From 1845 to 1847 Thoreau lived as a hermit in a hut which he had built on the shore of Walden Pond, and the simple life he led there gave him plenty of leisure for the things he liked best--the study of nature, the grappling with philosophical problems, and the society of friends. The result of the two years at Walden Pond was his best book, _Walden, or Life in the Woods_, a work which is distinguished for its peculiarly truthful and sympathetic studies of nature.
Thoreau refused to perform any of the ordinary duties of a citizen; he never voted, he never paid taxes. Once he was arrested because he refused to pay his taxes, and was thrown into jail; his friends remonstrated with him, but still he refused to pay. However, when his friends paid the sum he made no objections to accepting his release, nor did he in the future make any objections when his friends quietly paid his taxes.
_The Pond in Winter_ and _Winter Animals_, which are contained in this volume, are also from Thoreau.
Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.