May the buds within blossom, and may their fruit ripen in my prayers to God." He was now, indeed, very near his goal, though even yet he did not clearly see it.

And once more all his active powers deserted him.
Study became impossible.

His mind was drawn so strongly in upon itself that neither work nor play, neither books nor the renewed intercourse which at this period he sought with his old friends in Boston and at Brook Farm, could any longer fasten his attention.

He opens his new diary with a record of the trial he has just made in order to discover "whether in mixing with the world I should not be somewhat influenced by their life and brought into new relations with my studies.

But it was to no purpose that I went.