Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2)

He goes at that slow pace every morning, and after having wrought a hard day's work returns at night, however weary he may be, takes it all quietly, and, though perhaps he neither feels thankfulness nor pleasure, when he eats his supper, and has nothing to look forward to but falling asleep in bed, yet I daresay he neither murmurs nor thinks it hard. He seems mechanised to labour. We broke the seal of Coleridge's letters, and I had light enough just to see that he was not ill. I put it in my pocket. At the top of the White Moss I took it to my bosom,--a safer place for it. The sight was wild. There was a strange mountain lightness, when we were at the top of the White Moss. I have often observed it there in the evenings, being between the two valleys. There is more of the sky there than any other place. It has a strange effect. Sometimes, along with the obscurity of evening, or night, it seems almost like a peculiar sort of light. There was not much wind till we came to John's Grove, then it roared right out of the grove, all the trees were tossing about. Coleridge's letter somewhat damped us. It spoke with less confidence about France. Wm. wrote to him. The other letter was from Montagu, with £8. Wm. was very unwell, tired when he had written. He went to bed and left me to write to M.