cordial invitation to his house. My
circumstances allowed me no option and I readily complied. My attention
was for a time engrossed by a diversified succession of new objects.
Their novelty however disappearing, left me at liberty to turn my eyes
upon myself and my companion, and here my reflections were supplied with
abundant food.

His house was spacious and commodious, and furnished with profusion
and elegance. A suit of apartments was assigned to me, in which I
was permitted to reign uncontroled and access was permitted to a well
furnished library. My food was furnished in my own room, prepared in
the manner which I had previously directed. Occasionally Ludloe would
request my company to breakfast, when an hour was usually consumed in
earnest or sprightly conversation. At all other times he was invisible,
and his apartments, being wholly separate from mine, I had no
opportunity of discovering in what way his hours were employed.

He defended this mode of living as being most compatible with liberty.
He delighted to expatiate on the evils of cohabitation. Men, subjected
to the same regimen, compelled to eat and sleep and associate at certain
hours, were strangers to all rational independence and liberty. Society
would never be exempt from servitude and misery, till those artificial
ties which held human beings together under the same roof were
dissolved. He endeavoured to regulate his own conduct in pursuance
of these principles, and to secure to himself as much freedom as the
present regulations of society would permit. The same independence which
he claimed for himself he likewise extended to me. The distribution of
my own time, the selection of my own occupations and companions should
belong to myself.

But these privileges, though while listening to his arguments I could
not deny them to be valuable, I would have willingly dispensed with. The
solitude in which I lived became daily more painful. I ate and drank,
enjoyed clothing and shelter, without the exercise of forethought or
industry; I walked and sat, went out and returned for as long and at
what seasons I thought proper, yet my condition was a fertile source of
discontent.

I felt myself removed to a comfortless and chilling distance from
Ludloe. I wanted to share in his occupations and views. With all his
ingenuousness of aspect and overflow of thoughts, when he allowed me his
company, I felt myself painfully bewildered with regard to his genuine
con