автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Walden

Henry David Thoreau

Economy

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.

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, 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.

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 Bramins 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 Io­laus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hy­dra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.

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 wood­lot! The por­tion­less, who strug­gle with no such un­nec­es­sary in­her­ited en­cum­brances, find it la­bor enough to sub­due and cul­ti­vate a few cu­bic feet of flesh.

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:—

Inde genus du­rum sumus, ex­pe­rien­sque labo­rum,
Et doc­u­menta damus qua simus orig­ine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way—

“From thence our kind hard­hearted is, en­dur­ing pain and care,
Ap­prov­ing that our bod­ies of a stony na­ture are.”

So much for a blind obe­di­ence to a blun­der­ing or­a­cle, throw­ing the stones over their heads be­hind them, and not see­ing where they fell.

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.

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 aes alienum, 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 of­fenses; 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.

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.

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.

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 to­day may turn out to be false­hood to­mor­row, 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 any­thing 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 any­thing 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.

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 plow 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.

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?”

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.

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.

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.

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 day­books 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.

By the words, nec­es­sary of life, 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, an­i­mal life, is nearly syn­ony­mous with the ex­pres­sion, an­i­mal heat; 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 heat thus gen­er­ated and ab­sorbed.

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 night­clothes, 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, etc., 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 à la mode.

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, Hindu, 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 we 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 no­ble 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 hill­tops 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.

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.

For many years I was self-ap­pointed in­spec­tor of snow­storms and rain­storms, 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.

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 to­day; 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.

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.

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 any­one’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?

Find­ing that my fel­low-cit­i­zens were not likely to of­fer me any room in the court house, or any cu­racy or liv­ing any­where 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.

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 ev­ery­where, 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 Prouse;—uni­ver­sal sci­ence to be kept pace with, study­ing the lives of all great dis­cov­er­ers and nav­i­ga­tors, great ad­ven­tur­ers and mer­chants, from Hanno and the Phoeni­cians 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.

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 ev­ery­where 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.

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.

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 balls 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 do with, but some­thing to do, or rather some­thing to be. 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.

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 his own earn­ing, there will not be found wise men to do him rev­er­ence?

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 They are re­lated to me, 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 bang the coat on? We wor­ship not the Graces, nor the Par­cae, 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 some­one 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.

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 can­non­ball, rags are as be­com­ing as pur­ple.

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.

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.

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 warmth, then the warmth of the af­fec­tions.

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 out­doors, 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, any 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 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.

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.

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 poor 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 his 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?

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 in­sti­tu­tion, 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?

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

“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.”

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 éclat an­nu­ally, as if all the joints of the agri­cul­tural ma­chine were suent.

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,

“The false so­ci­ety of men—
—for earthly great­ness
All heav­enly com­forts rar­efies to air.”

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.

Granted that the ma­jor­ity 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 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?

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 ev­ery­where 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, wood­pile, 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 mod­er­ate cir­cum­stances.

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 palm-leaf 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 car­load 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 morn­ing work 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 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.

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 sun­shades, 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 malaria all the way.

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 moun­tain­tops. 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 agri-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 fine 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 man­tel­piece, 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 fine 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 the three who suc­ceed? An­swer me these ques­tions, and then per­haps I may look at your baubles 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.

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.”

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 hu­man cul­ture, and we are still forced to cut our spir­i­tual 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.

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.

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 fel­low­men 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.

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—

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings—
The arts and sci­ences,
And a thou­sand ap­pli­ances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

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.

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. Door­sill 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 tonight, he to va­cate at five to­mor­row 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.

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.

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.

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 mean­while 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.

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 may also think for me; but it is not there­fore de­sir­able that he should do so to the ex­clu­sion of my think­ing for my­self.

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 sug­arplum, 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 pic­turesque; 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 ar­chi­tec­ture 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 belles-let­tres and the beaux-arts 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, he 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.

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.

