even remotely allude to it; and at this time he gave expression to it with a sincerity so unconscious that in reading his letters—and there are many of them, though happily he destroyed his wife's—one looks straight into his heart. It is strange, he thinks, that "such a flower as our affection should have blossomed amid snow and wintry winds;" and in all ways this love had the singularity that deep natures feel in their own experiences. "I never till now," writes Hawthorne, "had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me, and whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance. But peace overflows from your heart into mine." So one might weave the chain of lovers' phrases, linking the old words over; but here, at least, it will be enough to let one or two separate passages stand for his abiding mood. In June, 1840, he writes to her when she is at Concord:—
"My heart thirsts and languishes to be there, away from the hot sun, and the coal-dust, and the steaming docks, and the thick-pated, stubborn, contentious men, with whom I brawl from morning till night, and all the weary toil that quite engrosses me, and yet occupies only a small part of my being, which I did not know existed before I became a measurer. I do think I should sink down quite disheartened and inanimate if you were not happy, and gathering from earth and sky enjoyment for both of us; but this makes me feel that my real, innermost soul is apart from all
