This, to be sure, was
a great pity; but, nevertheless, we thought it a very bright idea of
Zenobia's to bring her legend to so effective a conclusion.
XIV. ELIOT'S PULPIT
Our Sundays at Blithedale were not ordinarily kept with such rigid
observance as might have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims,
whose high enterprise, as we sometimes flattered ourselves, we had
taken up, and were carrying it onward and aloft, to a point which
they never dreamed of attaining.
On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested from our labors. Our
oxen, relieved from their week-day yoke, roamed at large through the
pasture; each yoke-fellow, however, keeping close beside his mate,
and continuing to acknowledge, from the force of habit and sluggish
sympathy, the union which the taskmaster had imposed for his own hard
ends. As for us human yoke-fellows, chosen companions of toil, whose
hoes had clinked together throughout the week, we wandered off, in
various directions, to enjoy our interval of repose. Some, I believe,
went devoutly to the village church. Others, it may be, ascended a
city or a country pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much
dignity that you would scarcely have suspected the yeoman's frock to
have been flung off only since milking-time. Others took long
rambles among the rustic lanes and by-paths, pausing to look at black
old farmhouses, with their sloping roofs; and at the modern cottage,
so like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or sorrow could
have no scope within; and at the more pretending villa, with its
range of wooden columns supporting the needless insolence of a great
portico.
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