Well-regulated society is essential to anything bordering on pure enjoyment in every community, and when an individual leaves one society and mingles with or is surrounded by another constituted with less regard for the materials of which he may have been composed, he is deprived of a source of much happiness and beneficial enjoyment. Thus I find myself situated. I find that none or very few have ideas corresponding with mine or that which is agreeable to my ideas is repugnant to theirs, and things which they judge important to enjoyment, to me appear of no consequence or at least should be considered only of secondary magnitude. If I have reason to complain, they have also, so I will endeavor to mingle as little as possible in their meetings so that, while I cannot participate, I will not disturb.
Yet my imagination takes its flight to other lands and contemplates the scenes that are past and to be remembered, not with pain, but pleasure. Oh! Society, you still visit my thoughts, you alleviate the burden that oppresses the weary and anxious mind. The cares of life are mitigated in your presence and solitude flees at your approach.
Gage is today absent. How easy to fly on the wings of imagination to home's more congenial clime and there go over the pleasures of the past conversations, to walk again amid the beauties of nature as the gentle zephyrs wafted their refreshing breezes over the landscape, or wander along the meandering rivulet and hear its gentle murmurs, or revisit the more noisy cascade and listen to its incessant roar, or rest beneath the majestic oak or more impressive willow. In the still evening to view the borrowed light of Luna and the bespangled fields of either above all, and still greater to sit by the side of an intelligent, pure, and unpretended friend and listen to the sweet melody of science that falls from the voice. Even the recollection thrills in such rapture through the mind that my feeble words are inadequate to the description.
Today I saw a man from Georgia, who was a complete egotist and considered himself of vast importance. He wanted a situation as a teacher in common schools. I saw some of his writing and observed he had better be at school than here endeavoring to lead innocent females into vice, as he was evidently endeavoring to do. Never be guilty of such conduct.