190 The Life Worth Living 



reading was not particularly wide, for he hated 

 libraries and had not money wherewith to buy 

 books. In one of his diaries he recalls his in- 

 disposition to go to Cambridge or Boston in 

 order to look at books in the library, and he 

 suggests that libraries should be built in the 

 woods where sensitive men might enjoy their 

 contents without being compelled to face the 

 noise and dust of the towns. He wrote at all 

 times ; in the evening at his desk, or during a 

 moment's rest upon a fallen log or stone. He 

 composed as he walked, the length of his walk 

 making the length of his writing. When he 

 could not get out-of-doors during the day, for 

 one reason or another, he wrote nothing; he 

 said that houses were like hospitals, and the 

 atmosphere of them enervated the mind as well 

 as the body. His great subject, the text 

 which he viewed on all sides and was always 

 preaching from, was the pursuit of self-im- 

 provement even in the face of unfriendly 

 criticism as it goes on in our society. He was 

 a critic before a naturalist. His books, such 

 as Walden, and A Week on the Concord, would 

 be delightful studies of nature even without the 



