"
Priscilla, for whatever reason, looked very much discomposed.
"I wish people would not fancy such odd things in me!" she said
rather petulantly. "How could I possibly make myself resemble this
lady merely by holding her letter in my hand?"
"Certainly, Priscilla, it would puzzle me to explain it," I replied;
"nor do I suppose that the letter had anything to do with it. It was
just a coincidence, nothing more."
She hastened out of the room, and this was the last that I saw of
Priscilla until I ceased to be an invalid.
Being much alone during my recovery, I read interminably in Mr.
Emerson's Essays, "The Dial," Carlyle's works, George Sand's romances
(lent me by Zenobia), and other books which one or another of the
brethren or sisterhood had brought with them. Agreeing in little
else, most of these utterances were like the cry of some solitary
sentinel, whose station was on the outposts of the advance guard of
human progression; or sometimes the voice came sadly from among the
shattered ruins of the past, but yet had a hopeful echo in the future.
They were well adapted (better, at least, than any other
intellectual products, the volatile essence of which had heretofore
tinctured a printed page) to pilgrims like ourselves, whose present
bivouac was considerably further into the waste of chaos than any
mortal army of crusaders had ever marched before. Fourier's works,
also, in a series of horribly tedious volumes, attracted a good deal
of my attention, from the analogy which I could not but recognize
between his system and our own.
Pages:
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75