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 moments, nor intrudes his thoughts upon yours
unless you desire it.

I do not want long books and least of all story books in the
woods--these are for the library--but rather scraps and extracts and