My thoughts
became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft of
moss ... crumbling in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower."
A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow
some distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his face
shaded by his hat. "How came you out here?" asked his friend. "Too much
of a party up there," was his answer, as he pointed toward the community
buildings. It has also been told that at leisure times he would sit
silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of The Hive,
where he "could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the
young people," himself almost always holding a book before him, but
seldom turning the leaves.
One sees in his letters of this time [Footnote: American Note-Books,
Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased
during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to
disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association,
even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the
old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination
flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm
community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in
Boston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show a
delightful solicitude reigning at home, during the period of his
experiment.
"What is the use," says one, "of burning your brains out in the sun, if
you can do anything better with them?.
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