comes before the world, retaining all the privileges of privacy, a contrivance, in short, like the white drapery of the veiled lady, only a little more transparent. But it is late. Will you tell me what I can do for you? Pleased to excuse me to-night, Mr. Coverdale said, Moody, you are very kind, but I am afraid I have troubled you when, after all, there may be no need. Perhaps with your good leave I will come to your lodgings to-morrow morning before you set out for Blythe Dale. I wish you a good night, sir, and beg pardon for stopping you. And so he slipped away, and as he did not show himself the next morning, it was only through subsequent events that I ever arrived at a plausible conjecture as to what his business could have been. Arriving at my room I threw a lump of cannel coal upon the grate, lighted a cigar, and spent an hour in musings of every hue from the brightest to the most somber, being in truth not so very confident as at some former periods that this final step which would mix me up irrevocably with the Blythe Dale affair was the wisest that could possibly be taken. It was nothing short of midnight when I went to bed, after drinking a glass of particularly fine sherry on which I used to pride myself in those days. It was the very last bottle, and I finished it with a friend the next forenoon before setting out for Blythe Dale. CHAPTER II There can hardly remain for me, who am really getting to be a frosty bachelor with another white hair every week or so in my mustache, or can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth as that which I remember the next day at Blythe Dale. It was a woodfire in the parlor of an old farmhouse on an April afternoon but with the fitful gusts of a wintry snowstorm roaring in the chimney. Vividly does that fireside recreate itself as I rake away the ashes from the embers in my memory and blow them up with a sigh for lack of more inspiring breath. Vividly for an instant but anon with the dimmest gleam and with just as little fervency for my heart as for my finger ends. The staunch oaken logs were long ago burnt out. Their genial glow must be represented, if at all, by the nearest phosphoric glimmer like that which exudes rather than shines from damp fragments of decayed trees diluting the benighted wanderer through a forest. Around such chill mockery of a fire some few of us might sit on the withered leaves, spreading out each a palm towards the imaginary warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning the life of Paradise anew. Paradise, indeed, nobody else in the world I am bold to affirm, nobody at least in our bleak little world of New England, had dreamed of Paradise that day except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor with such materials as were at hand could the most skillful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve's Bower than might be seen in the snow hut of an Eskimo. But we made a summer of it in spite of the wild drifts. It was an April day as already hinted and well towards the middle of the month. When morning dawned upon me in town its temperature was mild enough to be pronounced even balmy by a lodger like myself in one of the midmost houses of a brick block, each house partaking of the warmth of all the rest besides the sultriness of its individual furnace heat. But towards noon there had come snow, driven along the street by a northeasterly blast, and whitening the roofs and sidewalks with a business-like perseverance that would have done credit to our severest January tempest. It set about its task apparently as much in earnest as if it had been guaranteed from a thaw for months to come. The greater surely was my heroism when, puffing out a final whiff of cigar smoke, I quitted my cozy pair of bachelor-rooms, with a good fire burning in the grate and a closet right at hand where there was still a bottle or two in the champagne basket and a residuum of claret in a box. Quitted I say these comfortable quarters and plunged into the heart of the pitiless snowstorm, in quest of a better life. The better life. Possibly it would hardly look so now. It is enough it looked so then. The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool. The truest heroism is to resist the doubt and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted and when to be obeyed. Yet after all let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious, to follow out one's daydream to its natural consummation, although if the vision have been worth the having it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure. And what of that? Its arious fragments, impalpable as they may be, will possess a value that lurks not in the most ponderous realities of any practicable scheme. They are not the rubbish of the mind. Whatever else I may repent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's destiny. Yes, and to do what in me lay for their accomplishment, even to the extent of quitting a warm fireside, flinging away a freshly lighted cigar and travelling far beyond the strike of city clocks through a drifting snowstorm. There were four of us who rode together through the storm, and Hollingsworth, who had agreed to be of the number, was accidentally delayed and set forth at a later hour alone. As we threaded the streets I remember how the buildings on either side seemed to press too closely upon us in so much that our mighty hearts found barely room enough to throb between them. The snowfall, too, looked inexpressably dreary, I had almost called it dingy, coming down through an atmosphere of city smoke and a lighting on the sidewalk only to be molded into the impress of somebody's patched boot or overshoe. Thus the track of an old conventionalism was visible on what was freshest from the sky. But when we left the pavements and our muffled hoof-tramps beat upon a desolate extent of country road and were effaced by the unfettered blast as soon as stamped, then there was better air to breathe. Air that had not been breathed once and again, air that had not been spoken into, words of falsehood, formality and error, like all the air of the dusky city. How pleasant it is, remarked I, while the snowflakes flew into my mouth the moment it was opened. How very mild and balmy is this country air. Ah, Coverdale, don't laugh at what little enthusiasm you have left, said one of my companions. I maintain that this nitrous atmosphere is really exhilarating, and at any rate we can never call ourselves regenerated men till a February northeaster shall be as grateful to us as the softest breeze of June. So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly and merrily along by stone fences that were half-buried in the wave-like drifts, and through patches of woodland where the tree trunks opposed a snow-encrusted side towards the northeast, and within can of deserted villas with no footprints in their avenues, and past scattered dwellings whence puffed the smoke of country fires strongly impregnated with the pungent aroma of burning peat. Sometimes encountering a traveller we shouted a friendly greeting, and he, unmuffling his ears to the bluster and the snow-spray and listening eagerly, appeared to think our courtesy worth less than the trouble which it cost him. The churl. He understood the shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelligence for our blithe tones of brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial sympathy on the traveller's part was one among the innumerable tokens, how difficult a task we had in hand for the reformation of the world. We rode on, however, with still-unflagging spirits, and made such good companionship with the tempest that at our journey's end we professed ourselves almost loathe to bid the rude blusterer goodbye. But to own the truth I was little better than an icicle and began to be suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold. And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farmhouse, the same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences at the beginning of this chapter. There we sat with the snow melting out of our hair and beards, and our faces all ablaze what with the past inclemency and present warmth. It was indeed a right good fire that we found awaiting us, built up of great rough logs and knotty limbs, and splintered fragments of an oak tree such as farmers are wont to keep for their own hearths, since these crooked end unmanageable boughs could never be measured into merchantable cords for the market. A family of the old pilgrims might have swung their kettle over precisely such a fire as this, only no doubt a bigger one. And contrasting it with my coal grate I felt so much the more that we had transported ourselves a worldwide distance from the system of society that shackled us at breakfast time. Good comfortable Mrs. Foster, the wife of Stout Silas Foster, who was to manage the farm at a fair stipend and be our tutor in the art of husbandry, bade us a hearty welcome. At her back, a back of generous breadth, appeared two young women smiling most hospitably but looking rather awkward with all as not well knowing what was to be their position in our new arrangement of the world. We shook hands affectionately all round and congratulated ourselves that the blessed state of brotherhood and sisterhood at which we aimed might fairly be dated from this moment. Our greetings were hardly concluded when the door opened, and Zenobia, whom I had never before seen, important as was her place in our enterprise, Zenobia entered the parlor. This, as the reader, if at all acquainted with our literary biography, need scarcely be told, was not her real name. She had assumed it in the first instance as her magazine signature, and as it accorded well with something imperial which her friends attributed to this lady's figure and deportment, they half laughingly adopted it in their familiar intercourse with her. She took the appellation in good part and even encouraged its constant use, which in fact was thus far appropriate, that our Zenobia, however humble, looked her new philosophy, had as much native pride as any queen would have known what to do with. The Blythdale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 3 A Knot of Dreamers Zenobia bat us welcome in a fine Frank mellow voice and gave each of us her hand, which was very soft and warm. She had something appropriate, I recollect, to say to every individual, and what she said to myself was this. I have long wished to know you, Mr. Coverdale, and to thank you for your beautiful poetry, some of which I have learned by heart, or rather it has stolen into my memory without my exercising any choice or volition about the matter. Of course permit me to say you