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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 205 ***</div>

<h1>WALDEN</h1>

<h2 class="no-break">and<br>
ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE</h2>

<h2 class="no-break">by Henry David Thoreau</h2>

<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover ">
</div>

<hr >

<div class="chapter">

<h2>Contents</h2>

<table style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap01"><b>WALDEN</b></a><br><br></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap02">Economy</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap03">Where I Lived, and What I Lived For</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap04">Reading</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap05">Sounds</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap06">Solitude</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap07">Visitors</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap08">The Bean-Field</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap09">The Village</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap10">The Ponds</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap11">Baker Farm</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap12">Higher Laws</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap13">Brute Neighbors</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap14">House-Warming</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap15">Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap16">Winter Animals</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap17">The Pond in Winter</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap18">Spring</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap19">Conclusion</a><br><br></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap20"><b>ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE</b></a></td>
</tr>

</table>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">
<p><i>"I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as
chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up."</i>
</p>
</div>

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap01"></a>WALDEN</h2>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap02"></a>Economy</h2>

<p>
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in
the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on
the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by
the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present
I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
</p>

<p>
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very
particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of
life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all
impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent.
Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not
afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my
income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how
many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who
feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of
these questions in this book. In most books, the <i>I</i>, or first person, is
omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main
difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first
person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were
anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by
the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every
writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not
merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would
send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must
have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly
addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept
such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in
putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
</p>

<p>
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich
Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England;
something about your condition, especially your outward condition or
circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary
that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I
have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices,
and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a
thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four
fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their
heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders
“until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while
from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach;” or
dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their
bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg
on the tops of pillars,—even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more
incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve
labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors
have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never
see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They
have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra’s head, but
as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.
</p>

<p>
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms,
houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired
than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled
by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were
called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their
sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should
they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live
a man’s life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they
can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered
under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn
seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred
acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who
struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
</p>

<p>
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into
the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are
employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust
will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they
will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that
Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind
them:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,<br>
Et documenta damus quâ simus origine nati.
</p>

<p class="noindent">
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,<br>
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over
their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
</p>

<p>
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and
mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse
labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers,
from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually,
the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot
afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated
in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember
well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his
knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit
him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our
nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate
handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
</p>

<p>
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it
were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book
are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the
coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come
to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an
hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my
sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into
business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the
Latins <i>æs alienum</i>, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of
brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always
promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent;
seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison
offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of
civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that
you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his
coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick,
that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away
in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in
the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
</p>

<p>
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend
to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there
are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is
hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst
of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man!
Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does
any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses!
What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he
drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he
cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor
divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by
his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private
opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather
indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the
fancy and imagination,—what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think,
also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day,
not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time
without injuring eternity.
</p>

<p>
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is
confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate
country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A
stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the
games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after
work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
</p>

<p>
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of
man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men
had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to
any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and
healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give
up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted
without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may
turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had
trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What
old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old
people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance,
to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood
under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way
to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well,
qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has
lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute
value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the
young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such
miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be
that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only
less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I
have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my
seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to
the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but
it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I
think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.
</p>

<p>
One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it
furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of
his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the
while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and
his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really
necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in
others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
</p>

<p>
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their
predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been
cared for. According to Evelyn, “the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the
very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have decided how often you may
go into your neighbor’s land to gather the acorns which fall on it without
trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor.” Hippocrates has even left
directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the
fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui
which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as
Adam. But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of
what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been
thy failures hitherto, “be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to
thee what thou hast left undone?”
</p>

<p>
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the
same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours.
If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not
the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful
triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the
universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human
life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect
life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look
through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the
world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry,
Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and
informing as this would be.
</p>

<p>
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad,
and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What
demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you
can, old man,—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind,—I
hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation
abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
</p>

<p>
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just
so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well
adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of
some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the
importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if
we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if
we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our
prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are
we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of
change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can
be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it
is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, “To know that
we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true
knowledge.” When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to
his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on
that basis.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have
referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at
least, careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier
life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are
the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them;
or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was
that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what
are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little
influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably,
are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
</p>

<p>
By the words, <i>necessary of life</i>, I mean whatever, of all that man
obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has
become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness,
or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures
there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the
prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he
seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain’s shadow. None of the brute
creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man
in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads
of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we
prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of
success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and
possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the
consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by
it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper
Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an
excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our
own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the
naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own
party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too
warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great
surprise, “to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.”
So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European
shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these
savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig,
man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion
in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the
result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too
rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes
out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much
for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression,
<i>animal life</i>, is nearly synonymous with the expression, <i>animal
heat</i>; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire
within us,—and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth
of our bodies by addition from without,—Shelter and Clothing also serve only to
retain the <i>heat</i> thus generated and absorbed.
</p>

<p>
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital
heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and
Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing
the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the
mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is
wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than
social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some
climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook
his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are
sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more
easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At
the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few
implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &amp;c., and for the
studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to
necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go
to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote
themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,—that
is, keep comfortably warm,—and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich
are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before,
they are cooked, of course <i>à la mode</i>.
</p>

<p>
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only
not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With
respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and
meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian,
and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none
so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that <i>we</i>
know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers
and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of
human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary
poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or
commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy,
but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once
admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts,
nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its
dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to
solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success,
not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity,
practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a
nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run
out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are
we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in
advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed,
sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a
philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
</p>

<p>
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he
want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food,
larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more
numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those
things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain
the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from
humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for
it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also
with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that
he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?—for the nobler
plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far
from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though
they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root,
and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in
their flowering season.
</p>

<p>
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind
their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more
magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever
impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live,—if, indeed, there are any
such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and
inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with
the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers,—and, to some extent, I reckon myself in
this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever
circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;—but mainly
to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness
of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who
complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they
say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most
terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not
how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or
silver fetters.
</p>

<p class="p2">
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past,
it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with
its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about
it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
</p>

<p>
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve
the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two
eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe
that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my
trade than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from
its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint
“No Admittance” on my gate.
</p>

<p>
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their
trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their
tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the
hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a
cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them
themselves.
</p>

<p>
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature
herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was
stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my
townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for
Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I
never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the
last importance only to be present at it.
</p>

<p>
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear
what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my
capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of
it. If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it
would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other
times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new
arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I
might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would
dissolve again in the sun.
</p>

<p>
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose
editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is
too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this
case my pains were their own reward.
</p>

<p>
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms,
and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths
and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable
at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.
</p>

<p>
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman
a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the
unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know
whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of
my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle
tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet,
which might have withered else in dry seasons.
</p>

<p>
In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it without boasting,
faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my
townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make
my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear
to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less
accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on
that.
</p>

<p>
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a
well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he
asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as
he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious
white neighbors so well off,—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and
by some magic, wealth and standing followed, he had said to himself; I will go
into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking
that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it
would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was
necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least
make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be
worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture,
but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in
my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying
how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to
avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as
successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the
expense of the others?
</p>

<p>
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the
court house, or any curacy or living any where else, but I must shift for
myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was
better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire
the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in
going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to
transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from
accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and
business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish.
</p>

<p>
I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are
indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then
some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture
enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native
products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native
bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in
person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and
sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read
every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be
upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time;—often the richest freight
will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be your own telegraph, unweariedly
sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up
a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and
exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets,
prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade
and civilization,—taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions,
using new passages and all improvements in navigation;—charts to be studied,
the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and
ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some
calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a
friendly pier,—there is the untold fate of La Perouse;—universal science to be
kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators,
great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phœnicians down to our day;
in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand.
It is a labor to task the faculties of a man,—such problems of profit and loss,
of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a
universal knowledge.
</p>

<p>
I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely
on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may
not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva
marshes to be filled; though you must every where build on piles of your own
driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the
Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth.
</p>

<p class="p2">
As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not
be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to
every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once
to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love
of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a
true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing
is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to
cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work
may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a
suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties,
cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than
wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more
assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer’s character,
until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay and medical appliances
and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my
estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is
greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched
clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended,
perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my
acquaintances by such tests as this;—who could wear a patch, or two extra seams
only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for
life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to
hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an
accident happens to a gentleman’s legs, they can be mended; but if a similar
accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he
considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but
few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift,
you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing
a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the
owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him
last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his
master’s premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It
is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they
were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any
company of civilized men, which belonged to the most respected class? When
Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west,
had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of
wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities,
for she “was now in a civilized country, where —— — people are judged of by
their clothes.” Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental
possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain
for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect,
numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to
them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call
endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is never done.
</p>

<p>
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit
to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an
indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served
his valet,—if a hero ever has a valet,—bare feet are older than shoes, and he
can make them do. Only they who go to soirées and legislative halls must have
new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my
jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do;
will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes,—his old coat, actually worn out,
resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to
bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer
still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all
enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have
any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not
something to <i>do with</i>, but something to <i>do</i>, or rather something to
<i>be</i>. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty
the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that
we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping
new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a
crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also
the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal
industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal
coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably
cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
</p>

<p>
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition
without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or
false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and
there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our
cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark,
which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe
that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is
desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in
the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that,
if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate
empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as
good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to
suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will
last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a
dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter
cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal
cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of <i>his own earning</i>,
there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?
</p>

<p>
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely,
“They do not make them so now,” not emphasizing the “They” at all, as if she
quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get
made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say,
that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment
absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come
at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity
<i>They</i> are related to <i>me</i>, and what authority they may have in an
affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her
with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the “they,”—“It is true,
they did not make them so recently, but they do now.” Of what use this
measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of
my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We worship not the Graces,
nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority.
The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in
America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and
honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed
through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so
that they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be
some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg
deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and
you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some
Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
</p>

<p>
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or
any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make shift to wear
what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on
the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each
other’s masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows
religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or
Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the
Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the
serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain
laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with
a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the
soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming as purple.
</p>

<p>
The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many
shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the
particular figure which this generation requires today. The manufacturers have
learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only
by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold
readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after
the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively,
tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous
merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
</p>

<p>
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get
clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that
of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or
observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly
clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run
men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately,
they had better aim at something high.
</p>

<p class="p2">
As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though
there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder
countries than this. Samuel Laing says that “the Laplander in his skin dress,
and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night
after night on the snow—in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of
one exposed to it in any woollen clothing.” He had seen them asleep thus. Yet
he adds, “They are not hardier than other people.” But, probably, man did not
live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a
house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the
satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be
extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is
associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two
thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in
the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian
gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day’s march, and a row of them cut or
painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man
was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his
world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of
doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by
daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun,
would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to
clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the
fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of
warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the
affections.
</p>

<p>
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising
mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world
again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold. It
plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember
the interest with which when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach
to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion of our most primitive
ancestor which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of
palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and
straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what
it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than
we think. From the hearth to the field is a great distance. It would be well
perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction
between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from
under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor
do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
</p>

<p>
However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to
exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a
workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a
splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely
necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin
cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought
that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when
how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a
question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am
become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet
long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and
it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for
a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least,
get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have
freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst,
nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you
pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord
dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a
larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box
as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being
treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a
rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost
entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin,
who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony,
writing in 1674, says, “The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight
and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when
the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber,
when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make
of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so
good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and
thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as
warm as the best English houses.” He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and
lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with
various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of
the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string.
Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and
taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its
apartment in one.
</p>

<p>
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and
sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within
bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the
foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society
not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and
cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a
shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for
this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which
would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long
as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring
compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter
because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because
he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to
hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man
secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage’s. An annual rent
of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles
him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean
paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper
pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens
it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a <i>poor</i>
civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it
is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,—and I
think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,—it must be
shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly;
and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is
required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average
house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up
this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he
is not encumbered with a family;—estimating the pecuniary value of every man’s
labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;—so
that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before <i>his</i>
wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a
doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his
wigwam for a palace on these terms?
</p>

<p>
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this
superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the
individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But
perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an
important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt,
they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized
people an <i>institution</i>, in which the life of the individual is to a great
extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish
to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to
suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without
suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have
always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s
teeth are set on edge?
</p>

<p>
“As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this
proverb in Israel.”
</p>

<p>
“Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the
son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
</p>

<p>
When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well
off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling
twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their
farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought
with hired money,—and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their
houses,—but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the
encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself
becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being
well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am
surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own
their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads,
inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for
his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I
doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the
merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure
to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however,
one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not
genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements,
because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks
down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests,
beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls,
but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly.
Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our
civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the
unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with
<i>éclat</i> annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were
suent.
</p>

<p>
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula
more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates
in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair
spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his
own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are
all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by
luxuries. As Chapman sings,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“The false society of men—<br>
        —for earthly greatness<br>
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”
</p>

<p>
And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer
for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a
valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she
“had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided;”
and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we
are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be
avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this
town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in
the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish
it, and only death will set them free.
</p>

<p>
Granted that the <i>majority</i> are able at last either to own or hire the
modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving
our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has
created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And <i>if
the civilized man’s pursuits are no worthier than the savage’s, if he is
employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and
comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?</i>
</p>

<p>
But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just in
proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage,
others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced
by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are
the almshouse and “silent poor.” The myriads who built the pyramids to be the
tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently
buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at
night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose
that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the
condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as
that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To
know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which every
where border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see
in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open
door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile,
and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long
habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs
and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose
labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too,
to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every
denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could
refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots
on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North
American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it
was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that
people’s rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition
only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer
now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple exports of
this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South. But to
confine myself to those who are said to be in <i>moderate</i> circumstances.
</p>

<p>
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually
though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have
such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat
which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palmleaf hat
or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to
buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and
luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to
pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not
sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely
teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s providing a
certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest
chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as
simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I think of the benefactors of the
race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine
gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load
of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular
allowance?—that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s, in
proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our
houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out
the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning’s work undone.
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be
man’s <i>morning work</i> in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my
desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when
the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the
window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather
sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has
broken ground.
</p>

<p>
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so
diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon
discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he
resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely
emasculated. I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on
luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these
to become no better than a modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans,
and sun-shades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west
with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the
Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I
would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a
velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free
circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and
breathe a <i>malaria</i> all the way.
</p>

<p>
The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply
this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature.
When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again. He
dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the
valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain tops. But lo! men
have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the
fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for
shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled
down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an
improved method of <i>agri</i>-culture. We have built for this world a family
mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the
expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the
effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher
state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of
<i>fine</i> art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our
houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to
hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I
consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their
internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give
way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantel-piece,
and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy
foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so called rich and refined life is
a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the <i>fine</i> arts
which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I
remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record,
is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five
feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth
again beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to the
proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the
ninety-seven who fail, or of the three who succeed? Answer me these questions,
and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. The cart
before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our
houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be
stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a
foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors,
where there is no house and no housekeeper.
</p>

<p>
Old Johnson, in his “Wonder-Working Providence,” speaking of the first settlers
of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that “they burrow
themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and,
casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth,
at the highest side.” They did not “provide them houses,” says he, “till the
earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them,” and the first
year’s crop was so light that “they were forced to cut their bread very thin
for a long season.” The secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in
Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up land there,
states more particularly that “those in New Netherland, and especially in New
England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to their
wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep,
as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all
round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to
prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot
it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars
with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses
with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood
that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of
the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in the beginning of
the colonies, commenced their first dwelling houses in this fashion for two
reasons; firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to want food
the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom
they brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or four
years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves
handsome houses, spending on them several thousands.”
</p>

<p>
In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least,
as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are
the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for myself one
of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not
yet adapted to <i>human</i> culture, and we are still forced to cut our
<i>spiritual</i> bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. Not
that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods;
but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with
our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But,
alas! I have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.
</p>

<p>
Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a
wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages,
though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In
such a neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper
and more easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in
sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak
understandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both
theoretically and practically. With a little more wit we might use these
materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our
civilization a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser
savage. But to make haste to my own experiment.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by
Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut
down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is
difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous
course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise.
The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple
of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant
hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on
the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were
springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some
open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. There were
some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the
most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand
heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the
spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to
commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the
winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that
had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had come off and
I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed
the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped
snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without
inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour;
perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared
to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive
condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs
arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of
their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On
the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the
day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond
and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.
</p>

<p>
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and
rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like
thoughts, singing to myself,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
Men say they know many things;<br>
But lo! they have taken wings,—<br>
The arts and sciences,<br>
And a thousand appliances;<br>
The wind that blows<br>
Is all that any body knows.
</p>

<p>
I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides
only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the
bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones.
Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed
other tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I
usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which
it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut
off, and to my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were
covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend
than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having
become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted
by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had
made.
</p>

<p>
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the
most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought
the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad,
for boards. James Collins’ shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I
called to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at first
unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It was of small
dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt
being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was
the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun.
Door-sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door
board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The
hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the
most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which
would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof
and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me
not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own
words, they were “good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good
window,”—of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way
lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house
where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new
coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded,
for James had in the meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five
cents to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody else
meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to be there
early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score
of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At six I
passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all,—bed,
coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens,—all but the cat, she took to the woods and
became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for
woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.
</p>

<p>
I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it
to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to
bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two
as I drove along the woodland path. I was informed treacherously by a young
Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting,
transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and
spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day,
and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation;
there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent
spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the
removal of the gods of Troy.
</p>

<p>
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck
had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the
lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where
potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not
stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place.
It was but two hours’ work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of
ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable
temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the
cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the
superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. The
house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.
</p>

<p>
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances,
rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any
necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the
character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the
raising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of
July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully
feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but
before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two
cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney
after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing
my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning:
which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than
the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards
over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant
hours in that way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but
little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or
tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same
purpose as the Iliad.
</p>

<p class="p2">
It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did,
considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a
garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any
superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal
necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own
house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men
constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for
themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be
universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But
alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which
other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and
unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the
carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of
men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural
an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the
tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and
the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what
object does it finally serve? No doubt another <i>may</i> also think for me;
but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my
thinking for myself.
</p>

<p>
True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one
at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core
of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him.
All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the
common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the
cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within
the ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an almond or caraway
seed in it,—though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the
sugar,—and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and
without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man
ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin
merely,—that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shellfish its
mother-o’-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their
Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of
his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so
idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The
enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed
to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude
occupants who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now
see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and
character of the indweller, who is the only builder,—out of some unconscious
truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and
whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be
preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings
in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log
huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose
shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes
them <i>picturesque;</i> and equally interesting will be the citizen’s suburban
box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and
there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great
proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September
gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the
substantials. They can do without <i>architecture</i> who have no olives nor
wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of
style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about
their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the
<i>belles-lettres</i> and the <i>beaux-arts</i> and their professors. Much it
concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him,
and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any
earnest sense, <i>he</i> slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having
departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own
coffin,—the architecture of the grave, and “carpenter” is but another name for
“coffin-maker.” One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a
handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he
thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an
abundance of leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better
paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An
enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have got my
ornaments ready I will wear them.
</p>

<p>
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were
already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first
slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane.
</p>

<p>
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen
long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each
side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The
exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used,
but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and
I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses
cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which
compose them:—
</p>

<pre>
    Boards.......................... $ 8.03½, mostly shanty boards.
    Refuse shingles for roof sides,..  4.00
    Laths,...........................  1.25
    Two second-hand windows
       with glass,...................  2.43
    One thousand old brick,..........  4.00
    Two casks of lime,...............  2.40  That was high.
    Hair,............................  0.31  More than I needed.
    Mantle-tree iron,................  0.15
    Nails,...........................  3.90
    Hinges and screws,...............  0.14
    Latch,...........................  0.10
    Chalk,...........................  0.01
    Transportation,..................  1.40  I carried a good part
                                       ————  on my back.
        In all,..................... $28.12½
</pre>

<p>
These are all the materials excepting the timber stones and sand, which I
claimed by squatter’s right. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made
chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house.
</p>

<p>
I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in
Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost
me no more than my present one.
</p>

<p>
I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a
lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If
I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity
rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect
the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy,—chaff which
I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as
any man,—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a
relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not
through humility become the devil’s attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good
word for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student’s room,
which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though
the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under
one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy
neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that
if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be
needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the
pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish.
Those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost
him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with
proper management on both sides. Those things for which the most money is
demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for
instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more
valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his
contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly,
to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then following blindly the
principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a principle which should
never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a contractor who makes
this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives
actually to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said to
be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive generations
have to pay. I think that it would be <i>better than this</i>, for the
students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation
themselves. The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by
systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and
unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make
leisure fruitful. “But,” says one, “you do not mean that the students should go
to work with their hands instead of their heads?” I do not mean that exactly,
but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that; I mean that
they should not <i>play</i> life, or <i>study</i> it merely, while the
community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly <i>live</i> it
from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once
trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as
much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and
sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely
to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is
professed and practised but the art of life;—to survey the world through a
telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry,
and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is
earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his
eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the
monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop
of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,—the boy
who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted,
reading as much as would be necessary for this,—or the boy who had attended the
lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a
Rodgers’ penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his
fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had
studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have
known more about it. Even the <i>poor</i> student studies and is taught only
<i>political</i> economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with
philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is,
that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in
debt irretrievably.
</p>

<p>
As with our colleges, so with a hundred “modern improvements”; there is an
illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on
exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous
succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means
to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as
railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a
magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have
nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man
who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was
presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to
say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are
eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to
the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad,
flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping
cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry
the most important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round
eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck
of corn to mill.
</p>

<p>
One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you
might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.” But I am
wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes
afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The
distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day’s wages.
I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that
rate by the week together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare,
and arrive there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are
lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be
working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round
the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the
country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your
acquaintance altogether.
</p>

