University of Virginia Library

2. II.
BLITHEDALE.

There can hardly remain for me (who am really
getting to be a frosty bachelor, with another white hair,
every week or so, in my moustache), there can hardly
flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as
that which I remember, the next day, at Blithedale. It
was a wood-fire, in the parlor of an old farm-house, on
an April afternoon, but with the fitful gusts of a wintry
snow-storm roaring in the chimney. Vividly does
that fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the ashes
from the embers in my memory, and blow them up with
a sigh, for lack of more inspiring breath. Vividly, for
an instant, but, anon, with the dimmest gleam, and with
just as little fervency for my heart as for my fingerends!
The stanch oaken logs were long ago burnt
out. Their genial glow must be represented, if at all,
by the merest phosphoric glimmer, like that which
exudes, rather than shines, from damp fragments of
decayed trees, deluding the benighted wanderer through
a forest. Around such chill mockery of a fire some
few of us might sit on the withered leaves, spreading
out each a palm towards the imaginary warmth, and
talk over our exploded scheme for beginning the life of
Paradise anew.

Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am
bold to affirm, — nobody, at least, in our bleak little

world of New England, — had dreamed of Paradise
that day, except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor,
with such materials as were at hand, could the most
skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of
Eve's bower than might be seen in the snow-hut of an
Esquimaux. But we made a summer of it, in spite of
the wild drifts.

It was an April day, as already hinted, and well towards
the middle of the month. When morning dawned
upon me, in town, its temperature was mild enough to
be pronounced even balmy, by a lodger, like myself,
in one of the midmost houses of a brick block, — each
house partaking of the warmth of all the rest, besides
the sultriness of its individual furnace-heat. But,
towards noon, there had come snow, driven along the
street by a north-easterly blast, and whitening the roofs
and side-walks with a business-like perseverance that
would have done credit to our severest January tempest.
It set about its task apparently as much in earnest as
if it had been guaranteed from a thaw for months to
come. The greater, surely, was my heroism, when, puffing
out a final whiff of cigar-smoke, I quitted my cosey
pair of bachelor-rooms, — with a good fire burning in the
grate, and a closet right at hand, where there was still a
bottle or two in the champagne-basket, and a residuum
of claret in a box, — quitted, I say, these comfortable
quarters, and plunged into the heart of the pitiless snow-storm,
in quest of a better life.

The better life! Possibly, it would hardly look so,
now; it is enough if it looked so then. The greatest
obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may
not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism

is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to
know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be
obeyed.

Yet, after all, let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more
sagacious, to follow out one's day-dream to its natural consummation,
although, if the vision have been worth the
having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise
than by a failure. And what of that? Its airiest fragments,
impalpable as they may be, will possess a value
that lurks not in the most ponderous realities of any
practicable scheme. They are not the rubbish of the
mind. Whatever else I may repent of, therefore, let it
be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I
once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes
of the world's destiny, — yes! — and to do what in me
lay for their accomplishment; even to the extent of
quitting a warm fireside, flinging away a freshly-lighted
cigar, and travelling far beyond the strike of city clocks,
through a drifting snow-storm.

There were four of us who rode together through the
storm; and Hollingsworth, who had agreed to be of the
number, was accidentally delayed, and set forth at a later
hour alone. As we threaded the streets, I remember
how the buildings on either side seemed to press too
closely upon us, insomuch that our mighty hearts found
barely room enough to throb between them. The snowfall,
too, looked inexpressibly dreary (I had almost
called it dingy), coming down through an atmosphere
of city smoke, and alighting on the side-walk only to be
moulded into the impress of somebody's patched boot or
over-shoe. Thus the track of an old conventionalism
was visible on what was freshest from the sky. But,

when we left the pavements, and our muffled hoof-tramps
beat upon a desolate extent of country road, and
were effaced by the unfettered blast as soon as stamped,
then there was better air to breathe. Air that had
not been breathed once and again! air that had not
been spoken into words of falsehood, formality and
error, like all the air of the dusky city!

“How pleasant it is!” remarked I, while the snow-flakes
flew into my mouth the moment it was opened.
“How very mild and balmy is this country air!”

“Ah, Coverdale, don't laugh at what little enthusiasm
you have left!” said one of my companions. “I maintain
that this nitrous atmosphere is really exhilarating;
and, at any rate, we can never call ourselves regenerated
men till a February north-easter shall be as grateful
to us as the softest breeze of June.”

So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly and merrily
along, by stone-fences that were half-buried in the
wave-like drifts; and through patches of woodland,
where the tree-trunks opposed a snow-encrusted side
towards the north-east; and within ken of deserted
villas, with no foot-prints in their avenues; and past
scattered dwellings, whence puffed the smoke of country
fires, strongly impregnated with the pungent aroma of
burning peat. Sometimes, encountering a traveller, we
shouted a friendly greeting; and he, unmuffling his ears
to the bluster and the snow-spray, and listening eagerly,
appeared to think our courtesy worth less than the
trouble which it cost him. The churl! He understood
the shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelligence
for our blithe tones of brotherhood. This lack of faith
in our cordial sympathy, on the traveller's part, was one

among the innumerable tokens how difficult a task we
had in hand, for the reformation of the world. We rode
on, however, with still unflagging spirits, and made such
good companionship with the tempest that, at our journey's
end, we professed ourselves almost loth to bid the
rude blusterer good-by. But, to own the truth, I was
little better than an icicle, and began to be suspicious
that I had caught a fearful cold.

And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the
old farm-house, — the same fire that glimmers so faintly
among my reminiscences at the beginning of this chapter.
There we sat, with the snow melting out of our
hair and beards, and our faces all a-blaze, what with the
past inclemency and present warmth. It was, 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.