do not think of relinquishing an occupation in which you have done yourself so much credit, I would almost rather give you up as an associate than that the world should lose one of its true poets. On, no, there will not be the slightest danger of that, especially after this inestimable praise from Zenobia, said I, smiling and blushing no doubt with excess of pleasure. I hope on the contrary, now to produce something that shall really deserve to be called poetry, true, strong, natural, and sweet, as is the life which we are going to lead, something that shall have the notes of wild birds twittering through it, or a strain like the wind anthems in the woods as the case may be. Is it irksome to you to hear your own verses sung, asked Zenobia, with a gracious smile? If so, I am very sorry, for you will certainly hear me singing them sometimes in the summer evenings. Of all things, answered I, that is what will delight me most. While this passed and while she spoke to my companions, I was taking note of Zenobia's aspect, and it impressed itself on me so distinctly that I can now summon her up like a ghost, a little warner than the life but otherwise identical with it. She was dressed as simply as possible in an American print, I think the dry goods people call it so, but with a silken kerchief, between which and her gown, there was one glimpse of a white shoulder. It struck me as a great piece of good fortune that there should be just that glimpse. Her hair, which was dark, glossy, and of singular abundance, was put up rather soberly and primly, without curls or other ornament, except a single flower. It was an exotic of rare beauty, and as fresh as if the hot-house gardener had just clipped it from the stem, that flower has struck deep root into my memory. I can both see it and smell it at this moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly as it must have been, and yet enduring only for a day, it was more indicative of the pride and pomp which had a luxuriant growth in Zenobia's character than if a great diamond had sparkled among her hair. Their hand, though very soft, was larger than most women would like to have, or than they could afford to have, though not a wit too large in proportion with the spacious plan of Zenobia's entire development. It did one good to see a fine intellect, as hers really was, although its natural tendency lay in another direction than towards literature, so fitly cased. She was indeed an admirable figure of a woman, just on the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a combination of features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if some fastidious persons might pronounce them a little deficient in softness and delicacy. But we find enough of those attributes everywhere. Preferable, by way of variety at least, was Zenobia's bloom, health, and vigor, which she possessed in such overflow that a man might well have fallen in love with her for their sake only. In her quiet moods she seemed rather indolent, but when really in earnest, particularly if there were a spice of bitter feeling, she grew all alive to her fingertips. I am the first comeer Zenobia went on to say while her smile beamed warmth upon us all, so I take the part of hostess for today and welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at supper. Tomorrow, if you please, we will be brethren and sisters, and begin our new life from daybreak. Have we our various parts assigned, asked someone? Oh, we of the softer sex responded Zenobia with her mellow, almost broad laugh, most delectable to hear, but not in the least like an ordinary woman's laugh. We women, there are four of us here already, will take the domestic and indoor part of the business as a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew. To wash and iron, and scrub and sweep, and at our idler intervals to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing. These, I suppose, must be feminine occupations for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us who wear the petticoat will go afield and leave the weaker brethren to take our places in the kitchen. What a pity, I remarked, that the kitchen and the housework generally cannot be left out of our system altogether. It is odd enough that the kind of labour which falls to the lot of women is just that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life, the life of degenerated mortals, from the life of paradise. Eve had no dinner pot, and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day. I am afraid, said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out of her eyes, we shall find some difficulty in adopting the paradisiacal system for at least a month to come. Look at that snow-drift sweeping past the window. Are there any figs ripe, do you think? Have the pine apples been gathered to-day? Would you like a breadfruit or a coconut? Shall I run out and pluck you some roses? No, no, Mr. Coverdale, the only flower hereabouts is the one in my hair which I got out of a greenhouse this morning. As for the garb of Eden, added she, shivering playfully, I shall not assume it till after Mayday. Assuredly Zenobia could not have intended it. The fault must have been entirely in my imagination, but these last words together with something in her manner irresistibly brought up a picture of that fine, perfectly developed figure in Eve's earliest garment. Her free, careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of creating images which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite decorous when born of a thought that passes between man and woman. I imputed it at that time to Zenobia's noble courage, conscious of no harm, and scorning the petty restraints which take the life and colour out of other women's conversation. There was another peculiarity about her. We seldom meet with women nowadays and in this country who impress us as being women at all. Their sex fades away and goes for nothing in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt an influence breathing out of her such as we might suppose to come from Eve when she was just made, and her creator brought her to Adam, saying, Behold, here is a woman. Not that I would convey the idea of a special gentleness, grace, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm and rich characteristic, which seems for the most part to have been refined away out of the feminine system. And now, continued Zenobia, I must go and help get supper. Do you think you can be content, instead of figs, pineapples, and all the other delicacies of Adam's supper table, with tea and toast and a certain modest supply of ham and tongue, which with the instinct of a housewife I brought hither in a basket? And there shall be bread and milk, too, if the innocence of your taste demands it. The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic avocations, utterly declining our offers to assist, further than by bringing wood for the kitchen fire from a huge pile in the backyard. After heaping up more than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects. Soon with a tremendous stamping in the entry appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth and grisly bearded. He came from foddering the cattle in the barn and from the field where he had been plowing until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty much the same tone as if he were speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron tobacco box, pulled off his wet cow-hide boots, and sat down before the fire in his stocking feet. The steam arose from his soaked garments so that the stout yeoman looked vaporous and specter-like. Well, folks, remarked Silas, you'll be wishing yourselves back to town again if this weather holds. And true enough there was a look of gloom as the twilight fell silently and sadly out of the sky, its gray or sable flakes intermingling themselves with the fast descending snow. The storm in its evening aspect was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for our especial behoof, a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful phantoms that invariably haunt the mind on the eve of adventurous enterprises to warn us back within the boundaries of ordinary life. But our courage did not quail. We would not allow ourselves to be depressed by the snow-drift trailing past the window any more than if it had been the sigh of a summer wind among rustling boughs. There have been few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever men might lawfully dream awake and give utterance to their wildest visions without dread of laughter or scorn on the part of the audience, yes, and speak of earthly happiness for themselves and mankind as an object to be hopefully striven for and probably obtained. We who made that little semicircle round the blazing fire were those very men. We had left the rusty iron framework of society behind us. We had broken through many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on the weary treadmill of the established system, even while they feel its irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did. We had stepped down from the pulpit. We had flung aside the pen. We had shut up the ledger. We had thrown off that sweet, bewitching, innervating indolence, which is better, after all, than most of the enjoyments within mortal grasp. It was our purpose, a generous one, certainly, and absurd, no doubt, in full proportion with its generosity, to give up whatever we had here to foreattained, for the sake of showing mankind the example of a life governed by other than the false and cruel principles on which human society has all along been based. And first of all we had divorced ourselves from pride and were striving to supply its place with familiar love. We meant to lessen the laboring man's great burden of toil by performing our due share of it at the cost of our own thews and sinews. We sought our profit by mutual aid instead of resting it by the strong hand of an enemy, or filching it craftily from those less shrewd than ourselves, if indeed there were any such in New England, or winning it by selfish competition with a neighbor in one or another of which fashions every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil, whether he chooses it or know. And as the basis of our institution we purposed to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies as a prayer no less than an effort for the advancement of our race. Therefore if we built splendid castles, phalansteries perhaps they might be more fitly called, and pictured beautiful scenes among the fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime, or if so the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error. Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation, but when he did speak it was very much to some practical purpose. For instance, which man among you, quote he, is the best judge of swine? Some of us must go to the next Brighton Fair and buy half a dozen pigs. Pigs, good heavens, had we come out from among the swinish multitude for this? And again in reference to some discussion about raising early vegetables for the market. We shall never make any hand at market gardening, said Silas Foster, unless the women folks will undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team enough for that and the regular farm work, reckoning three of your city folks as worth one common field hand. No no I tell you we should have to get up a little too early in the morning to compete with the market gardeners round Boston. It struck me, as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But to own the truth I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather than new brotherhood. Nor could this fail to be the case in some degree until the bigger and better half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting so pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual bond among ourselves. This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness by the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence that supper was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass and perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid, probably by being exposed to the fervency of the kitchen fire, she flung it on the floor as unconcernedly as a village girl would throw away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her character, although me thought it would still more have befitted the bounteous nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand and to revive faded ones by her touch. Nevertheless it was a singular but irresistible effect. The presence of Zenobia caused our heroic enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia in which we grown-up men and women were making a play-day of the years that were given us to live in. I tried to analyze this impression, but not with much success. It really vexes me, observes Zenobia, as we left the room, that Mr. Hollingsworth should be such a laggard. I should not have thought him at all the sort of person to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind or a few snowflakes drifting into his face. Do you know Hollingsworth personally, I inquired? No, only as an auditor, auditress I mean, of some of his lectures, said she. What a voice he has, and what a man he is. Yet not so much an intellectual man, I should say, as a great heart. At least he moved me more deeply than I think myself capable of being moved, except by the stroke of a true strong heart against my own. It is a sad pity that he should have devoted his glorious powers to such a grimy, unbeautiful, and positively hopeless object as this reformation of criminals, about which he makes himself and his wretchedly small audiences so very miserable. To tell you a secret I never could tolerate a philanthropist before, could you? By no means I answered, neither can I now. They are indeed an odiously disagreeable set of mortals, continued Zenobia. I should like Mr. Hollingsworth a great deal better if the philanthropy had been left out. At all events as a mere matter of taste I wish he had let the bad people alone and try to benefit those who are not already past his help. Do you suppose he will be content to spend his life, or even a few months of it, among tolerably virtuous and comfortable individuals like ourselves? Upon my word I doubt it, said I, if we wish to keep him with us we must systematically commit at least one crime apiece. Mere peccadillos will not satisfy him. Zenobia turned side-long a strange kind of a glance upon me, but before I could make out what it meant we had entered the kitchen, where in accordance with the rustic simplicity of our new life the supper-table was spread. CHAPTER IV The Pleasant Firelight I must still keep harping on it. The kitchen hearth had an old-fashioned breath, depth and spaciousness, far within which lay what seemed the butt of a good-sized oak-tree, with the moisture bubbling merrily out at both ends. It was now half an hour beyond dusk. The blaze from an armful of substantial sticks, rendered more combustible by brushwood and pine, flickered powerfully on the smoke-blackened walls, and so cheered our spirits that we cared not what inclemency might rage and roar on the other side of our illuminated windows. A yet sultry or warmth was bestowed by a goodly quantity of peat which was crumbling to white ashes among the burning brands, and incensed the kitchen with its not ungrateful fragrance. The exuberance of this household fire would alone have sufficed to bespeak us no true farmers, for the New England yeoman, if he have the misfortune to dwell within practicable distance of a wood market, is as niggardly of each stick as if it were a bar of California gold. But it was fortunate for us, on that wintery eve of our untried life, to enjoy the warm and radiant luxury of a somewhat too abundant fire. If it served no other purpose, it made the men look so full of youth, warm blood and hope, and the women, such of them at least as were anywise convertible by its magic, so very beautiful, that I would cheerfully have spent my last dollar to prolong the blaze. As for Zenobia, there was a glow in her cheeks that made me think of Pandora, fresh from Vulcan's workshop, and full of the celestial warmth by dint of which he had tempered and molded her. Take your places, my dear friends all, cried she. Seat yourselves without ceremony, and you shall be made happy with such tea as not many of the world's working people, except yourselves, will find in their cups tonight. After this one supper you may drink buttermilk, if you please. Tonight we will quaff this nectar which I assure you could not be bought with gold. We all sat down, grizzly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the two bouncing handmaidens included, and looked at one another in a friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood, and we people of superior cultivation and refinement, for as such I presume we unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves, felt as if something were already accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however, that the laboring oar was with our unpolished companions, it being far easier to condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I refrain from questioning in secret whether some of us, and Zenobia among the rest, would so quietly have taken our places among these good people, say for the cherished consciousness that it was not by necessity but choice. Though we sought fit to drink our tea out of earthen cups tonight and in earthen company, it was at our own option to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again to-morrow. The same salvo as to the power of regaining our former position contributed much, I fear, to the equanimity with which we subsequently bore many of the hardships and humiliations of a life of toil. If ever I have deserved, which has not often been the case, and I think never, but if ever I did deserve to be soundly cuffed by a fellow mortal for secretly putting weight upon some imaginary social advantage, it must have been while I was striving to prove myself ostentatiously his equal and no more. It was while I sat beside him on his cobbler's bench, or clinked my hoe against his own in the corn field, or broke the same crust of bread my earth-grimmed hand to his at our noontide lunch. The poor proud man should look at both sides of sympathy like this. The silence which followed upon our sitting down to table grew rather oppressive. Indeed it was hardly broken by a word during the first round of Zenobia's fragrant tea. I hope, said I at last, that our blazing windows will be visible a great way off. There is nothing so pleasant and encouraging to a solitary traveller on a stormy night as a flood of firelight seen amid the gloom. These ruddy window-panes cannot fail to cheer the hearts of all that look at them. Are they not warm with the beacon fire which we have kindled for humanity? The blaze of that brushwood will only last a minute or two longer, observed Silas Foster, but whether he meant to insinuate that our moral illumination would have as brief a term I cannot say. Meantime, said Zenobia, it may serve to guide some wayfarer to a shelter. And just as she said this there came a knock at the house door. There is one of the world's wayfarers, said I. I, I, just so, quote Silas Foster, our firelight will draw stragglers just as a candle draws doorbugs on a summer night. Whether to enjoy a dramatic suspense, or that we were selfishly contrasting our own comfort with the chill and dreary situation of the unknown person at the threshold, or that some of us cityfolk felt a little startled at the knock which came so unseasonably through night and storm to the door of the lonely farmhouse, so it happened that nobody for an instant or two arose to answer the summons. Very soon there came another knock. The first had been moderately loud, the second was smitten so forcibly that the knuckles of the applicant must have left their mark in the door panel. He knocks as if he had a right to come in, said Zenobia, laughing, and what are we thinking of? It must be Mr. Hollingsworth. Hereupon I went to the door unbolted and flung it wide open. There, sure enough, stood Hollingsworth, his shaggy great coat all covered with snow, so that he looked quite as much like a polar bear as a modern philanthropist. Sluggish hospitality this, said he, in those deep tones of his, which seemed to come out of a chest as capacious as a barrel. It would have served you right if I had lain down and spent the night on the doorstep, just for the sake of putting you to shame. But here is a guest who will need a warmer and softer bed. And stepping back to the wagon in which he had journeyed hither, Hollingsworth received into his arms and deposited on the doorstep a figure enveloped in a cloak. It was evidently a woman, or rather judging from the ease with which he lifted her and the little space which she seemed to fill in his arms, a slim and unsubstantial girl. As she showed some hesitation about entering the door, Hollingsworth, with his usual directness and lack of ceremony, urged her forward not merely within the entry, but into the warm and strongly lighted kitchen. Who is this? whispered I, remaining behind with him while he was taking off his great coat. Who? Really I don't know, answered Hollingsworth, looking at me with some surprise. It is a