! I will be heavy, and
desolate, and shiver with cold! For I, your deep heart, know when to be
miserable, as once I knew when to be happy! All is changed for us! You are
beloved no more!« And, were my life to be spent over again, I would invariably
lend my ear to this Cassandra of the inward depths, however clamorous the music
and the merriment of a more superficial region.
    My outbreak with Hollingsworth, though never definitely known to our
associates, had really an effect upon the moral atmosphere of the Community. It
was incidental to the closeness of relationship, into which we had brought
ourselves, that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two
members, without the whole society being more or less commoted and made
uncomfortable thereby. This species of nervous sympathy (though a pretty
characteristic enough, sentimentally considered, and apparently betokening an
actual bond of love among us) was yet found rather inconvenient in its practical
operation; mortal tempers being so infirm and variable as they are. If one of us
happened to give his neighbor a box on the ear, the tingle was immediately felt,
on the same side of everybody's head. Thus, even on the supposition that we were
far less quarrelsome than the rest of the world, a great deal of time was
necessarily wasted in rubbing our ears.
    Musing on all these matters, I felt an inexpressible longing for at least a
temporary novelty. I thought of going across the Rocky Mountains, or to Europe,
or up the Nile - of offering myself a volunteer on the Exploring Expedition - of
taking a ramble of years, no matter in what direction, and coming back on the
other side of the world. Then, should the colonists of Blithedale have
established their enterprise on a permanent basis, I might fling aside my
pilgrim-staff and dusty shoon, and rest as peacefully here as elsewhere. Or, in
case Hollingsworth should occupy the ground with his School of Reform, as he now
purposed, I might plead earthly guilt enough, by that time, to give me what I
was inclined to think the only trustworthy hold on his affections. Meanwhile,
before deciding on any ultimate plan, I determined to remove myself to a little
distance, and take an exterior view of what we had all been about.
    In truth, it was dizzy work, amid such fermentation of opinions as was going
on in the general brain of the Community. It was a kind of Bedlam, for the time
being; although, out of the very thoughts that were wildest and