Doing History on Vacation

has obtained those things which are necessary life, he should not sacrifice more of his time and energy to obtain the superfluities but rather adventure on life now, his from humbler toil having commenced. Work time, Thoreau goes on, is like the time a plant spends making roots; time is the time it devotes shoot[ing] upward.' The quotation is only a little misleading. In advocating vacations, Thoreau was not thinking of conventional family visits the mountains or the seashore. For him, vacation meant time freedfrom necessary laborfor intellectual and spiritual adventure. One of his goals in life was spend as little time as possible on what most of his neighbors considered productive work and as much as possible in the walking, thinking, and writing he called vacation. Few nineteenth-century Americans shared this goal, and even fewer could allow themselves the balance between toil and leisure that Thoreau recommended. Many professional people, however, and a growing number of work

Economics · American and British Literature Analysis · American Literature and Culture