...I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh as that was! My very heart leaped with delight at the sound.

The speaker’s sudden joy at a horse’s “brisk and melodious neigh” highlights Hawthorne’s frequent use of sensory detail to register an inward, almost involuntary emotional response. The neigh functions as more than background sound: it becomes a signal of vitality, freedom, or welcome companionship, strong enough to make the narrator’s “very heart” leap. The moment suggests how quickly the imagination can be stirred by a natural, animal utterance—an unselfconscious music contrasted with the often burdened, self-scrutinizing human mind in Hawthorne. In miniature, the line dramatizes a Romantic attentiveness to nature’s voices as catalysts for feeling and renewed spirit.