Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a
man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in
some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking
no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such
associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of
altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.
Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment
in my regard. I cared not at this period for books; they were
apart from me. Nature--except it were human nature--the nature
that is developed in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden
from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been
spiritualized passed away out of my mind. A gift, a faculty, if
it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate within me.
There would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all
this, had I not been conscious that it lay at my own option to
recall whatever was valuable in the past. It might be true,
indeed, that this was a life which could not, with impunity, be
lived too long; else, it might make me permanently other than I
had been, without transforming me into any shape which it would
be worth my while to take.
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