and an oldness, oddly combining themselves into one impression. It made me
acutely sensible how strange a piece of mosaic-work had lately been wrought into
my life. True; if you look at it in one way, it had been only a summer in the
country. But, considered in a profounder relation, it was part of another age, a
different state of society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its aims and
methods, a leaf of some mysterious volume, interpolated into the current history
which Time was writing off. At one moment, the very circumstances now
surrounding me - my coal-fire, and the dingy room in the bustling hotel -
appeared far off and intangible. The next instant, Blithedale looked vague, as
if it were at a distance both in time and space, and so shadowy, that a question
might be raised whether the whole affair had been anything more than the
thoughts of a speculative man. I had never before experienced a mood that so
robbed the actual world of its solidity. It nevertheless involved a charm, on
which - a devoted epicure of my own emotions - I resolved to pause, and enjoy
the moral sillabub until quite dissolved away.
    Whatever had been my taste for solitude and natural scenery, yet the thick,
foggy, stifled element of cities, the entangled life of many men together,
sordid as it was, and empty of the beautiful, took quite as strenuous a hold
upon my mind. I felt as if there could never be enough of it. Each
characteristic sound was too suggestive to be passed over, unnoticed. Beneath
and around me, I heard the stir of the hotel; the loud voices of guests,
landlord, or barkeeper; steps echoing on the staircase; the ringing of a bell,
announcing arrivals or departures; the porter lumbering past my door with
baggage, which he thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers; the
lighter feet of chamber-maids scudding along the passages; - it is ridiculous to
think what an interest they had for me. From the street, came the tumult of the
pavements, pervading the whole house with a continual uproar, so broad and deep
that only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it. A company of the
city-soldiery, with a full military band, marched in front of the hotel,
invisible to me, but stirringly audible both by its foot-tramp and the clangor
of its instruments. Once or twice, all the city-bells jangled together,
announcing a fire, which brought out the engine-men and their machines, like an
army with