A man builds a cabin at a pond outside Concord, plants beans, keeps accounts to the half-cent, and reports what a year of deliberate living costs and returns. Thoreau went to the woods in 1845 and stayed two years and two months; he was jailed one night for refusing a tax that paid for a war and slavery, and the essay on that night is printed here beside the pond. The arithmetic is exact, the mockery of his neighbours is affectionate, and the ice on the pond is measured. Fifteen landscape plates by painters including George Inness and Winslow Homer, from woodland pools and autumn hillsides to Niagara and returning fishing boats, keep the pond and its woods in view throughout.
