Recording intelligenceAI-generated brief · check the source for context

Where I Lived and What I Lived For

27:19 recording · EN · 1 speaker

Listen to the original

Brief overview

Owning land in imagination beats owning it in fact; the real work is staying awake.

  1. A man is rich by what he lets aloneAfter laying out orchard, wood-lot and pasture in an afternoon, he simply let the land lie fallow.
  2. The refusal of a farm was all he wantedHe kept the landscape and the poetry of every farm without ever getting his fingers burned by actual possession.
  3. Morning is a condition of mind, not a clockTo him whose thought keeps pace with the sun the day is a perpetual morning; moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.
Executive Summary AI
  • Thoreau opens Chapter II of Walden by describing how he surveyed the country within a dozen miles of his home and, in imagination, bought every farm in succession, walking each farmer's premises, taking his farm at any price and mortgaging it back to him in his mind.
  • His nearest approach to real ownership was the Hollowell place, which he had begun to stock with seeds and wheelbarrow materials before the owner's wife changed her mind and the owner offered him ten dollars to be released — though Thoreau had only ten cents in the world, he let him keep both the farm and the ten dollars and kept the landscape instead.
  • He took up his abode in the woods on Independence Day, the fourth of July, 1845, in a house unfinished for winter — no plastering or chimney, rough weather-stained boards with wide chinks — which he calls an airy unplastered cabin fit to entertain a travelling god.
  • The site was by a small pond about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord, in an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, two miles south of the Concord Battle Ground, with the opposite shore half a mile off as his most distant horizon.
  • The chapter closes on morning as a religious exercise and a moral test: the millions are awake enough for physical labor but only one in a million for effective intellectual exertion, and Thoreau says he has never yet met a man who was quite awake.
Key Quote
“The refusal was all I wanted.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Key Quote
“And then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Key Quote
“I am monarch of all I survey.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Transcript

0:00 CHAPTER II. by henry david thoreau chapter two where i lived and what i lived for I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live.
0:46 In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought,
0:52 and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples,
1:00 discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price,
1:06 Mortgaging it to him in my mind.
1:09 Even put a higher price on it.
1:11 Took everything but a deed of it.
1:14 Took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk.
1:19 Cultivated it, and him too, to some extent, I trust,
1:22 And withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough leaving him to carry it on this experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly.
1:46 What is a house but a sedes, a seat?
1:52 Better if a country seat.
1:55 I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have
2:00 thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from
2:06 it.
2:07 Well, there I might live, I said, and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter
2:16 life, saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring
2:24 come in.
2:30 The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses,
2:34 may be sure that they have been anticipated.
2:41 An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture,
2:47 and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door,
2:52 and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage.
3:01 And then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
3:11 My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms.
3:13 The refusal was all I wanted.
3:19 But I never got my fingers burned by actual possession.
3:35 The nearest that I came to actual possession was when i bought the hollow well place and had begun to sort my seeds and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with but before the owner gave me a deed of it his wife every man has such a wife changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten
3:47 dollars to release him.
3:50 Now to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic
3:56 to tell if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the
4:08 farm too, for I had carried it far enough. Or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for
4:16 just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars,
4:23 and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and
4:27 materials for a wheelbarrow left.
4:29 I found thus that I had been a rich man, without any damage to my poverty, but I retained the
4:39 landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow.
4:47 With respect to landscapes,
4:53 I am monarch of all I survey.
4:57 My right there is none to dispute.

Showing the first 40 of 186 lines.