says Thoreau, "is to be" (have been, he means) "idle and
worse." There are two passages in his letters, both, oddly
enough, relating to firewood, which must be brought together
to be rightly understood. So taken, they contain between
them the marrow of all good sense on the subject of work in
its relation to something broader than mere livelihood. Here
is the first: "I suppose I have burned up a good-sized tree
to-night - and for what? I settled with Mr. Tarbell for it
the other day; but that wasn't the final settlement. I got
off cheaply from him. At last one will say: 'Let us see, how
much wood did you burn, sir?' And I shall shudder to think
that the next question will be, 'What did you do while you
were warm?'" Even after we have settled with Admetus in the
person of Mr. Tarbell, there comes, you see, a further
question. It is not enough to have earned our livelihood.
Either the earning itself should have been serviceable to
mankind, or something else must follow. To live is sometimes
very difficult, but it is never meritorious in itself; and we
must have a reason to allege to our own conscience why we
should continue to exist upon this crowded earth.

If Thoreau had simply dwelt in his house at Walden, a lover
of trees, birds, and fishes, and the open air and virtue, a
reader of wise books, an idle, selfish self-improver, he
would have managed to cheat Admetus, but, to cling to
metaphor, the devil would have had him in the end. Those who
can avoid toil altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of private
means, and even those who can, by abstinence, reduce the
necessary amount of it to some six weeks a year, having the
more liberty, have only the higher moral obligation to be up