 the moment that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The
same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me
home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study.
Nor did it quit me, when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlour, lighted
only by the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth
imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the brightening page in
many-hued description.
    If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be
deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the
carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly, - making every object so
minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility, - is a medium
the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive
guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the
chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a
work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case;
the picture on the wall; - all these details, so completely seen, are so
spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual
substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling
to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll,
seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse; - whatever, in a word,
has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of
strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by
daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral
territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and
the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.
Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping
with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form,
beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic
moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from
afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside.
    The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in producing the
effect which I would describe. It throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the
room, with a faint ruddiness
