Great comments above, folks. He does view village life anthropologically: “I went there frequently to observe their habits.” His time in the woods has given him a certain remove from society, and animals are now […]

[civilized life]

irony.

maybe you need to live near a big lake to hear this, but I’ve heard it. As Kenny said, the ice cracks and booms and it’s Loud!

[Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homœopathic […]

This is a very important line (buried in this paragraph), and worth considering whenever you’re about to spend a lot of money! Thoreau didn’t want to expend any life for material things, reasonably, since his life […]

[Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling t […]