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Selections from Thoreau /
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SELECTIONS FEOM THOKEAU
•f'i^,
iZ
'i>t-^'^
SELECTIONS FEOM
THOEEAU
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION
HENEY S. SALT
AUTHOR OF ' THK LIFE OP HENRY DAVID THOBEAU '
Honlion
MACMILLAN AISTD CO.
1895
INTEODUCTION
We are most of us familiar with one or another of
the many legendary apparitions of the alter ego, or
second self, a manifestation which must have entailed
considerable inconvenience on the parties whom it
principally concerned. It could hardly be agreeable
to a person of strong distinctive personality to feel
that his astral counterpart was travelling at large
about the country, and compromising him by grant-
ing unauthorised interviews to all sorts of busy-
bodies; still less, perhaps, would he relish such a
startling experience as that of the magus Zoroaster,
who, if the poet is to be credited, "met his own
image walking in the garden." But it should be
noted that the annals of literature present equally
interesting, and better authenticated examples of a
somewhat similar phenomenon. Authors, and especi-
ally those of new and unappreciated genius, are not
unfrequently subject to the same annoyance as
Zoroaster ; nay, worse, for whereas the second self in
the legend was at least an exact image of its original,
VI SELECTIONS FUOM THOEEAU
the literary phantom can seldom boast more than a
very superficial resemblance. In a word, there are
often two personalities who stand junder the same
name before the eyes of the public^the author him-
self, as represented in his actual character and writ-
ings, and the current idea of the auihor, as misrepre-
sented in the critical analysis and exposition of him.
And it often goes hard for a time with the reputation
of a writer who is thus dogged and superseded by his
ghostly rival, for these spectral illusions, flimsy and
hollow though they may be, are by no means easy to
exorcise, and many years, or even generations, must
sometimes elapse before they are finally consigned to
their appointed resting-place with the hippogriff, the
chimsera, and other kindred superstitions.
If ever there was a man of genius who was fore-
ordained by the peculiarity of his doctrines and the
eccentricity of his actions to be misjudged by critics,
it was Thoreau. It is not in the least surprising that
I his true character should to this day remain unknown
i to the majority of readers, while his place is usurped
by a mysterious personage of whose origin I will
presently speak. But first let us turn our attention
to the real Thoreau, and in particular to that much-
maligned gospel of naturalness and simplicity which
it is so easy to comprehend if it be studied with sym-
pathetic interest, and so easy to distort and miscon-
I strue if regarded from a hostile standpoint. Having
INTRODUCTION VU
seen how Thoreau himself lived and wrote and acted,
we shall be better able to appreciate what his carica-
turists have erroneously attributed to him; having
made ourselves acquainted with the characteristic
features of the man, we shall know what to think
of the more shadowy lineaments of the phantom.
Henry David Thoreau was born at the village of
Concord, Massachusetts, on 12th July 1817, his
father, John Thoreau, being a pencil -maker, of
French extraction, and his mother, whose maiden
name was Cynthia Dunbar, the daughter of a New
Hampshire minister. His debt to his parents, and
especially to his mother, has perhaps been somewhat
underrated, for it is probable that his sturdy uncom-
promising temperament, and shrewd mordant humour,
were a direct inheritance. " The best parts of Mrs.
Thoreau's character," so I learn from one who was
born and bred in Concord, "have not been given.
She was a woman of commanding presence, never
to be ignored in any company. She had a keen
sense of humour, and would give an account of a
journey to Boston in a stage-coach, or even a walk
to the post-office, which, although perhaps tinged a
little with romance, would convulse her hearers with
laughter, her manner was so dramatic. Of her
generosity it was said that no matter how much she I
might complain of poverty, she always had something:
of value to give to her poorer neighbours.'' Still
Vlll SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
more important, in its bearing on Henry Thoreau's
.character, was the fact that both his parents were
/great lovers of nature, and earnest workers for the
abolition of negro slavery. " They were twenty
years ahead of their time," is the verdict of one who
knew them.
From 1833 to 1837 "Thoreau was a student at
Harvard University, but though he became in this
■^way a good classical scholar, his intellect, so free and
' self-reliant in its scope, was not one which could
! greatly profit by an academical education. It was
' in the school of wild nature that he was destined to
graduate. " Though bodily," he wrote, " I have been
a member of Harvard University, heart and soul I
have been far away among the scenes of my boyhood.
