I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or
working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space
that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives
of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field
or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when
he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must
be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day's
solitude; and hence he wonders how student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the
day without ennui and the blues", but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is
still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same
recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.
Question:
Read the excerpt from Thoreau's Walden, and inter the main idea. Recall that to inter does not
mean to guess but rather to draw a conclusion based on evidence. Support your conclusions,
therefore, with details and quotations from the passage