It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwanted jollity that brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of the year - as it already… - Nathaniel Hawthorne

...the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.

We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs—strange to say—was the shape of a human heart.
"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bertram...
"At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like a special good lime... my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him." ...
[T]he rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments.

Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.