and fancies. To come alone into the woods, even though the scene
I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and awakens gloomy
imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I have taken
to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone, never
desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us,
as even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams
of youth, gone, never to return again.

"I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not
wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but
my heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the
spirit for it. I felt that I should not be any company for you,
and feared that I would only affect you with some of my own dullness."

"Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should
know that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies
of age, provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune
of age that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the
pulse, if not violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man.
But these sorrows of yours, my son--do you not call them by too
strong a name? I suspect they are nothing more than the discontents,
the vague yearnings of the young and ardent nature, such as prompt
enterprise and lead to nobleness. If you had them not, you would
think of little else than how to squat with your cousin there,
seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not so much--you would think
only of the modes of cooking and the delight of eating the fish,
and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive yourself.
This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial sorrow.
It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO something--for
this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object of