<p>
Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the
railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round
the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface
of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity
of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in
next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and
the conductor shouts “All aboard!” when the smoke is blown away and the vapor
condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run
over,—and it will be called, and will be, “A melancholy accident.” No doubt
they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they
survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire
to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one’s life earning
money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part
of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first,
in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should
have gone up garret at once. “What!” exclaim a million Irishmen starting up
from all the shanties in the land, “is not this railroad which we have built a
good thing?” Yes, I answer, <i>comparatively</i> good, that is, you might have
done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent
your time better than digging in this dirt.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some
honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted
about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans,
but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot
contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold
the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said
that it was “good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.” I put no
manure whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and
not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all once.
I got out several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied me with fuel for
a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable
through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and
for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from
the pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team
and a man for the ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes
for the first season were, for implements, seed, work, &amp;c., $14.72½. The
seed corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant
more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of
potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too
late to come to any thing. My whole income from the farm was
</p>

<pre>
                                       $ 23.44
      Deducting the outgoes,...........  14.72½
                                         —————
      There are left,................. $  8.71½,
</pre>

<p class="noindent">
beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made of the
value of $4.50,—the amount on hand much more than balancing a little grass
which I did not raise. All things considered, that is, considering the
importance of a man’s soul and of to-day, notwithstanding the short time
occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character,
I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
</p>

<p>
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I
required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience of both
years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry,
Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply and eat only the
crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an
insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to
cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up
that than to use oxen to plough it, and to select a fresh spot from time to
time than to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it
were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be
tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak
impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the success or failure
of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent than
any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could
follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Beside
being better off than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had
failed, I should have been nearly as well off as before.
</p>

<p>
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are
the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange
work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have
greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his
part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy’s play.
Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of
philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals.
True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers,
nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, <i>I</i> should
never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might
do for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds-man merely; and if
society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one
man’s gain is not another’s loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with
his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works would not have been
constructed without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox
and horse; does it follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more
worthy of himself in that case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or
artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable
that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words, become
the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works for the animal within him,
but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. Though we have
many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is
still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town
is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and
it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for
free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by their
architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations
should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the
Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury
of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any
prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or
gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much
stone hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering
stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory
of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains
were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be
more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones
in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod
of stone wall that bounds an honest man’s field than a hundred-gated Thebes
that has wandered farther from the true end of life. The religion and
civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what
you might call Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes
toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is
nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be
found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some
ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in
the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some
excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the religion and
love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether
the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more
than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and
bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the
back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to
Dobson &amp; Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look down
on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high towers and monuments,
there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to
China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and
kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the
hole which he made. Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the
East,—to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those
days did not build them,—who were above such trifling. But to proceed with my
statistics.
</p>

<p>
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in
the mean while, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The
expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time
when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years,—not
counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor
considering the value of what was on hand at the last date, was
</p>

<pre>
    Rice,................... $ 1.73½
    Molasses,................  1.73     Cheapest form of the
                                         saccharine.
    Rye meal,................  1.04¾
    Indian meal,.............  0.99¾     Cheaper than rye.
    Pork,....................  0.22

    All experiments which failed:
    Flour,...................  0.88  Costs more than Indian meal,
                                      both money and trouble.
    Sugar,...................  0.80
    Lard,....................  0.65
    Apples,..................  0.25
    Dried apple,.............  0.22
    Sweet potatoes,..........  0.10
    One pumpkin,.............  0.06
    One watermelon,..........  0.02
    Salt,....................  0.03
</pre>

<p>
Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my
guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with
myself, and that their deeds would look no better in print. The next year I
sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to
slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,—effect his transmigration,
as a Tartar would say,—and devour him, partly for experiment’s sake; but though
it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw
that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem
to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.
</p>

<p>
Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can
be inferred from this item, amounted to
</p>

<pre>
                                            $8.40¾
    Oil and some household utensils,.......  2.00
</pre>

<p class="noindent">
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for
the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been
received,—and these are all and more than all the ways by which money
necessarily goes out in this part of the world,—were
</p>

<pre>
    House,................................ $ 28.12½
    Farm one year,.......................... 14.72½
    Food eight months,......................  8.74
    Clothing, etc., eight months,...........  8.40¾
    Oil, &amp;c., eight months,.................  2.00
                                            ——————
        In all,........................... $ 61.99¾
</pre>

<p class="noindent">
I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. And to
meet this I have for farm produce sold
</p>

<pre>
                                            $23.44
    Earned by day-labor,...................  13.34
                                            ——————
        In all,............................ $36.78,
</pre>

<p class="noindent">
which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25.21¾ on the
one side,—this being very nearly the means with which I started, and the
measure of expenses to be incurred,—and on the other, beside the leisure and
independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I
choose to occupy it.
</p>

<p>
These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may
appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing
was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the
above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a
week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without
yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my
drink water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well
the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I
may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and
I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the
detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have
stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative
statement like this.
</p>

<p>
I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little
trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may
use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have
made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish
of purslane (<i>Portulaca oleracea</i>) which I gathered in my cornfield,
boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial
name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in
ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled,
with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding
to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass
that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of
luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because
he took to drinking water only.
</p>

<p>
The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from an economic
than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put my abstemiousness
to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder.
</p>

<p>
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I
baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber
sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a
piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and
Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little
amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and
turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real
cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that
of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in
cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making,
consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and
first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and
meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and
travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the
dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the
various fermentations thereafter, till I came to “good, sweet, wholesome
bread,” the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the
<i>spiritus</i> which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved
like the vestal fire,—some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over
in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still
rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land,—this seed I
regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning
I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that
even this was not indispensable,—for my discoveries were not by the synthetic
but analytic process,—and I have gladly omitted it since, though most
housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast
might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces.
Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for
a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the
trivialness of carrying a bottle-full in my pocket, which would sometimes pop
and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more
respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt
himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I put any sal soda, or
other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it according to
the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ.
“Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in
mortarium indito, aquæ paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene
subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu.” Which I take to mean—“Make kneaded
bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add
water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould
it, and bake it under a cover,” that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about
leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing to the
emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month.
</p>

<p>
Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of
rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for
them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord,
fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a
still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmer gives
to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is
at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw that I could
easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow
on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them
in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if I must have some
concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good
molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out
a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing I
could use various substitutes beside those which I have named. “For,” as the
Forefathers sang,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“we can make liquor to sweeten our lips<br>
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.”
</p>

<p>
Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might be a fit
occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I
should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever
troubled themselves to go after it.
</p>

<p>
Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and
having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The
pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer’s family,—thank Heaven there
is so much virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the
operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;—and in a
new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted
still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land
I cultivated was sold—namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I
considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.
</p>

<p>
There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as,
if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root
of the matter at once,—for the root is faith,—I am accustomed to answer such,
that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot
understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to hear of
experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight
to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The
squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in
these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or
who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed.
</p>

<p class="p2">
My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing of
which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk,
three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and
andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two
knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for
molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin.
That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the
village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit
and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a
philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and
going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly
account of empty boxes? That is Spaulding’s furniture. I could never tell from
inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called rich man or a poor
one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of
such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents
of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor.
Pray, for what do we <i>move</i> ever but to get rid of our furniture, our
<i>exuviæ</i>; at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and
leave this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a
man’s belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are
cast without dragging them,—dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his
tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder
man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! “Sir, if I may be
so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?” If you are a seer, whenever you meet
a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown,
behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves
and will not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what
headway he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a
knot hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow him. I
cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man,
seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his “furniture,” as whether it
is insured or not. “But what shall I do with my furniture?” My gay butterfly is
entangled in a spider’s web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to
have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in
somebody’s barn. I look upon England to-day as an old gentleman who is
travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from
long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little
trunk, bandbox and bundle. Throw away the first three at least. It would
surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I
should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met
an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all—looking like an
enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck—I have pitied him, not
because that was his all, but because he had all <i>that</i> to carry. If I
have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not
nip me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never to put one’s paw
into it.
</p>

<p>
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have
no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should
look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun
injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he is sometimes too warm a
friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which
nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping.
A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house,
nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to
wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of
evil.
</p>

<p>
Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon’s effects, for his life
had not been ineffectual:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his
father’s day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a
century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned;
instead of a <i>bonfire</i>, or purifying destruction of them, there was an
<i>auction</i>, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view
them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust
holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again.
When a man dies he kicks the dust.
</p>

<p>
The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by
us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough
annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or
not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a “busk,” or “feast of
first fruits,” as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse
Indians? “When a town celebrates the busk,” says he, “having previously
provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household
utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other
despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town
of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions
they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having
taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is
extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every
appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors
may return to their town.—”
</p>

<p>
“On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces
new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is
supplied with the new and pure flame.”
</p>

<p>
They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days,
“and the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends
from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified and prepared
themselves.”
</p>

<p>
The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every
fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an
end.
</p>

<p>
I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines
it, “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” than this, and
I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do
thus, though they have no biblical record of the revelation.
</p>

<p class="p2">
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my
hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all
the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers,
I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and
found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my
income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe,
accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the
good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have
tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that,
and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually
afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When
formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad
experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax
my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that
surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice,—for my greatest skill
has been to want but little,—so little capital it required, so little
distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances
went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this
occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the
berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to
keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs,
or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods,
even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses
everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole
curse of trade attaches to the business.
</p>

<p>
As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I
could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in
earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house
in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no
interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when
acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are “industrious,” and appear
to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse
mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know
what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice
as hard as they do,—work till they pay for themselves, and get their free
papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most
independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a
year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and
he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his
labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite
from one end of the year to the other.
</p>

<p>
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s
self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and
wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more
artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat
of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.
</p>

<p>
One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me that he
thought he should live as I did, <i>if he had the means</i>. I would not have
any one adopt <i>my</i> mode of living on any account; for, beside that before
he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that
there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would
have each one be very careful to find out and pursue <i>his own</i> way, and
not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead. The youth may build
or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells
me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as
the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is
sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a
calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.
</p>

<p>
Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still for a thousand,
as a large house is not proportionally more expensive than a small one, since
one roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several
apartments. But for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it
will commonly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another
of the advantage of the common wall; and when you have done this, the common
partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other may prove a
bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in repair. The only coöperation which
is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little
true coöperation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to
men. If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith everywhere; if he
has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever
company he is joined to. To coöperate, in the highest as well as the lowest
sense, means <i>to get our living together</i>. I heard it proposed lately that
two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money,
earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other
carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could
not long be companions or coöperate, since one would not <i>operate</i> at all.
They would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Above all,
as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day; but he who travels
with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time
before they get off.
</p>

<p class="p2">
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess
that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. I have
made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this
pleasure also. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to
undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to
do,—for the devil finds employment for the idle,—I might try my hand at some
such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this
respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor
persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even
ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly
preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many
ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to
other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as
for any thing else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are
full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am
satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should not
consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which
society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe
that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now
preserves it. But I would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him
who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I
would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most
likely they will.
</p>

<p>
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many of my
readers would make a similar defence. At doing something,—I will not engage
that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,—I do not hesitate to say that I
should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer to
find out. What <i>good</i> I do, in the common sense of that word, must be
aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say,
practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to
become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I
were to preach at all in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being
good. As if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the
splendor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin
Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and
tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his
genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can
look him in the face, and then, and in the mean while too, going about the
world in his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has
discovered, the world going about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to
prove his heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the sun’s chariot but one day,
and drove out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the
lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up
every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter
hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief
at his death, did not shine for a year.
</p>

<p>
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is
human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming
to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my
life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the
simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are
suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its
virus mingled with my blood. No,—in this case I would rather suffer evil the
natural way. A man is not a good <i>man</i> to me because he will feed me if I
should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a
ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that
will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one’s fellow-man in the broadest
sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and
has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred Howards to
<i>us</i>, if their philanthropy do not help <i>us</i> in our best estate, when
we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a philanthropic meeting in
which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me.
</p>

<p>
The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake,
suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being superior to physical
suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation
which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by
fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not
care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and
came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
</p>

<p>
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your
example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with
it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes.
Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and
gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him
money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy
Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while
I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one
bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm
him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings
ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is
true, and that he could afford to refuse the <i>extra</i> garments which I
offered him, he had so many <i>intra</i> ones. This ducking was the very thing
he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a greater
charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There
are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the
root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on
the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he
strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds
of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday’s liberty for the rest. Some show their
kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be
kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of
your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done
with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing
to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness
of the officers of justice?
</p>

<p>
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by
mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which
overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a
fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning
himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true
spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a
man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary,
and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and
others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required
it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of
the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the
falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England’s best men and women;
only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.
</p>

<p>
I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but
merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to
mankind. I do not value chiefly a man’s uprightness and benevolence, which are,
as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we
make herb tea for the sick, serve but a humble use, and are most employed by
quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted
over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness
must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which
costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides
a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the
remembrance of his own cast-off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy.
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not
our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. From what
southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the
heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man
whom we would redeem? If any thing ail a man, so that he does not perform his
functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,—for that is the seat of
sympathy,—he forthwith sets about reforming—the world. Being a microcosm
himself, he discovers, and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make
it,—that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the
globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of
that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his
drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces
the populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of
philanthropic activity, the powers in the mean while using him for their own
ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint
blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and
life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never
dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never
shall know, a worse man than myself.
</p>

<p>
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his
fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private
ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his
couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse
for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that
is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are
things enough I have chewed, which I could lecture against. If you should ever
be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know
what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and
tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set about some free labor.
</p>

<p>
Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our
hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring him forever.
One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the
fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and
irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God.
All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may
appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however
much sympathy it may have with me or I with it. If, then, we would indeed
restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us
first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang
over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be
an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the
world.
</p>

<p>
I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that “They
asked a wise man, saying; Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God
has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the
cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied; Each
has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of
which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to
neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and
of this nature are the azads, or religious independents.—Fix not thy heart on
that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow
through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be
liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad,
or free man, like the cypress.”
</p>

<p class="poem">
COMPLEMENTAL VERSES<br>
<br>
The Pretensions of Poverty<br>
<br>
“Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,<br>
To claim a station in the firmament<br>
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,<br>
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue<br>
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,<br>
With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,<br>
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,<br>
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,<br>
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,<br>
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.<br>
We not require the dull society<br>
Of your necessitated temperance,<br>
Or that unnatural stupidity<br>
That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc’d<br>
Falsely exalted passive fortitude<br>
Above the active. This low abject brood,<br>
That fix their seats in mediocrity,<br>
Become your servile minds; but we advance<br>
Such virtues only as admit excess,<br>
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,<br>
All-seeing prudence, magnanimity<br>
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue<br>
For which antiquity hath left no name,<br>
But patterns only, such as Hercules,<br>
Achilles, Theseus.  Back to thy loath’d cell;<br>
And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,<br>
Study to know but what those worthies were.”<br>
                                    T. CAREW
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap03"></a>Where I Lived, and What I Lived For</h2>

<p>
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the
possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within
a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in
succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over
each farmer’s premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with
him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind;
even put a higher price on it,—took everything but a deed of it,—took his word
for his deed, for I dearly love to talk,—cultivated it, and him too to some
extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to
carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of
real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the
landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a <i>sedes</i>, a
seat?—better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely
to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village,
but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I
said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I
could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come
in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their
houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to
lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture, and to decide what fine
oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted
tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow
perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can
afford to let alone.
</p>

<p>
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several
farms,—the refusal was all I wanted,—but I never got my fingers burned by
actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I
bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected
materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but
before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife—every man has such a
wife—changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to
release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it
surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who
had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten
dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be
generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a
rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and
seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a
rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I
have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With
respect to landscapes,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“I am monarch of all I <i>survey</i>,<br>
My right there is none to dispute.”
</p>

<p>
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part
of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples
only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his
farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded
it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the
skimmed milk.
</p>

<p>
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were; its complete
retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the
nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding
on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the
spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the
house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between
me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by
rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the
recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house
was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the
house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished
getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up
some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made
any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it
on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders,—I never heard what
compensation he received for that,—and do all those things which had no other
motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession
of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of
the kind I wanted if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as
I have said.
</p>

<p>
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale, (I have
always cultivated a garden,) was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think
that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between
the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to
be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as
possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you
are committed to a farm or the county jail.
</p>

<p>
Old Cato, whose “De Re Rusticâ” is my “Cultivator,” says, and the only
translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage, “When you think of
getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your
pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The
oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good.” I think I
shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be
buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last.
</p>

<p class="p2">
The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe
more at length; for convenience, putting the experience of two years into one.
As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as
lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake
my neighbors up.
</p>

<p>
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights
as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the
Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a
defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of
rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night.
The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it
a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were
saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude
from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of
this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I
had visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to
entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The
winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of
mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial
music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted;
but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth
every where.
</p>

<p>
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent,
which I used occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is
still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand,
has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me,
I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly
clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It
was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors
to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It
was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest
weather. The Harivansa says, “An abode without birds is like a meat without
seasoning.” Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the
birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was
not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the
orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which
never, or rarely, serenade a villager,—the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet
tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.
</p>

<p>
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the
village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive
wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only
field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods that
the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my
most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it
impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far
above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off
its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples
or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts,
were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the
breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the
trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.
</p>

<p>
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle
rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the
sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the
wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is
never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it
being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections,
becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill top near
by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista
southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form
the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested
a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream
there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some
distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing
on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and
more distant mountain ranges in the north-west, those true-blue coins from
heaven’s own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other
directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods
which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to
give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is,
that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular.
This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the
pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I
distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a
coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust
insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and I was
reminded that this on which I dwelt was but <i>dry land</i>.
</p>

<p>
Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded
or confined in the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low
shrub-oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose, stretched away toward the
prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all
the roving families of men. “There are none happy in the world but beings who
enjoy freely a vast horizon,”—said Damodara, when his herds required new and
larger pastures.
</p>

<p>
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the
universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I
lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are
wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial
corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair, far from
noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such
a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were
worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to
Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from
the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to
my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was
that part of creation where I had squatted;—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“There was a shepherd that did live,<br>
    And held his thoughts as high<br>
As were the mounts whereon his flocks<br>
    Did hourly feed him by.”
</p>

<p>
What should we think of the shepherd’s life if his flocks always wandered to
higher pastures than his thoughts?
</p>

<p>
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity,
and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a
worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that
was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that
characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this
effect: “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever
again.” I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as
much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and
unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting
with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of
fame. It was Homer’s requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing
its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing
advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the
world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the
awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at
least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we
are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some
servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from
within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory
bells, and a fragrance filling the air—to a higher life than we fell asleep
from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no
less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an
earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired
of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial
cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are
reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make.
All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning
atmosphere. The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake with the morning.” Poetry
and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from
such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora,
and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought
keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what
the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake
and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why
is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been
slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome
with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake
enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for
effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or
divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was
quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?
</p>

<p>
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but
by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our
soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable
ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to
be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a
few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very
atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect
the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to
make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most
elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be
done.
</p>

<p>
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the
marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that
was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a
corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why
then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to
the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give
a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are
in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and
have <i>somewhat hastily</i> concluded that it is the chief end of man here to
“glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
</p>

<p>
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long
ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon
error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a
superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An
honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme
cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a
thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on
your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are
the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed
for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and
not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator
indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be
necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other
things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty
states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot
tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so
called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and
superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered
with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless
expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in
the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern
and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too
fast. Men think that it is essential that the <i>Nation</i> have commerce, and
export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour,
without a doubt, whether <i>they</i> do or not; but whether we should live like
baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and
forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon
our <i>lives</i> to improve <i>them</i>, who will build railroads? And if
railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay
at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the
railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that
underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irish-man, or a Yankee man. The
rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run
smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years
a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of
riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they
run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the
wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue
and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes
a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their
beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.
</p>

<p>
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be
starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so
they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for
<i>work</i>, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance,
and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at
the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there
is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that
press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a
boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that
sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the
truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did
not set it on fire,—or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is
done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man
takes a half hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head
and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.
Some give directions to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other
purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a
night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me any
thing new that has happened to a man any where on this globe,”—and he reads it
over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning
on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark
unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye
himself.
</p>

<p>
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are
very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never
received more than one or two letters in my life—I wrote this some years
ago—that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution
through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so
often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable
news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by
accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown
up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one
lot of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is
enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad
instances and applications? To a philosopher all <i>news</i>, as it is called,
is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not
a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other
day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that
several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken
by the pressure,—news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a
twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for
Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta,
and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right
proportions,—they may have changed the names a little since I saw the
papers,—and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be
true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of
things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the
newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from
that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of
her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again,
unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge
who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign
parts, a French revolution not excepted.
</p>

<p>
What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old!
“Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to
know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and
questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger
answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults,
but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the
philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!” The
preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at
the end of the week,—for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and
not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one,—with this one other
draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, “Pause! Avast!
Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?”
</p>

<p>
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is
fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow
themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know,
would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we
respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would
resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that
only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,—that
petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is
always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and
consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life
of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory
foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more
clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are
wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that
“there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city,
was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state,
imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of
his father’s ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and
the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a
prince. So soul,” continues the Hindoo philosopher, “from the circumstances in
which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to
it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be <i>Brahme</i>.” I
perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do
because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that
<i>is</i> which <i>appears</i> to be. If a man should walk through this town
and see only the reality, where, think you, would the “Mill-dam” go to? If he
should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not
recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a
court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing
really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account
of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the
farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed
something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are
now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be
more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at
all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of
the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers
to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had
so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish
it.
</p>

<p>
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track
by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise
early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company
come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,—determined to
make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not
be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner,
situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for
the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor,
sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine
whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings,
why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us
settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and
slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance,
that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New
York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and
philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place,
which we can call <i>reality</i>, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then
begin, having a <i>point d’appui</i>, below freshet and frost and fire, a place
where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps
a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how
deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you
stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer
on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing
you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal
career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let
us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are
alive, let us go about our business.
</p>

<p>
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I
see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides
away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom
is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the
alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was
born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret
of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary.
My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My
instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use
their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through
these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the
divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap04"></a>Reading</h2>

<p>
With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would
perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature
and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for
ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame
even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear
no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a
corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling
robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I
in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision.
No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was
revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither
past, present, nor future.
</p>

<p>
My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading,
than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary
circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those
books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on
bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the
poet Mîr Camar Uddîn Mast, “Being seated to run through the region of the
spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a
single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the
liquor of the esoteric doctrines.” I kept Homer’s Iliad on my table through the
summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my
hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same
time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of
such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the
intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I
asked where it was then that <i>I</i> lived.
</p>

