BRIEF ESSAYS 221 



have a heart for Nature herself t For many reasons 

 women seldom voluntarily face solitude, but in my 

 boyhood I knew an aged widow who lived all alone 

 on her little farm, in her little brown house, for 

 many years. She kept five or six cows, which she 

 took care of herself winter and summer. She hired 

 her hay gathered, her wood cut, and that was all. 

 She was a gentle and pious little woman, and her 

 house was as neat as a pin. But think of those 

 long years of solitary life; the nights, the morn- 

 ings, the meals, the Sundays, the week days, and 

 no sound but what you made yourself ! How inti- 

 mately acquainted with one's self one must become 

 in such a life! If one's self was not a pretty good 

 fellow, how cordially one would learn to dislike his 

 company ! One Sunday, as my people were passing 

 the house on their way to church, they saw her 

 washing. "Hello, Aunt Debby! don't you know 

 it is Sunday 1 " Behold the consternation of the 

 old dame! She had lost her reckoning, and had 

 kept Sabbath on Saturday. The last time I passed 

 that way I saw only a little grassy mound where 

 Aunt Debby 's house used to stand. 



The poet of solitude is Wordsworth. What a 

 sense of the privacy of fields and woods there is 

 over all his poetry; what stillness, what lonesome 

 dells, what sounds of distant waterfalls! How 

 fondly he lingers upon the simple objects of nature, 

 upon rural scenes and events, and how perpetually 

 he returns upon his own heart ! His companionship 

 with hills and trees and rocks and shepherds does 



