If I am interested
in a book, I can read on till I am satiated. Never before in my life
have I had the chance of reading, as Theocrite praised God, "morning,
evening, noon, and night." But now, if I get really absorbed in a
volume, I can let the whole story, tragedy or comedy, open before me,
take its course, and draw to a close. The result is that I find I can
apprehend a book in a way that I have never apprehended one before, in
its entirety; one can enter wholly and completely into the mind of an
author, into the progress of a biography; so that to read a book now is
like sitting out a play.
All this is very delightful; and no less delightful, too, is it, if the
mood takes me, to wander off for a whole day in the country; to moon
onwards entirely oblivious of time; to stop on a hill-top and survey a
scene, to turn into a village church and sit long in the cool gloom; to
seek out the heart of a copse, all carpeted with spring flowers, and to
lie on a green bank, with the whisper of the leaves in one's ear; or to
sit beside a stream, near a crystal pool, half-hidden in sedges, and to
see hour by hour what goes on in the dim waterworld. I do not mean to
say that it would not be pleasanter to share one's rambles with a
congenial companion; but it is not easy to find one; either there are
differences of opinion, or the subtle barriers of age to overleap, or
one is conscious that there are regions of one's mind in which a friend
will inevitably and fretfully miss his way--there are not many friends,
for anyone, to whom his mind can lie perfectly and unaffectedly open;
and thus, though I do not hesitate to say that I would prefer the
society of the perfect friend to my loneliness, yet I prefer my
loneliness to the incursions of the imperfect friend.
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