<p>
The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of
dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate
their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books,
even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a
language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of
each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of
what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile
press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the
heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which
they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of
youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient
language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be
perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer
remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes
speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern
and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics,
in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For
what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the
only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most
modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit
to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books
in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more
than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training
such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life
to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were
written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation
by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken
and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is
commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and
we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the
maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our
father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by
the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who
merely <i>spoke</i> the Greek and Latin tongues in the middle ages were not
entitled by the accident of birth to <i>read</i> the works of genius written in
those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they
knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler
dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written
were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary
literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though
rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their
rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to
discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and
Grecian multitude could not <i>hear</i>, after the lapse of ages a few scholars
<i>read</i>, and a few scholars only are still reading it.
</p>

<p>
However much we may admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence, the
noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken
language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. <i>There</i> are
the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on
and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and
vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be
rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient
occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can <i>hear</i> him;
but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be
distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the
intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can <i>understand</i>
him.
</p>

<p>
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a
precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at
once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is
the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every
language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not
be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of
life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s
speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian
literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for
they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to
protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of
the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest
and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.
They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain
the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural
and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or
emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps
scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and
independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns
inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of
intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture
and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good
sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual
culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the
founder of a family.
</p>

<p>
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in
which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of
the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been
made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as
such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Æschylus,
nor Virgil even—works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as
the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have
rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and
heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who
never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the
learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them.
That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the
still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the
nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be
filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and
Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited
their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale
heaven at last.
</p>

<p>
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only
great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the
stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to
read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to
keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble
intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in
a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler
faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and
devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.
</p>

<p>
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in
literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, and words of one
syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost
form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and
perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and
for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is
called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating
Library entitled Little Reading, which I thought referred to a town of that
name which I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants and
ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats
and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the
machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read
the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sephronia, and how they loved as
none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run
smooth,—at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on!
how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have
gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the
happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear, O
dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that they had better
metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man
weathercocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them
swing round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother
honest men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will
not stir though the meeting-house burn down. “The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a
Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of ‘Tittle-Tol-Tan,’ to
appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don’t all come together.” All this they
read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied
gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little
four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella,—without
any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis,
or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness
of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and
sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is
baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost
every oven, and finds a surer market.
</p>

<p>
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What
does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few
exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English
literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so
called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no
acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of
mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will
know of them, there are the feeblest efforts any where made to become
acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French
paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to “keep himself in
practice,” he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers
the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and
add to his English. This is about as much as the college bred generally do or
aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just
come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with
whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or
Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so called
illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about
it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has
mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the
difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to
impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or
Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do
not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man,
will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are
golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth
the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;—and yet we learn to read
only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave
school, the “Little Reading,” and story books, which are for boys and
beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very
low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
</p>

<p>
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has
produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato
and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him,—my
next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his
words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal
in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and
low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very
broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at
all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for
children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of
antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of
tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the
columns of the daily paper.
</p>

<p>
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words
addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and
understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives,
and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has
dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us
perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present
unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that
disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise
men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his
ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn
liberality. The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who
has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he
believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it
is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and
had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and
treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and
established worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and
through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ
himself, and let “our church” go by the board.
</p>

<p>
We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid
strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own
culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for
that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked,—goaded like oxen,
as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common
schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the
winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no
school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or
ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools,
that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It
is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the
fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are indeed so well off—to pursue
liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one
Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal
education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture
to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept
from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country,
the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe.
It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the
magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers
and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for
things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has
spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics,
but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into
that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars
annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other
equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why should
we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers? Why should our
life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the
gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?—not be
sucking the pap of “neutral family” papers, or browsing “Olive-Branches” here
in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we
will see if they know any thing. Why should we leave it to Harper &amp;
Brothers and Redding &amp; Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of
cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his
culture,—genius—learning—wit—books—paintings—statuary—music—philosophical
instruments, and the like; so let the village do,—not stop short at a
pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because
our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with
these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and
I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are
greater than the nobleman’s. New England can hire all the wise men in the world
to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at
all. That is the <i>uncommon</i> school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us
have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river,
go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of
ignorance which surrounds us.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap05"></a>Sounds</h2>

<p>
But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and
read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and
provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and
events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is
published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will
be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor
discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a
course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or
the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the
discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a
student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on
into futurity.
</p>

<p>
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better
than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of
the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad
margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed
bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and
stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house,
until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s
wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in
those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of
the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so
much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by
contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how
the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was
morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.
Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good
fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door,
so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My
days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor
were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived
like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that “for yesterday, to-day, and
to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by
pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the
passing day.” This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if
the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been
found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The
natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
</p>

<p>
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged
to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself
was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many
scenes and without an end. If we were always indeed getting our living, and
regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we
should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it
will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant
pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture
out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water
on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a
broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken
their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move
in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see
my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a
gypsy’s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books
and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get
out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted
to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while
to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so
much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the
house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table,
and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and
strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these
forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and
bedsteads,—because they once stood in their midst.
</p>

<p>
My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood,
in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen
rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front
yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and
goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of
May, the sand-cherry (<i>Cerasus pumila</i>,) adorned the sides of the path
with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short
stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good sized and handsome
cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out of
compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The sumach (<i>Rhus
glabra</i>,) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the
embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its
broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large
buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed
to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender
boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so
heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender
bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of
air stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of
berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed
their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke
the tender limbs.
</p>

<p class="p2">
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my
clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my
view, or perching restless on the white-pine boughs behind my house, gives a
voice to the air; a fishhawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings
up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by
the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting
hither and thither; and for the last half hour I have heard the rattle of
railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge,
conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of
the world as that boy who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part
of the town, but ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel
and homesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks
were all gone off; why, you couldn’t even hear the whistle! I doubt if there is
such a place in Massachusetts now:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“In truth, our village has become a butt<br>
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o’er<br>
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is—Concord.”
</p>

<p>
The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I
dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were,
related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the
whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so
often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would
fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.
</p>

<p>
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding
like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer’s yard, informing me that
many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or
adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one
horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard
sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country;
your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that
he can say them nay. And here’s your pay for them! screams the countryman’s
whistle; timber like long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the
city’s walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that
dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a
chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the
cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the
woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but
down goes the wit that writes them.
</p>

<p>
When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary
motion,—or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that
velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its
orbit does not look like a returning curve,—with its steam cloud like a banner
streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I
have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light,—as if this
travelling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky
for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo
with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing
fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon
they will put into the new Mythology I don’t know), it seems as if the earth
had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made
the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the
engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which
floats over the farmer’s fields, then the elements and Nature herself would
cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort.
</p>

<p>
I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the
rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds
stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the
cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant
field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars
which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron
horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the
mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early
to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as
innocent as it is early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snow-shoes,
and with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in
which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men
and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies
over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by
his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods
he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall
only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or
slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the
superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver
and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and
commanding as it is protracted and unwearied!
</p>

<p>
Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the
hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons
without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some
brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the
next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals
of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such
regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the
farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well conducted institution
regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since
the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than
they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere
of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought;
that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would
never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings.
To do things “railroad fashion” is now the by-word; and it is worth the while
to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There
is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in
this case. We have constructed a fate, an <i>Atropos</i>, that never turns
aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a
certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of
the compass; yet it interferes with no man’s business, and the children go to
school on the other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all educated
thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but
your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
</p>

<p>
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp
its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their
business with more or less courage and content, doing more even than they
suspect, and perchance better employed than they could have consciously
devised. I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in
the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men
who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter quarters; who have not merely the
three-o’-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest,
but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the
storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of
the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men’s blood, I
hear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their
chilled breath, which announces that the cars <i>are coming</i>, without long
delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England north-east snow storm, and I
behold the ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering, above the
mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of
field-mice, like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in
the universe.
</p>

<p>
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and
unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many
fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular
success. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me,
and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long
Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and
Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more
like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so
many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut
husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car-load of
torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought
into paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of the
storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They are proof-sheets
which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did not
go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because
of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedar,—first, second, third,
and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and
moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far
among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and
qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final
result of dress,—of patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in
Milwaukie, as those splendid articles, English, French, or American prints,
ginghams, muslins, &amp;c., gathered from all quarters both of fashion and
poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades only, on which
forsooth will be written tales of real life, high and low, and founded on fact!
This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New England and commercial
scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen a
salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and
putting the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep
or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself
and his lading against sun wind and rain behind it,—and the trader, as a
Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences
business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be
animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and
if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a
Saturday’s dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their
twist and the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore them were
careering over the pampas of the Spanish main,—a type of all obstinacy, and
evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I
confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a man’s real
disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this
state of existence. As the Orientals say, “A cur’s tail may be warmed, and
pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years’ labor
bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form.” The only effectual
cure for such inveteracies as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them,
which I believe is what is usually done with them, and then they will stay put
and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith,
Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for
the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulk-head and
thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for
him, telling his customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before
this morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality. It is
advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.
</p>

<p>
While these things go up other things come down. Warned by the whizzing sound,
I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills,
which has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot
like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye
beholds it; going
</p>

<p class="poem">
“to be the mast<br>
Of some great ammiral.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand hills,
sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and
shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures,
whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The
air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen,
as if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at the head
rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills
like lambs. A car-load of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their
droves now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as
their badge of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to
them; they are quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them
barking behind the Peterboro’ Hills, or panting up the western slope of the
Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is
gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will slink back to
their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the
wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell
rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by;—
</p>

<p class="poem">
What’s the railroad to me?<br>
I never go to see<br>
Where it ends.<br>
It fills a few hollows,<br>
And makes banks for the swallows,<br>
It sets the sand a-blowing,<br>
And the blackberries a-growing,
</p>

<p class="noindent">
but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my eyes put out
and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the
fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever.
For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted
only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway.
</p>

<p>
Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or
Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were,
natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance
over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine
needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound
heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a
vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a
distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to
it. There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and
which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the
sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to
vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic
and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in
the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes
sung by a wood-nymph.
</p>

<p>
At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond the woods
sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I would mistake it for the voices of
certain minstrels by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over
hill and dale; but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was
prolonged into the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be
satirical, but to express my appreciation of those youths’ singing, when I
state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and
they were at length one articulation of Nature.
</p>

<p>
Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening
train had gone by, the whippoorwills chanted their vespers for half an hour,
sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. They would
begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of
a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a
rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I heard four
or five at once in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind
another, and so near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after each
note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider’s web, only
proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round me in the
woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I was near
its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as
musical as ever just before and about dawn.
</p>

<p>
When other birds are still the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning
women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise
midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but,
without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of
suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the
infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses,
trilled along the wood-side; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds;
as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that
would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy
forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth
and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing
hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new
sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling.
<i>Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!</i> sighs one on this side of
the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the
gray oaks. Then—<i>that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!</i> echoes another on the
farther side with tremulous sincerity, and—<i>bor-r-r-r-n!</i> comes faintly
from far in the Lincoln woods.
</p>

<p>
I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could fancy it the most
melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make
permanent in her choir the dying moans of a human being,—some poor weak relic
of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human
sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling
melodiousness,—I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try to
imitate it,—expressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage
in the mortification of all healthy and courageous thought. It reminded me of
ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a
strain made really melodious by distance,—<i>Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo</i>; and
indeed for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard
by day or night, summer or winter.
</p>

<p>
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for
men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day
illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not
recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which
all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where
the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate
above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and
rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a
different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.
</p>

<p>
Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges,—a
sound heard farther than almost any other at night,—the baying of dogs, and
sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In
the mean while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy
spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to
sing a catch in their Stygian lake,—if the Walden nymphs will pardon the
comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there,—who
would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their
voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has
lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet
intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation
and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, with his chin upon a
heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under this
northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes
round the cup with the ejaculation <i>tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk,
tr-r-r-oonk!</i> and straightway comes over the water from some distant cove
the same password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped
down to his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores,
then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction,
<i>tr-r-r-oonk!</i> and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least
distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then
the bowl goes round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist,
and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing
<i>troonk</i> from time to time, and pausing for a reply.
</p>

<p>
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my clearing, and
I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music
merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is
certainly the most remarkable of any bird’s, and if they could be naturalized
without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our
woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then
imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords’ clarions
rested! No wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock,—to say nothing of
the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these
birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the
trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the
feebler notes of other birds,—think of it! It would put nations on the alert.
Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive
day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This
foreign bird’s note is celebrated by the poets of all countries along with the
notes of their native songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He
is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs
are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific
is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my
slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have
said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the
spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn,
nor children crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his
senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were
starved out, or rather were never baited in,—only squirrels on the roof and
under the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay screaming beneath
the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl
behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to
bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds,
ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard.
No yard! but unfenced Nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest
growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking
through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the
shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead
of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale,—a pine tree snapped off or torn
up by the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the
front-yard gate in the Great Snow,—no gate,—no front-yard,—and no path to the
civilized world!
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap06"></a>Solitude</h2>

<p>
This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes
delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a
part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt
sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing
special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The
bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is
borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering
alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my
serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening
wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is
now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and
some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete.
The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk,
and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature’s
watchmen,—links which connect the days of animated life.
</p>

<p>
When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their
cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil
on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some
little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they
leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand,
woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if
visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the
print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by
some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and
thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the
lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the
passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his
pipe.
</p>

<p>
There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our
elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is
always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way,
and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit,
some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by
men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any
place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded
by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the
pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the
other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies.
It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and
moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there was never a
traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first
or last man; unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals some came
from the village to fish for pouts,—they plainly fished much more in the Walden
Pond of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness,—but they soon
retreated, usually with light baskets, and left “the world to darkness and to
me,” and the black kernel of the night was never profaned by any human
neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the
dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been
introduced.
</p>

<p>
Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent
and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor
misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to
him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never
yet such a storm but it was Æolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing
can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy
the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to
me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is
not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing
them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as
to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low
lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for
the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other
men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any
deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands
which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not
flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt
lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that
was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the
near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be
alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a
slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of
a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such
sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and
in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable
friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied
advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of
them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and
befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something
kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary,
and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a
villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Mourning untimely consumes the sad;<br>
Few are their days in the land of the living,<br>
Beautiful daughter of Toscar.”
</p>

<p>
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or
fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon,
soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in
a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold
themselves. In those driving north-east rains which tried the village houses
so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the
deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and
thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning
struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and
perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and
four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it
again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that
mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came
down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, “I
should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to
folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.” I am tempted to reply to
such,—This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart,
think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth
of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel
lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not
to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a
man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of
the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most
to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the
bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the
Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our
life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow
stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary
with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his
cellar.... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what
is called “a handsome property,”—though I never got a <i>fair</i> view of
it,—on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me
how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I
answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And
so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and
the mud to Brighton,—or Bright-town,—which place he would reach some time in
the morning.
</p>

<p>
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all
times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and
indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only
outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact,
the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which
fashions their being. <i>Next</i> to us the grandest laws are continually being
executed. <i>Next</i> to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we
love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
</p>

<p>
“How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of
Earth!”
</p>

<p>
“We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we
do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be
separated from them.”
</p>

<p>
“They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and
clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations
to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are every
where, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides.”
</p>

<p>
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.
Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these
circumstances,—have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, “Virtue
does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.”
</p>

<p>
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort
of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all
things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in
Nature. I may be either the drift-wood in the stream, or Indra in the sky
looking down on it. I <i>may</i> be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the
other hand, I <i>may not</i> be affected by an actual event which appears to
concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to
speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by
which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my
experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me,
which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience,
but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it
may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind
of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This
doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
</p>

<p>
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company,
even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I
never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the
most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our
chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and
his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of
Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can
work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel
lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit
down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can
“see the folks,” and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his
day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house
all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues;” but he does not
realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in <i>his</i>
field, and chopping in <i>his</i> woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn
seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a
more condensed form of it.
</p>

<p>
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had
time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a
day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We
have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness,
to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.
We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every
night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another,
and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less
frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider
the girls in a factory,—never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better
if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value
of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
</p>

<p>
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at
the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with
which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and
which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and
strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural
society, and come to know that we are never alone.
</p>

<p>
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when
nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an
idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs
so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray?
And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure
tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there
sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone,—but the devil,
he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am
no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf,
or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill
Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April
shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
</p>

<p>
I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast
and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor,
who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with
pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between
us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of
things, even without apples or cider,—a most wise and humorous friend, whom I
love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and
though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly
dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose
odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening
to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory
runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every
fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when
she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and
seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet.
</p>

<p>
The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,—of sun and wind and
rain, of summer and winter,—such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and
such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected,
and the sun’s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the
clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in
midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have
intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?
</p>

<p>
What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy
great-grandfather’s, but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal, vegetable,
botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many
old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my
panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron
and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking
wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of
undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the
fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in
the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to
morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noon-day
even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow
westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygeia, who was the
daughter of that old herb-doctor Æsculapius, and who is represented on
monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which
the serpent sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who was
the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods
and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly
sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe,
and wherever she came it was spring.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap07"></a>Visitors</h2>

<p>
I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten
myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my
way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest
frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.
</p>

<p>
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for
society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the
third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing
up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I
have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof,
and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one
another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost
innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of
wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their
inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only
vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons
before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over
the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into
some hole in the pavement.
</p>

<p>
One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty
of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the
big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing
trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your
thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its
last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may
plough out again through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room
to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations,
must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral
ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond
to a companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we could
not begin to hear,—we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw
two stones into calm water so near that they break each other’s undulations. If
we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very
near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath; but if we speak
reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat
and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most
intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being
spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we
cannot possibly hear each other’s voice in any case. Referred to this standard,
speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are
many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation
began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs
farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly
there was not room enough.
</p>

<p>
My “best” room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on
whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in
summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless
domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order.
</p>

<p>
If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no
interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the
rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the mean while. But if
twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though
there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit;
but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence
against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. The waste and
decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously
retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. I could
entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away
disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may
depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though
many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of
the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own
part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man’s house, by
any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which
I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I
think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the
motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on
a yellow walnut leaf for a card:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Arrivéd there, the little house they fill,<br>
    Ne looke for entertainment where none was;<br>
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will:<br>
    The noblest mind the best contentment has.”
</p>

<p>
When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, went with a companion
on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived
tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing
was said about eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote their own
words,—“He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end
and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground, and a
thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and
upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” At
one o’clock the next day Massasoit “brought two fishes that he had shot,” about
thrice as big as a bream; “these being boiled, there were at least forty looked
for a share in them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had in two nights
and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey
fasting.” Fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also
sleep, owing to “the savages’ barbarous singing, (for they used to sing
themselves asleep,)” and that they might get home while they had strength to
travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were but poorly
entertained, though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for
an honor; but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians
could have done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser
than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests; so
they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it. Another time when
Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no
deficiency in this respect.
</p>

<p>
As for men, they will hardly fail one any where. I had more visitors while I
lived in the woods than at any other period in my life; I mean that I had some.
I met several there under more favorable circumstances than I could any where
else. But fewer came to see me on trivial business. In this respect, my company
was winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far within the
great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty, that for the
most part, so far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was
deposited around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored
and uncultivated continents on the other side.
</p>

<p>
Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian
man,—he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it
here,—a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a
day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has
heard of Homer, and, “if it were not for books,” would “not know what to do
rainy days,” though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy
seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read
his verse in the testament in his native parish far away; and now I must
translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles’ reproof to Patroclus for
his sad countenance.—“Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?”—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia?<br>
They say that Menœtius lives yet, son of Actor,<br>
And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons,<br>
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve.”
</p>

<p>
He says, “That’s good.” He has a great bundle of white-oak bark under his arm
for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. “I suppose there’s no harm in
going after such a thing to-day,” says he. To him Homer was a great writer,
though what his writing was about he did not know. A more simple and natural
man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral
hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He was about
twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada and his father’s house a dozen
years before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last,
perhaps in his native country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but
sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy
hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with
expression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and
cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to
his work a couple of miles past my house,—for he chopped all summer,—in a tin
pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which
dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came
along early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety or haste to get to
his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn’t a-going to hurt himself. He didn’t
care if he only earned his board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the
bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and
a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded,
after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the
pond safely till nightfall,—loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would
say, as he went by in the morning, “How thick the pigeons are! If working every
day were not my trade, I could get all the meat I should want by
hunting,—pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges,—by gosh! I could get all I
should want for a week in one day.”
</p>

<p>
He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his
art. He cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts which
came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the
stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he
would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off
with your hand at last.
</p>

<p>
He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a
well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was
without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and
he would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation
in Canadian French, though he spoke English as well. When I approached him he
would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a
pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a
ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal
spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with
laughter at any thing which made him think and tickled him. Looking round upon
the trees he would exclaim,—“By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here
chopping; I want no better sport.” Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused
himself all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at
regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire by which at noon he
warmed his coffee in a kettle; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the
chickadees would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at the
potato in his fingers; and he said that he “liked to have the little
<i>fellers</i> about him.”
</p>

<p>
In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical endurance and
contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was
not sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he answered, with a
sincere and serious look, “Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life.” But the
intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an
infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in
which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never
educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and
reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. When Nature made
him, she gave him a strong body and contentment for his portion, and propped
him on every side with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his
threescore years and ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated that no
introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a
woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him out as you did. He would not
play any part. Men paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe
him; but he never exchanged opinions with them. He was so simply and naturally
humble—if he can be called humble who never aspires—that humility was no
distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods
to him. If you told him that such a one was coming, he did as if he thought
that any thing so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take all the
responsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still. He never heard the
sound of praise. He particularly reverenced the writer and the preacher. Their
performances were miracles. When I told him that I wrote considerably, he
thought for a long time that it was merely the handwriting which I meant, for
he could write a remarkably good hand himself. I sometimes found the name of
his native parish handsomely written in the snow by the highway, with the
proper French accent, and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he ever
wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters for
those who could not, but he never tried to write thoughts,—no, he could not, he
could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, and then there was
spelling to be attended to at the same time!
</p>

