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We are extremely delighted to bring you the audio recording of Henry David Thoreau's classic work, Walden -- a chronicle of his communion with nature that became one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature. The following excerpt illustrates Thoreau's profound observations on the meaning of work -- and how not all work serves the one doing it.
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house, which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present, I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
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