absolutely nothing, except in a single direction, where he had
thought so energetically, and felt to such a depth, that no doubt the
entire reason and justice of the universe appeared to be concentrated
thitherward.

It is my private opinion that, at this period of his life,
Hollingsworth was fast going mad; and, as with other crazy people
(among whom I include humorists of every degree), it required all the
constancy of friendship to restrain his associates from pronouncing
him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddling upon one
string--such multiform presentation of one idea! His specific object
(of which he made the public more than sufficiently aware, through
the medium of lectures and pamphlets) was to obtain funds for the
construction of an edifice, with a sort of collegiate endowment. On
this foundation he purposed to devote himself and a few disciples to
the reform and mental culture of our criminal brethren. His
visionary edifice was Hollingsworth's one castle in the air; it was
the material type in which his philanthropic dream strove to embody
itself; and he made the scheme more definite, and caught hold of it
the more strongly, and kept his clutch the more pertinaciously, by
rendering it visible to the bodily eye. I have seen him, a hundred
times, with a pencil and sheet of paper, sketching the facade, the
side-view, or the rear of the structure, or planning the internal
arrangements, as lovingly as another man might plan those of the
projected home where he meant to be happy with his wife and children.
I have known him to begin a model of the building with little stones,
gathered at the brookside, whither we had gone to cool ourselves in
the sultry noon of haying-time. Unlike all other ghosts, his spirit
haunted an edifice, which, instead of being time-worn, and full of
storied love, and joy, and sorrow, had never yet come into existence.