INTRODUCTION 



"Above man's aims his nature rose. 

 The wisdom of a just content 

 Made one small spot a continent. 

 And tuned to poetry life's prose." 



Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, 

 Massachusetts, July 12, 1817, and died there. May 6, 

 1862. With the exception of brief periods of absence 

 during childhood and youth, a few excursions in adult 

 years to the Maine Woods, the White Mountains, 

 Cape Cod, Quebec, and other easily reached localities, 

 and one longer trip to Minnesota in 1861 in the effort 

 to recover his health, his whole life was spent within 

 the limits of his native town. This was a distinction 

 in which he rejoiced. "I cannot but regard it," he 

 says, "as a kindness in those who have the steering 

 of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have 

 been nailed down to this my native region so long and 

 steadily, and made to study and love this spot of 

 earth more and more. What would signify in com- 

 parison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the 

 whole earth instead, got by wandering.''" And yet 

 there are intimations here and there in his journal 

 that he would have delighted in extensive travel 

 abroad. Few men have ever lived who possessed so 

 keen an appreciation of the attractiveness of the out- 



