Coverdale's Sick-Chamber

The horn sounded at daybreak, as Silas Foster had forewarned us, harsh,
uproarious, inexorably drawn out, and as sleep-dispelling as if this
hard-hearted old yeoman had got hold of the trump of doom.

On all sides I could hear the creaking of the bedsteads, as the
brethren of Blithedale started from slumber, and thrust themselves into
their habiliments, all awry, no doubt, in their haste to begin the
reformation of the world. Zenobia put her head into the entry, and
besought Silas Foster to cease his clamor, and to be kind enough to
leave an armful of firewood and a pail of water at her chamber door.
Of the whole household,--unless, indeed, it were Priscilla, for whose
habits, in this particular, I cannot vouch,--of all our apostolic
society, whose mission was to bless mankind, Hollingsworth, I
apprehend, was the only one who began the enterprise with prayer.

My sleeping-room being but thinly partitioned from his, the solemn murmur
of his voice made its way to my ears, compelling me to be an auditor of
his awful privacy with the Creator. It affected me with a deep
reverence for Hollingsworth, which no familiarity then existing, or
that afterwards grew more intimate between us,--no, nor my subsequent
perception of his own great errors,--ever quite effaced. It is so rare,
in these times, to meet with a man of prayerful habits (except, of
course, in the pulpit), that such an one is decidedly marked out by the
light of transfiguration, shed upon him in the divine interview from
which he passes into his daily life.