young person who belongs here, however, and no doubt she had been expected. Zenobia, or some of the women folks, can tell you all about it. I think not, said I, glancing towards the newcomer and the other occupants of the kitchen. Nobody seems to welcome her. I should hardly judge that she was an expected guest. Well, well, said Hollingsworth quietly. We'll make it right. The stranger, or whatever she were, remained standing precisely on that spot of the kitchen floor to which Hollingsworth's kindly hand had impelled her. The cloak falling partly off, she was seen to be a very young woman, dressed in a poor but decent gown, made high in the neck and without any regard to fashion or smartness. Her brown hair fell down from beneath the hood, not in curls, but with only a slight wave. Her face was of a wand almost sickly hue, betokening habitual seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower shrub that had done its best to blossom in too scanty light. To complete the pitiableness of her aspect she shivered either with cold or fear or nervous excitement so that you might have beheld her shadow vibrating on the fire-lighted wall. In short there has seldom been seen so depressed and sad a figure as this young girl's. And it was hardly possible to help being angry with her from mere despair of doing anything for her comfort. The fantasy occurred to me that she was some desolate kind of a creature doomed to wander about in snowstorms, and that, though the ruddiness of our window-panes had tempted her into a human dwelling, she would not remain long enough to melt the icicles out of her hair. Another conjecture likewise came into my mind. Recollecting Hollingsworth's sphere of philanthropic action I deemed it possible that he might have brought one of his guilty patients to be wrought upon and restored to spiritual health by the pure influences which our mode of life would create. As yet the girl had not stirred. She stood near the door, fixing a pair of large, brown, melancholy eyes upon Zenobia, only upon Zenobia. She evidently saw nothing else in the room save that bright, fair, rosy, beautiful woman. It was the strangest look I ever witnessed, long a mystery to me, and forever a memory. Once she seemed about to move forward and greet her. I know not with what warmth or with what words, but finally, instead of doing so, she dropped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and gazed piteously into Zenobia's face. Meeting no kindly reception, her head fell on her bosom. I never thoroughly forgave Zenobia for her conduct on this occasion, but women are always more cautious in their casual hospitalities than men. What does the girl mean, cried she, in rather a sharp tone? Is she crazy? Has she no tongue? And here Hollingsworth stepped forward. No wonder if the poor child's tongue is frozen in her mouth, said he, and I think he positively frowned at Zenobia. The very heart will be frozen in her bosom unless you women can warm it among you with the warmth that ought to be in your own. Hollingsworth's appearance was very striking at this moment. He was then about thirty years old, but looked several years older, with his great shaggy head, his heavy brow, his dark complexion, his abundant beard, and the rude strength with which his features seemed to have been hammered out of iron, rather than chiseled or molded from any finer or softer material. His figure was not tall, but massive and brawny, and well befitting his original occupation, which as the reader probably knows, was that of a blacksmith. As for external polish, or mere courtesy of manner, he never possessed more than a tolerably educated bear, although in his gentler moods there was a tenderness in his voice, eyes, mouth, in his gesture, and in every indescribable manifestation which few men could resist and know women. But he now looked stern and reproachful, and it was with that inauspicious meaning in his glance that Hollingsworth first met Zinobia's eyes and began his influence upon her life. To my surprise, Zinobia, of whose haughty spirit I had been told so many examples, absolutely changed colour, and seemed mortified and confused. You do not quite do me justice, Mr. Hollingsworth, said she almost humbly. I am willing to be kind to the poor girl. Is she a protege of yours? What can I do for her? Have you anything to ask of this lady, said Hollingsworth kindly to the girl? I remember you mentioned her name before we left town. Only that she will shelter me, replied the girl tremulously. Only that she will let me be always near her. Well, indeed exclaimed Zinobia, recovering herself and laughing, this is an adventure, and well worthy to be the first incident in our life of love and free-heartedness. But I accept it for the present without further question. Only, added she, it would be a convenience if we knew your name. Priscilla, said the girl, and it appeared to me that she hesitated whether to add anything more and decided in the negative. Pray do not ask me my other name, at least not yet, if you will be so kind to a forlorn creature. Priscilla, Priscilla, I repeated the name to myself three or four times, and in that little space this quaint and prim cognomen had so amalgamated itself with my idea of the girl that it seemed as if no other name could have adhered to her for a moment. Hereafter the poor thing had not shed any tears, but now that she found herself received, and at least temporarily established, the big drops began to ooze out from beneath her eyelids as if she were full of them. Perhaps it showed the iron substance of my heart that I could not help smiling at this odd scene of unknown and unaccountable calamity into which our cheerful party had been entrapped, without the liberty of choosing whether to sympathize or know. Hulling's worst behavior was certainly a great deal more creditable than mine. Let us not pry further into her secrets, he said to Zinobia and the rest of us apart, and his dark shaggy face looked really beautiful with this expression of thoughtful benevolence. Let us conclude that Providence has sent her to us as the first fruits of the world which we have undertaken to make happier than we find it. Let us warm her poor shivering body with this good fire and her poor shivering heart with our best kindness. Let us feed her and make her one of us. As we do by this friendless girl, so shall we prosper, and in good time whatever is desirable for us to know will be melted out of her as inevitably as those tears which we see now. At least, remarked I, you may tell us how and where you met with her. An old man brought her to my lodgings, answered Hulling's worth, and begged me to convey her to Blythdale, where so I understood him she had friends, and this is positively all I know about the matter. Grim Silas Foster all this while had been busy at the supper-table, pouring out his own tea and gulping it down with no more sense of its exquisite-ness than if it were a decoction of catnip, helping himself to pieces of dipped toast on the flat of his knife-blade and dropping half of it on the tablecloth, using the same serviceable implement to cut slice after slice of ham, perpetrating terrible enormities with the butter-plate, and in all other respects behaving less like a civilized Christian than the worst kind of an ogre. Being by this time fully gorged, he crowned his amiable exploits with a draft from the water-pitcher, and then favored us with his opinion about the business in hand, and certainly though they proceeded out of an unwiped mouth, his expressions did him honour. Give the girl a hot cup of tea and a thick slice of this first-rate bacon, said Silas, like a sensible man as he was. That's what she wants. Let her stay with us as long as she likes and help in the kitchen and take the cow-breath at milking-time, and in a week or two she'll begin to look like a creature of this world. So we sat down again to supper and Priscilla along with us. Hawthorne. Chapter 5 Until Bedtime Silas Foster, by the time we concluded our meal, had stripped off his coat and planted himself on a low chair by the kitchen fire, with a lap-stone, a hammer, a piece of sole leather, and some waxed ends, in order to cobble an old pair of cow-hide boots—he being, in his own phrase, something of a dab, whatever degree of skill that may imply, at the shoemaking business. We heard the tap of his hammer at intervals for the rest of the evening. The remainder of the party adjourned to the sitting-room. Good Mrs Foster took her knitting-work and soon fell fast asleep, still keeping her needles in brisk movement, and, to the best of my observation, absolutely footing a stocking out of the texture of a dream, and a very substantial stocking it seemed to be. One of the two handmaidens hemmed a towel, and the other appeared to be making a ruffle for her sundaes-wear, out of a little bit of embroidered muslin, which the nobia had probably given her. It was curious to observe how, trustingly and yet how timidly, our poor Priscilla betook herself into the shadow of the nobia's protection. She sat beside her on a stool, looking up every now and then with an expression of humble delight at her new friend's beauty. A brilliant woman is often an object of the devoted admiration—it might almost be termed worship or idolatry—of some young girl, who perhaps beholds the signusure only at an awful distance, and has as little hope of personal intercourse as of climbing among the stars of heaven. We men are too gross to comprehend it. Even a woman of mature age despises or laughs at such a passion. There occurred to me no mode of accounting for Priscilla's behaviour, except by supposing that she had read some of Zenobia's stories, as such literature goes everywhere, or her tracts in defense of the sex, and had come hither with the one purpose of being her slave. There is nothing parallel to this, I believe, nothing so foolishly disinterested and hardly anything so beautiful in the masculine nature at whatever epoch of life. Or if there be, a fine and rare development of character might reasonably be looked for from the youth who should prove himself capable of such self-forgetful affection. Zenobia happening to change her seat, I took the opportunity in an undertone to suggest some such notion as the above. Since you see the young woman in so poetical alight replied she in the same tone, you had better turn the affair into a ballad. It is a grand subject and worthy of supernatural machinery. The storm, the startling knock at the door, the entrance of the sable night haulings worth, and this shadowy snow maiden, who, precisely at the stroke of midnight, shall melt away at my feet in a pool of ice- cold water, and give me my