“Being alone” is an intriguing phenomenon, which I sometimes regard as the first condition of any discovery. To discover your friend's “true personality”, you need a chance to be with him alone. To discover your true self, you have to give yourself a chance alone. And so is with a charming place, you're supposed to have an opportunity to visit it alone. Sincerely speaking, there are few people and places we have the chance to be acquainted with in our lifetime because we are all so busy around to get the opportunity to be alone. To tell the truth, I don't even know my hometown. Cambridge is a place where I show affections much, and then is the Florence. Ah, those early mornings, those dusks, and I was alone in Cambridge, as in a trance! Absolutely alone.

But how difficult is it for a man to write about his dearest object, whether it is a person or a piece of land, because you are afraid of giving a wrong description of it or annoying him for over describing it or let him down for being too conservative to describe it.