It's Incongruous That The Older We Get,

Henry David Thoreau, Who Never Earned Much Of A Living Or Sustained A Relationship With Any Woman That Wasn't Brotherly -- Who Lived Mostly Under His Parents' Roof . . . Who Advocated One Day's Work And Six Days "off" As The Weekly Round And Was Considered A Bit Of A Fool In His Hometown . . . Is Probably The American Writer Who Tells Us Best How To Live Comfortably With Our Most Constant Companion, Ourselves.

Indeed, If "biology Is Chemistry With History," As Somebody Has Said, Then Nature Writing Is Biology With Love.

We New Yorkers See More Death And Violence Than Most Soldiers Do, Grow A Thick Chitin On Our Backs, Grimace Like A Rat And Learn To Do A Disappearing Act. Long Ago We Outgrew The Need To Be Blowhards About Our Masculinity; We Leave That To The Alaskans And Texans, Who Have More Time For It.

Suicidal Thinking, If Serious, Can Be A Kind Of Death Scare, Comparable To Suffering A Heart Attack Or Undergoing A Cancer Operation. One Survives Such A Phase Both Warier And Chastened. When-ten Years Ago-i Emerged From A Bad Dip Into Suicidal Speculation, I Felt Utterly Exhausted And Yet Quite Fearless Of Ordinary Dangers, Vastly Afraid Of Myself But Much Less Scared Of Extraneous Eventualities.

Man Is Different From Animals In That He Speculates, A High-risk Activity.