depth of philosophic thought,--these were the works that might fitly
have flowed from such a retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved
at least to achieve a novel that should evolve some deep lesson, and
should possess physical substance enough to stand alone.

In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for not
fulfilling it, there was in the rear of the house the most delightful
little nook of a study that ever afforded its snug seclusion to a
scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote Nature; for he was then an
inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and
Paphian sunset and moonrise from the summit of our eastern hill. When
I first saw the room, its walls were blackened with the smoke of
unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan
ministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad
angels, or at least like men who had wrestled so continually and so
sternly with the Devil that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been
imparted to their own visages. They had all vanished now; a cheerful
coat of paint and golden-tinted paper-hangings lighted up the small
apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree that swept against the
overhanging eaves atempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of
the grim prints there was the sweet and lovely head of one of
Raphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of
Como. The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers,
always fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books
(few, and by no means choice; for they were chiefly such waifs as
chance had thrown in my way) stood in order about the room, seldom to
be disturbed.

The study had three windows, set with little, old-fashioned panes of
glass, each with a crack across it. The two on the western side