nor nourished his health, nor stimulated his genius. A house of his
own beside the Atlantic might well have added twenty years to his
life.

But it was not upon the knees of the gods.

Bridge's zealous efforts failed to find a place available, and after
an uneasy interval, during which his friend wandered uncomfortably
about Boston and the neighborhood (incidentally noting down some
side-scenes afterwards to be incorporated in The Blithedale Romance),
a cottage in the Berkshire Hills was spoken of, and upon examination
seemed practicable. Lenox, at that time, was as little known as Mount
Desert; it was not until long afterwards that fashion found them out
and made them uninhabitable to any but fashionable folks. Moreover, my
father had seen something of Lenox a dozen years before.

A dozen years before he was not yet betrothed to Sophia Peabody; he
already loved her and she him; but her health seemed an insuperable
barrier between them. This and certain other matters were weighing
heavily upon his soul, and his future seemed dark and uncertain. He
thought of taking a voyage round the world; he thought of getting into
politics; he even thought--as young men full of life sometimes
will--of death. What he finally did, with native good sense, was to
make a two-months' trip in the mountainous region to the westward, to
change the scene and his state of mind, and to get what artists call a
fresh eye. He chose North Adams as his headquarters, and forayed
thence in various directions over a radius of twenty miles. He was
then beginning to revolve one of the two great romance themes that
preoccupied his whole after-life, neither of which was he destined to
write. This was the idea of the Unpardonable Sin; the other was the