<p>
I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked him if he did not want
the world to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his
Canadian accent, not knowing that the question had ever been entertained
before, “No, I like it well enough.” It would have suggested many things to a
philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know
nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not
seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as
simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic
consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him
sauntering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to
himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise.
</p>

<p>
His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last he was
considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyclopædia to him, which he
supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a
considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day,
and he never failed to look at them in the most simple and practical light. He
had never heard of such things before. Could he do without factories? I asked.
He had worn the home-made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he
dispense with tea and coffee? Did this country afford any beverage beside
water? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was
better than water in warm weather. When I asked him if he could do without
money, he showed the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest and
coincide with the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this
institution, and the very derivation of the word <i>pecunia</i>. If an ox were
his property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, he thought
it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on mortgaging some portion
of the creature each time to that amount. He could defend many institutions
better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him,
he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested
to him any other. At another time, hearing Plato’s definition of a man,—a biped
without feathers,—and that one exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato’s
man, he thought it an important difference that the <i>knees</i> bent the wrong
way. He would sometimes exclaim, “How I love to talk! By George, I could talk
all day!” I asked him once, when I had not seen him for many months, if he had
got a new idea this summer. “Good Lord,” said he, “a man that has to work as I
do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. May be the man
you hoe with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you
think of weeds.” He would sometimes ask me first on such occasions, if I had
made any improvement. One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied
with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest
without, and some higher motive for living. “Satisfied!” said he; “some men are
satisfied with one thing, and some with another. One man, perhaps, if he has
got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his
belly to the table, by George!” Yet I never, by any manœuvring, could get him
to take the spiritual view of things; the highest that he appeared to conceive
of was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an animal to appreciate;
and this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested any improvement in
his mode of life, he merely answered, without expressing any regret, that it
was too late. Yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues.
</p>

<p>
There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be detected in
him, and I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself and
expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten
miles to observe it, and it amounted to the re-origination of many of the
institutions of society. Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express
himself distinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. Yet his
thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that, though more
promising than a merely learned man’s, it rarely ripened to any thing which can
be reported. He suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest
grades of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own
view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as
Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and the inside of my house, and,
as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of water. I told them that I drank
at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. Far off as I
lived, I was not exempted from the annual visitation which occurs, methinks,
about the first of April, when every body is on the move; and I had my share of
good luck, though there were some curious specimens among my visitors.
Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I
endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their
confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and
so was compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be wiser than the so called
<i>overseers</i> of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was time
that the tables were turned. With respect to wit, I learned that there was not
much difference between the half and the whole. One day, in particular, an
inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with others I had often seen used as
fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fields to keep cattle and
himself from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish to live as I did. He
told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather
<i>inferior</i>, to any thing that is called humility, that he was “deficient
in intellect.” These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed
the Lord cared as much for him as for another. “I have always been so,” said
he, “from my childhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other children; I
am weak in the head. It was the Lord’s will, I suppose.” And there he was to
prove the truth of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely
met a fellow-man on such promising ground,—it was so simple and sincere and so
true all that he said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to humble
himself was he exalted. I did not know at first but it was the result of a wise
policy. It seemed that from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor
weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might go forward to something
better than the intercourse of sages.
</p>

<p>
I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town’s poor, but
who should be; who are among the world’s poor, at any rate; guests who appeal,
not to your hospitality, but to your <i>hospitalality</i>; who earnestly wish
to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information that they are
resolved, for one thing, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor that
he be not actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the
world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men who did not
know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again,
answering them from greater and greater remoteness. Men of almost every degree
of wit called on me in the migrating season. Some who had more wits than they
knew what to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from
time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying
on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“O Christian, will you send me back?”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the
northstar. Men of one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling;
men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to
take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them
lost in every morning’s dew,—and become frizzled and mangy in consequence; men
of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that made you crawl
all over. One man proposed a book in which visitors should write their names,
as at the White Mountains; but, alas! I have too good a memory to make that
necessary.
</p>

<p>
I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. Girls and boys
and young women generally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the
pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of business, even
farmers, thought only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at
which I dwelt from something or other; and though they said that they loved a
ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they did not. Restless
committed men, whose time was all taken up in getting a living or keeping it;
ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who
could not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who
pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out,—how came Mrs. —— to know that my
sheets were not as clean as hers?—young men who had ceased to be young, and had
concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the professions,—all
these generally said that it was not possible to do so much good in my
position. Ay! there was the rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever
age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them
life seemed full of danger,—what danger is there if you don’t think of any?—and
they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position,
where Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment’s warning. To them the village was
literally a <i>com-munity</i>, a league for mutual defence, and you would
suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The
amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always <i>danger</i> that he may
die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is
dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Finally,
there were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, who thought
that I was forever singing,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
This is the house that I built;<br>
This is the man that lives in the house that I built;
</p>

<p class="noindent">
but they did not know that the third line was,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
These are the folks that worry the man<br>
That lives in the house that I built.
</p>

<p class="noindent">
I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; but I feared the
men-harriers rather.
</p>

<p>
I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children come a-berrying, railroad
men taking a Sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets
and philosophers; in short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for
freedom’s sake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to greet
with,—“Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!” for I had had communication
with that race.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap08"></a>The Bean-Field</h2>

<p>
Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles
already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown
considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily
to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this
small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so
many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength
like Antæus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my
curious labor all summer,—to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which
had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before,
sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall
I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I
have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work. It is a fine broad leaf to look
on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what
fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete. My
enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled
for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and
the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining
beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.
</p>

<p>
When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought from Boston to
this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. It
is one of the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And now to-night my flute has
waked the echoes over that very water. The pines still stand here older than I;
or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new
growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant eyes.
Almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial root in this pasture,
and even I have at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant
dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influence is seen in these
bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines.
</p>

<p>
I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as it was only about
fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I myself had got out two or three
cords of stumps, I did not give it any manure; but in the course of the summer
it appeared by the arrowheads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct
nation had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came
to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for this very
crop.
</p>

<p>
Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had
got above the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on, though the farmers warned
me against it,—I would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew
is on,—I began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw
dust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling like
a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the day the sun
blistered my feet. There the sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly
backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green
rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse where I could
rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green berries
deepened their tints by the time I had made another bout. Removing the weeds,
putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had
sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and
blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth
say beans instead of grass,—this was my daily work. As I had little aid from
horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I
was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. But
labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps
never the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and
to the scholar it yields a classic result. A very <i>agricola laboriosus</i>
was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows
where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins
loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil.
But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only open
and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road; so they
made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of
travellers’ gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: “Beans so late! peas
so late!”—for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe,—the
ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. “Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn
for fodder.” “Does he <i>live</i> there?” asks the black bonnet of the gray
coat; and the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to inquire what
you are doing where he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little
chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. But here
were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to
draw it,—there being an aversion to other carts and horses,—and chip dirt far
away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields
which they had passed, so that I came to know how I stood in the agricultural
world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman’s report. And, by the way, who
estimates the value of the crop which nature yields in the still wilder fields
unimproved by man? The crop of <i>English</i> hay is carefully weighed, the
moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond
holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only
unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and
cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and
others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a
half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and
primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the <i>Ranz des Vaches</i>
for them.
</p>

<p>
Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown-thrasher—or
red mavis, as some love to call him—all the morning, glad of your society, that
would find out another farmer’s field if yours were not here. While you are
planting the seed, he cries,—“Drop it, drop it,—cover it up, cover it up,—pull
it up, pull it up, pull it up.” But this was not corn, and so it was safe from
such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini
performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet
prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in
which I had entire faith.
</p>

<p>
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the
ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens,
and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this
modern day. They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the
marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits
of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. When
my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky,
and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable
crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I
remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances
who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The night-hawk circled
overhead in the sunny afternoons—for I sometimes made a day of it—like a mote
in the eye, or in heaven’s eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a
sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and
yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs
on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found
them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are
raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in Nature. The
hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his
perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the
sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky,
alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if
they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage
of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound
and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish
portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile,
yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights
I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment
which the country offers.
</p>

<p>
On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these
woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally penetrate thus far. To me,
away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded
as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which I
was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of
itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there
soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable
puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me
information of the “trainers.” It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody’s
bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Virgil’s advice, by a
faint <i>tintinnabulum</i> upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils,
were endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died
quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no
tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the
Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it
was smeared.
</p>

<p>
I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and of our fatherland
were in such safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with
an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust
in the future.
</p>

<p>
When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all the village
was a vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately
with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that
reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I
could spit a Mexican with a good relish,—for why should we always stand for
trifles?—and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry
upon. These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of
a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion
of the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the
<i>great</i> days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same
everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it.
</p>

<p>
It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with
beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and
picking over and selling them,—the last was the hardest of all,—I might add
eating, for I did taste. I was determined to know beans. When they were
growing, I used to hoe from five o’clock in the morning till noon, and commonly
spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and
curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds,—it will bear some
iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the
labor,—disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such
invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and
sedulously cultivating another. That’s Roman wormwood,—that’s pigweed,—that’s
sorrel,—that’s piper-grass,—have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to
the sun, don’t let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he’ll turn himself
t’other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with
cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their
side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin
the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a
lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding
comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.
</p>

<p>
Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in
Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in
London or New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New England, devoted to
husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so
far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged
them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake
of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It was on the whole
a rare amusement, which, continued too long, might have become a dissipation.
Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them
unusually well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, “there being
in truth,” as Evelyn says, “no compost or lætation whatsoever comparable to
this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade.”
“The earth,” he adds elsewhere, “especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism
in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which
gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to
sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars
succedaneous to this improvement.” Moreover, this being one of those “worn-out
and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,” had perchance, as Sir
Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted “vital spirits” from the air. I harvested
twelve bushels of beans.
</p>

<p>
But to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Coleman has reported
chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were,—
</p>

<pre>
    For a hoe,.................................. $ 0.54
    Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing,.........  7.50  Too much.
    Beans for seed,..............................  3.12½
    Potatoes for seed,...........................  1.33
    Peas for seed,...............................  0.40
    Turnip seed,.................................  0.06
    White line for crow fence,...................  0.02
    Horse cultivator and boy three hours,........  1.00
    Horse and cart to get crop,..................  0.75
                                                   ————
        In all,................................. $14.72½
</pre>

<p>
My income was (patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet), from
</p>

<pre>
    Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold,. $16.94
    Five    "    large potatoes,.................... 2.50
    Nine    "    small,............................. 2.25
    Grass,.......................................... 1.00
    Stalks,......................................... 0.75
                                                     ————
        In all,................................... $23.44
    Leaving a pecuniary profit,
        as I have elsewhere said, of..............  $8.71½.
</pre>

<p>
This is the result of my experience in raising beans. Plant the common small
white bush bean about the first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches
apart, being careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed. First look out for
worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if
it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves
almost clean as they go; and again, when the young tendrils make their
appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both buds and
young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all harvest as early as
possible, if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop; you may
save much loss by this means.
</p>

<p>
This further experience also I gained. I said to myself, I will not plant beans
and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is
not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and
see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and
sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. Alas! I said
this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and another, and another, and I
am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the seeds which I planted, if indeed
they <i>were</i> the seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their
vitality, and so did not come up. Commonly men will only be brave as their
fathers were brave, or timid. This generation is very sure to plant corn and
beans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the
first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. I saw an old man the other
day, to my astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the seventieth time at
least, and not for himself to lie down in! But why should not the New Englander
try new adventures, and not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and
grass crop, and his orchards,—raise other crops than these? Why concern
ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a
new generation of men? We should really be fed and cheered if when we met a man
we were sure to see that some of the qualities which I have named, which we all
prize more than those other productions, but which are for the most part
broadcast and floating in the air, had taken root and grown in him. Here comes
such a subtile and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice, though
the slightest amount or new variety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors
should be instructed to send home such seeds as these, and Congress help to
distribute them over all the land. We should never stand upon ceremony with
sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our
meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should
not meet thus in haste. Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to
have time; they are busy about their beans. We would not deal with a man thus
plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff between his work, not as
a mushroom, but partially risen out of the earth, something more than erect,
like swallows alighted and walking on the ground:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“And as he spake, his wings would now and then<br>
Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again,”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
so that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. Bread may
not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out
of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us,
to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic
joy.
</p>

<p>
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a
sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our
object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival,
nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our Cattle-shows and so called
Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his
calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast
which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to
the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit,
from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means
of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded
with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a
robber. Cato says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or
just, (<i>maximeque pius quæstus</i>), and according to Varro the old Romans
“called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and thought that they who cultivated
it led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of
King Saturn.”
</p>

<p>
We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the
prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays
alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he
beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated
like a garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and heat
with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though I value the seed of
these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year? This broad field which I
have looked at so long looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but away
from me to influences more genial to it, which water and make it green. These
beans have results which are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for
woodchucks partly? The ear of wheat (in Latin <i>spica</i>, obsoletely
<i>speca</i>, from <i>spe</i>, hope) should not be the only hope of the
husbandman; its kernel or grain (<i>granum</i> from <i>gerendo</i>, bearing) is
not all that it bears. How, then, can our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice
also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds? It
matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer’s barns. The
true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern
whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor
with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and
sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap09"></a>The Village</h2>

<p>
After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed
again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the
dust of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had
made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to
the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there,
circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and
which, taken in homœopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the
rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the
birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys;
instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction
from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the
grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men,
as curious to me as if they had been prairie dogs, each sitting at the mouth of
its burrow, or running over to a neighbor’s to gossip. I went there frequently
to observe their habits. The village appeared to me a great news room; and on
one side, to support it, as once at Redding &amp; Company’s on State Street,
they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some have
such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, and such
sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without
stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them like the Etesian winds, or
as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensibility to
pain,—otherwise it would often be painful to hear,—without affecting the
consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the village, to see
a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with
their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this way
and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning
against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to
prop it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind.
These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or
cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within
doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the
bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the
machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient
places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in
lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the gantlet,
and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. Of course, those who
were stationed nearest to the head of the line, where they could most see and
be seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their
places; and the few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in
the line began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside
into cow paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window tax. Signs
were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by the appetite, as
the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store
and the jeweller’s; and others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the
barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible
standing invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company expected
about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers,
either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is
recommended to those who run the gantlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high
things, like Orpheus, who, “loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre,
drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger.” Sometimes I bolted
suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much about
gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. I was even accustomed to
make an irruption into some houses, where I was well entertained, and after
learning the kernels and very last sieve-ful of news, what had subsided, the
prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together
much longer, I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the
woods again.
</p>

<p>
It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the
night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright
village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my
shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and
withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer
man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had
many a genial thought by the cabin fire “as I sailed.” I was never cast away
nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is
darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had
to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my
route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track
which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I
felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than
eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest
night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when
my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded
all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch,
I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought
that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it,
as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. Several times, when
a visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was
obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then
point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to
be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus
on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond. They lived about a
mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. A day or two
after one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the
night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning,
by which time, as there had been several heavy showers in the mean while, and
the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of
many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick
that you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. Some who live in the
outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to
put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a
mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not
knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable
experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow storm, even by
day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to
tell which way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has travelled it a
thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to
him as if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is
infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though
unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and
headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the
bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or
turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut
in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of
Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he
awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other
words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and
realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
</p>

<p>
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to
get a shoe from the cobbler’s, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I
have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of,
the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the
door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But,
wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions,
and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow
society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect,
might have run “amok” against society; but I preferred that society should run
“amok” against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released the
next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get
my dinner of huckleberries on Fair-Haven Hill. I was never molested by any
person but those who represented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the
desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I
never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days;
not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet
my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of
soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the
literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by
opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had
of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond,
I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed
anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly
gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am
convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and
robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have
got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope’s Homers
would soon get properly distributed.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
                “Nec bella fuerunt,<br>
Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes.”<br>
<br>
                “Nor wars did men molest,<br>
When only beechen bowls were in request.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
“You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love
virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like
the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the
wind passes over it, bends.”
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap10"></a>The Ponds</h2>

<p>
Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all
my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell,
into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, “to fresh woods and pastures
new,” or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and
blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The
fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who
raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take
that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the
partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries
who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been
known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential
part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market
cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not
one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country’s hills.
</p>

<p>
Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined some impatient
companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and
motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of
philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to
the ancient sect of Cœnobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher and
skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a
building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased
when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together
on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words
passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he
occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy.
Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing
to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. When, as was commonly the
case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking with a
paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and
dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts,
until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hill-side.
</p>

<p>
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the
perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon
travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the
forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in
dark summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the water’s
edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of
worms strung on a thread; and when we had done, far in the night, threw the
burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the
pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total
darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men
again. But now I had made my home by the shore.
</p>

<p>
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, I
have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day’s dinner,
spent the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls
and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown
bird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable and valuable to
me,—anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore,
surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the
surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen
line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet
below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in
the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it,
indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain
blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length you slowly
raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to the
upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had
wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint
jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It
seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward
into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as
it were with one hook.
</p>

<p class="p2">
The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does
not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long
frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its
depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep
green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference,
and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst
of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds
and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the
height of forty to eighty feet, though on the south-east and east they attain
to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a
quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord
waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another,
more proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows
the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance,
especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy
weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color. The sea, however, is said to
be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the
atmosphere. I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow,
both water and ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue “to be the
color of pure water, whether liquid or solid.” But, looking directly down into
our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is
blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying
between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed
from a hill-top it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a
yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green,
which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In
some lights, viewed even from a hill-top, it is of a vivid green next the
shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is
equally green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before
the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue
mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that
portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun
reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through the earth, melts first
and forms a narrow canal about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our
waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves
may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed
with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself;
and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so
as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light
blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more
cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the
opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is
a vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of the winter
sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of
its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. It
is well known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the
makers say, to its “body,” but a small piece of the same will be colorless. How
large a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I have
never proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one
looking directly down on it, and, like that of most ponds, imparts to the body
of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline
purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still
more unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and distorted withal,
produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a Michael Angelo.
</p>

<p>
The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the
depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling over it, you may see, many feet
beneath the surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch
long, yet the former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you
think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in
the winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in
order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on to the
ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods
directly into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out
of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw
the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and
gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have
stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I
had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel
which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the
neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end,
and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew
it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again.
</p>

<p>
The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving
stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many
places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not
for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its
bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is
nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all
in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently
overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not
detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few
small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all
which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and
bright like the element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the
water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where
there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which
have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is
brought up on anchors even in midwinter.
</p>

<p>
We have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in Nine Acre Corner, about
two and a half miles westerly; but, though I am acquainted with most of the
ponds within a dozen miles of this centre I do not know a third of this pure
and well-like character. Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired,
and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as
ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and
Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then
breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind,
and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall,
when still such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise
and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now
wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world
and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many unremembered nations’
literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain? or what nymphs presided over
it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her
coronet.
</p>

<p>
Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their
footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a
thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the
steep hill-side, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from
the water’s edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of
aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the
present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on
the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing
as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very
obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly
distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white
type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built
here may still preserve some trace of this.
</p>

<p>
The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period,
nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in
the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet
and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it
was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow
sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped
boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year
1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the
other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that a
few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the
woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since
converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and
now, in the summer of ’52, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or
as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow.
This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet
the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this
overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same
summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this
fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for
its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I
expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I
have ever known it. Flint’s Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance
occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also,
sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same
time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White
Pond.
</p>

<p>
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least; the
water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it makes it
difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up
about its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens, and
others, and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many
ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest
when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch
pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and
thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years
have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond
asserts its title to a shore, and thus the <i>shore</i> is <i>shorn</i>, and
the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake
on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time. When the water
is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous
red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, and to
the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain
themselves; and I have known the high-blueberry bushes about the shore, which
commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances.
</p>

<p>
Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My
townsmen have all heard the tradition, the oldest people tell me that they
heard it in their youth, that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon
a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep
into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this
vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus
engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden,
escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the
hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It
is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there
is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account
of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he
first came here with his divining rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward,
and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here.
As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by
the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding
hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been
obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the
pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so
that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If
the name was not derived from that of some English locality,—Saffron Walden,
for instance,—one might suppose that it was called originally <i>Walled-in</i>
Pond.
</p>

<p>
The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the year its water is as
cold as it is pure at all times; and I think that it is then as good as any, if
not the best, in the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air
is colder than springs and wells which are protected from it. The temperature
of the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat from five o’clock in
the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the thermometer
having been up to 65&deg; or 70&deg; some of the time, owing partly to the sun
on the roof, was 42&deg;, or one degree colder than the water of one of the
coldest wells in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling Spring
the same day was 45&deg;, or the warmest of any water tried, though it is the
coldest that I know of in summer, when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface
water is not mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm
as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In the
warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool
in the night, and remained so during the day; though I also resorted to a
spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a week old as the day it was
dipped, and had no taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by the
shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade
of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice.
</p>

<p>
There have been caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven pounds, to say
nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the
fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him, perch and
pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach
(<i>Leuciscus pulchellus</i>), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one
weighing four pounds,—I am thus particular because the weight of a fish is
commonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of
here;—also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long,
with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character,
which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond
is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief
boast. I have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three
different kinds; a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those caught
in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably
deep, which is the most common here; and another, golden-colored, and shaped
like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots,
intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The
specific name <i>reticulatus</i> would not apply to this; it should be
<i>guttatus</i> rather. These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their
size promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the fishes
which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer fleshed than
those in the river and most other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can
easily be distinguished from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new
varieties of some of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises,
and a few muscels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and
occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed off my
boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself
under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and
fall, the white-bellied swallows (<i>Hirundo bicolor</i>) skim over it, and the
peetweets (<i>Totanus macularius</i>) “teter” along its stony shores all
summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the
water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair
Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of
consequence which frequent it now.
</p>

<p>
You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern shore, where
the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond,
some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height,
consisting of small stones less than a hen’s egg in size, where all around is
bare sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice
for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they
are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar
to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know
not by what fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin.
These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom.
</p>

<p>
The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in my mind’s eye the
western indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully
scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest
unexplored coves between. The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so
distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills
which rise from the water’s edge; for the water in which it is reflected not
only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the
most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection
in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field
abuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each
sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven
a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of
the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man’s hand to be seen.
The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.
</p>

<p>
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s
eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The
fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and
the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.
</p>

