Leave-Takings

"By no means," I replied. "I am resolute to die in the last ditch, for
the good of the cause."

"Die in a ditch!" muttered gruff Silas, with genuine Yankee intolerance
of any intermission of toil, except on Sunday, the Fourth of July, the
autumnal cattle-show, Thanksgiving, or the annual Fast,--"die in a
ditch! I believe, in my conscience, you would, if there were no
steadier means than your own labor to keep you out of it!"

The truth was, that an intolerable discontent and irksomeness had come
over me. Blithedale was no longer what it had been. Everything was
suddenly faded. The sunburnt and arid aspect of our woods and
pastures, beneath the August sky, did but imperfectly symbolize the
lack of dew and moisture, that, since yesterday, as it were, had
blighted my fields of thought, and penetrated to the innermost and
shadiest of my contemplative recesses. The change will be recognized
by many, who, after a period of happiness, have endeavored to go on
with the same kind of life, in the same scene, in spite of the
alteration or withdrawal of some principal circumstance. They discover
(what heretofore, perhaps, they had not known) that it was this which
gave the bright color and vivid reality to the whole affair.

I stood on other terms than before, not only with Hollingsworth, but
with Zenobia and Priscilla. 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.