Fantastic handwritten manuscript by Henry David Thoreau containing a segment of his important essay ‘Life Without Principle,’ one page both sides, 7.5 x 9.5, originally published in 'The Atlantic Monthly' in 1863 and in which Thoreau offers his program for a righteous livelihood. Thoreau writes, in part: "I see advertisements for active young men, as if activity were the whole of a young man’s capital. Yet I have been surprised when a man has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to embark on ‘some enterprise’ of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this is to pay me! As if he had met me half way across the ocean beating up against the wind—but bound nowhere—& proposed to me to go along with him! If I did, what do you think the underwriters would say? No! no! I am not without employment at this time of life at this stage of the voyage. To tell the truth I saw an advertisement for able-bodied seamen when I was a boy sauntering in my native port—and as soon as I came of age I embarked. The community has not bribe that will tempt a wise man." Professionally inlaid into a slightly larger sheet, as issued in the first volume of the 1906 ‘manuscript edition’ of Thoreau’s works, published by Houghton Mifflin. In fine condition.
Fifty years after Thoreau's death in 1862, his manuscripts passed through a few hands until they were inherited by E. Harlow Russell. He then negotiated with publisher Houghton Mifflin to sell the literary rights of Thoreau's unpublished journals, also selling at least six-hundred pages of his original manuscripts to the firm. These were then broken up and included, one page at a time, in the first book of each copy of this enormous twenty-volume limited 'manuscript edition' set. A desirable piece of Thoreau's original writing on the values of a righteous livelihood.
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