Merrymount Press

The Service is an essay written in 1840 by Henry David Thoreau. He submitted it to The Dial for publication, but they declined to print it. It was not published until after Thoreau's death. The essay uses war and military discipline as metaphors that, as Thoreau would have it, can instruct us in how to order and conduct our lives. The Service is in part a contrarian swipe at the many pacifist writers and lecturers whose teachings on "nonresistance"...

By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve months; and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king—remembered and embodied all his wit and scepticism along

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