So I only
said "I must go,"--and turned my back upon the sea, and my face
to the banks of the Merrimack.
When I returned I found that I enjoyed even the familiar,
unremitting clatter of the mill, because it indicated that
something was going on. I liked to feel the people around me,
even those whom I did not know, as a wave may like to feel the
surrounding waves urging it forward, with or against its own
will. I felt that I belonged to the world, that there was
something for me to do in it, though I had not yet found out
what. Something to do; it might be very little, but still it
would be my own work. And then there was the better something
which I had almost forgotten--to be! Underneath my dull thoughts
the old aspirations were smouldering, the old ideals rose and
beckoned to me through the rekindling light.
It was always aspiration rather than ambition by which I felt
myself stirred. I did not care to outstrip others, and become
what is called "distinguished," were that a possibility, so much
as I longed to answer the Voice that invited, ever receding, up
to invisible heights, however unattainable they might seem.
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