<p>
Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm
September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line
indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, “the glassy surface of a
lake.” When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer
stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods,
separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think that you
could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim
over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below this line, as it were
by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward you are
obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as
well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you
survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where
the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by
their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or,
perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as
to touch it. It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or
four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and
another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is
revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its
surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten
glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful
like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother and darker
water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water
nymphs, resting on it. From a hill-top you can see a fish leap in almost any
part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but
it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful with
what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised,—this piscine murder will
out,—and from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations when they
are half a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-bug
(<i>Gyrinus</i>) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a
mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple
bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling
it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters
nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and
adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely
cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall
when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such
a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which
are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected
skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus
at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred,
the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can
leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples,
in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the
gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and
thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake!
Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and
stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a
spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light;
and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo!
</p>

<p>
In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set
round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair,
so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the
surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without
defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will
never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust,
can dim its surface ever fresh;—a mirror in which all impurity presented to it
sinks, swept and dusted by the sun’s hazy brush,—this the light
dust-cloth,—which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own
to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.
</p>

<p>
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually
receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature
between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water
itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the
streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its
surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and
mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.
</p>

<p>
The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of October,
when the severe frosts have come; and then and in November, usually, in a calm
day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One November afternoon,
in the calm at the end of a rain storm of several days’ duration, when the sky
was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the
pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish its
surface; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but the
sombre November colors of the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as
gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended almost
as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as
I was looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint
glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be
collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a
spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was
surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five
inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there, and
constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on
it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds,
I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming
impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock
of birds passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like
sails, set all around them. There were many such schools in the pond,
apparently improving the short season before winter would draw an icy shutter
over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if
a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached
carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash and rippling with their
tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took
refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the
waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of
water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface.
Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples on the
surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being full
of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already
the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I
anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were
produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had seared into the depths,
and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after
all.
</p>

<p>
An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was
dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it
all alive with ducks and other water fowl, and that there were many eagles
about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on
the shore. It was made of two white-pine logs dug out and pinned together, and
was cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted a great many
years before it became water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not
know whose it was; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for his
anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived
by the pond before the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest
at the bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to
the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and
disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of
an Indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which
perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into
the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the
lake. I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were many
large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been
blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was
cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared.
</p>

<p>
When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick
and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape vines had run over
the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The
hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so
high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an
amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when
I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled
my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer
forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the sand,
and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness
was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen
away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich,
if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor
do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s
desk. But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid
them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the
aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My
Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds
to sing when their groves are cut down?
</p>

<p>
Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark
surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it
lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its
water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a
pipe, to wash their dishes with!—to earn their Walden by the turning of a cock
or drawing of a plug! That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is
heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he
it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse,
with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the
country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and
thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?
</p>

<p>
Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best,
and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few
deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and
then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has
infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself
unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in
me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is
perennially young, and I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an
insect from its surface as of yore. It struck me again tonight, as if I had not
seen it almost daily for more than twenty years,—Why, here is Walden, the same
woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down
last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the same
thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy
and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it <i>may</i> be to me. It is
the work of a brave man surely, in whom there was no guile! He rounded this
water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will
bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by the same
reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you?
</p>

<p class="poem">
It is no dream of mine,<br>
To ornament a line;<br>
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven<br>
Than I live to Walden even.<br>
I am its stony shore,<br>
And the breeze that passes o’er;<br>
In the hollow of my hand<br>
Are its water and its sand,<br>
And its deepest resort<br>
Lies high in my thought.
</p>

<p>
The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the engineers and firemen
and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often,
are better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his
nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at
least during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State-street
and the engine’s soot. One proposes that it be called “God’s Drop.”
</p>

<p>
I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one
hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint’s Pond, which is more elevated,
by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly
and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds
through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a
little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by
living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has
acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively
impure waters of Flint’s Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever
go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave?
</p>

<p class="p2">
Flint’s, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake and inland sea, lies
about a mile east of Walden. It is much larger, being said to contain one
hundred and ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is
comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. A walk through the woods
thither was often my recreation. It was worth the while, if only to feel the
wind blow on your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remember the life of
mariners. I went a-chestnutting there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts
were dropping into the water and were washed to my feet; and one day, as I
crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I came upon
the mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more than the
impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes; yet its model was sharply
defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, with its veins. It was as
impressive a wreck as one could imagine on the sea-shore, and had as good a
moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond
shore, through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to admire the
ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of this pond, made firm and
hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the water, and the rushes
which grew in Indian file, in waving lines, corresponding to these marks, rank
behind rank, as if the waves had planted them. There also I have found, in
considerable quantities, curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or
roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, and
perfectly spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy
bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either solid grass, or
have a little sand in the middle. At first you would say that they were formed
by the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made of equally
coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season
of the year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear
down a material which has already acquired consistency. They preserve their
form when dry for an indefinite period.
</p>

<p>
<i>Flint’s Pond!</i> Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What right had
the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose
shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint,
who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which
he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which
settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and horny talons
from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;—so it is not named for me. I go not
there to see him nor to hear of him; who never <i>saw</i> it, who never bathed
in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word
for it, nor thanked God that he had made it. Rather let it be named from the
fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild
flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose
history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it
but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him,—him who
thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the shore;
who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters
within it; who regretted only that it was not English hay or cranberry
meadow,—there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes,—and would have
drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it
was no <i>privilege</i> to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm
where every thing has its price; who would carry the landscape, who would carry
his God, to market, if he could get any thing for him; who goes to market
<i>for</i> his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields
bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars;
who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till
they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are
poor,—poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands like a fungus in a
muck-heap, chambers for men, horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed,
all contiguous to one another! Stocked with men! A great grease-spot, redolent
of manures and buttermilk! Under a high state of cultivation, being manured
with the hearts and brains of men! As if you were to raise your potatoes in the
church-yard! Such is a model farm.
</p>

<p>
No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let
them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our lakes receive as true
names at least as the Icarian Sea, where “still the shore” a “brave attempt
resounds.”
</p>

<p class="p2">
Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint’s; Fair-Haven, an expansion
of Concord River, said to contain some seventy acres, is a mile south-west; and
White Pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond Fair-Haven. This
is my lake country. These, with Concord River, are my water privileges; and
night and day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry to them.
</p>

<p>
Since the woodcutters, and the railroad, and I myself have profaned Walden,
perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the
gem of the woods, is White Pond;—a poor name from its commonness, whether
derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In
these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so
much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. It has the
same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry
dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some of its bays which are
not so deep but that the reflection from the bottom tinges them, its waters are
of a misty bluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used to go there
to collect the sand by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I have
continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to call it
Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow-Pine Lake, from the following
circumstance. About fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch-pine, of
the kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct species,
projecting above the surface in deep water, many rods from the shore. It was
even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive
forest that formerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792, in a
“Topographical Description of the Town of Concord,” by one of its citizens, in
the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the author, after
speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds: “In the middle of the latter may be
seen, when the water is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the
place where it now stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface
of the water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures
fourteen inches in diameter.” In the spring of ’49 I talked with the man who
lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out this
tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as he could remember, it stood twelve
or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep.
It was in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had
resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take
out the old yellow-pine. He sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, and
hauled it over and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before he had
gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong end upward,
with the stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small end firmly
fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the big end,
and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit
only for fuel, if for that. He had some of it in his shed then. There were
marks of an axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might have
been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over into the pond, and
after the top had become waterlogged, while the butt-end was still dry and
light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty years old,
could not remember when it was not there. Several pretty large logs may still
be seen lying on the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the surface,
they look like huge water snakes in motion.
</p>

<p>
This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is little in it to
tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily, which requires mud, or the common
sweet flag, the blue flag (<i>Iris versicolor</i>) grows thinly in the pure
water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, where it is visited
by humming birds in June; and the color both of its bluish blades and its
flowers, and especially their reflections, are in singular harmony with the
glaucous water.
</p>

<p>
White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of
Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched,
they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn
the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our
successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor.
They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more
beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are
they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before
the farmer’s door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come.
Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their
plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or
maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most
alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap11"></a>Baker Farm</h2>

<p>
Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at
sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green
and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or
to the cedar wood beyond Flint’s Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue
berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the
creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps
where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white-spruce trees, and
toad-stools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more
beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable
winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alder-berry glows like
eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds,
and the wild-holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty,
and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair
for mortal taste. Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to
particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far
away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on
a hill-top; such as the black-birch, of which we have some handsome specimens
two feet in diameter; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its loose golden vest,
perfumed like the first; the beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully
lichen-painted, perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered
specimens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township,
supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with
beech nuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when
you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the <i>Celtis occidentalis</i>, or
false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a
shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in
the midst of the woods; and many others I could mention. These were the shrines
I visited both summer and winter.
</p>

<p>
Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow’s arch, which
filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves
around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake
of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it
had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on
the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow,
and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that
the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was
only natives that were so distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his
memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his
confinement in the castle of St. Angelo, a resplendent light appeared over the
shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy or France,
and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. This was
probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially
observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. Though
a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable
imagination like Cellini’s, it would be basis enough for superstition. Beside,
he tells us that he showed it to very few. But are they not indeed
distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all?
</p>

<p class="p2">
I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair-Haven, through the woods, to
eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an
adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung,
beginning,—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Thy entry is a pleasant field,<br>
Which some mossy fruit trees yield<br>
Partly to a ruddy brook,<br>
By gliding musquash undertook,<br>
And mercurial trout,<br>
Darting about.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I “hooked” the apples,
leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout. It was one of those
afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many events may
happen, a large portion of our natural life, though it was already half spent
when I started. By the way there came up a shower, which compelled me to stand
half an hour under a pine, piling boughs over my head, and wearing my
handkerchief for a shed; and when at length I had made one cast over the
pickerel-weed, standing up to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly in
the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble with such emphasis that
I could do no more than listen to it. The gods must be proud, thought I, with
such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for
shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but so much
the nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited:—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“And here a poet builded,<br>
    In the completed years,<br>
For behold a trivial cabin<br>
    That to destruction steers.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an Irishman,
and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his
father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the
rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its
father’s knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the
midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of
infancy, not knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the hope and
cynosure of the world, instead of John Field’s poor starveling brat. There we
sat together under that part of the roof which leaked the least, while it
showered and thundered without. I had sat there many times of old before the
ship was built that floated his family to America. An honest, hard-working, but
shiftless man plainly was John Field; and his wife, she too was brave to cook
so many successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; with round
greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve her condition one day;
with the never absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible
anywhere. The chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain,
stalked about the room like members of the family, too humanized methought to
roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly.
Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard he worked “bogging” for a
neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of
ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and his
little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father’s side the while, not
knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with my
experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I
too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living
like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly
cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and
how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own;
that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and
so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not
have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with
tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for
them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste
of his system,—and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader
than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain;
and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get
tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country
where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do
without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain
the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly
result from the use of such things. For I purposely talked to him as if he were
a philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows on the
earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men’s
beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need to study history to find
out what is best for his own culture. But alas! the culture of an Irishman is
an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him, that
as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing,
which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin
clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that I was dressed
like a gentleman, (which, however, was not the case,) and in an hour or two,
without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many fish as
I should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he
and his family would live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the
summer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared
with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough
to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was
sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their
port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion,
face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive
columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail;—thinking to deal
with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they fight at an
overwhelming disadvantage,—living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, and
failing so.
</p>

<p>
“Do you ever fish?” I asked. “Oh yes, I catch a mess now and then when I am
lying by; good perch I catch.” “What’s your bait?” “I catch shiners with
fish-worms, and bait the perch with them.” “You’d better go now, John,” said
his wife, with glistening and hopeful face; but John demurred.
</p>

<p>
The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair
evening; so I took my departure. When I had got without I asked for a drink,
hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my survey of the
premises; but there, alas! are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal,
and bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected,
water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delay passed out
to the thirsty one,—not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel
sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by
a skilfully directed under-current, I drank to genuine hospitality the
heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are
concerned.
</p>

<p>
As I was leaving the Irishman’s roof after the rain, bending my steps again to
the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and
bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an instant trivial to me
who had been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hill toward the
reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling
sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air, from I know not what quarter,
my Good Genius seemed to say,—Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day,—farther
and wider,—and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving.
Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the
dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night
overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no
worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature, like
these sedges and brakes, which will never become English hay. Let the thunder
rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers’ crops? that is not its errand to
thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not
to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not.
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and
selling, and spending their lives like serfs.
</p>

<p>
O Baker Farm!
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Landscape where the richest element<br>
Is a little sunshine innocent.” * *<br>
<br>
“No one runs to revel<br>
On thy rail-fenced lea.” * *<br>
<br>
“Debate with no man hast thou,<br>
    With questions art never perplexed,<br>
As tame at the first sight as now,<br>
    In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.” * *<br>
<br>
“Come ye who love,<br>
    And ye who hate,<br>
Children of the Holy Dove,<br>
    And Guy Faux of the state,<br>
And hang conspiracies<br>
From the tough rafters of the trees!”
</p>

<p>
Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their
household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath
over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily
steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and
discoveries every day, with new experience and character.
</p>

<p>
Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John Field,
with altered mind, letting go “bogging” ere this sunset. But he, poor man,
disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said
it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too.
Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by
it,—thinking to live by some derivative old country mode in this primitive new
country,—to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With
his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited
Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise
in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet
get <i>talaria</i> to their heels.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap12"></a>Higher Laws</h2>

<p>
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it
being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my
path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to
seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness
which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I
found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange
abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel
could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably
familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or,
as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive
rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than
the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it
to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the
animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite
young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and
detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little
acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their
lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves,
are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their
pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation.
She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is
naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper,
and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns
things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most
interested when science reports what those men already know practically or
instinctively, for that alone is a true <i>humanity</i>, or account of human
experience.
</p>

<p>
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he has not
so many public holidays, and men and boys do not play so many games as they do
in England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting
fishing and the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New
England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling piece between the ages
of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like
the preserves of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those
of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the
common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased
humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the
greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
</p>

<p>
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for
variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first
fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all
factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of
fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my
gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I
did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes
nor the worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that I
carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only
new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is
a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer
attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have
been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of
humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever
substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously
about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered,
yes,—remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education,—<i>make</i>
them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at
last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any
vegetable wilderness,—hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the
opinion of Chaucer’s nun, who
</p>

<p class="poem">
“yave not of the text a pulled hen<br>
That saith that hunters ben not holy men.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the
hunters are the “best men,” as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity
the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education
has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who
were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane
being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature
which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity
cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make
the usual phil-<i>anthropic</i> distinctions.
</p>

<p>
Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most
original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher,
until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes
his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and
fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.
In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make
a good shepherd’s dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd. I have been
surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping,
ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at
Walden Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or
children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did
not think that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a
long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the
while. They might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing
would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt such a
clarifying process would be going on all the while. The governor and his
council faintly remember the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were
boys; but now they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know
it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the
legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be
used there; but they know nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle
for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in
civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of
development.
</p>

<p>
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without falling a
little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I have skill at it,
and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives from
time to time, but always when I have done I feel that it would have been better
if I had not fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation,
yet so are the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this instinct
in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am
less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am
no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should
again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is
something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to see
where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to
wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and
free from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher and scullion and
cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak
from an unusually complete experience. The practical objection to animal food
in my case was its uncleanness; and, besides, when I had caught and cleaned and
cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was
insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or
a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many
of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or
coffee, &amp;c.; not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to
them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to
animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared
more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never
did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man
who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the
best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and
from much food of any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists,
I find it in Kirby and Spence, that “some insects in their perfect state,
though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them;” and they lay it
down as “a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less
than in that of larvæ. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a
butterfly,” . . “and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly,” content
themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen
under the wings of the butterfly still represents the larva. This is the
tid-bit which tempts his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the
larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without
fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.
</p>

<p>
It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend
the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they
should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The
fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor
interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish,
and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most
men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a
dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them
by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen
and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is
to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to
flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is
a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by
preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way,—as any one who will go
to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn,—and he will be regarded
as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more
innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt
that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement,
to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off
eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
</p>

<p>
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which
are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead
him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.
The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length
prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his
genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps
no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a
life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that
you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and
sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,—that is your
success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to
bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being
appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They
are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are
never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat
as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a
little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
</p>

<p>
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a
fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk
water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an
opium-eater’s heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite
degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man;
wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with
a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall
when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently
slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.
Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long
continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell
the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects.
I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser
than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be
regretted, with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these
questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice
is “nowhere,” my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself
as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that “he
who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists,”
that is, is not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even
in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that
the Vedant limits this privilege to “the time of distress.”
</p>

<p>
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in
which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental
perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired
through the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hill-side had fed
my genius. “The soul not being mistress of herself,” says Thseng-tseu, “one
looks, and one does not see; one listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and
one does not know the savor of food.” He who distinguishes the true savor of
his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan
may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman
to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but
the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the
quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a
viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the
worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and
other such savage tid-bits, the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a
calf’s foot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to
the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I,
can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.
</p>

<p>
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between
virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the music
of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which
thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe’s Insurance
Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment
that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the
universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most
sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and
he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop
but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off,
is heard as music, a proud sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.
</p>

<p>
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher
nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly
expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies.
Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it
may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The
other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and
tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from
the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and
purity. “That in which men differ from brute beasts,” says Mencius, “is a thing
very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve
it carefully.” Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to
purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him
forthwith. “A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the
body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind’s
approximation to God.” Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control
every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the
grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which,
when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent
invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are
called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which
succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By
turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is
assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being
established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the
inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods
or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the
creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our
disgrace.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“How happy’s he who hath due place assigned<br>
To his beasts and disafforested his mind!<br>
                *    *    *    *    *<br>
Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev’ry beast,<br>
And is not ass himself to all the rest!<br>
Else man not only is the herd of swine,<br>
But he’s those devils too which did incline<br>
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse.”
</p>

<p>
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the
same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but
one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to
know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with
purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows
himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is
chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have
heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the
rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth
ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of
mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove,
whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you
would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at
cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome.
What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen,
if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many
systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with
shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of
rites merely.
</p>

<p>
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject,—I care
not how obscene my <i>words</i> are,—but because I cannot speak of them without
betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of
sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot
speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in
some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law.
Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to
modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine,
and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by
calling these things trifles.
</p>

<p>
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships,
after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead.
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood
and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any
meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
</p>

<p>
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day’s work, his
mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to
re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his
neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his
thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound
harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but the burden of his
thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself
planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little.
It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off.
But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from
that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in
him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in
which he lived. A voice said to him,—Why do you stay here and live this mean
moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars
twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and
actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new
austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat
himself with ever increasing respect.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap13"></a>Brute Neighbors</h2>

<p>
Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my
house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as
much a social exercise as the eating of it.
</p>

<p>
<i>Hermit.</i> I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much
as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep
upon their roosts,—no flutter from them. Was that a farmer’s noon horn which
sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt
beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does
not eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would live there
where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? And O, the housekeeping!
to keep bright the devil’s door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day!
Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and
dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. O, they swarm; the sun is too warm
there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring,
and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.—Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves.
Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the
lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain?
It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble.—Eh, Mr. Poet, is it
you? How do you like the world to-day?
</p>

<p>
<i>Poet.</i> See those clouds; how they hang! That’s the greatest thing I have
seen to-day. There’s nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in
foreign lands,—unless when we were off the coast of Spain. That’s a true
Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten
to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That’s the true industry for poets. It is
the only trade I have learned. Come, let’s along.
</p>

<p>
<i>Hermit.</i> I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I will go
with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious meditation. I think
that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we
may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. Angle-worms are
rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with
manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly
equal to that of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen; and
this you may have all to yourself to-day. I would advise you to set in the
spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I
think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you
look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you
choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of
fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of the distances.
</p>

<p>
<i>Hermit alone.</i> Let me see; where was I? Methinks I was nearly in this
frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or
a-fishing? If I should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another so
sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being resolved into the
essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come
back to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for them. When they make
us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts have left no
track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I was thinking of? It
was a very hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Con-fut-see; they
may fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a
budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of a kind.
</p>

<p>
<i>Poet.</i> How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole
ones, beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they will do for
the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those village worms are
quite too large; a shiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer.
</p>

<p>
<i>Hermit.</i> Well, then, let’s be off. Shall we to the Concord? There’s good
sport there if the water be not too high.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has man just
these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could
have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay &amp; Co. have put animals to
their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry
some portion of our thoughts.
</p>

<p>
The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to
have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the
village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much.
When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before
I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out
regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had
never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over
my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by
short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length,
as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along
my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the
latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held
still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it,
sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and
walked away.
</p>

<p>
A phœbe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew
against the house. In June the partridge (<i>Tetrao umbellus</i>,) which is so
shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the
front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her
behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on
your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them
away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a
traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the
old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail
her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The
parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that
you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young
squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only
their mother’s directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make
them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your
eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my
open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother
and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is
this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one
accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same
position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most
birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The
remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very
memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely
the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was
not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods
do not yield another such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such a
limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such
a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or
bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble.
It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some
alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother’s call which gathers
them again. These were my hens and chickens.
</p>

<p>
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the
woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by
hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live here! He grows to be four
feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a
glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house
is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested
an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read
a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing
from under Brister’s Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was
through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines,
into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot,
under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. I
had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip
up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost
every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the wood-cock
led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down
the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would
leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within
four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention,
and get off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint
wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep
of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle-doves
sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white-pines
over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was
particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in
some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit
themselves to you by turns.
</p>

<p>
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out
to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the
one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely
contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but
struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I
was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it
was not a <i>duellum</i>, but a <i>bellum</i>, a war between two races of ants,
the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one
black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my
wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red
and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only
battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red
republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every
side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could
hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that
were fast locked in each other’s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the
chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went
out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his
adversary’s front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an
instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already
caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him
from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of
several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs.
Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their
battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the mean while there came along a single red
ant on the hill-side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either
had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the
latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to
return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had
nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus.
He saw this unequal combat from afar,—for the blacks were nearly twice the size
of the red,—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half
an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the
black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right
fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were
three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which
put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this
time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some
eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and
cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had
been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly
there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history
of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the
numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers
and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on
the patriots’ side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a
Buttrick,—“Fire! for God’s sake fire!”—and thousands shared the fate of Davis
and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a
principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a
three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as
important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of
Bunker Hill, at least.
</p>

