Judge for yourself if I be fit for the smoothness, and confidence, and ease of social intercourse; I am not fit, I feel it! I am doomed to be alone--tell your father this--tell him to suffer me to live so! I am grateful for his goodness--I know his motives--but have a certain pride of mind; I cannot bear sufferance--I loath indulgence.

Nay, interrupt me not, I beseech you.

Look round on Nature--behold the only company that humbles me not--except the dead whose souls speak to us from the immortality of books.

These herbs at your feet, I know their secrets--I watch the mechanism of their life; the winds--they have taught me their language; the stars--I have unravelled their mysteries; and these, the creatures and ministers of God--these I offend not by my mood--to them I utter my thoughts, and break forth into my dreams, without reserve and without fear.

But men disturb me--I have nothing to learn from them--I have no wish to confide in them; they cripple the wild liberty which has become to me a second nature.