Those hours that should have been devoted to study
have been spent in scouring the woods and exploring
the lakes and streams of my native village. Im- ■
mured within the dark but classic walls, my spirit '
yearned for the sympathy of my old and almost for-
gotten friend. Nature/'
During the last twenty- five years of his life he
indulged this instinctive sympathy to the utmost, in
his devoted attachment to the fields and forests of
his native Concord. After leaving Harvard he
became a prominent member of that transcendentalist
circle of which Emerson was the chief, and a personal
friend and associate of Bronson Alcott, Ellery Chan-
INTKODUCTION ix
ning, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
By Emerson in particular he was powerfully and
beneficially influenced in his youth and early man-
hood, when his hitherto unsuspected genius was
somewhat suddenly awakened ; though, in view of
the originality and greater practicalness of mind
which in later life carried him apart from and
beyond the Emersonian theories, it is a complete
mistake to regard him as an "imitator" of his
friend. I have been assured on good authority that
Emerson was in his turn considerably influenced by
Thoreau, in the direction of a simpler and austerer
mode of thought and living, at a time when the
elder man was leaning in a somewhat contrary
direction. An amusing story is told that when
Thoreau was a mere youth, and some one remarked
to his mother on the similarity of his thought to
that of the great Concord philosopher, Mrs. Thoreau
replied, "Well, you see, Mr. Emerson has been a
good deal with David Henry, and may have got
ideas from him." What was said as a jest in 1837
might have been said in all truth and seriousness
some ten years later.
Thoreau's personal appearance is thus described
by EUery Channing, the most intimate of his Con-
cord friends. " His face once seen could not be for-
gotten. The features were quite marked ; the nose
aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of
X SELECTIONS FKOM THOREAU
Ceesar (more like a beak, as was said) ; huge over-
hanging brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that
could be seen, in certain lights, and in others gray-
eyes expressive of all shades of feeling, but never
weak or near-sighted; the forehead not unusually
broad or high, full of concentrated energy or pur-
pose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up
with meaning and thought when silent, and giving
out when open a stream of the most varied and
unusual and instructive sayings. His whole figure
' had an active earnestness, as if he had no moment to
waste."
A good idea of Thoreau's wayward independent
mode of living, and of the paradoxical humour which
covered, and in some cases concealed, his profound
' sincerity of purpose,J may be gathered from the
highly characteristic answer which he returned in
1847 to a Harvard University circular, issued in
order to collect statistics concerning the Uves of
former students. This remarkable letter runs as
follows : —
"Am not married. I don't know whether mine is a
profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned,
and in every instance has been practised before being
studied. The mercantile part of it was begun by myself
alone. It is not one but legion. I will give you some
of the monster's heads. I am a schoolmaster, a private
tutor, a surveyor, a gardener, a farmer, a painter (I mean
a house-painter), a carpenter, a mason, a day-labourer a
INTRODUCTION xi
pencil-maker, a glass-paper-maker, a writer, and some-
times a poetaster. If you will act the part of lolus, and
apply a hot iron to any of these heads, I shall be greatly
obliged to yon. My present employment is to answer
such orders as may be expected from so general an
advertisement as the above. That is, if I see fit, which
is not always the case, for I have found out a way to live
without what is commonly called employment or industry,
attractive or otherwise. Indeed my steadiest employment,
if such it can be called, is to keep myself^t^the top of my .
condition, and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven
or on_earth. The last two or three years I lived in
Concord woods alone, something more than a mile from
any neighbour, in a house built entirely by myself.
