intended a latent satire.  Some were for calling our institution “The Oasis,” in view of its being the one green spot in the moral sand-waste of the world; but others insisted on a proviso for reconsidering the matter at a twelvemonths’ end, when a final decision might be had, whether to name it “The Oasis” or “Sahara.”  So, at last, finding it impracticable to hammer out anything better, we resolved that the spot should still be Blithedale, as being of good augury enough.

The evening wore on, and the outer solitude looked in upon us through the windows, gloomy, wild, and vague, like another state of existence, close beside the little sphere of warmth and light in which we were the prattlers and bustlers of a moment.  By and by the door was opened by Silas Foster, with a cotton handkerchief about his head, and a tallow candle in his hand.

“Take my advice, brother farmers,” said he, with a great, broad, bottomless yawn, “and get to bed as soon as you can.  I shall sound the horn at daybreak; and we’ve got the cattle to fodder, and nine cows to milk, and a dozen other things to do, before breakfast.”

Thus ended the first evening at Blithedale.  I went shivering to my fireless chamber, with the miserable consciousness (which had been growing upon me for several hours past) that I had caught a tremendous cold, and should probably awaken, at the blast of the horn, a fit subject for a hospital.  The night proved a feverish one.  During the greater part of it, I was in that vilest of states when a fixed idea remains in the mind, like the nail in Sisera’s brain, while innumerable other ideas go and come, and flutter to and fro, combining constant transition with intolerable sameness.  Had I made a record of that night’s half-waking dreams, it is my belief that it would have anticipated several of the chief incidents of this narrative, including a dim shadow of its catastrophe.  Starting up in bed at length, I saw that the storm was past, and the moon was shining on the snowy landscape, which looked like a lifeless copy of the world in marble.

From the bank of the distant river, which was shimmering in the moonlight, came the black shadow of the only cloud in heaven, driven swiftly by the wind, and passing over meadow and hillock, vanishing amid tufts of leafless trees, but reappearing on the hither side, until it swept across our doorstep.

How cold an Arcadia was this!

VI.  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.