Henry Thoreau, Bachelor of Nature by Léon Bazalgette

Someone has died in the village: the man who bought the house on the square a year ago -- the retired seaman.

A new face that has soon disappeared. Perhaps he had his reasons in choosing for his retreat this straggling village, twenty miles from the city from which he came. Or perhaps it had been enough for him to chance upon it one day, a city-dweller in search of a resting-place, to be won by the fine elms and maples that sheltered a gracious village, nestling among the low hills and deep woods and named after the slow-moving river that watered the broad meadows: Concord.