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:—

Boards

$8.03½

Mostly shanty boards.

Refuse shin­gles for roof sides

4.00

Laths

1.25

Two sec­ond­hand 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

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

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.

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 bet­ter than this, 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 play life, or study it merely, while the com­mu­nity sup­ports them at this ex­pen­sive game, but earnestly live 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 any­thing 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 mean­while, 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 poor stu­dent stud­ies and is taught only po­lit­i­cal 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.

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.

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 to­day 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 mean­while have earned your fare, and ar­rive there some time to­mor­row, 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.

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, com­par­a­tively 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.

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 plow­ing, 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 plow­ing, though I held the plow my­self. My farm out­goes for the first sea­son were, for im­ple­ments, seed, work, etc., $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 any­thing. My whole in­come from the farm was

$23.44

De­duct­ing the out­goes

14.72½

There are left

$8.71½

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 to­day, 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.

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 plow 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.

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 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 horse­man or a herds­man 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 sta­ble­boy 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 & 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.

By sur­vey­ing, car­pen­try, and day-la­bor of var­i­ous other kinds in the vil­lage in the mean­while, 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

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

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.

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

$8.40¾

Oil and some house­hold uten­sils

2.00

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

House

$ 28.12½

Farm one year

14.72½

Food eight months

8.74

Cloth­ing, etc., eight months

8.40¾

Oil, etc., eight months

2.00

In all

$61.99¾

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

$23.44

Earned by day-la­bor

13.34

In all

$36.78

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.

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 love 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.

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 (Por­tu­laca ol­er­acea) 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.

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.

Bread I at first made of pure In­dian meal and salt, gen­uine hoe­cakes, 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 spir­i­tus which fills its cel­lu­lar tis­sue, which is re­li­giously pre­served like the vestal fire—some pre­cious bot­tle­ful, 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 bot­tle­ful 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, aquae 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.

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—

“we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pump­kins and parsnips and wal­nut-tree chips.”

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.

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.

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.

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 wash­bowl, 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 move ever but to get rid of our fur­ni­ture, our ex­u­viœ: 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 knot­hole 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 to­day 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 that 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.

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.

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

“The evil that men do lives af­ter them.”

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 bon­fire, or pu­ri­fy­ing de­struc­tion of them, there was an auc­tion, 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.

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.”

“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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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 fel­low­men, 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.

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.

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.

One young man of my ac­quain­tance, who has in­her­ited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means. I would not have any­one adopt my 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 his own 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.

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 co­op­er­a­tion which is com­monly pos­si­ble is ex­ceed­ingly par­tial and su­per­fi­cial; and what lit­tle true co­op­er­a­tion there is, is as if it were not, be­ing a har­mony in­audi­ble to men. If a man has faith, he will co­op­er­ate 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 co­op­er­ate in the high­est as well as the low­est sense, means to get our liv­ing to­gether. 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 co­op­er­ate, since one would not op­er­ate 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 to­day; but he who trav­els with an­other must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time be­fore they get off.

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 any­thing 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.

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 good 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 mean­while 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.

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 man 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 fel­low­man 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 us, if their phi­lan­thropy do not help us 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.

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.

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 ex­tra gar­ments which I of­fered him, he had so many in­tra 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?

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. Every­one must feel the false­hood and cant of this. The last were not Eng­land’s best men and women; only, per­haps, her best phi­lan­thropists.

I would not sub­tract any­thing 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 castoff 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 any­thing 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 Esquimau and the Patag­o­nian, and em­braces the pop­u­lous In­dian and Chi­nese vil­lages; and thus, by a few years of phil­an­thropic ac­tiv­ity, the pow­ers in the mean­while 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.

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 shoe­strings. Take your time, and set about some free la­bor.

Our man­ners have been cor­rupted by com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the saints. Our hymn­books 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.

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.”

Complemental Verses The Pretensions of Poverty

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

T. Carew

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

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 sedes, 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.

