, and hidden in some obscure corner. In
one word, the prevailing feeling was, that nobody cared for me, and I
cared for nobody.

And yet, strange as it may appear, I was far from being unhappy.
Sometimes, it is true, my in-turned thoughts became weary, and pined for
human fellowship; and I grew sick at heart, as I contemplated the future,
a vast, dry, waste, desolate desert of parched sand, over which I must
toil and thirst, without one single being to speak a word of kindness, or
give me a drop of water. But these were fits, fits of wildness, I called
them, and seldom lasted long. And when they came over me, one attempt to
link my sympathies with others was always sufficient to throw me back into
a state of mind harder and colder than before. For it was so fated, that
all my overtures, and they were not many, were met with open repulse or
wary suspicion. It is true, suspicion is a necessary ingredient in human
character; but I did not think of this then, and so it had the same effect
as though I had found, indeed I thought I _had_ found, that coldness and
insensibility were the prominent characteristics of the race.

And yet, as I said before, I was not unhappy. If there was no happiness,
there was at least no unhappiness, in sitting down for hours, and brooding
over my own idiosyncrasies. It made me proud, to see and despise the
weakness of others; and it gave me stern joy, to walk about and feel that
there was a kind of armed neutrality between them and me. By degrees there
arose, also, a gloomy pleasure in dwelling on, and picturing in deeper
colors, the failings and baseness of my neighbors. Humble and weak as I
knew myself to be, I exulted in my strength, because there were some still
more weak and humble. Far back as my recollection ran, there had never
been any thing in the world that seemed to me worthy of very much exertion
or toil to obtain; but now I first learned to despise others for
possessing feeble energies, as well as for directing them to the
attainment of little objects. I am afraid, if left to myself, I should
have hardened into a genuine hater; but I was not left to myself.

I have mentioned my uncle's kindness; his whole family were not less kind.
My cousin Jane, especially, saw that I was silent, and fancied that I was
unhappy, and tried, by a thousand little devices and arts, to lull me into
forgetfulness of myself, and entice me into a more sociable frame of mind.
I will not say that I was ins