Three Chairs

Thoreau's house at Walden measured ten feet by fifteen, and he furnished it with three chairs: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. This episode takes the furniture seriously. He was no hermit; the man threw melon parties. But he filtered his company on purpose, with a bare table and a mile's walk from town, and a week in the Alps with a friend and some very stale bread taught Kaag what a table needs to hold. Then the visitor who repaid the walk best, a woodchopper who leaves Thoreau wondering whether he has met a simple man or a Shakespeare. Who makes the mile to see you?