cost him. The churl! He
understood the shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelligence for
our blithe tones of brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial
sympathy, on the traveller's part, was one among the innumerable tokens
how difficult a task we had in hand for the reformation of the world.
We rode on, however, with still unflagging spirits, and made such good
companionship with the tempest that, at our journey's end, we professed
ourselves almost loath to bid the rude blusterer good-by. But, to own
the truth, I was little better than an icicle, and began to be
suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold.

And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farmhouse, the
same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences at the
beginning of this chapter. There we sat, with the snow melting out of
our hair and beards, and our faces all ablaze, what with the past
inclemency and present warmth. It was, indeed, a right good fire that
we found awaiting us, built up of great, rough logs, and knotty limbs,
and splintered fragments of an oak-tree, such as farmers are wont to
keep for their own hearths, since these crooked and unmanageable boughs
could never be measured into merchantable cords for the market. A
family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their kettle over precisely
such a fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger one; and, contrasting it
with my coal-grate, I felt so much the more that we had transported
ourselves a world-wide distance from the system of society that
shackled us at breakfast-time.

Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of stout Silas Foster, who was
to manage the farm at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the art of
husbandry) bade us a hearty welcome. At her back--a back of generous
breadth--appeared two young women, smiling most hospitably, but looking
rather awkward withal, as not well knowing what was to be their
position in our new arrangement of the world. We shook hands
affectionately all round, and congratulated ourselves that the blessed
state of brotherhood and sisterhood, at which we aimed, might fairly be
dated from this moment. Our greetings were hardly concluded when the
door opened, and Zenobia--whom I had never before seen, important as
was her place in our enterprise--Zenobia entered the parlor.

This (as the reader, if at all acquainted with our literary biography,
need scarcely be told) was not her real name. She had assumed it, in
the fir