[ XXX ] 



Still another confirmation, of a different sort, was 

 found in the duplication of Thoreau's experience 

 with regard to the solitariness of his walks. More 

 than once he comments upon this. "There are said 

 to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet 

 I find such ample space and verge, even miles of 

 walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a 

 human being, and often not very recent traces of 

 them. Methinks that for a great part of the time, 

 as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the 

 advantages of human culture, fresh from the society 

 of men, but turned loose in the woods, the only man 

 in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent 

 as if man and his customs and institutions were not." 

 It seems strange, but it is a fact, that during all these 

 fifteen years of frequent rambling among the fields 

 and woods of Concord the writer has never yet met 

 with a single other person bent upon a similar errand. 

 This, of course, merely happened so; we did not 

 chance to meet, that is all. The "Walking Associa- 

 tion" of Concord has not yet disbanded, and it is 

 not fair to conclude that Thoreau's gospel of the 

 outdoor life which he so vigorously preached has 

 been wholly lost upon the residents of his native 

 town. 



There was a peculiar fascination in hunting down 

 localities to which Thoreau had given names after 

 an arbitrary method of his own, and without any 

 regard whatever for their possible recognition by 



