Hollingsworth and I--we had been hoeing potatoes, that forenoon, while
the rest of the fraternity were engaged in a distant quarter of the
farm--sat under a clump of maples, eating our eleven o'clock lunch,
when we saw a stranger approaching along the edge of the field. He had
admitted himself from the roadside through a turnstile, and seemed to
have a purpose of speaking with us.
And, by the bye, we were favored with many visits at Blithedale,
especially from people who sympathized with our theories, and perhaps
held themselves ready to unite in our actual experiment as soon as
there should appear a reliable promise of its success. It was rather
ludicrous, indeed (to me, at least, whose enthusiasm had insensibly
been exhaled together with the perspiration of many a hard day's toil),
it was absolutely funny, therefore, to observe what a glory was shed
about our life and labors, in the imaginations of these longing
proselytes. In their view, we were as poetical as Arcadians, besides
being as practical as the hardest-fisted husbandmen in Massachusetts.
We did not, it is true, spend much time in piping to our sheep, or
warbling our innocent loves to the sisterhood.
But they gave us credit
for imbuing the ordinary rustic occupations with a kind of religious
poetry, insomuch that our very cow-yards and pig-sties were as
delightfully fragrant as a flower garden. Nothing used to please me
more than to see one of these lay enthusiasts snatch up a hoe, as they
were very prone to do, and set to work with a vigor that perhaps
carried him through about a dozen ill-directed strokes. Men are
wonderfully soon satisfied, in this day of shameful bodily enervation,
when, from one end of life to the other, such multitudes never taste
the sweet weariness that follows accustomed toil. I seldom saw the new
enthusiasm that did not grow as flimsy and flaccid as the proselyte's
moistened shirt-collar, with a quarter of an hour's active labor under
a July sun.
But the person now at hand had not at all the air of one of these
amiable visionaries. He was an elderly man, dressed rather shabbily,
yet decently enough, in a gray frock-coat, faded towards a brown hue,
and wore a broad-brimmed white hat, of the fashion of several years
gone by. His hair was perfect silver, without a dark thread in the
whole of it; his nose, though it had a scarlet tip, by no means
indicated the jollity of which a red nose is the generally admitted
symbol. He was a subdued, undemonstrative old man, who would doubtless
drink a glass of liquor, now and then, and probably more than was good
for him,--not, however, with a purpose of undue exhilaration, but in
the hope of bringing his spirits up to the ordinary level of the
world's cheerfulness. Drawing nearer, there was a shy look about him,
as if he were ashamed of his poverty, or, at any rate, for some reason
or other, would rather have us glance at him sidelong than take a full
front view. He had a queer appearance of hiding himself behind the
patch on his left eye.