the great world once, in an old, roomy house beside
a little wood of larches, with an aunt of the name of Sophia. My
father and mother died a few days before my fourth birthday, so that I
can conjure up only fleeting glimpses of their faces by which to
remember what love was then lost to me. Both were youthful at death,
but my Aunt Sophia was ever elderly. She was keen, and just, seldom
less than kind; but a child was to her something of a little animal,
and it was nothing more. In consequence, well fed, warmly clad, and in
freedom, I grew up almost in solitude between my angels, hearkening
with how simple a curiosity to that everlasting warfare of persuasion
and compulsion, terror and delight.

Which of them it was that guided me, before even I could read, to the
little room dark with holly trees that had been of old my uncle's
library, I know not. Perhaps at the instant it chanced there had
fallen a breathless truce between them, and I being solitary, my own
instinct took me. But having once found that pictured haven, I had
found somewhat of content.

I think half my youthful days passed in that low, book-walled chamber.
The candles I burned through those long years of evening would deck
Alps' hugest fir; the dust I disturbed would very easily fill again
the measure that some day shall contain my own; and the small studious
thumbmarks that paced, as if my footprints, leaf by leaf of that long
journey, might be the history of life's experience in little,--from
clearer, to clear, to faint--how very faint at last!

I do not remember ever to have been discovered in this retreat. I was
(by nature) prompt at meals, and wary to be in bed at my hour, however
transitory its occupation might be. Indeed, I very well recollect
dawn painting the page my eyes dwelt on, surprising me with its
mystery and stealth in a house as silent as the grave.

Thus entertained then by insubstantial society I grew up, and began to
be old, before I had yet learned age is disastrous. And it was there,
in that cold, bright chamber, one snowy twilight, first suddenly awoke
in me an imperative desire for distant lands.

Even while little else than a child I had begun to cast my mind to
travel. I doubt if ever Columbus suffered such vexation from an itch
to be gone.

But whither?

Now, it seemed clear to me after long brooding and musing that however
beautiful were these regions of which I never wearied to read, and
however wild and faithful