The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 8 Page 27

out of iron, after heating the iron in my heart! It matters little what my outward toil may be. Were I a slave, at the bottom of a mine, I should keep the same purpose, the same faith in its ultimate accomplishment, that I do now. Miles Coverdale is not in earnest, either as a poet or a laborer.”

“You give me hard measure, Hollingsworth,” said I, a little hurt. “I have kept pace with you in the field; and my bones feel as if I had been in earnest, whatever may be the case with my brain!”

“I cannot conceive,” observed Zenobia with great emphasis, — and, no doubt, she spoke fairly the feeling of the moment, — ”I cannot conceive of being so continually as Mr.

Coverdale is within the sphere of a