death with a pair of wet slippers. And when the verses are written and polished quite to your mind, I will favour you with my idea as to what the girl really is. Pray let me have it now, said I, it shall be woven into the ballad. She is neither more nor less answered Zenobia than a seamstress from the city, and she has probably no more transcendental purpose than to do my miscellaneous sewing, for I suppose she will hardly expect to make my dresses. How can you decide upon her so easily, I inquired. Oh, we women judge one another by tokens that escape the obtuseness of masculine perception, said Zenobia. There is no proof which you would be likely to appreciate except the needle marks on the tip of her forefinger. Then my supposition perfectly accounts for her paleness, her nervousness, and her wretched fragility. Poor thing, she has been stifled with the heat of a salamander stove in a small, close room, and has drunk coffee and fed upon doughnuts, raisins, candy, and all such trash, till she is scarcely half alive, and so, as she has hardly any physique, a poet like Mr. Miles Coverdale may be allowed to think her spiritual. Look at her now, whispered I. Priscilla was gazing towards us with an inexpressible sorrow in her wan face and great tears running down her cheeks. It was difficult to resist the impression that cautiously as we had lowered our voices she must have overheard and been wounded by Zenobia's scornful estimate of her character and purposes. What ears the girl must have whispered Zenobia with a look of vexation, partly comic and partly real. I will confess to you that I cannot quite make her out. However, I am positively not an ill-natured person unless one very grievously provoked, and as you and especially Mr. Hollingsworth take so much interest in this odd creature, and as she knocks with a very slight tap against my own heart likewise, why I mean to let her in. From this moment I will be reasonably kind to her. There is no pleasure in tormenting a person of one's own sex, even if she do favour one with a little more love than one can conveniently dispose of. And that, let me say, Mr. Coverdale, is the most troublesome offense you can offer to a woman. Thank you, said I, smiling. I don't mean to be guilty of it. She went towards Priscilla, took her hand, and passed her own rosy fingertips with a pretty caressing movement over the girl's hair. The touch had a magical effect, so vivid a look of joy flushed up beneath those fingers that it seemed as if the sad and wan Priscilla had been snatched away and another kind of creature substituted in her place. This one caress bestowed voluntarily by Zenobia was evidently received as a pledge of all that the stranger sought from her whatever the unuttered boon might be. From that instant, too, she melted in quietly amongst us and was no longer a foreign element. Though always an object of peculiar interest, a riddle and a theme of frequent discussion, her tenure at Blythdale was thenceforth fixed. We no more thought of questioning it than if Priscilla had been recognized as a domestic sprite who had haunted the rustic fireside of old before we had ever been warmed by its blaze. She now produced out of a work bag that she had with her some little wooden instruments, what they are called, I never knew, and proceeded to knit or net an article which ultimately took the shape of a silk purse. As the work went on I remembered to have seen just such purses before, indeed I was the possessor of one. Their peculiar excellence, besides the great delicacy and beauty of the manufacture, lay in the almost impossibility that any uninitiated person should discover the aperture. Although to a practiced touch they would open as wide as charity or prodigality might wish, I wondered if it were not a symbol of Priscilla's own mystery. Notwithstanding the new confidence with which Zanobia had inspired her, our guest showed herself disquieted by the storm. When the strong puffs of wind spattered the snow against the windows and made the oaken frame of the Farmhouse Creek, she looked at us apprehensively, as if to inquire whether these tempestuous outbreaks did not be token some unusual mischief in the shrieking blast. She had been bred up, no doubt, in some close nook, some inauspiciously sheltered court of the city, where the uttermost rage of a tempest, though it might scatter down the slates of the roof into the bricked area, could not shake the casement of her little room. The sense of vast, undefined space, pressing from the outside against the black panes of our uncurtained windows, was fearful to the poor girl, here to fore accustomed to the narrowness of human limits, with the lamps of neighboring tenements glimmering across the street. The house probably seemed to her a drift on the great ocean of the night. A little parallelogram of sky was all that she had hitherto known of nature, so that she felt the awfulness that really exists in its limitless extent. Once while the blast was bellowing, she caught hold of Zenobia's robe with precisely the air of one who hears her own name spoken at a distance, but is unutterably reluctant to obey the call. We spent rather an incommunicative evening. Hollingsworth hardly said a word unless when repeatedly and pertinaciously addressed. Then indeed he would glare upon us from the thick shrubbery of his meditations like a tiger out of a jungle, make the briefest reply possible, and be take himself back into the solitude of his heart and mind. The poor fellow had contracted this ungracious habit from the intensity with which he contemplated his own ideas, and the infrequent sympathy which they met with from his auditors, a circumstance that seemed only to strengthen the implicit confidence that he awarded to them. His heart, I imagine, was never really interested in our socialist scheme, but was forever busy with his strange and, as most people thought it, impracticable plan for the reformation of criminals through an appeal to their higher instincts. Much as I liked Hollingsworth it cost me many a groan to tolerate him on this point. He ought to have commenced his investigation of the subject by perpetrating some huge sin in his proper person and examining the condition of his higher instincts afterwards. The rest of us formed ourselves into a committee for providing our infant community with an appropriate name, a matter of greatly more difficulty than the uninitiated reader would suppose. Blythdale was neither good nor bad. We should have resumed the old Indian name of the premises, had it possessed the oil and honey flow which the Aborigines were so often happy in communicating to their local appellations, but at chance to be a harsh, ill-connected and interminable word which seemed to fill the mouth with a mixture of very stiff clay and very crumbly pebbles. Zenobia suggested sunny glimpse as expressive of a vista into a better system of society. This we turned over and over for a while, acknowledging its prettiness, but concluded it to be rather too fine and sentimental a name, a fault inevitable by literary ladies in such attempts, for sunburnt men to work under. I ventured to whisper Utopia, which, however, was unanimously scouted down and the proposer very harshly maltreated as if he had intended a latent satire. Some were for calling our institution the Oasis in view of its being the one green spot in the moral sand waste of the world, but others insisted on a proviso for reconsidering the matter at a twelve-month's end when a final decision might be had whether to name it the Oasis or Sahara. So at last finding it impracticable to hammer out anything better, we resolved that the spot should still be Blythdale as being of good augury enough. The evening wore on and the outer solitude looked in upon us through the windows, gloomy, wild and vague, like another state of existence, close beside the little sphere of warmth and light in which we were the prattlers and bustlers of a moment. By and by the door was opened by Silas Foster, with a cotton handkerchief about his head and a tallow candle in his hand. Take my advice, Brother Farmers, said he, with a great broad bottomless yawn, and get to bed as soon as you can. I shall sound the horn at daybreak, and we've got the cattle to fodder and nine cows to milk and a dozen other things to do before breakfast. Thus ended the first evening at Blythdale. I went shivering to my fireless chamber with the miserable consciousness which had been growing upon me for several hours past that I had caught a tremendous cold and should probably awaken at the blast of the horn a fit subject for a hospital. The night proved a feverish one. During the greater part of it I was in that vilest of states when a fixed idea remains in the mind like the nail in Cicera's brain, while innumerable other ideas go and come and flutter to and fro, combining constant transition with intolerable sameness. Had I made a record of that night's half-waking dreams, it is my belief that it would have anticipated several of the chief incidents of this narrative, including a dim shadow of its catastrophe. Starting up in bed at length I saw that the storm was past and the moon was shining on the snowy landscape which looked like a lifeless copy of the world in marble. From the bank of the distant river which was shimmering in the moonlight came the black shadow of the only cloud in heaven driven swiftly by the wind and passing over meadow and hillock vanishing amid tufts of leafless trees but reappearing on the hither side until it swept across our doorstep. How cold in Arcadia was this? The horn sounded at daybreak as Silas Foster had forewarned us, harsh, uproarious, inexorably drawn out and as sleep-dispelling as if this hard-hearted old yeoman had got hold of the trump of doom. On all sides I could hear the creaking of the bedsteads as the brethren of Blythdale started from slumber and thrust themselves into their habiliments, all a rye no doubt in their haste to begin the reformation of the world. Zenobia put her head into the entry and besought Silas Foster to cease his clamour and to be kind enough to leave an armful of firewood and a pail of water at her chamber door. Of the whole household, unless indeed it were Priscilla for whose habits in this particular I cannot vouch, of all our apostolic society whose mission was to bless mankind, Hulling's worth I apprehend was the only one who began the enterprise with prayer. My sleeping-room, being but thinly partitioned from his, the solemn murmur of his voice made its way to my ears, compelling me to be an auditor of his awful privacy with the creator. It affected me with a deep reverence for Hulling's worth, which no familiarity then