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368 the "thens," the shadows—a dream, and so is everything.

This was my last discovery—for it was one for me. Soon after I made it I left this wild northern promontory, regretting, as I shall ever regret, that there is no comfortable little cottage upon it where I might stay, and be looked after—have my porridge made—for several months at a time. To be able to walk out from as much of civilisation as this would amount to into absolute wildness and solitude, returning into it again at the end of each day—that is the life I appreciate. For society there would be the good old body who cooked for me, and her husband—a fisherman, doubtless, with his tales of the sea. With them I could have a crack when I wished to, nor ever sigh for anything higher, since the homely utterances and out-of-the-heart-comings of simple country folks, especially of "the old folks, time's doting chroniclers," have for long been all I care for in the way of conversation. All other irks me, and my mind soon grows confused in it, so that I seem to have no ideas at all, and indeed, have none for the time, except a panting to be gone. Therefore, for the world of men and women here—those masks, those flesh-enshrouded spirits, never to be properly dug up or pierced into, give me but books, and for my own little circle of daily life, it lives in Miss Austen's novels, nor do I ever want to enlarge it. How many readers are there who can say this—that they have ever had one friend or acquaintance with whose loss they could not better