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,

“I am monarch of all I sur­vey,
My right there is none to dis­pute.”

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.

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.

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.

Old Cato, whose De Re Rus­tica 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.

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.

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 a 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 ev­ery­where.

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 smaller 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 whip-poor-will, and many oth­ers.

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.

This small lake was of most value as a neigh­bor in the in­ter­vals of a gen­tle rain­storm 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 hill­top 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 north­west, 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 dry land.

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.

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;

“There was a shep­herd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by.”

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

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 Tch­ingth­ang 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?

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.

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 some­what hastily con­cluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glo­rify God and en­joy him for­ever.”

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 thumb­nail. 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 Na­tion have com­merce, and ex­port ice, and talk through a tele­graph, and ride thirty miles an hour, with­out a doubt, whether they 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 lives to im­prove them, 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 Ir­ish­man, 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.

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 to­day to save nine to­mor­row. As for work, 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 any­thing new that has hap­pened to a man any­where 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.

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 news, 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 twelve­month, 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 bull­fight 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.

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?”

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 Hindu 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 Hindu 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 Brahme.” 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 is which ap­pears to be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the re­al­ity, where, think you, would the “Mill­dam” 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 meet­ing­house, or a court­house, 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.

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 re­al­ity, and say, This is, and no mis­take; and then be­gin, hav­ing a point d’ap­pui, be­low freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp­post 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 scim­i­tar, 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.

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.

Reading

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 Hindu 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.

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 lived.

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 spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Mid­dle Ages were not en­ti­tled by the ac­ci­dent of birth to read 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 hear, af­ter the lapse of ages a few schol­ars read, and a few schol­ars only are still read­ing it.

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. There 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 hear 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 un­der­stand him.

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.

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.

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 tip­toe to read and de­vote our most alert and wake­ful hours to.

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 Sophro­nia, 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 meet­ing­house burn down. “The Skip of the TipToe-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.

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 any­where 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 sto­ry­books, 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.

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.

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.

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 town­house, 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 any­thing. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Red­ding & 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 un­com­mon 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.

Sounds

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.

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, to­day, and to­mor­row they have only one word, and they ex­press the va­ri­ety of mean­ing by point­ing back­ward for yes­ter­day for­ward for to­mor­row, 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.

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.

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 (Cera­sus pumila) 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 (Rhus glabra) 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.

As I sit at my win­dow this sum­mer af­ter­noon, hawks are cir­cling about my clear­ing; the tan­tivy of wild pi­geons, fly­ing by two and threes athwart my view, or perch­ing rest­less on the white pine boughs be­hind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk 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 reed­birds 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:—

“In truth, our vil­lage has be­come a butt
For one of those fleet rail­road shafts, and o’er
Our peace­ful plain its sooth­ing sound is—Con­cord.”

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.

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.

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 trav­el­ing 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.

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 snow­shoes, 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 en­cased 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!

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 by­word; 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 Atro­pos, 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.

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 snow­plow 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 bear the muf­fled tone of their en­gine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which an­nounces that the cars are com­ing, with­out long de­lay, not­with­stand­ing the veto of a New Eng­land north­east snow­storm, and I be­hold the plow­men 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.

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 co­conut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car­load 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 Mil­wau­kee, as those splen­did ar­ti­cles, English, French, or Amer­i­can prints, ging­hams, muslins, etc., 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 bulk­head 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.

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

“to be the mast
Of some great am­mi­ral.”

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 bell­wether at the head rat­tles his bell, the moun­tains do in­deed skip like rams and the lit­tle hills like lambs. A car­load 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;—

What’s the rail­road to me?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hol­lows,
And makes banks for the swal­lows,
It sets the sand a-blow­ing,
And the black­ber­ries a-grow­ing,

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reg­u­larly at half-past seven, in one part of the sum­mer, af­ter the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted their ves­pers for half an hour, sit­ting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge­pole 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.

