You belong to your own race; go join them again; cultivate again.

In “The Swamp Angel” Prentice Mulford tells the story of his amateur hermit life.

“I had long entertained the idea of building for myself a house in the woods, and there living alone. Not that I was cynical or disgusted with the world. I have no reason to be disgusted with the world. It has given me lots of amusement, sandwiched between headaches, periods of repentance, and sundry hours spent in the manufacture of good resolutions, many of which I could not keep because they spoiled so quickly on my hands. I have tried to treat the world pretty well, and it has rewarded me. For the world invariably returns kick for kick, frown for frown, smile for smile.
I found at last in New Jersey, a piece of woods, a swamp, a spring nearby, a rivulet, and above all, a noble, wide spreading oak. The owner willingly consented to my building there, and under the oak I built.
I was living alone, in the country, in a house I built for myself.”

He was philosophical about the end of that experiment too:

“I had imagined I could live happily alone in nature, and largely independent of the rest of the human race. I couldn’t. I don’t believe anybody can. Nature has taught me better. I found that birds went in pairs and in flocks; that plants and trees grew in families; that ants live in colonies, and that everything of its kind has a tendency to live and grow together. But here I was, a single bit of the human race, trying to live alone and away from my kind. The birds and trees were possibly glad of my admiration for them, but they said :-- You don’t belong to us. You shouldn’t try to belong to us. You belong to your own race; go join them again; cultivate again. We live our own lives; you can’t get wholly into our lives. You’re not a bird, that you can live in a nest and on uncooked seeds; or a squirrel, that can live in a hole in a tree; or a tree, that can root itself in one place and stay there, as you’ve been trying to. A hermit is one who tried to be a tree, and draw nourishment from one spot, when he is really a great deal more than a tree, and must draw life and recreation from many persons and places. A bear is not so foolish as to try and live among foxes; neither should man try to live entirely among trees, because they cannot give him all that he must have to get the most out of life.
So I left my hermitage, I presume forever, and carted my bed and pots and pans to the house of a friend.”

National Magazine, 1905