P.S. — I beg that the class will not consider me an
object of charity, and if any of them are in want of any
pecuniary assistance, and will make known their case to
me,(I will engage to give them some advice of more
worth than money^
The residence in Walden woods, referred to in the
above letter, and narrated in the most popular of his
books, was the one episode in Thoreau's career which
attracted popular attention, but it should be re-
membered that it was an episode only , occupying but
two and a half years out of his whole active life. To
label him "misanthrope" or_^ermit" on account of
the Walden experiment is to misunderstand him
completely. (JHe was a hermit when it suited his
purposes to be one — a misanthrope never.j A man
1 From " Memorials of the Class of 1837 of Harvard Uni-
versity," by Henry Williams, Boston, Mass.
xii SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
\pf deep sp iritual instincts, he needed large j),eiiQds_of
solitude and retirement ; butTEeTdeaT'tliat he had no
regard for human interests and human aspirations is
the very reverse of the truth. At that critical and
supreme moment in the abolitionist movement when
John Brown was arrested and condemned for the
insurrection at Harper's Ferry the first voice publicly
raised on the convict's behalf was the voice of Thoreau,
in the magnificent "Plea for Captain John Brown."
" For my own part," he wrote in a second oration on
the same subject, '{l commonly attend more to nature
than to man, but any affecting human event may
blind our eyes to natural objects.^ This is scarcely
the sentiment of a misanthrope.
A great injustice has been done to Thoreau's
memory by the common notion^ hat h e was devoid of
huin an symp athies. For this notion the responsibility
must partly rm~5n Emerson, who, when editing the
posthumous volume oi Tetters in 1865, made the
unfortunate mistake of omitting the domestic cgr-
respondence which showed Thoreau in his most neigh-
bourly and affectionate mood, in order to exhibit in the
more formal epistles " a perfect piece of stoicism." The
recent publication of Thoreau's F amiliar Lette rs has
now corrected- tliis„im.ppess}pn, but it will doubtless
be many years before it is finally removed. The truth
is that Thoreau, despite his sternness of temperament
and bluntness of speech, was at heart a man of
INTRODUCTION xiii
profound sensibility and_feeling, as was proved, for
example, in the extreme tenderness of his relations
MiMiiiiiii I III! Ill miir'iWiiiwifi' -III
with hi s broth er John, the brother who was his
companion in the famous "Week on the Concord
Eiver," and whose early death was a cause of lifelong
grief to the survivor. A discerning reader will not
fail to note the true^humanityj)f__Thoreau, although
there" is, be it admitted, a complete absence of t he
" am iability " that needs to be expressed in words.
Such are the readers for whom he lived and wrote.
('I think of those amongst men," he say s, "wh o will
know that I love th^m, though I tell them not.''
It is unnecessary here to relate the details of his
life at Concord, so uneventful in external incidents,
so full of spiritual adventure and inner experience.
His Walden and JVeek on the Concord cund Merrimack
Rivers have already been referred to ; the other most
notable "Excursions'' are those described in The
Maine Woods and Cape Cod. With the exception of
such brief absences, his years were wholly spent at
Concord, where he lived in his father's house, and
supported himself by( land-surveying, pencil-making,
or one of the many crafts of which he had made him-
self master. He died from consumption on 6th May
1862, and the family, which was never a robust stock,
is now extinct. It is probable that nothing but simple
living and open-air habits could have prolonged his
life to the term of forty-five years.
xiv SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
Let us now turn to tlia ^philosophy of Thoreau's
writings. It has been recorded that when Dr. Samuel
Johnson was invited to take a country walk he
replied, "Sir, one green field is like another green
field; I like to look at men." Thoreau's attitude
towards nature and natural scenery was the exact
opposite of this. He found in nature not the dull,
uniform, inanimate thing which most town-dwellers,
and it is to be feared some country-dwellers, too often
conceive it to be, but a living entity, possessing its
own distinctive moods and affections, and animated j
with as conscious and active a spirit as himself. ' He
rejoiced in the belief that mankind is not the sole'
object of concern to the spirit of the universe. Like
St. Francis, he could never look on the animals as
divided from man by some arbitrary line of demarca-
tion, but sympathised with them as his " townsmen
and fellow-creatures," who, as he said, possessed the
" character and importance of another order of men."
Accordingly his whole relation to nature and
natural history differed widely from that of the
collector and scientist, whose dominant impulse on
seeing a beautiful bird or beast is to kill and stuff it
— to knock it down first, and then, as the taxider-
mists say, to " set it up " afterwards. Thoreau was
distinctly not a professor of this anatomical method
of classification. "I think," he said, ("the mos_t
important requisite in describing an animal is to be
INTRODUCTION XV
sure that you give its character and spirit, for in that
you have, without error, the sum and effect of all its
parts, known and unknown. J You must tell what it
is to man ; surely the most important part of an
animal is its anima, its vital spirit, on which is based
its character and all the particulars by which it most
concerns us. Yet most scientific books which treat
of animals leave this out altogether, and what they
describe are, as it were, phenomena of dead matter."
