His last illness, induced by exposure to cold, confined
him for months away from the out of doors that he loved. In 1862, at the
age of forty-five, he said, as he lay on his deathbed, "When I was a very
little boy, I learned that I must die, and I set that down, so, of course,
I am not disappointed now." He was buried not far from Emerson's lot in the
famous Sleepy Hollow cemetery at Concord.
WORKS.--Only two of his books were published during his lifetime. These
were _A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers_ (1849) and _Walden_
(1854). The first of these, usually referred to as _The Week_, is the
record of a week spent in a rowboat on the rivers mentioned in the title.
The clearness and exactness of the descriptions are remarkable. Whenever he
investigated nature, he took faithful notes so that when he came to write a
more extended description or a book, he might have something more definite
than vague memory impressions on which to rely. When he describes in _The
Week_ a mere patch of the river bank, this definiteness of observation is
manifest:--
"The dead limbs of the willow were rounded and adorned by the
climbing milkania, _Milkania scandens_, which filled every
crevice in the leafy bank, contrasting agreeably with the gray bark
of its supporter and the balls of the button-bush.
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