<p>
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were
struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my
window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the
first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the
near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast
was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black
warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the
dark carbuncles of the sufferer’s eyes shone with ferocity such as war only
could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I
looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their
bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like
ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as
ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and
with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest
himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I
raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state.
Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in
some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would
not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor
the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my
feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and
carnage, of a human battle before my door.
</p>

<p>
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and
the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author
who appears to have witnessed them. “Æneas Sylvius,” say they, “after giving a
very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great
and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,” adds that “‘This action was
fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas
Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle
with the greatest fidelity.’ A similar engagement between great and small ants
is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are
said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their
giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the
expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.” The battle which I
witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage
of Webster’s Fugitive-Slave Bill.
</p>

<p>
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling cellar,
sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge of his master,
and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks’ holes; led
perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still
inspire a natural terror in its denizens;—now far behind his guide, barking
like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for
scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining
that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was
surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they
rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most
domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in
the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native
there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with
young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had
their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I lived in
the woods there was what was called a “winged cat” in one of the farm-houses in
Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker’s. When I called to see her in June,
1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont, (I am not sure
whether it was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun,) but her
mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year
before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was of a
dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and
had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and
flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two
and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the
under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They
gave me a pair of her “wings,” which I keep still. There is no appearance of a
membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other
wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific
hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This
would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for
why should not a poet’s cat be winged as well as his horse?
</p>

<p>
In the fall the loon (<i>Colymbus glacialis</i>) came, as usual, to moult and
bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had
risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in
gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical
balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves,
at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond,
some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must
come up there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and
rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though
his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their
discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all
water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and
unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail
of water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of
my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order
to see how he would manœuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so that I
did not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I
was more than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
</p>

<p>
As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for
such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down,
having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from
the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh
and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up
I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he
would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time,
for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and
with more reason than before. He manœuvred so cunningly that I could not get
within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface,
turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land,
and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the
widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was
surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution.
He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from
it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine
his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the
pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary’s checker disappears
beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will
appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of
me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and
so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge
again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond,
beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he
had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is
said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the
surface, with hooks set for trout,—though Walden is deeper than that. How
surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere
speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as
surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice
I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to
reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to
rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he
would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface
one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But
why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the
moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray
him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of
the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he
seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first.
It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when
he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His
usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl;
but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long
way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a
wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and
deliberately howls. This was his looning,—perhaps the wildest sound that is
ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he
laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the
sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he
broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of
the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length,
having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if
calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from
the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and
I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was
angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous
surface.
</p>

<p>
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold
the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have
less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would
sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height,
from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes
in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they
would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant
part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the
middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason
that I do.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap14"></a>House-Warming</h2>

<p>
In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with
clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food. There too
I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants
of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake,
leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel
and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York;
destined to be <i>jammed</i>, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there.
So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of
the torn and drooping plant. The barberry’s brilliant fruit was likewise food
for my eyes merely; but I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling,
which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe I
laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that season to roam
the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln,—they now sleep their long sleep
under the railroad,—with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burrs with
in my hand, for I did not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of
leaves and the loud reproofs of the red-squirrels and the jays, whose
half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burrs which they had selected
were sure to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees.
They grew also behind my house, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed
it, was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but
the squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks
early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burrs before they fell. I
relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed
wholly of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for
bread. Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. Digging one day for
fish-worms, I discovered the ground-nut (<i>Apios tuberosa</i>) on its string,
the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to
doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not
dreamed it. I had often since seen its crimpled red velvety blossom supported
by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation has
well nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, much like that of a
frostbitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted. This tuber
seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them
simply here at some future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving
grain-fields this humble root, which was once the <i>totem</i> of an Indian
tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild
Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will
probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the
crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the
Indian’s God in the south-west, whence he is said to have brought it; but the
now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of
frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance
and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva must
have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry
commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works
of art.
</p>

<p>
Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned
scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens
diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their
color told! And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came
out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each
morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished
by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.
</p>

<p>
The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October, as to winter quarters, and
settled on my windows within and on the walls over-head, sometimes deterring
visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept
some of them out, but I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them; I even
felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They
never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me; and they gradually
disappeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeakable
cold.
</p>

<p>
Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used
to resort to the north-east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the
pitch-pine woods and the stony shore, made the fire-side of the pond; it is so
much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than
by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which
the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.
</p>

<p class="p2">
When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks being second-hand
ones required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of
the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old,
and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which
men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves grow
harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a
trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of Mesopotamia
are built of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins
of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still. However
that may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so
many violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had been in a chimney
before, though I did not read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out
as many fire-place bricks as I could find, to save work and waste, and I filled
the spaces between the bricks about the fire-place with stones from the pond
shore, and also made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. I
lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house. Indeed,
I worked so deliberately, that though I commenced at the ground in the morning,
a course of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for my pillow at
night; yet I did not get a stiff neck for it that I remember; my stiff neck is
of older date. I took a poet to board for a fortnight about those times, which
caused me to be put to it for room. He brought his own knife, though I had two,
and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth. He shared with me
the labors of cooking. I was pleased to see my work rising so square and solid
by degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to
endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent an independent structure,
standing on the ground and rising through the house to the heavens; even after
the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and
independence are apparent. This was toward the end of summer. It was now
November.
</p>

<p class="p2">
The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it took many weeks of
steady blowing to accomplish it, it is so deep. When I began to have a fire at
evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly
well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some
cheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough
brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high overhead. My
house never pleased my eye so much after it was plastered, though I was obliged
to confess that it was more comfortable. Should not every apartment in which
man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity over-head, where flickering
shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable
to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive
furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to
use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had got a couple of old fire-dogs to
keep the wood from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot form on the
back of the chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire with more right and
more satisfaction than usual. My dwelling was small, and I could hardly
entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and
remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one
room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever
satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house,
I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (<i>patremfamilias</i>)
must have in his rustic villa “cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti
lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriæ erit,” that is, “an
oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard
times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory.” I had in my cellar
a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on
my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck
each.
</p>

<p>
I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden
age, of enduring materials, and without ginger-bread work, which shall still
consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without
ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower
heaven over one’s head,—useful to keep off rain and snow; where the king and
queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to
the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous
house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where
some may live in the fire-place, some in the recess of a window, and some on
settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on
rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when
you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary
traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey;
such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing
all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see
all the treasures of the house at one view, and every thing hangs upon its peg,
that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, store-house,
and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so
convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects
to the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven that bakes your bread, and the
necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is
not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes
requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the
cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without
stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest, and
you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of
its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the
house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a
particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there,—in solitary
confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to <i>his</i> hearth, but has
got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality
is the art of <i>keeping</i> you at the greatest distance. There is as much
secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that
I have been on many a man’s premises, and might have been legally ordered off,
but I am not aware that I have been in many men’s houses. I might visit in my
old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have
described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will
be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.
</p>

<p>
It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve
and degenerate into <i>palaver</i> wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness
from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched,
through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so
far from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a
dinner, commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near enough to Nature and Truth
to borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar, who dwells away in the North
West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen?
</p>

<p>
However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to stay and eat a
hasty-pudding with me; but when they saw that crisis approaching they beat a
hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its foundations.
Nevertheless, it stood through a great many hasty-puddings.
</p>

<p>
I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought over some whiter and
cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a
sort of conveyance which would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary.
My house had in the mean while been shingled down to the ground on every side.
In lathing I was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a single blow
of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to
the wall neatly and rapidly. I remembered the story of a conceited fellow, who,
in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to
workmen. Venturing one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his
cuffs, seized a plasterer’s board, and having loaded his trowel without mishap,
with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture
thitherward; and straightway, to his complete discomfiture, received the whole
contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired anew the economy and convenience of
plastering, which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome
finish, and I learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is liable.
I was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were which drank up all the
moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water
it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the previous winter made a small
quantity of lime by burning the shells of the <i>Unio fluviatilis</i>, which
our river affords, for the sake of the experiment; so that I knew where my
materials came from. I might have got good limestone within a mile or two and
burned it myself, if I had cared to do so.
</p>

<p class="p2">
The pond had in the mean while skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest
coves, some days or even weeks before the general freezing. The first ice is
especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and
affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it
is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a
skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your
leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and
the water is necessarily always smooth then. There are many furrows in the sand
where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for
wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of cadis worms made of minute grains of
white quartz. Perhaps these have creased it, for you find some of their cases
in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to make. But the ice
itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve the earliest
opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely the morning after it
freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared
to be within it, are against its under surface, and that more are continually
rising from the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark,
that is, you see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to
an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your
face reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty or forty of them to
a square inch. There are also already within the ice narrow oblong
perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex
upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one
directly above another, like a string of beads. But these within the ice are
not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on
stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in
air with them, which formed very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath.
One day when I came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found that
those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed,
as I could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last
two days had been very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now
transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but
opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than
before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run
together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over
another, but often like silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping
another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the
ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. Being curious to know
what position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out
a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The new
ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included between the
two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was
flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an
inch deep by four inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find that directly
under the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a
saucer reversed, to the height of five eighths of an inch in the middle,
leaving a thin partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly an
eighth of an inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition
had burst out downward, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest
bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number of
minute bubbles which I had first seen against the under surface of the ice were
now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a
burning glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. These are the little
air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop.
</p>

<p class="p2">
At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering,
and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to
do so till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark with
a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with
snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair
Haven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from the village at ten
or eleven o’clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else
ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where
they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their leader as they
hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night
of the 22d of December, Flint’s and other shallower ponds and the river having
been frozen ten days or more; in ’46, the 16th; in ’49, about the 31st; and in
’50, about the 27th of December; in ’52, the 5th of January; in ’53, the 31st
of December. The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of
November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet
farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my
house and within my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the
dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or
sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest
fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I sacrificed it to
Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Terminus. How much more interesting an
event is that man’s supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay,
you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat are sweet.
There are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of
our towns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some
think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also the drift-wood of
the pond. In the course of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch-pine
logs with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was
built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. After soaking two years and then
lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. I
amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond,
nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on
my shoulder, and the other on the ice; or I tied several logs together with a
birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the
end, dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged and almost as heavy as
lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire; nay, I thought that
they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the
water, burned longer, as in a lamp.
</p>

<p>
Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says that “the
encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the
borders of the forest,” were “considered as great nuisances by the old forest
law, and were severely punished under the name of <i>purprestures</i>, as
tending <i>ad terrorem ferarum—ad nocumentum forestæ</i>, &amp;c.,” to the
frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest. But I was interested
in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or
woodchoppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if
any part was burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a
grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the
proprietors; nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the proprietors themselves.
I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe
which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a
consecrated grove (<i>lucum conlucare</i>), that is, would believe that it is
sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever
god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my
family, and children, &amp;c.
</p>

<p>
It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in
this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After
all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as
precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their
bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago,
says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia “nearly
equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this
immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and
is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains.” In
this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is,
how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics and
tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to
attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of
gleaning after the woodchopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to
the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts; the New Englander and the
New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robinhood, Goody Blake
and Harry Gill, in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the
scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to
warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.
</p>

<p>
Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine
before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing
work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter
days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got
out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was ploughing, they warmed
me twice, once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the
fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised
to get the village blacksmith to “jump” it; but I jumped him, and, putting a
hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at
least hung true.
</p>

<p>
A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to remember
how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth.
In previous years I had often gone “prospecting” over some bare hill-side,
where a pitch-pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots.
They are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least,
will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable
mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the
earth four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel you
explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as
if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth. But commonly I
kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my
shed before the snow came. Green hickory finely split makes the woodchopper’s
kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once in a while I got a little of
this. When the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too
gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer
from my chimney, that I was awake.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,<br>
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,<br>
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,<br>
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;<br>
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form<br>
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;<br>
By night star-veiling, and by day<br>
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;<br>
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,<br>
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
</p>

<p>
Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little of that, answered my purpose
better than any other. I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk
in a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it
would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It
was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that
lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One day, however,
as I was splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at the window and
see if the house was not on fire; it was the only time I remember to have been
particularly anxious on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught
my bed, and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as
my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof
was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost
any winter day.
</p>

<p>
The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug
bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even
the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive
the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. Some of my friends
spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal
merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but
man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and
warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can
move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the
midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamp
lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a
little time for the fine arts. Though, when I had been exposed to the rudest
blasts a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the
genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and prolonged my
life. But the most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in this respect,
nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may be at last
destroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads any time with a little sharper
blast from the north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a
little colder Friday, or greater snow, would put a period to man’s existence on
the globe.
</p>

<p>
The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for economy, since I did not own
the forest; but it did not keep fire so well as the open fire-place. Cooking
was then, for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process.
It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast
potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion. The stove not only took up
room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had
lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The laborer, looking
into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which
they have accumulated during the day. But I could no longer sit and look into
the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me with new force.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
     “Never, bright flame, may be denied to me<br>
     Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy.<br>
     What but my hopes shot upward e’er so bright?<br>
     What but my fortunes sunk so low in night?<br>
     <br>
     Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,<br>
     Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all?<br>
     Was thy existence then too fanciful<br>
     For our life’s common light, who are so dull?<br>
     Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold<br>
     With our congenial souls? secrets too bold?<br>
     Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit<br>
     Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,<br>
     Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire<br>
     Warms feet and hands—nor does to more aspire;<br>
     By whose compact utilitarian heap<br>
     The present may sit down and go to sleep,<br>
     Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,<br>
     And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked.”
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap15"></a>Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors</h2>

<p>
I weathered some merry snow storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by
my fire-side, while the snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of
the owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who came
occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village. The elements, however,
abetted me in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I
had once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they
lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only
made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide. For
human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods.
Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands
resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border
it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and
dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. In some
places, within my own remembrance, the pines would scrape both sides of a
chaise at once, and women and children who were compelled to go this way to
Lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part of the
distance. Though mainly but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the
woodman’s team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and
lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch from the
village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on a foundation of
logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present dusty
highway, from the Stratton, now the Alms House, Farm, to Brister’s Hill.
</p>

<p>
East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan
Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, who built his slave a house,
and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;—Cato, not Uticensis, but
Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who
remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he
should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at
last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato’s
half-obliterated cellar hole still remains, though known to few, being
concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is now filled with the
smooth sumach (<i>Rhus glabra</i>,) and one of the earliest species of
golden-rod (<i>Solidago stricta</i>) grows there luxuriantly.
</p>

<p>
Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town, Zilpha, a colored
woman, had her little house, where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the
Walden Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable
voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English
soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens
were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. One
old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he passed her house one noon
he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling pot,—“Ye are all bones,
bones!” I have seen bricks amid the oak copse there.
</p>

<p>
Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a
handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once,—there where grow still the
apple-trees which Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their
fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in
the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves
of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is
styled “Sippio Brister,”—Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—“a
man of color,” as if he were discolored. It also told me, with staring
emphasis, when he died; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he
ever lived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet
pleasantly,—large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night,
such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since.
</p>

<p>
Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the woods, are marks of
some homestead of the Stratton family; whose orchard once covered all the slope
of Brister’s Hill, but was long since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a
few stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty
village tree.
</p>

<p>
Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed’s location, on the other side of the way,
just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the pranks of a demon not
distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding
part in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mythological
character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise
of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole
family,—New-England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted
here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tint to
them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern
stood; the well the same, which tempered the traveller’s beverage and refreshed
his steed. Here then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and
went their ways again.
</p>

<p>
Breed’s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been
unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous
boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the
village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant’s Gondibert, that winter
that I labored with a lethargy,—which, by the way, I never knew whether to
regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving
himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to
keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read
Chalmers’ collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my
Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot
haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys,
and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far
south over the woods,—we who had run to fires before,—barn, shop, or
dwelling-house, or all together. “It’s Baker’s barn,” cried one. “It is the
Codman place,” affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood,
as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted “Concord to the rescue!” Wagons shot
past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest,
the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever
and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost of
all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the
alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our
senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and actually felt
the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were
there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought
to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone
and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed
our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the
great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including Bascom’s shop,
and, between ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our
“tub,” and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and
universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any
mischief,—returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except
that passage in the preface about wit being the soul’s powder,—“but most of
mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder.”
</p>

<p>
It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the following night, about
the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark,
and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both
its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on
his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders
beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been working far off in
the river meadows all day, and had improved the first moments that he could
call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the
cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as
if there was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones,
where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house
being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the sympathy
which my mere presence implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness
permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be
burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his
father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a
burden had been fastened to the heavy end,—all that he could now cling to,—to
convince me that it was no common “rider.” I felt it, and still remark it
almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family.
</p>

<p>
Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall,
in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward
Lincoln.
</p>

<p>
Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to
the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthen
ware, and left descendants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly
goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the
sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and “attached a chip,” for form’s
sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that he could
lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who was
carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse against my field and
inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He had long ago bought a potter’s wheel
of him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter’s
clay and wheel in Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we
use were not such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees
like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was
ever practiced in my neighborhood.
</p>

<p>
The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I
have spelt his name with coil enough,) who occupied Wyman’s tenement,—Col.
Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he
had lived I should have made him fight his battles over again. His trade here
was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods.
All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who had seen the
world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. He
wore a great coat in mid-summer, being affected with the trembling delirium,
and his face was the color of carmine. He died in the road at the foot of
Brister’s Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered
him as a neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades avoided
it as “an unlucky castle,” I visited it. There lay his old clothes curled up by
use, as if they were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on
the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. The last could never have
been the symbol of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard
of Brister’s Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds
spades and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One black chicken which the
administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not even croaking,
awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there
was the dim outline of a garden, which had been planted but had never received
its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it was now
harvest time. It was over-run with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last
stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly
stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo; but no
warm cap or mittens would he want more.
</p>

<p>
Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried
cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel-bushes,
and sumachs growing in the sunny sward there; some pitch-pine or gnarled oak
occupies what was the chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black-birch, perhaps,
waves where the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, where once
a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deep,—not to be
discovered till some late day,—with a flat stone under the sod, when the last
of the race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be,—the covering up of
wells! coincident with the opening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like
deserted fox burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir
and bustle of human life, and “fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,” in
some form and dialect or other were by turns discussed. But all I can learn of
their conclusions amounts to just this, that “Cato and Brister pulled wool;”
which is about as edifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy.
</p>

<p>
Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the
sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked
by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children’s hands, in
front-yard plots,—now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving
place to new-rising forests;—the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that
family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two
eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily
watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear
that shaded it, and grown man’s garden and orchard, and tell their story
faintly to the lone wanderer a half century after they had grown up and
died,—blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I
mark its still tender, civil, cheerful, lilac colors.
</p>

<p>
But this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail while Concord
keeps its ground? Were there no natural advantages,—no water privileges,
forsooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister’s Spring,—privilege to
drink long and healthy draughts at these, all unimproved by these men but to
dilute their glass. They were universally a thirsty race. Might not the basket,
stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business
have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a
numerous posterity have inherited the land of their fathers? The sterile soil
would at least have been proof against a low-land degeneracy. Alas! how little
does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
Again, perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house
raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet.
</p>

<p>
I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver
me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are
ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and
before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. With such
reminiscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.
</p>

<p class="p2">
At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay deepest no wanderer
ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as
snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have
survived for a long time buried in drifts, even without food; or like that
early settler’s family in the town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage was
completely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an Indian
found it only by the hole which the chimney’s breath made in the drift, and so
relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned himself about me; nor
needed he, for the master of the house was at home. The Great Snow! How
cheerful it is to hear of! When the farmers could not get to the woods and
swamps with their teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before
their houses, and when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps,
ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the next spring.
</p>

<p>
In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to my house, about
half a mile long, might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with
wide intervals between the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly the
same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, stepping
deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep
tracks,—to such routine the winter reduces us,—yet often they were filled with
heaven’s own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather
my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the
deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an
old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to
droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir-trees;
wading to the tops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deep
on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or
sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the
hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon I amused myself by
watching a barred owl (<i>Strix nebulosa</i>) sitting on one of the lower dead
limbs of a white-pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within
a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet,
but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out his
neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon
fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after
watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat,
winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their
lids, by which he preserved a peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut
eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague
object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noise or
my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his
perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched
himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected
breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the
pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight,
feeling his twilight way as it were with his sensitive pinions, he found a new
perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day.
</p>

<p>
As I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through the meadows, I
encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play;
and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to
it the other also. Nor was it much better by the carriage road from Brister’s
Hill. For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian, when the contents of
the broad open fields were all piled up between the walls of the Walden road,
and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveller. And
when I returned new drifts would have formed, through which I floundered, where
the busy north-west wind had been depositing the powdery snow round a sharp
angle in the road, and not a rabbit’s track, nor even the fine print, the small
type, of a meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in
mid-winter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage
still put forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally
awaited the return of spring.
</p>

<p>
Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my walk at evening I
crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and found his
pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his
pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the
cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far
through the woods sought my house, to have a social “crack;” one of the few of
his vocation who are “men on their farms;” who donned a frock instead of a
professor’s gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state
as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple
times, when men sat about large fires in cold bracing weather, with clear
heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which
wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest
shells are commonly empty.
</p>

<p>
The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest snows and most
dismal tempests, was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a
philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated
by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him
out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. We made that small house ring with
boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amends
then to Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway was still and deserted in
comparison. At suitable intervals there were regular salutes of laughter, which
might have been referred indifferently to the last uttered or the forth-coming
jest. We made many a “bran new” theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which
combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which
philosophy requires.
</p>

<p>
I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another
welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and
rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me
some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers,—Connecticut
gave him to the world,—he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares,
his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing
for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the
man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a
better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the
last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the
present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws
unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will
come to him for advice.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
     “How blind that cannot see serenity!”
</p>

<p>
A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old
Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making
plain the image engraven in men’s bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced
and leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces children,
beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it
commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary
on the world’s highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on
his sign should be printed, “Entertainment for man, but not for his beast.
Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right
road.” He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I
chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and
talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no
institution in it, freeborn, <i>ingenuus</i>. Whichever way we turned, it
seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the
beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the
overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die;
Nature cannot spare him.
</p>

