The Blithedale Romance

arsh, uproarious, inexorably drawn out, and as sleep-dispelling as

ed, it were Priscilla, for whose habits, in this particular, I cannot vouch - of all our apostolic society, whose mission was to bless mankind, Hollingsworth, 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 reverenc

taken much of the pith out of my physical system; and the wintry 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,

nt bachelor-parlor, sunny and shadowy, curtained and carpeted, with the bedchamber adjoining; my centre-table, strewn with books and periodic

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 chamberm

nstantly at the boiling point, yet shivering at the bare idea of extruding so much as a finger into the icy at

id fair to make an admirable farmer

ow," said I hopelessly. "I

e matter no

nd besought him to send me ba

indly seriousness. "If you are real

ent for, who, being homaeopathic, gave me as much medicine, in the course of a fortnight's attendance, as would have laid on the point of a needle. They f

e exceptions - have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity of any k

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 moulded 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

t 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, wh

ly smiling. "You know nothing about sickness, and thi

m in the mood," replied I, with

asked Hollingsworth, "that you fan

, in our pastoral. It seems but an unsubstantial sort of business, as viewed through a mist of fever. But, dear Hollingsworth, your own

inquired he, "can you suppose me

id. "It seems to me the re

that the most marked trait in my character is an inflexible severity of purpose. M

elieve it,"

me, I remember

gnorance of such matters, I was inclined to consider it. After so much tragical pr

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, t

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

ke 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 w

ster of the Veiled Lady. That flower in her hair is a talisman. If you were

he say?" as

s a little beside himself, I believe, and talks about your being a witch

corn to owe anything to magic. Here, Mr. Hollingsworth, you may keep the spell while it has any virtue in it; but I c

his remarkable woman - her daily flower affected my imagination, though more slightly, yet in very much the same way. The reason must h

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 p

e 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 period

n, 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

rvation, though not, I presume,

t 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 favoring me with. I seem to inter

prised into the truth by the unexpectedness

o her eyes, as if challenging me to drop a plumme

eyes, "unless it be the face of a sprite lau

however, in my sensitive condition of mind and body, that I most ungratefully 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 co