all those details about his property (a very large one), which in life he had kept entirely to himself—­all these we saw.  I remember, lying on the top of the documents contained in an iron chest, a little scrap of paper, the back of an ancient letter, on which was written a note of the amount of all his wealth.  There you saw at once a secret which in life he would have confided to no one.  I remember the precise arrangement of all the little piles of papers, so neatly tied up in separate parcels.  I remember the pocket-handkerchiefs, of several different kinds, each set wrapped up by itself in a piece of paper.  It was curious to think that he had counted and sorted those, handkerchiefs; and now he was so far away.  What a contrast, the little cares of many little matters like that, and the solemn realities of the unseen world!  I would not on any account have looked over these things alone.  I should have had an awe-stricken expectation that I should be interrupted.  I should have expected a sudden tap on the shoulder, and to be asked what I was doing there.  And doubtless, in many such cases, when the repositories of the dead are first looked into by strangers, some one far away would be present, if such things could be.

Solitary men, of the class which I have in my mind, are generally very hard-wrought men, and are kept too busy to allow very much time for reverie.  Still, there is some.  There are evening hours after the task is done, when you sit by the fire, or walk up and down your study, and think that you are missing a great deal in this lonely life; and that much more might be made of your stay in this world, while its best years are passing over.  You think that there are many pleasant people in the world, people whom you would like to know, and who might like you if they knew you.  But you and they have never met; and if you go on in this solitary fashion, you and they never will meet.  No doubt here is your comfortable room; there is the blazing fire and the mellow lamp and the warmly-curtained windows; and pervading the silent chamber, there is the softened murmur of the not distant sea.  The backs of your books look out at you like old friends; and after you are married, you won’t be able to afford to buy so many.  Still, you recall the cheerful society in which you have often spent such hours, and you think it might be well if you were not so completely cut off from it.  You fancy you hear the hum of lively conversation, such as gently exhilarates the mind without tasking it; and again you think what a loss it is to live where you hardly ever hear music, whether good or bad.  You think of the awkward shyness and embarrassment of manner which grows upon a man who is hardly ever called to join in general conversation.  Yes, He knew our nature best who said that it is not good that man should be alone.  We lean to our kind.  There is indeed a solitariness which is the condition of an individual soul’s being, which no association with others can do away;