Marianne assented most feelingly to the remark; and her mother was ledby it to an enumeration of Colonel Brandon’s injuries and merits, warmas friendship and design could unitedly dictate. Her daughter did notlook, however, as if much of it were heard by her.

Elinor, according to her expectation,  that Marianne did not continue to gain strength as she had done;but while her resolution was unsubdued, and she still tried to appearcheerful and easy, her sister could safely trust to the effect of timeupon her health.

Margaret returned, and the family were again all restored to eachother, again quietly settled at the cottage; and if not pursuing theirusual studies with quite so much vigour as when they first came toBarton, at least planning a vigorous prosecution of them in future.

Elinor grew impatient for some tidings of Edward. She had heardnothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new of his plans,nothing certain even of his present abode. Some letters had passedbetween her and her brother, in consequence of Marianne’s illness; andin the first of John’s, there had been this sentence:– “We knownothing of our unfortunate Edward, and can make no enquiries on soprohibited a subject, but conclude him to be still at Oxford;” whichwas all the intelligence of Edward afforded her by the correspondence,for his name was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters.She was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of his measures.

Their man-servant had been sent one morning to Exeter on business; andwhen, as he waited at table, he had satisfied the inquiries of hismistress as to the event of his errand, this was his voluntarycommunication.

One day in 1819, 3,000 miles off the coast of Chile, in one of the most remote regions of the Pacific Ocean, 20 American sailors watched their ship flood with seawater.

They’d been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped a catastrophic hole in the ship’s hull, the men huddled together in three small whaleboats.

These men were 10,000 miles from home, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest scrap of land. In their small boats, they carried only rudimentary navigational equipment and limited supplies of food and water.

These were the men of the whaleship Essex, whose story would later inspire parts of “Moby Dick.”

Even in today’s world, their situation would be really dire, but think about how much worse it would have been then.

No one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. No search party was coming to look for these men. So most of us have never experienced a situation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, but we all know what it’s like to be afraid.

We know how fear feels, but I’m not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean.

As we grow up, we’re often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates.

And I think it’s no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists.

So maybe that’s why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. “Don’t worry,” we like to say to one another. “Don’t panic.” In English, fear is something we conquer. It’s something we fight.

It’s something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?

It’s easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid.

When I was a child, I lived in California, which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live, but for me as a child, California could also be a little scary.