existing or that afterwards grew more intimate between us, no, nor my subsequent perception of his own great errors ever quite effaced. It is so rare in these times to meet with a man of prayerful habits, except of course in the pulpit, that such an one is decidedly marked out by the light of transfiguration shed upon him in the divine interview from which he passes into his daily life. As for me, I lay a bed, and if I said my prayers it was backward, cursing my day as bitterly as patient Job himself. The truth was the hot house warmth of a town residence and the luxurious life in which I indulged myself had taken much of the pith out of my physical system, and the wintery blast of the preceding day, together with the general chill of our airy old farmhouse, had got fairly into my heart and the marrow of my bones. In this predicament I seriously wished, selfish as it may appear, that the reformation of society had been postponed about half a century or at all events to such a date as should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question. What in the name of common sense had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in? It had satisfied me well enough. My pleasant bachelor parlor, sunny and shadowy, curtained and carpeted, with the bed-chamber adjoining, my centre-table strewn with books and periodicals, my writing-desk with a half-finished poem in a stanza of my own contrivance, my morning lounge at the reading-room or picture-gallery, my noontide walk along the cheery pavement with the suggestive succession of human faces and the brisk throb of human life in which I shared, my dinner at the albion where I had a hundred dishes at command, and could banquet as delicately as the wizard Michael Scott when the devil fed him from the king of France's kitchen, my evening at the billiard club, the concert, the theatre, or at somebody's party if I pleased, what could be better than all this? Was it better to hoe, to mow, to toil and moil amidst the accumulations of a barnyard, to be the chambermaid of two yoke of oxen and a dozen cows, to eat salt-beef and earn it with the sweat of my brow, and thereby take the tough morsel out of some wretches' mouth into whose vocation I had thrust myself? Above all, was it better to have a fever and dye-blast-feming as I was like to do? In this wretched plight, with a furnace in my heart and another in my head, by the heat of which I was kept constantly at the boiling-point, yet shivering at the bare idea of extruding so much as a finger into the icy atmosphere of the room, I kept my bed until breakfast time, when Hollingsworth knocked at the door and entered. Well, Coverdale cried he, you bid fair to make an admirable farmer, don't you mean to get up to-day? Neither to-day nor to-morrow, said I hopelessly, I doubt if I ever rise again. What is the matter now, he asked. I told him my piteous case, and besought him to send me back to town in a close carriage. No, no, said Hollingsworth with kindly seriousness, if you are really sick we must take care of you. Accordingly he built a fire in my chamber and having little else to do while the snow lay on the ground established himself as my nurse. A doctor was sent for, who, being homeopathic, gave me as much medicine in the course of a fortnight's attendance as would have laid on the point of a needle. They fed me on water-grewle and I speedily became a skeleton above ground. But after all I have many precious recollections connected with that fit of sickness. Hollingsworth's more-than-brotherly attendance gave me inexpressible comfort. Most men, and certainly I could not always claim to be one of the exceptions, have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feeling, towards those whom disease or weakness or calamity of any kind causes to falter and faint amid the rude jostle of our selfish existence. The education of Christianity it is true, the sympathy of a like experience and the example of women may soften and possibly subvert this ugly characteristic of our sex. But it is originally there, and has likewise its analogy in the practice of our brute brethren who hunt the sick or disabled member of the herd from among them as an enemy. It is for this reason that the stricken deer goes apart and the sick lion grimly withdraws himself into his den, except in love or the attachments of kindred or other very long and habitual affection we really have no tenderness. But there was something of the woman molded into the great stalwart frame of Hollingsworth, nor was he ashamed of it as men often are of what is best in them, nor seemed ever to know that there was such a soft place in his heart. I knew it well, however, at that time, although afterwards it came nigh to be forgotten. We thought there could not be two such men alive as Hollingsworth. There never was any blaze of a fireside that warmed and cheered me in the down-sinkings and shiverings of my spirit so effectually as did the light out of those eyes, which lay so deep and dark under his shaggy brows. Happy the man that has such a friend beside him when he comes to die, and unless a friend like Hollingsworth be at hand, as most probably there will not, he had better make up his mind to die alone. How many men I wonder does one meet with in a lifetime whom he would choose for his deathbed companions? At the crisis of my fever I besought Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the room, but continually to make me sensible of his own presence by a grasp of the hand, a word, a prayer if he thought good to utter it, and that then he should be the witness how courageously I would encounter the worst. It still impresses me as almost a matter of regret that I did not die then when I had tolerably made up my mind to it, for Hollingsworth would have gone with me to the hither verge of life, and have sent his friendly and hopeful accents far over on the other side while I should be treading the unknown path. Now were I to send for him he would hardly come to my bedside, or should I depart the easier for his presence? You are not going to die this time, said he, gravely smiling. You know nothing about sickness and think your case a great deal more desperate than it is. Death should take me while I am in the mood, replied I, with a little of my customary levity. Have you nothing to do in life, asked Hollingsworth, that you fancy yourself so ready to leave it? Having answered I, nothing that I know of unless to make pretty verses and play a part with Zenobia and the rest of the amateurs in our pastoral, it seems but an unsubstantial sort of business as viewed through a mist of fever. But dear Hollingsworth, your own vocation is evidently to be a priest, and to spend your days and nights in helping your fellow creatures to draw peaceful dying breaths. And by which of my qualities, inquired he, can you suppose me fitted for this awful ministry? By your tenderness, I said, it seems to me the reflection of God's own love. And you call me tender, repeated Hollingsworth thoughtfully, I should rather say that the most marked trait in my character is an inflexible severity of purpose. Mortal man has no right to be so inflexible as it is my nature and necessity to be. I do not believe it, I replied. But in due time I remembered what he said. Probably as Hollingsworth suggested my disorder was never so serious as in my ignorance of such matters I was inclined to consider it. After so much tragical preparation it was positively rather mortifying to find myself on the mending hand. All the other members of the community showed me kindness according to the full measure of their capacity. Zenobia brought me my gruel every day made by her own hands, not very skillfully if the truth must be told, and whenever I seemed inclined to converse would sit by my bedside and talk with so much vivacity as to add several gratuitous throbs to my pulse. Her poor little stories and tracts never half did justice to her intellect. It was only the lack of a fitter avenue that drove her to seek development in literature. She was made among a thousand other things that she might have been for a stump oratress. I recognized no severe culture in Zenobia. Her mind was full of weeds. It startled me sometimes in my state of moral as well as bodily faint-heartedness to observe the hardy-hood of her philosophy. She made no scruple of oversetting all human institutions and scattering them as with a breeze from her fan. A female reformer in her attacks upon society has an instinctive sense of where the life lies and is inclined to aim directly at that spot. Especially the relation between the sexes is naturally among the earliest to attract her notice. Zenobia was truly a magnificent woman. The homely simplicity of her dress could not conceal nor scarcely diminish the queenliness of her presence. The image of her form and face should have been multiplied all over the earth. It was wronging the rest of mankind to retain her as the spectacle of only a few. The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty moreover to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors and preferably to the latter because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery so that the eye might chastely be gladdened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks and even the flesh warmth over her round arms and what was visible of her full bust, in a word her womanliness incarnated, compelled me sometimes to close my eyes as if it were not quite the privilege of modesty to gaze at her. Illness and exhaustion, no doubt, had made me morbidly sensitive. I noticed and wondered how Zenobia contrived it that she had always a new flower in her hair, and still it was a hot-house flower, an outlandish flower, a flower of the tropics, such as appeared to have sprung passionately out of a soil the very weeds of which would be fervid and spicy. Unlike as was the flower of each successive day to the preceding one, it yet so assimilated its richness to the rich beauty of the woman that I thought it the only flower fit to be worn. So fit indeed that nature had evidently created this floral gem in a happy exuberance for the one purpose of worthily adorning Zenobia's head. It might be that my feverish fantasies clustered themselves about this peculiarity and caused it to look more gorgeous and wonderful than if beheld with temperate eyes. In the height of my illness, as I well recollect, I went so far as to pronounce it preternatural. Zenobia is an enchantress, whispered I once to Hollingsworth. She is a sister of the veiled lady. That flower in her hair is a talisman. If you were to snatch it away she would vanish or be transformed into something else. What does he say, asked