o think that in
this wealth of peace and joy I am alone--alone.

Can you stand by yourself on a hillside and look across a beautiful little
lake to the woods beyond; or walk through a pine-forest, where the needles
sink as a carpet beneath your feet, and the air is full of the pungent
odor of the pine, and the gently swaying tree-tops overhead croon you a
lullaby--can you enjoy all this without an exquisite melancholy, and a
joy that hurts, piercing your soul? It's homesickness, that's all; you
want to go home and tell some one how happy you are. Give me solitude,
sweet solitude, but in my solitude give me still one friend to whom I may
murmur, Solitude is sweet.

* * * * *

That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake
may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon
expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake
at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.

I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and
along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush
and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.

At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The
landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked
where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage
aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate,
sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist
that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted
accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and
finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a
remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I
had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see
how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It
is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.

So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.

I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I asked if I could
wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered
that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a
motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested
that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to
call the por