A VILLAGE HALL
Well, I betook myself away, and wandered up and down, like an
exorcised spirit that had been driven from its old haunts after a
mighty struggle. It takes down the solitary pride of man, beyond
most other things, to find the impracticability of flinging aside
affections that have grown irksome. The bands that were silken once
are apt to become iron fetters when we desire to shake them off. Our
souls, after all, are not our own. We convey a property in them to
those with whom we associate; but to what extent can never be known,
until we feel the tug, the agony, of our abortive effort to resume an
exclusive sway over ourselves. Thus, in all the weeks of my absence,
my thoughts continually reverted back, brooding over the bygone
months, and bringing up incidents that seemed hardly to have left a
trace of themselves in their passage. I spent painful hours in
recalling these trifles, and rendering them more misty and
unsubstantial than at first by the quantity of speculative musing
thus kneaded in with them. Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! These
three had absorbed my life into themselves. Together with an
inexpressible longing to know their fortunes, there was likewise a
morbid resentment of my own pain, and a stubborn reluctance to come
again within their sphere.
All that I learned of them, therefore, was comprised in a few brief
and pungent squibs, such as the newspapers were then in the habit of
bestowing on our socialist enterprise.
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