The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 29 Page 4

notwithstanding that Dr. Griswold — as the reader, of course, knows — has placed me at a fair elevation among our minor minstrelsy, on the strength of my pretty little volume, published ten years ago.

As regards human progress (in spite of my irrepressible yearnings over the Blithedale reminiscences), let them believe in it who can, and aid in it who choose. If I could earnestly do either, it might be all the better for my comfort. As Hollingsworth once told me, I lack a purpose. How strange! He was ruined, morally, by an overplus 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