friended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of
something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call
wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest
was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be
strange to me again.

"Mourning untimely consumes the sad;
Few are their days in the land of the living,
Beautiful daughter of Toscar."

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the
spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well
as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an
early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time
to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains
which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop
and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door
in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its
protection. In one heavy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large
pitch pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly
regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four
or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it
again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding
that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless
bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently
say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want
to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I
am tempted to reply to such--This whole earth which we inhabit is but
a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant
inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be
appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our
planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the
most important question. What sort of space is that which separates
a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no
exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely,
the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the
school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men
most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence