These
Reflections Are A Rather Serious Commencement Of A Sketch Which Was
Intended To Be Of A More Lively Description;
One of my chief objects
in writing this chapter being to afford a connecting link between
my wife's sketches, and
To account for some circumstances connected
with our situation, which otherwise would be unintelligible to
the reader. Before emigrating to Canada, I had been settled as a
bachelor in South Africa for about twelve years. I use the word
settled, for want of a better term - for a bachelor can never,
properly, be said to be settled. He has no object in life - no aim.
He is like a knife without a blade, or a gun without a barrel. He
is always in the way, and nobody cares for him. If he work on a
farm, as I did, for I never could look on while others were
working without lending a hand, he works merely for the sake of
work. He benefits nobody by his exertions, not even himself; for
he is restless and anxious, has a hundred indescribable ailments,
which no one but himself can understand; and for want of the
legitimate cares and anxieties connected with a family, he is full
of cares and anxieties of his own creating. In short, he is in a
false position, as every man must be who presumes to live alone
when he can do better.
This was my case in South Africa. I had plenty of land, and of
all the common necessaries of life; but I lived for years without
companionship, for my nearest English neighbour was twenty-five
miles off.
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