<p>
Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them,
trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine.
We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the
fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the
bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the
western sky, and the mother-o’-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve
there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there,
and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation.
Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with whom was a New England Night’s
Entertainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old
settler I have spoken of,—we three,—it expanded and racked my little house; I
should not dare to say how many pounds’ weight there was above the atmospheric
pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be
calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak;—but I had
enough of that kind of oakum already picked.
</p>

<p>
There was one other with whom I had “solid seasons,” long to be remembered, at
his house in the village, and who looked in upon me from time to time; but I
had no more for society there.
</p>

<p>
There too, as every where, I sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes.
The Vishnu Purana says, “The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his
court-yard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await
the arrival of a guest.” I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited
long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching
from the town.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap16"></a>Winter Animals</h2>

<p>
When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter
routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar
landscape around them. When I crossed Flint’s Pond, after it was covered with
snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so
unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin’s
Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in
which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an
indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish
dogs, passed for sealers or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous
creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this
course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road
and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond,
which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high
above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden,
being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted
drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly
two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their
streets. There, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals,
from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard
well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or
bristling with icicles.
</p>

<p>
For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but
melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen
earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very <i>lingua
vernacula</i> of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never
saw the bird while it was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter
evening without hearing it; <i>Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo,</i> sounded
sonorously, and the first three syllables accented somewhat like <i>how der
do</i>; or sometimes <i>hoo hoo</i> only. One night in the beginning of winter,
before the pond froze over, about nine o’clock, I was startled by the loud
honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings
like a tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. They passed over
the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their
commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable
cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever
heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the
goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from Hudson’s Bay
by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and
<i>boo-hoo</i> him out of Concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the
citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you think I am ever caught
napping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as
yourself? <i>Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!</i> It was one of the most thrilling
discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a discriminating ear, there were in
it the elements of a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard.
</p>

<p>
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that
part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over,
were troubled with flatulency and had dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of
the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and
in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a
third of an inch wide.
</p>

<p>
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight
nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly and
demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking
expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the
streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a
civilization going on among brutes as well as men? They seemed to me to be
rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting their
transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light,
barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.
</p>

<p>
Usually the red squirrel (<i>Sciurus Hudsonius</i>) waked me in the dawn,
coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out
of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I threw out half a
bushel of ears of sweet-corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow crust by
my door, and was amused by watching the motions of the various animals which
were baited by it. In the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and
made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded
me much entertainment by their manœuvres. One would approach at first warily
through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a
leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and
waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his “trotters,” as if it were
for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than
half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and
a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on
him,—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of
the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl,—wasting more
time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole
distance,—I never saw one walk,—and then suddenly, before you could say Jack
Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock
and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the
universe at the same time,—for no reason that I could ever detect, or he
himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and
selecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way
to the top-most stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in
the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time
to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about;
till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only
the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick
by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he
would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if
suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again,
or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was
in the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a
forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably
bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to
the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent
pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling
all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and
horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;—a singularly
frivolous and whimsical fellow;—and so he would get off with it to where he
lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant,
and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various
directions.
</p>

<p>
At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard long before, as
they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in a
stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer,
and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a
pitch-pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too
big for their throats and chokes them; and after great labor they disgorge it,
and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their
bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but
the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what
was their own.
</p>

<p>
Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs the
squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig, and, placing them under their
claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect
in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A
little flock of these tit-mice came daily to pick a dinner out of my wood-pile,
or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling
of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly <i>day day day</i>, or more
rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery <i>phe-be</i> from the wood-side.
They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I
was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow
alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden,
and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should
have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to
be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the
nearest way.
</p>

<p>
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of winter,
when the snow was melted on my south hill-side and about my wood-pile, the
partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever
side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring
the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the
sun-beams like golden dust; for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter.
It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, “sometimes plunges from
on wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two.” I
used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods
at sunset to “bud” the wild apple-trees. They will come regularly every evening
to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the
distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I am glad that the
partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature’s own bird which lives on buds
and diet-drink.
</p>

<p>
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a
pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to
resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting horn at
intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no
fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing
their Actæon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a single
brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me
that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe,
or if he would run in a straight line away no fox-hound could overtake him;
but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they
come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters
await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap
off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his
scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on
to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across,
and then return to the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they
lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and
circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted
by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit.
Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise
hound will forsake every thing else for this. One day a man came to my hut from
Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been
hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I
told him, for every time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me
by asking, “What do you do here?” He had lost a dog, but found a man.
</p>

<p>
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden once
every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon me,
told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a
cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of
hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as
quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet
had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and her three pups in
full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in the woods.
Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he
heard the voice of the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the
fox; and on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring
sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For
a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter’s
ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy
coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves,
swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind; and,
leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back
to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter’s arm; but that
was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece
was levelled, and <i>whang!</i>—the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on the
ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on
they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their aisles with their
demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the
ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but
spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb with
amazement, and walked round and round him in silence; and one by one her pups
arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then
the hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved.
They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a
while, and at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston
Squire came to the Concord hunter’s cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told
how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston woods.
The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the
other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the
next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farm-house for
the night, whence, having been well fed, they took their departure early in the
morning.
</p>

<p>
The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used to hunt
bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concord
village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had a
famous fox-hound named Burgoyne,—he pronounced it Bugine,—which my informant
used to borrow. In the “Wast Book” of an old trader of this town, who was also
a captain, town-clerk, and representative, I find the following entry. Jan.
18th, 1742–3, “John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0—2—3;” they are not now found
here; and in his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit “by ½ a
Catt skin 0—1—4½;” of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the
old French war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble game.
Credit is given for deer skins also, and they were daily sold. One man still
preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and
another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged.
The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember well one
gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the road-side and play a strain on it
wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting-horn.
</p>

<p>
At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my path
prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and
stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.
</p>

<p>
Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were scores of
pitch-pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter, which had
been gnawed by mice the previous winter,—a Norwegian winter for them, for the
snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine
bark with their other diet. These trees were alive and apparently flourishing
at mid-summer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely girdled;
but after another winter such were without exception dead. It is remarkable
that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner,
gnawing round instead of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order
to thin these trees, which are wont to grow up densely.
</p>

<p>
The hares (<i>Lepus Americanus</i>) were very familiar. One had her form under
my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and she startled
me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir,—thump, thump,
thump, striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used to
come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had thrown out,
and were so nearly the color of the ground that they could hardly be
distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and
recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my
door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand
they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at
first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and
bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked
as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her
last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I
took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow crust,
straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the
forest between me and itself,—the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and
the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such then was
its nature. (<i>Lepus</i>, <i>levipes</i>, light-foot, some think.)
</p>

<p>
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most
simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to
antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest
allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or
it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or
a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling
leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true
natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the
sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become
more numerous than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does not
support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp may be
seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair
snares, which some cow-boy tends.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap17"></a>The Pond in Winter</h2>

<p>
After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had
been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as
what—how—when—where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live,
looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question
on <i>her</i> lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight.
The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of
the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no
question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her
resolution. “O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the
soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils
without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us
this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether.”
</p>

<p>
Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of
water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a
divining rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the
pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and
shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it
will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal
depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots
in the surrounding hills, it closes its eye-lids and becomes dormant for three
months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the
hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and
open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the
quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of
ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a
perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding
to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet
as well as over our heads.
</p>

<p>
Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with
fishing reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the
snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow
other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their
goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be
ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak
leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial.
They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have
done. The things which they practise are said not yet to be known. Here is one
fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. You look into his pail with
wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew
where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in mid-winter? O, he got
worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. His
life itself passes deeper in Nature than the studies of the naturalist
penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and
bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to
their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living
by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see Nature
carried out in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the
perch, and the fisher-man swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the
scale of being are filled.
</p>

<p>
When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes amused by the
primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps have
placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five
rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of
the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack
line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak
leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These
alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked half way
round the pond.
</p>

<p>
Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well
which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I
am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they
are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our
Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which
separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose
fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray
like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible,
yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls,
the animalized <i>nuclei</i> or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course,
are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal
kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here,—that in this
deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and
tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish
swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure
of all eyes there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their
watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of
heaven.
</p>

<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
<img src="images/walden_pond_map.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="walden_pond_map">
</div>

<p>
As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it
carefully, before the ice broke up, early in ’46, with compass and chain and
sounding line. There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no
bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is
remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without
taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one
walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through
to the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long
time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into
the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in
their breasts, have seen vast holes “into which a load of hay might be driven,”
if there were any body to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and
entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from
the village with a “fifty-six” and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have
failed to find any bottom; for while the “fifty-six” was resting by the way,
they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly
immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that
Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an
unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about
a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom,
by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me.
The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added
the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a
remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by
the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the
minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol.
While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
</p>

<p>
A factory owner, hearing what depth I had found, thought that it could not be
true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so
steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their
area as most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys.
They are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually
deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not deeper
than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow
than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates
to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in
Scotland, which he describes as “a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms
deep, four miles in breadth,” and about fifty miles long, surrounded by
mountains, observes, “If we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian
crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed
in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared!
</p>

<p class="poem">
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low<br>
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,<br>
Capacious bed of waters—.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these proportions to
Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a vertical section only like
a shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So much for the
<i>increased</i> horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many
a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a “horrid
chasm,” from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and
the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this
fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the
low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain has been necessary
to conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways
know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amount of it is,
the imagination give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than
Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very
inconsiderable compared with its breadth.
</p>

<p>
As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with
greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze
over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there
are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun
wind and plough. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did
not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I
could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction
beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep
and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of
water under these circumstances is to level all inequalities. The regularity of
the bottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring
hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the
soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be determined by
observing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and
gorge deep water and channel.
</p>

<p>
When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, and put down
the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed this remarkable
coincidence. Having noticed that the number indicating the greatest depth was
apparently in the centre of the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and
then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length
intersected the line of greatest breadth <i>exactly</i> at the point of
greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline
of the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were got by
measuring into the coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but this hint would
conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? Is not
this the rule also for the height of mountains, regarded as the opposite of
valleys? We know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part.
</p>

<p>
Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a
bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so that the bay tended
to be an expansion of water within the land not only horizontally but
vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two
capes showing the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has
its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider
compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that
in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the
character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make
out a formula for all cases.
</p>

<p>
In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, at the deepest
point in a pond, by observing the outlines of its surface and the character of
its shores alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which contains about forty-one
acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet;
and as the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth,
where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays receded, I
ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter line, but still on
the line of greatest length, as the deepest. The deepest part was found to be
within one hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had
inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a stream
running through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more
complicated.
</p>

<p>
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the
description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at
that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of
course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of
essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are
commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which
results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really
concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The
particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain
outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles,
though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not
comprehended in its entireness.
</p>

<p>
What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of
average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in
the system and the heart in man, but draw lines through the length and breadth
of the aggregate of a man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into
his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of
his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his
adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If
he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks
overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth
in him. But a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our
bodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth
of thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, or
particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are
detained and partially land-locked. These inclinations are not whimsical
usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories
of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is gradually
increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the
waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an
inclination in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual
lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own conditions,
changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a
marsh. At the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that
such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor
navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a
harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or
steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science,
where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to
individualize them.
</p>

<p>
As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any but rain and
snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such
places may be found, for where the water flows into the pond it will probably
be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When the ice-men were at work here
in ’46–7, the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were
stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side with the
rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two
or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there was an
inlet there. They also showed me in another place what they thought was a
“leach hole,” through which the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring
meadow, pushing me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under
ten feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need
soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested, that if
such a “leach hole” should be found, its connection with the meadow, if any
existed, might be proved by conveying some colored powder or sawdust to the
mouth of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow,
which would catch some of the particles carried through by the current.
</p>

<p>
While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick, undulated under
a slight wind like water. It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice.
At one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a
level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters
of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was
probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments were delicate
enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? When two legs
of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were
directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal
amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When I
began to cut holes for sounding, there were three or four inches of water on
the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water began
immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run for two days in deep
streams, which wore away the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, if
not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond; for, as the water ran in, it raised
and floated the ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a
ship to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and
finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully
mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider’s web, what
you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing
from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with
shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of
the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hill-side.
</p>

<p class="p2">
While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent
landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink;
impressively, even pathetically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July
now in January,—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not
provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will
cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond, unroofs the
house of fishes, and carts off their very element and air, held fast by chains
and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter air, to wintry
cellars, to underlie the summer there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far
off, it is drawn through the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry race, full
of jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite me to
saw pit-fashion with them, I standing underneath.
</p>

<p>
In the winter of ’46–7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop
down on to our pond one morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-looking
farming tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes,
and each man was armed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not
described in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether
they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently
introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim
the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long
enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to
double his money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already;
but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the
only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter.
They went to work at once, ploughing, harrowing, rolling, furrowing, in
admirable order, as if they were bent on making this a model farm; but when I
was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang
of fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a
peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water,—for it was a very
springy soil,—indeed all the <i>terra firma</i> there was,—and haul it away on
sleds, and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. So they came
and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to
some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic
snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired man,
walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground down toward
Tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became but the ninth part of
a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house,
and acknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen
soil took a piece of steel out of a ploughshare, or a plough got set in the
furrow and had to be cut out.
</p>

<p>
To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, came from
Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods
too well known to require description, and these, being sledded to the shore,
were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons
and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many
barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if
they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They
told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the
yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and “cradle holes” were worn in the ice, as
on <i>terra firma</i>, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and the
horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets.
They stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high
on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between the outside
layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though never so cold, finds a
passage through, it will wear large cavities, leaving slight supports or studs
only here and there, and finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast
blue fort or Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into
the crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a
venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of
Winter, that old man we see in the almanac,—his shanty, as if he had a design
to estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty-five per cent of this
would reach its destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in
the cars. However, a still greater part of this heap had a different destiny
from what was intended; for, either because the ice was found not to keep so
well as was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some other reason,
it never got to market. This heap, made in the winter of ’46–7 and estimated to
contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though
it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest
remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next winter,
and was not quite melted till September 1848. Thus the pond recovered the
greater part.
</p>

<p>
Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a
distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of
the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off.
Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man’s sled into the
village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of
interest to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which in the
state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the same point of
view blue. So the hollows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be
filled with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will have
frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and
air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an interesting
subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at
Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of
water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly
said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.
</p>

<p>
Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy
husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming,
such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as I
looked out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the
parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirty
days more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green
Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its
evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood
there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes
himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf,
beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securely
labored.
</p>

<p>
Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans,
of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my
intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta,
since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with
which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if
that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so
remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my
well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of
Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading
the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet
his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate
together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred
water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the
fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno,
and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in
the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander
only heard the names.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap18"></a>Spring</h2>

<p>
The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break
up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears
away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for
she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. This pond
never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of
its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear
away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting
that of ’52–3, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about
the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond and Fair-Haven,
beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began
to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress
of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A
severe cold of a few days’ duration in March may very much retard the opening
of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost
uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of
March, 1847, stood at 32&deg;, or freezing point; near the shore at 33&deg;; in
the middle of Flint’s Pond, the same day, at 32&frac12;&deg;; at a dozen rods
from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36&deg;. This
difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep
water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion
of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than
Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner
than in the middle. In mid-winter the middle had been the warmest and the ice
thinnest there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the pond
in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore,
where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the
surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun not only
exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but
its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the
bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side
of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making
it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves
upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears
suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a
cake begins to rot or “comb,” that is, assume the appearance of honey-comb,
whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was
the water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface
the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this
reflected heat; and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to
freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated
underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the
bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle
of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or
transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker
white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected
heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as
burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath.
</p>

<p>
The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale.
Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more
rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every
evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an
epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the
spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the
ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night,
February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint’s Pond to spend the day, I noticed
with surprise, that when I struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded
like a gong for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-head.
The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence
of the sun’s rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and
yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up
three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more
toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of
the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. But in the
middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic,
it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could
not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the
“thundering of the pond” scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond
does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its
thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does.
Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so
sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as
surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered
with papillæ. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the
globule of mercury in its tube.
</p>

<p class="p2">
One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure
and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins
to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and
warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly
longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my
wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the
first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the
striped squirrel’s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see
the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I
had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a
foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the
water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was
completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was
merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot
through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a
warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with
the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before
it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of
April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of
March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23d of March; in ’54, about the
7th of April.
</p>

<p>
Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the
settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate
of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river
hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if
its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly
going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.
One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly
wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks
when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel,—who has come to his
growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore if he should live to the
age of Methuselah,—told me, and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at
any of Nature’s operations, for I thought that there were no secrets between
them, that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he would
have a little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it
was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from
Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair-Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly,
covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he
was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he
hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then
concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was
melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm
sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he
thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still
there about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but
singularly grand and impressive, unlike any thing he had ever heard, gradually
swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a
sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast
body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in
haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the
ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound
he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore,—at first gently nibbled
and crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the
island to a considerable height before it came to a stand still.
</p>

<p>
At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up
mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles
on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through
which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of
a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of
winter which they are bearing off.
</p>

<p>
Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand
and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through
which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so
large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material
must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material
was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed
with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a
thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava,
sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to
be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with
another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of
currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of
sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth,
and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated
thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard’s paws or
birds’ feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a
truly <i>grotesque</i> vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in
bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus,
chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some
circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. The whole cut impressed
me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The
various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the
different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing
mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into
<i>strands</i>, the separate streams losing their semi-cylindrical form and
gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more
moist, till they form an almost flat <i>sand</i>, still variously and
beautifully shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of
vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into
<i>banks</i>, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of
vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on the bottom.
</p>

<p>
The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid
with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile
on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand
foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on
the one side the inert bank,—for the sun acts on one side first,—and on the
other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a
peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and
me,—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with
excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer
to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a
foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very
sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses
itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have
already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees
here its prototype. <i>Internally</i>, whether in the globe or animal body, it
is a moist thick <i>lobe</i>, a word especially applicable to the liver and
lungs and the <i>leaves</i> of fat, (λείβω,
<i>labor</i>, <i>lapsus</i>, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing;
λοβος, <i>globus</i>, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and
many other words,) <i>externally</i> a dry thin <i>leaf</i>, even as the
<i>f</i> and <i>v</i> are a pressed and dried <i>b</i>. The radicals of
<i>lobe</i> are <i>lb</i>, the soft mass of the <i>b</i> (single lobed, or B,
double lobed,) with the liquid <i>l</i> behind it pressing it forward. In
globe, <i>glb</i>, the guttural <i>g</i> adds to the meaning the capacity of
the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves.
Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and
fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates
itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal
leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water plants have
impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and
rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and
cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
</p>

<p>
When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams
will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You
here see perchance how blood vessels are formed. If you look closely you
observe that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of
softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its
way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as
the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to
which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for
itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little
silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or
branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is
wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows,
using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its
channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the
water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and
organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of
thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers
and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what
the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not
the hand a spreading <i>palm</i> leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be
regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, <i>umbilicaria</i>, on the side of the head,
with its lobe or drop. The lip—<i>labium</i>, from <i>labor</i> (?)—laps or
lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed
drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of
the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face,
opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable
leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are
the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it
tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to
flow yet farther.
</p>

<p>
Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the
operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What
Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new
leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance
and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its
character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver lights and bowels, as if
the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that
Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the
frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and
flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more
purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still
in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh
curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These
foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that
Nature is “in full blast” within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead
history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by
geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a
tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth;
compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely
parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their graves. You may melt
your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will
never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not
only it, but the institutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of
the potter.
</p>

<p class="p2">
Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every
hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its
burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds.
Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The
one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.
</p>

<p>
When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its
surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the
infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered
vegetation which had withstood the winter,—life-everlasting, golden-rods,
pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently
than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even
cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and
other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the
earliest birds,—decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am
particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it
brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art
loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to
types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style
older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of
an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear
this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of
a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
</p>

<p>
At the approach of spring the red-squirrels got under my house, two at a time,
directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest
chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever
were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all
fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No you
don’t—chickaree—chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to
perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was
irresistible.
</p>

<p>
The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!
The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from
the blue-bird, the song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of
winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies,
traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to
the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the
first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all
dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the
hillsides like a spring fire,—“et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus
evocata,”—as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun;
not yellow but green is the color of its flame;—the symbol of perpetual youth,
the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the
summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its
spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the
rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the
growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their
channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream,
and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but
dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.
</p>

<p>
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and
westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has
cracked off from the main body. I hear a song-sparrow singing from the bushes
on the shore,—<i>olit</i>, <i>olit</i>, <i>olit,</i>—<i>chip</i>, <i>chip</i>,
<i>chip</i>, <i>che char</i>,—<i>che wiss</i>, <i>wiss</i>, <i>wiss</i>. He too
is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of
the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is
unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered
or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque
surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to
behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond
full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of
the sands on its shore,—a silvery sheen as from the scales of a
<i>leuciscus</i>, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between
winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke
up more steadily, as I have said.
</p>

<p>
The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and
sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all
things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of
light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter
still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out
the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent
pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer
evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had
intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the
first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not
forget for many a thousand more,—the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O
the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find
the twig he sits upon! I mean <i>he</i>; I mean <i>the twig</i>. This at least
is not the <i>Turdus migratorius</i>. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my
house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters,
looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed
and restored by the rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell
by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its
winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the <i>honking</i>
of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from
southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual
consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when,
driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor
wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my
first spring night in the woods.
</p>

<p>
In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in
the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden
appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I stood on the
shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of
their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head,
twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular
<i>honk</i> from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in
muddier pools. A “plump” of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to
the north in the wake of their noisier cousins.
</p>

<p>
For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary goose in the
foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the
sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen
again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins
twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township
contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were
peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came.
In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and
heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and
plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of
the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature.
</p>

<p>
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is
like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden
Age.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Eurus ad Auroram Nabathæaque regna recessit,<br>
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis.”<br>
<br>
“The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæan kingdom,<br>
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays<br>
<br>
            *    *    *    *<br>
<br>
Man was born.  Whether that Artificer of things,<br>
The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;<br>
Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high<br>
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven.”
</p>

