mode of observation was calculated to lead me.  The issue was, that in solitude I often shuddered at my friend.  In my recollection of his dark and impressive countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle.  On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave.  “He is a man after all,” thought I; “his Maker’s own truest image, a philanthropic man!—­ not that steel engine of the Devil’s contrivance, a philanthropist!” But in my wood-walks, and in my silent chamber, the dark face frowned at me again.

When a young girl comes within the sphere of such a man, she is as perilously situated as the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, the people used to expose to a dragon.  If I had any duty whatever, in reference to Hollingsworth, it was to endeavor to save Priscilla from that kind of personal worship which her sex is generally prone to lavish upon saints and heroes.  It often requires but one smile out of the hero’s eyes into the girl’s or woman’s heart, to transform this devotion, from a sentiment of the highest approval and confidence, into passionate love.  Now, Hollingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla,—­more than upon any other person.  If she thought him beautiful, it was no wonder.  I often thought him so, with the expression of tender human care and gentlest sympathy which she alone seemed to have power to call out upon his features.  Zenobia, I suspect, would have given her eyes, bright as they were, for such a look; it was the least that our poor Priscilla could do, to give her heart for a great many of them.  There was the more danger of this, inasmuch as the footing on which we all associated at Blithedale was widely different from that of conventional society.  While inclining us to the soft affections of the golden age, it seemed to authorize any individual, of either sex, to fall in love with any other, regardless of what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent.  Accordingly the tender passion was very rife among us, in various degrees of mildness or virulence, but mostly passing away with the state of things that had given it origin.  This was all well enough; but, for a girl like Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to jostle one another in their love of a man like Hollingsworth, was likely to be no child’s play.

Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes thought myself, nothing would have interested me more than to witness the play of passions that must thus have been evolved.  But, in honest truth, I would really have gone far to save Priscilla, at least, from the catastrophe in which such a drama would be apt to terminate.