As regarded the two latter, it was that
dreamlike and miserable sort of change that denies you the privilege
to complain, because you can assert no positive injury, nor lay your
finger on anything tangible. It is a matter which you do not see,
but feel, and which, when you try to analyze it, seems to lose its
very existence, and resolve itself into a sickly humor of your own.
Your understanding, possibly, may put faith in this denial. But your
heart will not so easily rest satisfied. It incessantly remonstrates,
though, most of the time, in a bass-note, which you do not
separately distinguish; but, now and then, with a sharp cry,
importunate to be heard, and resolute to claim belief. "Things are
not as they were!" it keeps saying. "You shall not impose on me! I
will never be quiet! I will throb painfully! I will be heavy, and
desolate, and shiver with cold! For I, your deep heart, know when to
be miserable, as once I knew when to be happy! All is changed for us!
You are beloved no more!" And were my life to be spent over again,
I would invariably lend my ear to this Cassandra of the inward depths,
however clamorous the music and the merriment of a more superficial
region.
My outbreak with Hollingsworth, though never definitely known to our
associates, had really an effect upon the moral atmosphere of the
Community. It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into
which we had brought ourselves, that an unfriendly state of feeling
could not occur between any two members without the whole society
being more or less commoted and made uncomfortable thereby.
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