THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. If] 



statistics have revealed." The wish was prob- 

 ably father to the figures. A/k *v**^A.. JC~ fy^^i **, 



" The cost of a thing," says Thoreau, " is 7 

 the amount of what I will call life which is 

 required to be exchanged for it, immediately or 

 in the long run." The idea may be common- 

 place, and yet most of us will admit a leavening 

 of truth in it while declining to make an ex- 

 periment. Do you want one thousand a year, 

 or two thousand a year ? Do you want ten 

 thousand a year? And can you afford what 

 you want ? It is a matter of taste, and within 

 certain lines not in the least a question of duty, 

 although commonly supposed to be so. There is 

 no authority for that view anywhere. Thoreau's 

 tastes are well defined. He loved to be free, to 

 be master of his times and seasons ; he preferred 

 long rambles to rich dinners, his own reflections 

 to the consideration of society, and an easy, 

 calm, unfettered life among green trees to dull 

 toiling at the counter of a bank. And such 

 being his inclination, he determined that he 

 would gratify it. 



In 1845, when twenty-eight years old, an age 

 by which the liveliest of us have usually de- 

 clined into some conformity with the world, 



