For my part, I feel, that with regard to Nature, I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.

[Moss-troopers were disbanded or deserting soldiers who had kept their weapons after the war and lived a life of banditry.]