These things went deep with me.

Only the other day, when a friend asked me how old I was, I responded instantly--our unpremeditated words are usually truest--with the date of my arrival at this farm.
"Then you are only ten years old!" he exclaimed with a laugh, thinking I was joking.
"Well," I said, "I am counting only the years worth living." No; I existed, but I never really lived until I was reborn, that wonderful summer here among these hills.
I said I felt afraid in the streets of Kilburn, but it was no physical fear.

Who could be safer in a city than the man who has not a penny in his pockets?
It was rather a strange, deep, spiritual shrinking.

There seemed something so irresistible about this life of the city, so utterly overpowering.

I had a sense of being smaller than I had previously felt myself, that in some way my personality, all that was strong or interesting or original about me, was being smudged over, rubbed out.
In the country I had in some measure come to command life, but here, it seemed to me, life was commanding me and crushing me down.