Read "Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature" by Léon Bazalgette online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
At the end of October, 1856, Henry was asked to go down and survey an estate in New Jersey, giving some lectures at the same time. Alcott persuaded him to go. The two friends took the boat at Norwich, Connecticut, so as to reach New York by way of the Sound. Norwich was on the Thames: breezes blew there that seemed to come from afar.
Henry was leading a very dissipated life these days: visits to friends, expeditions, lectures. For here and there, outside of Concord, people were inviting him to come and utter those obscure or unpleasant truths that fell on the fallow ground of their understandings. It was all the same to him: he sowed as chance directed him, and the sower for his pains gathered in a little cash that had a more genuine ring in his ear than the applause of the audience.