There it still lingered, after I
awoke; one of those unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to
deal with, because it involves nothing for common-sense to clutch.
It was a gray and dripping forenoon; gloomy enough in town, and still
gloomier in the haunts to which my recollections persisted in
transporting me. For, in spite of my efforts to think of something
else, I thought how the gusty rain was drifting over the slopes and
valleys of our farm; how wet must be the foliage that overshadowed
the pulpit rock; how cheerless, in such a day, my hermitage--the
tree-solitude of my owl-like humors--in the vine-encircled heart of
the tall pine! It was a phase of homesickness. I had wrenched
myself too suddenly out of an accustomed sphere. There was no choice,
now, but to bear the pang of whatever heartstrings were snapt
asunder, and that illusive torment (like the ache of a limb long ago
cut off) by which a past mode of life prolongs itself into the
succeeding one. I was full of idle and shapeless regrets. The
thought impressed itself upon me that I had left duties unperformed.
With the power, perhaps, to act in the place of destiny and avert
misfortune from my friends, I had resigned them to their fate. That
cold tendency, between instinct and intellect, which made me pry with
a speculative interest into people's passions and impulses, appeared
to have gone far towards unhumanizing my heart.
But a man cannot always decide for himself whether his own heart is
cold or warm.
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