He was slow in discovering it, because he had always lived alone; had no intimate friends, not even when he was a boy.
His love of books and his passionate love of beauty combined with his poverty to hedge him about more effectually than miles of desert could have done.

His father and mother had lived upon fairly good terms with all their neighbors, but had formed no very close bonds with any.

In the ordinary New England town, neighborhood never means much: there is a dismal lack of cohesion to the relations between people.

The community is loosely held together by a few accidental points of contact or common interest.

The individuality of individuals is, by a strange sort of paradox, at once respected and ignored.