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Thoreau had tried schoolteaching, but he had to give up his position because he would not exercise the birch and ferule. “If the scholars once find out the teacher is not goin’ to sting ’em up when they need it, that is an end to the skule,” said one of the directors, and he spat violently at a fly, ten feet away. The others agreeing with him, Thoreau was asked to resign.

William Emerson, a brother of Ralph Waldo’s, a prosperous New York merchant, had lured Ralph Waldo’s hired man away from him and taken him down to Staten Island, New York. Here Thoreau acted as private tutor, and imparted the mysteries of woodcraft to boys who cared more for marbles.

Staten Island was about two hundred miles too far from Concord to suit Thoreau.

His loneliness in New York City made Concord and the pine-trees of Walden woods seem paradise enow. There is no heart desolation equal to that which can come to one in a throng.

Margaret Fuller was now in New York City, working for Greeley on the editorial staff of the “Tribune.” Greeley was so much pleased with Thoreau that he offered to set him to work as reporter, for Greeley had guessed the truth that the best city reporters are country boys. They observe and hear–all is curious and wonderful to them: by and by they will become blase–sophisticated–that is, blind and deaf.

Greeley was a great talker, and he had a way of getting others to talk also. He got Thoreau to talking about communal life and life in the woods, and then Horace worked Henry’s words up into copy–for that is the way all good newspaper-writers evolve their original ideas.

Thoreau was amazed to pick up a number of the daily “Tribune” and find his conversation of the day before, with Greeley, skilfully transformed into a leader.

Fourierism had been the theme–the Phalanstery versus Individual Housekeeping. Greeley had prophesied that the phalanstery, with one kitchen for forty families, instead of forty kitchens for forty families, would soon come about. Greeley’s prophetic vision did not quite anticipate the modern apartment-house, which perhaps is a transitional expedient, moving toward the phalanstery, but he quoted Thoreau by saying, “A woman enslaved by her housekeeping is just as much a chattel as if owned by a man.”

This was in Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, and Thoreau was now twenty-eight years of age. He was homesick for the dim pine-woods with their ceaseless lullaby, the winding and placid river, and the great, massive, sullen, self-sufficient boulders of Concord.

He was resolved to follow the example of Brook Farm, and start a community of his own in opposition. His community would be on the shores of Walden Pond, and the only member of the genus homo who would be eligible to membership would be himself; the other members would be the birds and squirrels and bees, and the trees would make up the rest. Brook Farm was a retreat for transcendentalists–a place to meditate, dream and work–a place where one could exist close to Nature, and live a simple, hardy and healthful life.

Thoreau’s retreat would be the same, with the disadvantage of personal contact eliminated.

It was in March, Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, that Thoreau began building his shanty. The spot was in a dense woods, on a hillside that gently sloped down to the clear, cold, deep water of Walden Pond. The land belonged to Emerson, who obligingly gave Thoreau the use of it, rent free, with no conditions. Alcott helped in the carpenter work, and discussed betimes of the Wherefore, and when it came to the raising, a couple of neighboring farmers were hailed and pressed into service. The cabin was twelve by fifteen, and cost–furnished–the sum of twenty-eight dollars, good money, not counting labor, which Thoreau did not calculate as worth anything, since he had had the fun of the thing–something for which men often pay high.