Zenobia? Nothing that has an atom of sense in it, answered Hollingsworth. He is a little beside himself, I believe, and talks about your being a witch, and of some magical property in the flower that you wear in your hair. It is an idea worthy of a feverish poet, said she, laughing rather compassionately and taking out the flower. I scorn to owe anything to magic. Here Mr. Hollingsworth you may keep the spell while it has any virtue in it, but I cannot promise you not to appear with a new one to-morrow. It is the one relic of my more brilliant, my happier days. The most curious part of the matter was that long after my slight delirium had passed away, as long indeed as I continued to know this remarkable woman, her daily flower affected my imagination, though more slightly, yet in very much the same way. The reason must have been that whether intentionally on her part or not this favorite ornament was actually a subtle expression of Zenobia's character. One subject about which, very impertently moreover, I perplexed myself with great many conjectures, was whether Zenobia had ever been married. The idea it must be understood was unauthorized by any circumstance or suggestion that had made its way to my ears. So young as I beheld her, and the freshest and rosiest woman of a thousand, there was certainly no need of imputing to her a destiny already accomplished. The probability was far greater that her coming years had all life's richest gifts to bring. If the great event of a woman's existence had been consummated, the world knew nothing of it, although the world seemed to know Zenobia well. It was a ridiculous piece of romance undoubtedly to imagine that this beautiful personage, wealthy as she was, and holding a position that might fairly enough be called distinguished, could have given herself away so privately, but that some whisper and suspicion and by degrees of full understanding of the fact would eventually be blown abroad. But then, as I failed not to consider, her original home was at a distance of many hundred miles. Rumors might fill the social atmosphere, or might once have filled it there, which would travel but slowly, against the wind, towards our northeastern metropolis, and perhaps melt into thin air before reaching it. There was not, and I distinctly repeat it, the slightest foundation in my knowledge for any surmise of the kind. But there is a species of intuition, either a spiritual lie or the subtle recognition of a fact, which comes to us in a reduced state of the corporeal system. The soul gets the better of the body after wasting illness, or when a vegetable diet may have mingled too much ether in the blood. Vapors then rise up to the brain and take shapes that often image falsehood but sometimes truth. The spheres of our companions have at such periods a vastly greater influence upon our own than when robust health gives us a repellent and self-defensive energy. Zenobia's sphere, I imagine, impressed itself powerfully on mine and transformed me during this period of my weakness into something like a mesmerical clairvoyant. Then also, as anybody could observe, the freedom of her deportment, though to some tastes it might commend itself as the utmost perfection of manner in a youthful widow or a blooming matron, was not exactly maiden-like. What girl had ever laughed as Zenobia did? What girl had ever spoken in her mellow tones? Her unconstrained and inevitable manifestation, I said often to myself, was that of a woman to whom wedlock had thrown wide the gates of mystery. Yet sometimes I strove to be ashamed of these conjectures. I acknowledged it as a masculine grossness, a sin of wicked interpretation of which man is often guilty towards the other sex, thus to mistake the sweet, liberal, but womanly frankness of a noble and generous disposition. Still it was of no avail to reason with myself nor to upbraid myself. Pertinaciously the thought, Zenobia is a wife, Zenobia has lived and loved, there is no folded petal, no latent dewdrop in this perfectly developed rose. Irresistibly that thought drove out all other conclusions, as often as my mind reverted to the subject. Zenobia was conscious of my observation, though not I presume of the point to which it led me. Mr. Coverdale said she one day, as she saw me watching her, while she arranged my gruel on the table, I have been exposed to a great deal of eye-shot in the few years of my mixing in the world, but never, I think, to precisely such glances as you are in the habit of favouring me with. I seem to interest you very much, and yet, or else a woman's instinct is for once deceived, I cannot reckon you as an admirer. What are you seeking to discover in me? The mystery of your life, answered I, surprised into the truth by the unexpectedness of her attack, and you will never tell me. She bent her head towards me and let me look into her eyes as if challenging me to drop a plummet line down into the depths of her consciousness. I see nothing now, said I, closing my own eyes, unless it be the face of a sprite laughing at me from the bottom of a deep well. A bachelor always feels himself defrauded when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away. Otherwise the matter could have been no concern of mine. It was purely speculative, for I should not under any circumstances have fallen in love with Zenobia. The riddle made me so nervous, however, in my sensitive condition of mind and body, that I most ungrateful began to wish that she would let me alone. Then, too, her gruel was very wretched stuff, with almost invariably the smell of pine-smoke upon it, like the evil taste that is said to mix itself up with a witch's best concocted dainties. Why could not she have allowed one of the other women to take the gruel in charge? Whatever else might be her gifts, nature certainly never intended Zenobia for a cook. Or if so, she should have meddled only with the richest and spiciest dishes, and such as are to be tasted at banquets between drafts of intoxicating wine. CHAPTER 7 The Convalescent As soon as my incomodities allowed me to think of past occurrences, I failed not to inquire what had become of the odd little guest whom Hollingsworth had been the medium of introducing among us. It now appeared that poor Priscilla had not so literally fallen out of the clouds as we were at first inclined to suppose. A letter which should have introduced her had since been received from one of the city missionaries containing a certificate of character and an allusion to circumstances which, in the writer's judgment, made it especially desirable that she should find shelter in our community. There was a hint not very intelligible, implying either that Priscilla had recently escaped from some particular peril or irksomeness of position, or else that she was still liable to this danger or difficulty, whatever it might be. We should ill have deserved the reputation of a benevolent fraternity had we hesitated to entertain a petitioner in such need and so strongly recommended to our kindness. Not to mention moreover that the strange maiden had set herself diligently to work and was doing good service with her needle. But a slight mist of uncertainty still floated about Priscilla and kept her as yet from taking a very decided place among creatures of flesh and blood. The mysterious attraction which from her first entrance on our scene she evinced for Zenobia had lost nothing of its force. I often heard her footsteps soft and low accompanying the light but decided tread of the latter of the staircase, stealing along the passageway by her new friend's side and pausing while Zenobia entered my chamber. Occasionally Zenobia would be a little annoyed by Priscilla's too close attendance, in an authoritative and not very kindly tone, she would advise her to breathe the pleasant air in a walk or to go with her work into the barn, holding out half a promise to come and sit on the hay with her when at leisure. Evidently Priscilla found but scanty requital for her love. Hullingsworth was likewise a great favourite with her. For several minutes together sometimes while my auditory nerves retained the susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low pleasant murmur ascending from the room below and at last ascertained it to be Priscilla's voice, babbling like a little brook to Hullingsworth. She talked more largely and freely with him than with Zenobia towards whom indeed her feelings seemed not so much to be confidence as involuntary affection. I should have thought all the better of my own qualities had Priscilla marked me out for the third place in her regards, but though she appeared to like me tolerably well I could never flatter myself with being distinguished by her as Hullingsworth and Zenobia were. One forenoon during my convalescence there came a gentle tap at my chamber door. I immediately said, come in Priscilla, with an acute sense of the applicant's identity. Nor was I deceived. It was really Priscilla, a pale, large-eyed little woman, for she had gone far enough into her teens to be at least on the outer limit of girlhood, but much less one than at my previous view of her and far better conditioned both as to health and spirits. As I first saw her she had reminded me of plants that one sometimes observes, doing their best to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court where there is scanty soil and never any sunshine. At present, though with no approach to bloom, there were indications that the girl had human blood in her veins. Priscilla came softly to my bedside and held out an article of snow-white linen very carefully and smoothly ironed. She did not seem bashful nor any wise embarrassed, my weekly condition I suppose supplied a medium in which she could approach me. Do you not need this, asked she, I have made it for you. It was a nightcap. My dear Priscilla said I, smiling, I never had on a nightcap in my life, but perhaps it will be better for me to wear one now that I am a miserable invalid. How admirably you have done it. No, no, I never can think of wearing such an exquisitely wrought nightcap as this unless it be in the daytime when I sit up to receive company. It is for use, not beauty, answered Priscilla. I could have embroidered it and made it much prettier if I pleased. While holding up the nightcap and admiring the fine needlework I perceived that Priscilla had a sealed letter which she was waiting for me to take. It had arrived from the village post-office that morning. As I did not immediately offer to receive the letter she drew it back and held it against her bosom with both hands clasped over it, in a way that had probably grown habitual to her. Now on turning my eyes from the nightcap to