wds for happinesss not knowing that all the
happiness they find there they must take with them. Thus they divert and
distract that within them which creates power and joy, until by flying
always away from themselves, seeking satisfaction from without rather
than from within, they become infinitely boresome to themselves, so that
they can scarcely bear a moment of their own society.

But if once a man have a taste of true and happy retirement, though it
be but a short hour, or day, now and then, he has found, or is beginning
to find, a sure place of refuge, of blessed renewal, toward which in the
busiest hours he will find his thoughts wistfully stealing. How stoutly
will he meet the buffets of the world if he knows he has such a place of
retirement where all is well-ordered and full of beauty, and right
counsels prevail, and true things are noted.

As a man grows older, if he cultivate the art of retirement, not indeed
as an end in itself, but as a means of developing a richer and freer
life, he will find his reward growing surer and greater until in time
none of the storms or shocks of life any longer disturbs him. He might
in time even reach the height attained by Diogenes, of whom Epictetus
said, "It was not possible for any man to approach him, nor had any man
the means of laying hold upon him to enslave him. He had everything
easily loosed, everything only hanging to him. If you laid hold of his
property, he would rather have let it go and be yours than he would have
followed you for it; if you laid hold of his leg he would have let go
his leg: if all of his body, all his poor body; his intimates, friends,
country, just the same. For he knew from whence he had them, and from
whom and on what conditions."

The best partners of solitude are books. I like to take a book with me
in my pocket, although I find the world so full of interesting
things--sights, sounds, odours--that often I never read a word in it. It
is like having a valued friend with you, though you walk for miles
without saying a word to him or he to you: but if you really know your
friend, it is a curious thing how, subconsciously, you are aware of
what he is thinking and feeling about this hillside or that distant
view. And so it is with books. It is enough to have this writer in your
pocket, for the very thought of him and what he would say to these old
fields and pleasant trees is ever freshly delightful. And he never
interrupts at inconvenient mom