_INTRODUCTORY NOTE_
_Henry David Thoreau was born at Concord, Massachusetts, July 12, 1817,
and died there May 6, 1862. He was one of the most markedly individual
of that group of philosophers and men of letters which has made the
name of the little Massachusetts town so notable in the intellectual
history of America._
_Thoreau came of a family of French descent, and was educated at
Harvard. "He was bred," says his friend Emerson, "to no profession; he
never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted;
he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no
wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he
used neither trap nor gun." The individualism which is implied in
these facts was the most prominent characteristic of this remarkable
person. Holding that "a man is rich in proportion to the number of
things which he can afford to let alone," he found that a small part of
his time, devoted to making lead-pencils, carpentering, and surveying,
gave him enough for his simple needs, and left him free for the rest of
the year to observe nature, to think, and to write._
_In 1845 Thoreau built himself a hut on the edge of Walden Pond, and
for over two years lived there in solitude, composing his "Week on the
Concord and Merrimac Rivers." During these years he kept a journal,
from which he later drew the volume called "Walden," and these are his
only two books published during his lifetime. From articles in
magazines and manuscripts, some eight more volumes have been compiled
since his death._
_Interesting as is the philosophy which permeates the work of this
solitary, his books have found readers rather on account of their
minute and sympathetic observation of nature and the beauty of their
style. The following essay on "Walking" represents all three elements;
and in its charming discursiveness, in the absence of any structure to
hinder the writer's pen from wandering at will, and in the
responsiveness which it exhibits to the moods and suggestions of
nature, it is a characteristic expression of its author's spirit._