INTRODUCTORY NOTE
In the same year as The Maine Woods, but as a Christmas book dated 1865, appeared Cape Cod, also edited by W. E. Channing and published by Ticknor & Fields. The first four chapters of the book had already been printed by their author in Putnam's Magazine in 1855, and chapters v. and viii. were printed, just in advance of publication in the book, in The Atlantic Monthly in October and December, 1864.
Thoreau has recorded his adventures in this book, and shows that he enjoyed the humor which attended his intercourse with the independent, self-reliant folk of what was then more than now a singularly isolated arm of the State. Mr. Channing adds in his book on Thoreau: "One of the old Cod could not believe that Thoreau was not a pedler; but said, after explanation failed, 'Well, it makes no odds what it is you carry, so long as you carry truth along with you.'"
