slavery. When his friend, the philosophic Emerson, peered into the
prison cell and said,--"Henry, why are you here?" the quick retort
was,--"Why are you not here?"

It must be remembered that Thoreau lived in a time of social
experiment. Hawthorne had thrown in his lot for a brief time with the
Brook Farm idealists. Why should not Thoreau make an experiment of his
own? Why not live the simple life before Wagner wrote about it? He was
tired of the conventionalities of society, of the incessant
interruptions to steady thought. Society is naught but a conspiracy to
compel imitation. "The head monkey of Paris puts on a traveler's cap,
and all the monkeys in America do the same." So Thoreau moves out into
the woods by the side of Walden Pond. Before he can live there he must
build his house:

"Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the
woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house,
and began to cut down some tall arrowy pines, still in their youth,
for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it
is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an
interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe as he released his
hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it
sharper than I received it."

His house, when finished, was ten feet wide and fifteen long. The
exact cost was twenty-eight dollars, twelve and one-half cents. In
_Walden_ he gives an itemized account of the cost. And then he adds,
with a twinkle of his eye, I think,--"I intend to build me a house
which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and
luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than
my present one."

Thoreau also finds some satisfaction that his house cost him less than
the year's rent of a college room at Harvard; for there the mere rent
of a student's room, "which is only a little larger than my own, is
thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of
building thirty-two side by side and under one roof."

In this book he gives a very interesting account of what his food cost
him during the eight months from July 4 to March 1. Here is his list:

Rice $1.73-1/2
Molasses 1.73
Rye meal 1.04-3/4
Indian meal .99-3/4
Pork .22
Fl