and like most of the New England literary men took the regular course at Harvard. At different times he engaged in business, but his chief delight was to get away from people to some secluded spot in the woods and live by himself in communion with nature. At one time he built a hut upon Walden Pond near his home and lived there for some years, supporting himself by what he could raise on a little patch of ground. His best book, Walden Pond, from which the following sketch is taken, was the product of this life of isolation.

WALDEN

This charming essay, while a sketch of Thoreau's experiences, is very imaginative, even fanciful. To appreciate it, it is necessary to put yourself into his place, as far as possible. Try to fancy his fancies.

WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succes-5 sion, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry 1 with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging

1 Husbandry, farming.

10 it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it,

took everything but a deed of it, took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk, cultivated it, and him, too, to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leav15 ing him to carry it on.

This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a seat? 20- better if a country seat.

I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it." Well, there I 25 might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, 30 may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the 35 best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

My imagination carried me so far that I even had

the refusal of several farms, the refusal was all I wanted, — but I never got my fingers burned by 40 actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off, but before the owner 45 gave me a deed of it, his wife every man has such a wife changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now (to speak the truth), I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to 50 tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm, too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave 55 for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the land-60 scape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,

"I am monarch of all I survey;

My right there is none to dispute."1

The first lines of Cowper's poem on the Solitude of Alexander Selkirk. See Fifth Reader, page 33.

65

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for 70 many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invincible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.d

75

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were its complete retirement, being about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the 80 owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the 85 hollow and lichen covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red 90 maples through which I heard the house dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in

short, had made any more of his improvements. 95 To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas1 to take the world on my shoulders, -I never heard what compensation he received for that, and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it 100 and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.

e

105

All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale (I have always cultivated a garden), was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good 110 and the bad: and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or to 115 the county jail.'

2

3

Old Cato, whose De Re Rustica is my "Cultivator," says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage: "When you

1 Atlas, a fabled giant of Greek mythology, who supported the world on his shoulders.

2 Cato, a Roman philosopher and writer.

De Re Rustica, a book on agriculture, by Cato.