ths and shady places
which I used to know so well last summer; and my views are so much
confined to the interior of our mansion, that sometimes, looking out of
the window, I am surprised to catch a glimpse of houses at no great
distance which had quite passed out of my recollection. From present
appearances, another month may scarcely suffice to wash away all the
snow from the open country; and in the woods and hollows it may linger
yet longer. The winter will not have been a day less than five months
long; and it would not be unfair to call it seven. A great space,
indeed, to miss the smile of Nature, in a single year of human life.
Even out of the midst of happiness I have sometimes sighed and groaned;
for I love the sunshine and the green woods, and the sparkling blue
water; and it seems as if the picture of our inward bliss should be set
in a beautiful frame of outward nature.... As to the daily course of our
life, I have written with pretty commendable diligence, averaging from
two to four hours a day; and the result is seen in various magazines. I
might have written more, if it had seemed worth while; but I was content
to earn only so much gold as might suffice for our immediate wants,
having prospect of official station and emolument which would do away
with the necessity of writing for bread. Those prospects have not yet
had their fulfilment; and we are well content to wait, because an office
would inevitably remove us from our present happy home,--at least from
an outward home; for there is an inner one that will accompany us
wherever we go. Meantime, the magazine people do not pay their debts; so
that we taste some of the inconveniences of poverty. It is an annoyance,
not a trouble.

Every day, I trudge through snow and slosh to the village, look into the
post-office, and spend an hour at the reading-room; and then return
home, generally without having spoken a word to a human being.... In the
way of exercise I saw and split wood, and, physically, I never was in a
better condition than now. This is chiefly owing, doubtless, to a
satisfied heart, in aid of which comes the exercise above mentioned, and
about a fair proportion of intellectual labor.

On the 9th of this month, we left home again on a visit to Boston and
Salem. I alone went to Salem, where I resumed all my bachelor habits for
nearly a fortnight, leading the same life in which ten years of my youth
flitted away like a dream. But how much changed wa