Priscilla it forcibly struck me that her air, though not her figure, and the expression of her face, but not its features, had a resemblance to what I had often seen in a friend of mine, one of the most gifted women of the age. I cannot describe it. The points easiest to convey to the reader were a certain curve of the shoulders and a partial closing of the eyes which seemed to look more penetratingly into my own eyes through the narrowed apertures than if they had been open at full width. It was a singular anomaly of likeness coexisting with perfect dissimilitude. Will you give me the letter, Priscilla, said I? She started, put the letter into my hand, and quite lost the look that had drawn my notice. Priscilla, I inquired, did you ever see Miss Margaret Fuller? No, she answered. Because, said I, you reminded me of her just now, and it happens strangely enough, that this very letter is from her. Priscilla, for whatever reason, looked very much discomposed. I wish people would not fancy such odd things in me, she said rather petulantly. How could I possibly make myself resemble this lady merely by holding her letter in my hand? Certainly Priscilla it would puzzle me to explain it, I replied, nor do I suppose that the letter had anything to do with it. It was just a coincidence, nothing more. She hastened out of the room, and this was the last that I saw of Priscilla until I ceased to be an invalid. Being much alone during my recovery I read interminably in Mr. Emerson's essays, The Dial, Carlisle's Works, George Sands Romances, Lent Me by Zenobia, and other books which one or another of the brethren or sisterhood had brought with them. Agreeing in little else, most of these utterances were like the cry of some solitary sentinel whose station was on the outposts of the advance guard of human progression, or sometimes the voice came sadly from among the shattered ruins of the past but yet had a hopeful echo in the future. They were well adapted, better at least than any other intellectual products, the volatile essence of which had heretofore tinctured a printed page, to pilgrims like ourselves, whose present Bivouac was considerably further into the waste of chaos than any mortal army of crusaders had ever marched before. Fourier's Works also, in a series of horribly tedious volumes, attracted a good deal of my attention from the analogy which I could not but recognize between his system and our own. There was far less resemblance it is true than the world chose to imagine in as much as the two theories differed as widely as the zenith from the nadir in their main principles. I talked about Fourier to Hollingsworth and translated for his benefit some of the passages that chiefly impressed me. When as a consequence of human improvements, said I, the globe shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a particular kind of lemonade such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier's time. He calls it limonade à cèdre. It is positively a fact. Just imagine the city docks filled every day with a flood tide of this delectable beverage. Why did not the Frenchmen make punch of it at once, asked Hollingsworth? The Jack Tars would be delighted to go down in ships and do business in such an element. I further proceeded to explain, as well as I modestly could, several points of Fourier's system, illustrating them with here and there a page or two, and asking Hollingsworth's opinion as to the expediency of introducing these beautiful peculiarities into our own practice. Let me hear no more of it, cried he in utter disgust. I never will forgive this fellow. He has committed the unpardonable sin. For what more monstrous iniquity could the devil himself contrive than to choose the selfish principle, the principle of all human wrong, the very blackness of man's heart, the portion of ourselves which we shudder at and which it is the whole aim of spiritual discipline to eradicate, to choose it as the master workman of his system, to seize upon and foster whatever vile, petty, sordid, filthy, bestial, and abominable corruptions have cankered into our nature to be the efficient instruments of his infernal regeneration, and his consummated paradise as he pictures it would be worthy of the agency which he counts upon for establishing it, the nauseous villain. Nevertheless remarked I, in consideration of the promised delights of his system, so very proper as they certainly are to be appreciated by Fourier's countrymen, I cannot but wonder that universal France did not adopt his theory at a moment's warning. But is there not something very characteristic of his nation and Fourier's manner of putting forth his views? He makes no claim to inspiration. He has not persuaded himself, as Swedenborg did, and as any other than a Frenchman would with a mission of like importance to communicate, that he speaks with authority from above. He promulgates his system so far as I can perceive entirely on his own responsibility. He has searched out and discovered the whole Council of the Almighty in respect to mankind, past, present, and for exactly seventy thousand years to come, by the mere force and cunning of his individual intellect. Take the book out of my sight, said Hollingsworth, with great virulence of expression, or I tell you fairly I shall fling it in the fire, and as for Fourier let him make a paradise if he can of Gehenna, where, as I conscientiously believe, he is floundering at this moment. And bellowing, I suppose, said I, not that I felt any ill will towards Fourier, but merely wanted to give the finishing touch to Hollingsworth's image, bellowing for the least drop of his beloved Limonade Acedre. There is but little profit to be expected in attempting to argue with a man who allows himself to reclaim in this manner, so I dropped the subject and never took it up again. But had the system at which he was so enraged, combined almost any amount of human wisdom, spiritual insight, and imaginative beauty, I questioned whether Hollingsworth's mind was in a fit condition to receive it. I began to discern that he had come among us, actuated by no real sympathy with our feelings and our hopes, but chiefly because we were estranging ourselves from the world, with which his lonely and exclusive object in life had already put him at odds. Hollingsworth must have been originally endowed with a great spirit of benevolence, deep enough and warm enough to be the source of as much disinterested good as Providence often allows a human being the privilege of conferring upon his fellows. This native instinct yet lived within him. I myself had profited by it in my necessity. It was seen too in his treatment of Priscilla. Such casual circumstances as were here involved would quicken his divine power of sympathy and make him seem, while their influence lasted, the tenderest man and the truest friend on earth. But by and by you missed the tenderness of yesterday and grew drearily conscious that Hollingsworth had a closer friend than ever you could be, and this friend was the cold spectral monster which he had himself conjured up and on which he was wasting all the warmth of his heart, and of which at last, as these men of a mighty purpose so invariably do, he had grown to be the bond slave. It was his philanthropic theory. This was a result exceedingly sad to contemplate, considering that it had been mainly brought about by the very ardour and exuberance of his philanthropy. Sad indeed, but by no means unusual. He had taught his benevolence to pour its warm tide exclusively through one channel, so that there was nothing to spare for other great manifestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attachments, unless they could minister in some way to the terrible egotism which he mistook for an angel of God. Had Hollingsworth's education been more enlarged, he might not so inevitably have stumbled into this pitfall. But this identical pursuit had educated him. He knew absolutely nothing except in a single direction where he had thought so energetically and felt to such a depth that no doubt the entire reason and justice of the universe appeared to be concentrated thitherward. It is my private opinion that at this period of his life Hollingsworth was fast going mad, and as with other crazy people, among whom I include humorists of every degree, it required all the constancy of friendship to restrain his associates from pronouncing him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddling upon one string, such multi-form presentation of one idea, his specific object of which he made the public more than sufficiently aware through the medium of lectures and pamphlets, was to obtain funds for the construction of an edifice with a sort of collegiate endowment. On this foundation he purposed to devote himself and a few disciples to the reform and mental culture of our criminal brethren. His visionary edifice was Hollingsworth's one castle in the air. It was the material type in which his philanthropic dream strove to embody itself, and he made the scheme more definite and caught hold of it the more strongly and kept his clutch the more pertinaciously by rendering it visible to the bodily eye. I have seen him a hundred times with a pencil and sheet of paper sketching the façade, the side view or the rear of the structure, or planning the internal arrangements, as lovingly as another man might plan those of the projected home where he meant to be happy with his wife and children. I have known him to begin a model of the building with little stones gathered at the brookside wither we had gone to cool ourselves in the sultry noon of hanging time. Unlike all other ghosts his spirit haunted an edifice which instead of being time-worn and full of storied love and joy and sorrow had never yet come into existence. Dear friend said I once to Hollingsworth before leaving my sick chamber I heartily wish that I could make your schemes my schemes because it would be so great a happiness to find myself treading the same path with you. But I am afraid there is not stuff in me stern enough for a philanthropist, or not in this peculiar direction, or at all events not solely in this. Can you bear with me if such should prove to be the case? I will at least wait a while answered Hollingsworth gazing at me sternly and gloomily. But how can you be my lifelong friend except you strive with me towards the great object of my life? Heaven forgive me a horrible suspicion crept into my heart and stung the very core of it as with the fangs of an adder. I wondered whether it were possible that Hollingsworth could have watched by my bedside with all that devoted care only for the ulterior purpose of making me a proselyte to his views.