and son. The name is somewhat mystical; an explanation was recently given to me by an old Concord resident. There was a large white star, near the station, and, as this was the time of agitation over the admission of Texas, "the lone star state," a colloquialism arose giving the name of Texas to that part of the town beyond the significant star.
To this point the life-history of Thoreau seems composed of trivial yet tentative experiences, not unlike those of many young men whose temperament and vicissitudes bring a series of disappointing trials. Conscious of this, he had confronted the query, Should his life become a failure because he could not adapt it to circumstances or, on the other hand, should he create and compel circumstances to satisfy his needs, physical, mental and spiritual? He seemed to face two irreconcilable necessities,—a sufficient income for his physical wants on the one side, and a no less urgent demand for leisure to study and write, to satisfy the intellectual and poetic cravings. Confronting this dilemma, he decided to put to the test one phase of his transcendental philosophy, the simplification of life,—an ideal constantly urged in his earlier letters. The result was the unique development gained from the next two years in the Walden woods.
