"Unto this last nook of refuge have I come; and, expecting little, find much. Shut out from the world, locked in with the sea,--no neighbors, no visitors, no news, no gossip,--solitary, shady, cool, and quiet,--surely I can rest here. Forked tongues of scandal can not penetrate through those rock-ribbed hills yonder, nor dart across that defying sea; and neither wail nor wassail of men or women can disturb me more. But how do I know that it will not prove a mocking cheat like Baiae and Maggiore, or Copais and Cromarty? I have fled in disgust and _ennui_ from far lovelier spots than this, and what right have I to suppose that contentment has housed itself as my guest in that old, mossy, brick pile, where mice and wrens run riot? Like Cain and Cartophilus, my curse travels with me, and I no sooner pitch my tent, than lo! the rattle and grin of my skeleton, for which earth is not wide enough to furnish a grave! Well! well! at least I shall not be stared to death here,--shall not be tormented by eye-glasses and sketch-books; can live in that dim, dark, greenish den yonder, unobserved and possibly forgotten and finally sleep undisturbed in the dank shade of those deodars, with twittering birds overhead and a sobbing sea at my feet. How long--how long before that dreamless slumber will fall upon my heavy lids,--weary with waiting? Only twenty-three yesterday! My God, if I should live to be an old woman! The very thought threatens insanity! Ten--twenty--possibly thirty years ahead of me. No; I could not endure it,--I should go mad, or destroy myself! If I were a delicate woman, if I only had weak lungs or a dropsical heart, or a taint of any hereditary infirmity that would surely curtail my days, I could be tolerably patient, hoping daily for the symptoms to develop themselves. But, unfortunately, though my family all died early, no two members, selected the same mode of escape from this bastile of clay; and my flesh is sound, and I am as strong and compact as that granite balustrade, and--ha! ha!--quite as hard. _Au pis aller_, if the burden of life becomes utterly intolerable I can shuffle it off as quickly as did that proud Roman, who, 'when the birds began to sing' in the dawn of a day heralded by tempestuous winds laden with perfume from the vales of Sicily, shut his eyes forever from the warm sparkling Mediterranean billows that broke in the roads of Utica, and pricked the memory of inattentive Azrael with the point of a sword. Neither Phaedo, family, nor fame, could coax Cato to respect the prerogative of Atropos; and if he, 'the only free and unconquered man,' quailed and fled before the apparition of numerous advancing years, what marvel that I, who am neither sage nor Roman, should be tempted some fine morning when the birds are sounding _reveille_ around my chamber windows, to imitate 'what Cato did, and Addison approved'? After all, what despicable cowards are human hearts, and how much easier to die like Socrates,