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 wood­side; 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. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and cir­cles with the rest­less­ness of de­spair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then—that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes an­other on the far­ther side with tremu­lous sin­cer­ity, and—bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lin­coln woods.

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—Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and in­deed for the most part it sug­gested only pleas­ing as­so­ci­a­tions, whether heard by day or night, sum­mer or win­ter.

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.

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 barn­yard. In the mean­while 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 tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r—oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! 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, tr-r-r-oonk! 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 howl goes round again and again, un­til the sun dis­perses the morn­ing mist, and only the pa­tri­arch is not un­der the pond, but vainly bel­low­ing troonk from time to time, and paus­ing for a re­ply.

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 whip-poor-will on the ridge­pole, 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.

Solitude

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 shirt­sleeves, 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 whip-poor-will 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.

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.

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 hill­tops 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.

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 to­day 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.

“Mourn­ing un­timely con­sumes the sad;
Few are their days in the land of the liv­ing,
Beau­ti­ful daugh­ter of Toscar.”

Some of my pleas­an­test hours were dur­ing the long rain­storms 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 north­east 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 thun­der­shower 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 bar­room, the meet­ing­house, the school­house, 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 fair 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.

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. Next to us the grand­est laws are con­tin­u­ally be­ing ex­e­cuted. Next 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.

“How vast and pro­found is the in­flu­ence of the sub­tle pow­ers of Heaven and of Earth!”

“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.”

“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 sub­tle in­tel­li­gences. They are ev­ery­where, above us, on our left, on our right; they en­v­i­ron us on all sides.”

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.”

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 drift­wood in the stream, or In­dra in the sky look­ing down on it. I may be af­fected by a the­atri­cal ex­hi­bi­tion; on the other hand, I may not 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.

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 his field, and chop­ping in his 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.

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.

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.

I have a great deal of com­pany in my house; es­pe­cially in the morn­ing, when no­body calls. Let me sug­gest a few com­par­isons, that some­one 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 horse­fly, or a bum­ble­bee. 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.

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.

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?

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 foun­tain­head 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 noon­day 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.

Visitors

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 bar­room, if my busi­ness called me thither.

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 be 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.

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 plow 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.

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.

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 mean­while. 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:—

“Ar­rivèd there, the lit­tle house they fill,
Ne looke for en­ter­tain­ment where none was;
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will:
The no­blest mind the best con­tent­ment has.”

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 eat 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 light­headed for want of food and also sleep, ow­ing to “the sav­ages’ bar­barous singing, (for they use 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.

As for men, they will hardly fail one any­where. 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 any­where 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.

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?”—

“Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia?
They say that Me­noetius lives yet, son of Ac­tor,
And Peleus lives, son of Æa­cus, among the Myr­mi­dons,
Either of whom hav­ing died, we should greatly grieve.”

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 to­day,” 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.”

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.

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 any­thing 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 fellers about him.”

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 any­thing 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!

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 clos­e­fit­ting cap, and whistling to him­self, he re­minded him of a prince in dis­guise.

His only books were an al­manac and an arith­metic, in which last he was con­sid­er­ably ex­pert. The for­mer was a sort of cy­clopae­dia 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 home­made 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 pe­cu­nia. 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 knees 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 ma­noeu­vring, 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.

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 any­thing 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.

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 ev­ery­body is on the move; and I had my share of good luck, though there were some cu­ri­ous spec­i­mens among my vis­i­tors. Halfwit­ted 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 over­seers 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, sim­ple­minded 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 in­fe­rior, to any­thing 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.

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 hos­pi­ta­lal­ity; 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—

“O Chris­tian, will you send me back?”

One real run­away slave, among the rest, whom I helped to for­ward to­ward the north star. 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.

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 an 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 com­mu­nity, 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 dan­ger 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—

This is the house that I built;
This is the man that lives in the house that I built;

but they did not know that the third line was,

Th­ese are the folks that worry the man
That lives in the house that I built.

I did not fear the hen-har­ri­ers, for I kept no chick­ens; but I feared the men-har­ri­ers rather.

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.

The Bean-Field

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 An­taeus. 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.

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 tonight 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.

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.

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 agri­cola la­bo­rio­sus 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 live 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 English 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 “Ranz des Vaches” for them.

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.

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 nighthawk 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.

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 tintinnab­u­lum 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.

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.

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 great 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.

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.

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 lae­ta­tion 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.

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

For a hoe

$0.54

Plow­ing, 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

My in­come was (pa­trem fa­mil­ias ven­dacem, non emacem esse oportet), from

Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold

$16.94

Five bushels large pota­toes

2.50

Nine bushels 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

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.

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 were the seeds of those virtues, were worm-eaten 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 sub­tle 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:—

“And as he spake, his wings would now and then
Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again—”

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.

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 (maximeque pius quaes­tus), 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.”

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 spica, ob­so­letely speca, from spe, hope) should not be the only hope of the hus­band­man; its ker­nel or grain (granum from gerendo, 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.

The Village

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 ho­moeo­pathic 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 & 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 bear—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 bar­room, 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 gaunt­let, 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 gaunt­let, 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 sieve­ful 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.

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 ab­sent­minded 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 mean­while, 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 snow­storm, 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.

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.

“Nec bella fuerunt,
Fag­i­nus asta­bat dum scy­phus ante dapes.”

“Nor wars did men mo­lest,
When only beechen bowls were in re­quest.”

“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.”

The Ponds

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 cow­boy 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.

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 hill­side.

In warm evenings I fre­quently sat in the boat play­ing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seem 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.

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.

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 south­east 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 hill­top 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 hill­top, 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 sand­bank, 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 Michae­lan­gelo.

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 slip­noose, 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.

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.

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.

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 hill­side, 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.

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 sand­bar 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.

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 shore is shorn, 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.

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 pow­wow 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 Walled-in Pond.

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° or 70° some of the time, ow­ing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42°, 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°, 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.

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 (Leu­cis­cus pul­chel­lus), 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 retic­u­la­tus would not ap­ply to this; it should be gut­ta­tus 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 mus­sels 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 (Hirundo bi­color) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus mac­u­lar­ius) “teeter” along its stony shores all sum­mer. I have some­times dis­turbed a fish hawk sit­ting on a white pine over the wa­ter; but I doubt if it is ever pro­faned by the wind of a gull, like Fair Haven. At most, it tol­er­ates one an­nual loon. Th­ese are all the an­i­mals of con­se­quence which fre­quent it now.

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.

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.

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.

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 shore­line 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 this­tle­down 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 hill­top 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 (Gyri­nus) 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!

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 dust­cloth—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.

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.

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 rain­storm 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 rain­drops 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.

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 wa­ter­fowl, 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 wa­ter­logged 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.

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 grapevines 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 land 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?

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?

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 ice­men 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 may 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?

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

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.”

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?

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 seashore, 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.

Flint’s Pond! 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 skin­flint, 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 bony 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 saw 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 shores; 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 priv­i­lege to him to be­hold it. I re­spect not his labors, his farm where ev­ery­thing has its price, who would carry the land­scape, who would carry his God, to mar­ket, if he could get any­thing for him; who goes to mar­ket for 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 muck­heap, 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 church­yard! Such is a model farm.

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.”

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 south­west; 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.

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 cart­loads, to make sand­pa­per 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.

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 (Iris ver­si­color) grows thinly in the pure wa­ter, ris­ing from the stony bot­tom all around the shore, where it is vis­ited by hum­ming­birds in June; and the color both of its bluish blades and its flow­ers and es­pe­cially their re­flec­tions, is in sin­gu­lar har­mony with the glau­cous wa­ter.

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.