<p>
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects
brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in
the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like
the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it;
and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities,
which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring.
In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce
to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return.
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a
sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but
the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the
world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and
debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring
influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.
There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of
holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a
new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar
jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled
rind and try another year’s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even
he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his
prison doors,—why the judge does not dismis his case,—why the preacher does not
dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God
gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.
</p>

<p>
“A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath
of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of
vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of
the forest which has been felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the
interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again
from developing themselves and destroys them.
</p>

<p>
“After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing
themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve
them. As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve
them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men
seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never
possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural
sentiments of man?”
</p>

<p class="poem">
“The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger<br>
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.<br>
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read<br>
On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear<br>
The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.<br>
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended<br>
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,<br>
And mortals knew no shores but their own.<br>
            *    *    *    *<br>
There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm<br>
Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed.”
</p>

<p>
On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the
Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where
the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the
sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very
slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple
and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings,
which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a
shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are
associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but
I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed.
It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but
it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again
with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over
and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had
never set its foot on <i>terra firma</i>. It appeared to have no companion in
the universe,—sporting there alone,—and to need none but the morning and the
ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely
beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father
in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an
egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;—or was its native nest made in
the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, and
lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now some
cliffy cloud.
</p>

<p>
Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes,
which looked like a string of jewels. Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on
the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from
willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were
bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had
been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof
of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy
sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then?
</p>

<p>
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and
meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness,—to wade sometimes in
marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the
snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary
fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we
require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be
infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can
never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible
vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness
with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which
lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits
transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are
cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and
disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a
dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes
to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the
assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was
my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that
myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another;
that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like
pulp,—tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the
road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to
accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression
made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous
after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It
must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.
</p>

<p>
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out
amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to
the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through
mists and shining faintly on the hill-sides here and there. On the third or
fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month
I heard the whippoorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the
chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long before. The phœbe
had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my
house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with
clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises.
The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the pond and the stones
and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrel-ful.
This is the “sulphur showers” we hear of. Even in Calidas’ drama of Sacontala,
we read of “rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus.” And so the
seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher
grass.
</p>

<p>
Thus was my first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was
similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap19"></a>Conclusion</h2>

<p>
To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank
Heaven, here is not all the world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England,
and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here. The wild-goose is more of a
cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the
Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to
some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colorado
only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we
think that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our
farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are
chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but
you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider
than our views of it.
</p>

<p>
Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious
passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The
other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is
only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin
merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is
not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he
could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be
nobler game to shoot one’s self.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find<br>
A thousand regions in your mind<br>
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be<br>
Expert in home-cosmography.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
What does Africa,—what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white
on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it
the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West
Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which
most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife
should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?
Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own
streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes,—with shiploads of
preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans
sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely?
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new
channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside
which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by
the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no <i>self</i>-respect, and
sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves,
but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay.
Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea
Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect
recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world
to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that
it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals,
in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is
to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being
alone.—
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.<br>
Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.”<br>
<br>
Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.<br>
I have more of God, they more of the road.
</p>

<p class="noindent">
It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’
Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and
Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no
bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt
the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to
the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be
naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a
stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself.
Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go
to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest
western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor
conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this
sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last
earth down too.
</p>

<p>
It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery “to ascertain what degree of
resolution was necessary in order to place one’s self in formal opposition to
the most sacred laws of society.” He declared that “a soldier who fights in the
ranks does not require half so much courage as a foot-pad,”—“that honor and
religion have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm resolve.”
This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A
saner man would have found himself often enough “in formal opposition” to what
are deemed “the most sacred laws of society,” through obedience to yet more
sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. It
is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain
himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of
his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he
should chance to meet with such.
</p>

<p>
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me
that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for
that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular
route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week
before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five
or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear
that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface
of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths
which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the
world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a
cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world,
for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to
go below now.
</p>

<p>
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in
the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put
some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more
liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the
old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and
he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he
simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and
solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If
you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
</p>

<p>
It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak
so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toad-stools grow so. As if
that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them.
As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain
birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and <i>hush</i>
and <i>who</i>, which Bright can understand, were the best English. As if there
were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be
<i>extra-vagant</i> enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits
of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been
convinced. <i>Extra vagance!</i> it depends on how you are yarded. The
migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not
extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence,
and runs after her calf, in milking time. I desire to speak somewhere
<i>without</i> bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking
moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the
foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared
then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? In view of the future
or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front, our outlines
dim and misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration
toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the
inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly
<i>translated</i>; its literal monument alone remains. The words which express
our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant
like frankincense to superior natures.
</p>

<p>
Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common
sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by
snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are
once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third
part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning-red, if they ever got
up early enough. “They pretend,” as I hear, “that the verses of Kabir have four
different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the
Vedas;” but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint
if a man’s writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England
endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot,
which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
</p>

<p>
I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should be proud if no
more fatal fault were found with my pages on this score than was found with the
Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the
evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice,
which is white, but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists
which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.
</p>

<p>
Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are
intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men.
But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall
a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be
the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and
endeavor to be what he was made.
</p>

<p>
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate
enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon
as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the
condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality
which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we
with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done
we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the
former were not?
</p>

<p>
There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after
perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having considered
that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time
does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though
I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for
wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as
he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted
him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a
moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety,
endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no
compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance
because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in all respects
suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds
to peel the stick. Before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the
Candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of
the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he
had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere
he had put on the ferrule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma had
awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mention these things? When
the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes
of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He
had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair
proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away,
fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. And now he saw by the
heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the
former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed
than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on
and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his art
was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful?
</p>

<p>
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the
truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but
in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case,
and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it
is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the
case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better
than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if
he had anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” said he, “to remember to make a
knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.” His companion’s prayer
is forgotten.
</p>

<p>
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard
names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The
fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.
You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a
poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as
brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early
in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and
have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to
live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to
receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by
the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves
by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a
garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether
clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we
change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not
want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a
spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about
me. The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can take away
its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar
one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to
subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.
Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and
meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often
reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Crœsus, our aims must
still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are
restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers,
for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital
experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most
sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You
are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by
magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money
is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
</p>

<p>
I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a
little alloy of bell metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches
my ears a confused <i>tintinnabulum</i> from without. It is the noise of my
contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen
and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more
interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest
and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a
goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of
England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. —— of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all
transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard
like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession
with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder
of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling,
trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.
What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and
hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and
Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that
which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;—not hang by the beam of the
scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to
travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It
affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a
solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom
every where. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him
had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s
horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said
that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you
have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of
society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or
done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who
will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would
keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not
depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can
wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,—a work at which
you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only.
Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe,
you carrying on the work.
</p>

<p>
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where
were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity
and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The
hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to
freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the
vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious
vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and
grounds and “entertainment” pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but
he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for
hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His
manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.
</p>

<p>
How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which
any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with
long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go
forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!
Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This
generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an
illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its
long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with
satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the
public Eulogies of <i>Great Men!</i> It is the good Adam contemplating his own
virtue. “Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall
never die,”—that is, as long as <i>we</i> can remember them. The learned
societies and great men of Assyria,—where are they? What youthful philosophers
and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a
whole human life. These may be but the spring months in the life of the race.
If we have had the seven-years’ itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year
locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on
which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as
many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly
half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on
the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand
over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and
endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish
those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its
benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of
the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.
</p>

<p>
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate
incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened
to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow,
but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we
believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only.
It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the
United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and
falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he
should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust
will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not
framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.
</p>

<p>
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher
than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the
eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry
land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently
washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the
story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug
which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had
stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and
afterward in Massachusetts,—from an egg deposited in the living tree many years
earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was
heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn.
Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by
hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been
buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life
of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree,
which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned
tomb,—heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of
man, as they sat round the festive board,—may unexpectedly come forth from
amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect
summer life at last!
</p>

<p>
I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the
character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The
light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which
we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
</p>

<p>
<br><br>
</p>

<div class="center">THE END</div>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap20"></a>ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE</h2>

<p>
I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and
I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried
out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—“That government is best
which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the
kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an
expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes,
inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army,
and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be
brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the
standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the
people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and
perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican
war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government
as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this
measure.
</p>

<p>
This American government,—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one,
endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing
some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living
man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to
the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one
against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for
this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear
its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show
thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for
their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow; yet this government
never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got
out of its way. <i>It</i> does not keep the country free. <i>It</i> does not
settle the West. <i>It</i> does not educate. The character inherent in the
American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done
somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For
government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one
another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed
are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India
rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are
continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by
the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would
deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put
obstructions on the railroads.
</p>

<p>
But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves
no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but <i>at once</i> a
better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would
command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
</p>

<p>
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the
people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is
not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems
fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a
government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice,
even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which the
majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which
majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is
applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign
his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think
that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation
which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is
truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of
conscientious men is a corporation <i>with</i> a conscience. Law never made men
a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed
are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue
respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain,
corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over
hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense
and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a
palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in
which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they?
Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some
unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man
as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black
arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and
standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral
accompaniment, though it may be
</p>

<p class="poem">
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,<br>
    As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried;<br>
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot<br>
    O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”
</p>

<p>
The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with
their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables,
<i>posse comitatus</i>, &amp;c. In most cases there is no free exercise
whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a
level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be
manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect
than men of straw, or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as
horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and
office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely
make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without
<i>intending</i> it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs,
reformers in the great sense, and <i>men</i>, serve the State with their
consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are
commonly treated by it as enemies. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and
will not submit to be “clay,” and “stop a hole to keep the wind away,” but
leave that office to his dust at least:
</p>

<p class="poem">
“I am too high-born to be propertied,<br>
To be a secondary at control,<br>
Or useful serving-man and instrument<br>
To any sovereign state throughout the world.”
</p>

<p>
He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and
selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor
and philanthropist.
</p>

<p>
How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I
answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an
instant recognize that political organization as <i>my</i> government which is
the <i>slave’s</i> government also.
</p>

<p>
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse
allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its
inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the
case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of ’75. If one
were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign
commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an
ado about it, for I can do without them: all machines have their friction; and
possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is
a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its
machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such
a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a
nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole
country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to
military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and
revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact, that the
country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.
</p>

<p>
Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the
“Duty of Submission to Civil Government,” resolves all civil obligation into
expediency; and he proceeds to say, “that so long as the interest of the whole
society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be
resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God that
the established government be obeyed, and no longer.”—“This principle being
admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a
computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of
the probability and expense of redressing it on the other.” Of this, he says,
every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated
those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people,
as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly
wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown
myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save
his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves,
and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.
</p>

<p>
In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does anyone think that
Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?
</p>

<p class="poem">
“A drab of state, a cloth-o’-silver slut,<br>
To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.”
</p>

<p>
Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a
hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and
farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are
in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico,
<i>cost what it may</i>. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who,
near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and
without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the
mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not
materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many
should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere;
for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are <i>in
opinion</i> opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to
put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and
Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know
not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to
the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the
latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them
both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They
hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in
earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy
the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a
cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by
them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous
man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the
temporary guardian of it.
</p>

<p>
All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight
moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and
betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I
cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that
that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its
obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting <i>for the
right</i> is <i>doing</i> nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly
your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the
mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority
shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are
indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be
abolished by their vote. <i>They</i> will then be the only slaves. Only
<i>his</i> vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom
by his vote.
</p>

<p>
I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection
of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are
politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent,
intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to, shall we not
have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count
upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who
do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called,
has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when
his country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the
candidates thus selected as the only <i>available</i> one, thus proving that he
is himself <i>available</i> for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of
no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who
may have been bought. Oh for a man who is a <i>man</i>, and, as my neighbor
says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our
statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many
<i>men</i> are there to a square thousand miles in the country? Hardly one.
Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has
dwindled into an Odd Fellow,—one who may be known by the development of his
organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful
self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to
see that the alms-houses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully
donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and
orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the
Mutual Insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.
</p>

<p>
It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the
eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have
other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands
of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his
support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first
see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders.
I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what
gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, “I
should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the
slaves, or to march to Mexico,—see if I would go;” and yet these very men have
each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their
money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in
an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which
makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards
and sets at naught; as if the State were penitent to that degree that it hired
one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off
sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we
are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the
first blush of sin, comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it
were, <i>un</i>moral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have
made.
</p>

<p>
The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to
sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly
liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of
the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and
support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently
the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to
dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they
not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and
refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in same relation
to the State, that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons
prevented the State from resisting the Union, which have prevented them from
resisting the State?
</p>

<p>
How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy <i>it?</i>
Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you
are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied
with knowing you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with
petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to
obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from
principle,—the perception and the performance of right,—changes things and
relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with
anything which was. It not only divided states and churches, it divides
families; aye, it divides the <i>individual</i>, separating the diabolical in
him from the divine.
</p>

<p>
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to
amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them
at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought
to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that,
if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the
fault of the government itself that the remedy <i>is</i> worse than the evil.
<i>It</i> makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for
reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist
before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to
point out its faults, and <i>do</i> better than it would have them? Why does it
always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce
Washington and Franklin rebels?
</p>

<p>
One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was
the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not
assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If a man who has
no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in
prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by
the discretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninety
times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.
</p>

<p>
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of
government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the
machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope,
or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the
remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it
requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the
law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do
is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
</p>

<p>
As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I
know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone.
I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make
this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has
not every thing to do, but something; and because he cannot do <i>every
thing</i>, it is not necessary that he should do <i>something</i> wrong. It is
not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than
it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what
should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very
Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and
unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration
the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the
better, like birth and death which convulse the body.
</p>

<p>
I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should
at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from
the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority
of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it
is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one.
Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one
already.
</p>

<p>
I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government,
directly, and face to face, once a year, no more, in the person of its
tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily
meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most
effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of
treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and
love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the
very man I have to deal with,—for it is, after all, with men and not with
parchment that I quarrel,—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the
government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of
the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall
treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and
well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can
get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more
impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action? I know this well,
that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten
<i>honest</i> men only,—aye, if <i>one</i> HONEST man, in this State of
Massachusetts, <i>ceasing to hold slaves</i>, were actually to withdraw from
this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be
the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning
may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever. But we love better to
talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of
newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the
State’s ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question
of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the
prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State
which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister,—though at
present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a
quarrel with her,—the Legislature would not wholly waive the subject of the
following winter.
</p>

<p>
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man
is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts
has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to
be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put
themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and
the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his
race, should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground,
where the State places those who are not <i>with</i> her but <i>against</i>
her,—the only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor.
If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no
longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within
its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how
much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has
experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of
paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it
conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is
irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep
all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate
which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year,
that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and
enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact,
the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the
tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what
shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do any thing, resign your
office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned
his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should
flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through
this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an
everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.
</p>

<p>
I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure
of his goods,—though both will serve the same purpose,—because they who assert
the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State,
commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State
renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear
exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with
their hands. If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the
State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man—not to make
any invidious comparison—is always sold to the institution which makes him
rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes
between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no
great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would
otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the
hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from
under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as
what are called the “means” are increased. The best thing a man can do for his
culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he
entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their
condition. “Show me the tribute-money,” said he;—and one took a penny out of
his pocket;—if you use money which has the image of Cæsar on it, and which he
has made current and valuable, that is, <i>if you are men of the State</i>, and
gladly enjoy the advantages of Cæsar’s government, then pay him back some of
his own when he demands it; “Render therefore to Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s
and to God those things which are God’s,”—leaving them no wiser than before as
to which was which; for they did not wish to know.
</p>

<p>
When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they
may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard
for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they
cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the
consequences of disobedience to it to their property and families. For my own
part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the
State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill,
it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children
without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly
and at the same time comfortably in outward respects. It will not be worth the
while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or
squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live
within yourself, and depend upon yourself, always tucked up and ready for a
start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he
will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius
said,—“If a State is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery
are subjects of shame; if a State is not governed by the principles of reason,
riches and honors are the subjects of shame.” No: until I want the protection
of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant southern port, where my
liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at
home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to
Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every
sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State, than it would to obey.
I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.
</p>

<p>
Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the church, and commanded me to
pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father
attended, but never I myself. “Pay it,” it said, “or be locked up in the jail.”
I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not
see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the
priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the State’s schoolmaster, but I
supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should
not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the
church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some
such statement as this in writing:—“Know all men by these presents, that I,
Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated
society which I have not joined.” This I gave to the town-clerk; and he has it.
The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member
of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that
it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to
name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which
I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find such a complete list.
</p>

<p>
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this
account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone,
two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron
grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the
foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and
blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at
length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to
avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of
stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb
or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did nor for a
moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I
felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not
know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every
threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my
chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but
smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which
followed them out again without let or hindrance, and <i>they</i> were really
all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish
my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they
have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it
was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its
friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied
it.
</p>

<p>
Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or
moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or
honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I
will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force
has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They
force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of <i>men</i> being
<i>forced</i> to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were
that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your
life,” why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great
strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as
I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for
the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the
engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the
one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own
laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance,
overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its
nature, it dies; and so a man.
</p>

<p class="p2">
The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their
shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the door-way, when I
entered. But the jailer said, “Come, boys, it is time to lock up;” and so they
dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow
apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as “a first-rate
fellow and a clever man.” When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang
my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a
month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and
probably the neatest apartment in town. He naturally wanted to know where I
came from, and what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in
my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and,
as the world goes, I believe he was. “Why,” said he, “they accuse me of burning
a barn; but I never did it.” As near as I could discover, he had probably gone
to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was
burnt. He had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three
months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer;
but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for
nothing, and thought that he was well treated.
</p>

<p>
He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw, that, if one stayed there
long, his principal business would be to look out the window. I had soon read
all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had
broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the
various occupants of that room; for I found that even here there was a history
and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this
is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward
printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of
verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an
attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.
</p>

<p>
I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never see him
again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow out the
lamp.
</p>

<p>
It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to
behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the
town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept
with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native
village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a
Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were
the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary
spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the
adjacent village-inn—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer
view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its
institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a
shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.
</p>

<p>
In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small
oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with
brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called for the vessels again, I was
green enough to return what bread I had left; but my comrade seized it, and
said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after, he was let out
to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and would
not be back till noon; so he bade me good-day, saying that he doubted if he
should see me again.
</p>

<p>
When I came out of prison,—for some one interfered, and paid the tax,—I did not
perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed
who went in a youth, and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had to my
eyes come over the scene,—the town, and State, and country,—greater than any
that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I
lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as
good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only;
that they did not greatly purpose to do right; that they were a distinct race
from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are;
that, in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their
property; that, after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as
he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few
prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time
to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I
believe that most of them are not aware that they have such an institution as
the jail in their village.
</p>

<p>
It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail,
for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were
crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors
did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if
I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the
shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next
morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe,
joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my
conduct; and in half an hour,—for the horse was soon tackled,—was in the midst
of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off; and then
the State was nowhere to be seen.
</p>

<p>
This is the whole history of “My Prisons.”
</p>

<p class="p2">
I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being
a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and, as for supporting schools,
I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular
item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse
allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do
not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man, or a
musket to shoot one with,—the dollar is innocent,—but I am concerned to trace
the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State,
after my fashion, though I will still make use and get what advantages of her I
can, as is usual in such cases.
</p>

<p>
If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the State,
they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet
injustice to a greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax from
a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property or prevent
his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they
let their private feelings interfere with the public good.
</p>

<p>
This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his guard
in such a case, lest his actions be biassed by obstinacy, or an undue regard
for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself
and to the hour.
</p>

<p>
I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well; they are only ignorant; they
would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain to treat
you as they are not inclined to? But I think, again, this is no reason why I
should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a
different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men,
without heat, without ill-will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of
you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution,
of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on
your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this
overwhelming brute force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the
waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities.
You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this
as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have
relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere
brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and
instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to
themselves. But, if I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no
appeal to fire or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I
could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they
are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my
requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good
Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they
are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference
between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist
this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature
of the rocks and trees and beasts.
</p>

<p>
I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs,
to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek
rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am
but too ready to conform to them. Indeed I have reason to suspect myself on
this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself
disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments,
and the spirit of the people to discover a pretext for conformity.
</p>

<p class="poem">
“We must affect our country as our parents,<br>
And if at any time we alienate<br>
Out love of industry from doing it honor,<br>
We must respect effects and teach the soul<br>
Matter of conscience and religion,<br>
And not desire of rule or benefit.”
</p>

<p class="noindent">
I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out
of my hands, and then I shall be no better patriot than my fellow-countrymen.
Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very
good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this
American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to
be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; seen from a higher
still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth
looking at or thinking of at all?
</p>

<p>
However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest
possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government,
even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free,
that which <i>is not</i> never for a long time appearing <i>to be</i> to him,
unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.
</p>

<p>
I know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are
by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects content me as
little as any. Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the
institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving
society, but have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain
experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even
useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and
usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget
that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes
behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are
wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing
government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never
once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations
on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind’s range and hospitality.
Yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still
cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only
sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively, he is
always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still his quality is not
wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a
consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not
concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. He
well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the
Constitution. There are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones.
He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of ’87. “I have
never made an effort,” he says, “and never propose to make an effort; I have
never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to
disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came
into the Union.” Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to
slavery, he says, “Because it was part of the original compact,—let it stand.”
Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact
out of its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to
be disposed of by the intellect,—what, for instance, it behoves a man to do
here in America today with regard to slavery, but ventures, or is driven, to
make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak
absolutely, and as a private man,—from which what new and singular code of
social duties might be inferred?—“The manner,” says he, “in which the
governments of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for
their own consideration, under the responsibility to their constituents, to the
general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations
formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause,
have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement
from me and they never will.”
</p>

<p>
They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no
higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink
at it there with reverence and humanity; but they who behold where it comes
trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and
continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.
</p>

<p>
No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in
the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by
the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is
capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for
its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may
inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of
free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have
no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance,
commerce and manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy
wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable
experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long
retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance
I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the
legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the
light which it sheds on the science of legislation.
</p>

<p>
The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will
cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things
even those who neither know nor can do so well,—is still an impure one: to be
strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can
have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The
progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a
democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the
Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of
the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible
in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing
and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and
enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a
higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are
derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at
last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with
respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own
repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced
by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which
bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened,
would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I
have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
</p>

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<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 205 ***</div>
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