It has happened to me on other occasions,
as well as this, to prove how a state of physical well-being can
create a kind of joy, in spite of the profoundest anxiety of mind.
The pathway of that walk still runs along, with sunny freshness,
through my memory. I know not why it should be so. But my mental
eye can even now discern the September grass, bordering the pleasant
roadside with a brighter verdure than while the summer heats were
scorching it; the trees, too, mostly green, although here and there a
branch or shrub has donned its vesture of crimson and gold a week or
two before its fellows. I see the tufted barberry-bushes, with their
small clusters of scarlet fruit; the toadstools, likewise,--some
spotlessly white, others yellow or red,--mysterious growths,
springing suddenly from no root or seed, and growing nobody can tell
how or wherefore. In this respect they resembled many of the
emotions in my breast. And I still see the little rivulets, chill,
clear, and bright, that murmured beneath the road, through
subterranean rocks, and deepened into mossy pools, where tiny fish
were darting to and fro, and within which lurked the hermit frog.
But no,--I never can account for it, that, with a yearning interest
to learn the upshot of all my story, and returning to Blithedale for
that sole purpose, I should examine these things so like a
peaceful-bosomed naturalist. Nor why, amid all my sympathies and
fears, there shot, at times, a wild exhilaration through my frame.
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