“You seem,” said Hollingsworth, “to be trying how much nonsense you can pour out in a breath.”

“I wish you would see fit to comprehend,” retorted I, “that the profoundest wisdom must be mingled with nine tenths of nonsense, else it is not worth the breath that utters it.  But I do long for the cottages to be built, that the creeping plants may begin to run over them, and the moss to gather on the walls, and the trees—­which we will set out—­to cover them with a breadth of shadow.  This spick-and-span novelty does not quite suit my taste.  It is time, too, for children to be born among us.  The first-born child is still to come.  And I shall never feel as if this were a real, practical, as well as poetical system of human life, until somebody has sanctified it by death.”

“A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly!” said Hollingsworth.

“As good as any other,” I replied.  “I wonder, Hollingsworth, who, of all these strong men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed the first to die.  Would it not be well, even before we have absolute need of it, to fix upon a spot for a cemetery?  Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death’s garden ground; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave.  By our sweet, calm way of dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will shape our funeral rites, and the cheerful allegories which we will model into tombstones, the final scene shall lose its terrors; so that hereafter it may be happiness to live, and bliss to die.  None of us must die young.  Yet, should Providence ordain it so, the event shall not be sorrowful, but affect us with a tender, delicious, only half-melancholy, and almost smiling pathos!”

“That is to say,” muttered Hollingsworth, “you will die like a heathen, as you certainly live like one.  But, listen to me, Coverdale.  Your fantastic anticipations make me discern all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a precious summer of our lives.  Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass?”

“Certainly I do,” said I.  “Of course, when the reality comes, it will wear the every-day, commonplace, dusty, and rather homely garb that reality always does put on.  But, setting aside the ideal charm, I hold that our highest anticipations have a solid footing on common sense.”

“You only half believe what you say,” rejoined Hollingsworth; “and as for me, I neither have faith in your dream, nor would care the value of this pebble for its realization, were that possible.  And what more do you want of it?  It has given you a theme for poetry.  Let that content you.  But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth all our strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier than we.”