"As I look into the fire, and the hot coals shape themselves into a
thousand memories of the past, I seem to be staring with childish eyes
at a board that stares back at me out of a larch plantation, and gives
notice that 'This House is to Let.' Then, again, I seem to peep
through rusty iron gates at the house itself--an old red house, with
large windows, through which one could see the white shutters that
were always closed. To look at this house, though only with my mind's
eye, recalls the feeling of mysterious interest with which I looked at
it fifty years ago, and brings back the almost oppressive happiness of
a certain day, when Sarah, having business with the couple who kept
the empty manor, took me with her, and left me to explore the grounds
whilst she visited her friends.

"Next to a companion with that rare sympathy of mind to mind, that
exceptional coincidence of tastes, which binds some few friendships in
a chain of mesmeric links, supplanting all the complacencies of love
by intuition, is a companion whose desires and occupations are in
harmony, if not in unison, with one's own. That friend whom the long
patience of the angler does not chafe, the protracted pleasures of the
sketcher do not weary, because time flies as swiftly with him whilst
he pores over his book, or devoutly seeks botanical specimens through
the artist's middle distance; that friend, in short--that valuable
friend--who is blessed with the great and good quality of riding a
hobby of his own, and the greater and better quality of allowing other
people to ride theirs.

"I did not think out all this fifty years ago, neither were the tastes
of that excellent housemaid, Sarah, quite on a level with those of
which I have spoken; but I remember feeling the full comfort of the
fact that Sarah's love for friendly gossip was quite as ardent as mine