n 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