I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can :see the folks,:" and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and :the blues:; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

我發(fā)現(xiàn)人若大部分時間用于獨處，將有益身心。與人為伴，即使是摯友，也很快會有厭煩或虛度光陰的感覺。我愛獨處，我發(fā)現(xiàn)沒有比獨處更好的伴侶了。出國，身在熙攘人群中，要比退守陋室更讓人寂寞。心有所想，身有所系的人總是孤身一人，不論他身處何地。獨處與否也不是由人與人之間的距離來確定。在劍橋苦讀的學子雖身處蜂巢般擁擠的教室，實際上卻和沙漠中的苦行僧一樣，是在獨處。農(nóng)人終日耕于田間，伐于山野，此時他雖孤單但并不寂寞，因他專心于工作;但待到他日暮而息，卻未必能忍受形影相吊，空有思緒做伴的時光，他必到"可以看見大伙兒"的去處去找樂子，如他所認為的那樣以補償白日里的孤獨;因此他無法理解學子如何能竟夜終日獨坐而不心生厭倦或倍感凄涼;然而他沒意識到，學子雖身在學堂，但心系勞作，但是耕于心田，伐于學林，這正和農(nóng)人一樣，學子在尋求的無非是和他一樣的快樂與陪伴，只是形式更簡潔罷了。