lus of the very same ingredient, the want
of which, I occasionally suspect, has rendered my own life all an
emptiness. I by no means wish to die. Yet, were there any cause, in
this whole chaos of human struggle, worth a sane man's dying for, and
which my death would benefit, then--provided, however, the effort did
not involve an unreasonable amount of trouble--methinks I might be bold
to offer up my life. If Kossuth, for example, would pitch the
battlefield of Hungarian rights within an easy ride of my abode, and
choose a mild, sunny morning, after breakfast, for the conflict, Miles
Coverdale would gladly be his man, for one brave rush upon the levelled
bayonets. Further than that, I should be loath to pledge myself.

I exaggerate my own defects. The reader must not take my own word for
it, nor believe me altogether changed from the young man who once hoped
strenuously, and struggled not so much amiss. Frostier heads than mine
have gained honor in the world; frostier hearts have imbibed new
warmth, and been newly happy. Life, however, it must be owned, has
come to rather an idle pass with me. Would my friends like to know
what brought it thither? There is one secret,--I have concealed it all
along, and never meant to let the least whisper of it escape,--one
foolish little secret, which possibly may have had something to do with
these inactive years of meridian manhood, with my bachelorship, with
the unsatisfied retrospect that I fling back on life, and my listless
glance towards the future. Shall I reveal it? It is an absurd thing
for a man in his afternoon,--a man of the world, moreover, with these
three white hairs in his brown mustache and that deepening track of a
crow's-foot on each temple,--an absurd thing ever to have happened, and
quite the absurdest for an old bachelor, like me, to talk about. But
it rises to my throat; so let it come.

I perceive, moreover, that the confession, brief as it shall be, will
throw a gleam of light over my behavior throughout the foregoing
incidents, and is, indeed, essential to the full understanding of my
story. The reader, therefore, since I have disclosed so much, is
entitled to this one word more. As I write it, he will charitably
suppose me to blush, and turn away my face:

I--I myself--was in love--with--Priscilla!

End of Project Gutenberg's The Blithedale Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLITHEDALE