for a while, acknowledging its prettiness,
but concluded it to be rather too fine and sentimental a name (a fault
inevitable by literary ladies in such attempts) for sunburnt men to
work under. I ventured to whisper "Utopia," which, however, was
unanimously scouted down, and the proposer very harshly maltreated, as
if he had 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