As a child I scribbled; and my favorite pastime during the hours given me for recreation was to ‘write stories’. Still, I had a dearer pleasure than … - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A nymph of the woods such as you were,

I contempleted the lake; the waters were placid, all around was calm and the snowy mountains... the calm and heavenly scene restored me and I continued my journey toward Geneva.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!