250 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover 

 that I had not lived. T did not wish to live what was not life; liv- 

 ing i s go dear; I wanted to live deep, and suck out all the marrow 

 of life." He wrote in his journal, " If I had bestowed upon me 

 the wealth of Croesus, my aims must still be the same, and my 

 means essentially the same." 



He had no desire for money, and knew how to be poor without 

 the least appearance of poverty or inelegance. He says, " Do not 

 trouble yourself to get new things, whether clothes or friends; old 

 things do not change; we change; sell your clothes and keep your 

 thoughts; God will see that you do not want society." He easily 

 met his living expenses by doing an occasional piece of agreeable 

 work, like grafting trees, surveying a piece of land, or building 

 a boat or a fence for a neighbor; and when these short engage- 

 ments were ended, he was sure of his leisure. He never mar- 

 ried; ate little or no meat, and never used tea, coffee, tobacco or 

 wine. 



When he was twenty-eight years of age he rented eleven acres 

 of land, not far from Concord, on Walden pond, and on it built a 

 small frame house which he occupied for more than two years, liv- 

 ing a contented, happy, enthusiastic life, alone, without a cat, dog, 

 chicken or friendly pipe to cheer him in the quiet hours; no com- 

 pany but his own fresh thoughts, and a silver voiced flute, which 

 often awoke the echoes of the quiet dale. He was never home- 

 sick or the least oppressed by a sense of solitude but once, and 

 that was a few weeks after he came to the woods, and then, only 

 for an hour. In the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts 

 prevailed, he said, " I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and 

 beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering of the drops, 

 and in every sound and sight about my house; an infinite and un- 

 accountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining 

 me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood in- 

 significant, and I never thought of them again. Every leaf, bud 

 and pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and be- 

 friended me." He says, "I find it wholesome to be alone the 

 greater part of the time. I love to be alone. I never found the 

 companionship that was so companionable as solitude. A man 

 thinking or working is always alone." 



He began building his house near the middle of March, before 



