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 and
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 world-wide 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 withal, 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.
 

                            III. A Knot of Dreamers

Zenobia bade 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