- end_line
- 13107
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 13048
- text
- I.
Some days passed after the fatal tidings from the Meadows, and at
length, somewhat mastering his emotions, Pierre again sits down in his
chamber; for grieve how he will, yet work he must. And now day succeeds
day, and week follows week, and Pierre still sits in his chamber. The
long rows of cooled brick-kilns around him scarce know of the change;
but from the fair fields of his great-great-great-grandfather's manor,
Summer hath flown like a swallow-guest; the perfidious wight, Autumn,
hath peeped in at the groves of the maple, and under pretense of
clothing them in rich russet and gold, hath stript them at last of the
slightest rag, and then ran away laughing; prophetic icicles depend from
the arbors round about the old manorial mansion--now locked up and
abandoned; and the little, round, marble table in the viny summer-house
where, of July mornings, he had sat chatting and drinking negus with his
gay mother, is now spread with a shivering napkin of frost; sleety
varnish hath encrusted that once gay mother's grave, preparing it for
its final cerements of wrapping snow upon snow; wild howl the winds in
the woods: it is Winter. Sweet Summer is done; and Autumn is done; but
the book, like the bitter winter, is yet to be finished.
That season's wheat is long garnered, Pierre; that season's ripe apples
and grapes are in; no crop, no plant, no fruit is out; the whole harvest
is done. Oh, woe to that belated winter-overtaken plant, which the
summer could not bring to maturity! The drifting winter snows shall
whelm it. Think, Pierre, doth not thy plant belong to some other and
tropical clime? Though transplanted to northern Maine, the orange-tree
of the Floridas will put forth leaves in that parsimonious summer, and
show some few tokens of fruitage; yet November will find no golden
globes thereon; and the passionate old lumber-man, December, shall peel
the whole tree, wrench it off at the ground, and toss it for a fagot to
some lime-kiln. Ah, Pierre, Pierre, make haste! make haste! force thy
fruitage, lest the winter force thee.
Watch yon little toddler, how long it is learning to stand by itself!
First it shrieks and implores, and will not try to stand at all, unless
both father and mother uphold it; then a little more bold, it must, at
least, feel one parental hand, else again the cry and the tremble; long
time is it ere by degrees this child comes to stand without any support.
But, by-and-by, grown up to man's estate, it shall leave the very mother
that bore it, and the father that begot it, and cross the seas, perhaps,
or settle in far Oregon lands. There now, do you see the soul. In its
germ on all sides it is closely folded by the world, as the husk folds
the tenderest fruit; then it is born from the world-husk, but still now
outwardly clings to it;--still clamors for the support of its mother the
world, and its father the Deity. But it shall yet learn to stand
independent, though not without many a bitter wail, and many a miserable
fall.
That hour of the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails
him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds
him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest.
There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his
infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise
despise him, and own him not of their clan. Divinity and humanity then
are equally willing that he should starve in the street for all that
either will do for him. Now cruel father and mother have both let go his
hand, and the little soul-toddler, now you shall hear his shriek and his
wail, and often his fall.
- title
- Chunk 1