Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. My thoughts led me to call in a visitor that evening, a very rare thing with me. Perhaps a hermit in his cell could hardly enjoy more solitary evenings then I did then. When I shut myself and my one silent companion into my sitting room after the boys had gone, I knew always that from that hour I would see no one till the night was over. My fellow lodgers upstairs had companions, witness the stamping and singing that sometimes only ended with the morning; my landlady had children who came to see her, and visitors as well, the maid had sweethearts I lived alone. At first I liked this and only regretted the wasted hours, for I had found night classes more than my health, for the time being at least, was able to stand; it seemed impossible that any human companionship could be pleasant to me, and yet perhaps I should nothave loved my one consolation so well if I had not been lonely at whiles. The solitary hours were pleasant in their way, I had plenty to occupy my spare moments, dusting, settling, yes, and even sewing, for I had become a notable housewife for economy's sake, and liked to have things neat and clean about me. When I was not engaged in such like domestic occupations, I would sit in my big chair by the hearth and do nothing, for I would not study. In early days, when many thought me a rising artist, several of my professional brothers tried to make friends with me. But I had vowed never to have a friend again. Now in my older age, lonely and discontented, I was less likely to have a companion my big face and sledge hammer arms seemed to frighten people, besides I did not care for the society of the profligate and the good thought me a heathen. Yet now, even now, there were those, good and bad, who occasionally tried to force a slight acquaintance...
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