That aspect of natural scenery which especially
attracted Thoreau's temperament was the wild. He
turned back from the vanities and disappointments
of social intercourse to draw (renewed Jiealth and
vitality from the far recesses of nature) Alike in
ethics, in science, and in literature, he looked to
wildness as(supplying the most essentiaL element of
genius); a creed which may be summed up in one of
those incomparably terse and suggestive images
which lie scattered through his pages. " As the wild
duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is
the wild — the mallard — thought, which 'mid falling
dews, wings it way above the fens."
The simplicity which Thoreau preached and
(/practised was intimately connected with this love of
the wild. An instinctive persona l preference afforded
the primary reason for his simplification of life — it
was as natural to him to be frugal in his habits as to
prefer the wildness of the Concord woods to the
6
XVI SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
academic coteries of Boston. This should be sufficient
answer to the charge of "asceticism" which is some-
times brought against him by critics who cannot
believe that an abstinence from their comforts and
their luxuries can be due to any other cause.) It
would be difficult, perhaps, to instance a man who
was less of an ascetic than Thoreau -yht knew his own
mind, he determined from the first to live his own
life, and when he renounced certain things which
custom proclaims to be necessary, we may be quite
sure that he did so from a wish to vivify, not mortify,
the keenness of his enjoyment.
And here arises an important objection which has
been urged, from time to time, against every apostle
of simplicity — against Rousseau in France, and
Thoreau in America, and Edward Carpenter in Eng-
land. Does not the " return to nature," it is asked,
imply a corresponding relapse from civilisation toj
savagery 1 Is it not retrogressive, reactionary, unJ
scientific — in a word, impossible ? To which it may at
once be answered that the naturalness which Thoreau
advocates cannot, if one takes the trouble to note his
own clear definition of it, be mistaken for a state
akin to barbarism or incompatible with the highest
and truest culture. He explicitly avows his belief
that civilisation is " a real advance in the condition
ofjman," but adds that he wishes " to show at what a I
( sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to
INTRODUCTION xvii
suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all
the advantage without suffering any of the disadvan-
tage^ The destructive side of Thoreau's teaching
consists in a prolonged, deliberate, and merciless ex-
position of these disadvantages of civilisation, and of
the numerous sophisms that underlie so large a portion
of modern society. But he is no advocate of a mere
return to barbarism, the question proposed by him
being whether it is possible r to combine the hardi-
ness of the savage with the intellectualness of the
civilised man."
I have spoken of the destructive side of Thoreau's!
teaching, but his teaching was not destructive only. !
In an age ot^ increasing artificiality and restless self-
indulgence he preached a gospel of healthfulness,
simplicity, and contentment — the gospel of natural
living, 'of the open air.y(^He taught men to trust
their real native instincts, and to distrust the in-
numerable artificial wants with which custom and
tradition have everywhere surrounded us J to distin-
guish betweer^^genuine taste and acquired habitj As
the Greek philosopher exclaimed, " How many things
there are that I do not desire ! " so Thoreau insisted
that_!i£Liaaii-is rich in proportion to the number of
things which he can afford to let alone." It may be
said that a savage also is content to let alone those
things ; but it must be remembered that a savage
spends the leisure thus obtained in sleeping on a mat,
xviii SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
whereas Thoreau had other means for the disposal of
his spare hours. " To what end," he says in his
Letters, "do I lead a simple life at all? That I may
teach others to simplify their lives, and so all our
lives be 'simplified' merely, like an algebraic/
formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of
the ground I have cleared, to live more worthily \
and profitably ? "
This gospel of naturalness, strange enough in
itself to the ordinary member of society, was made
still stranger by the manner in which Thoreau intro-
duced it. His peculiarities of character and speech,
the keen thrifty incisiveness of his paradoxical utter-
ances — barbed like his favourite Indian arrow-heads
— all militated against the early acceptance of his
novel principles, and Thoreau was not the man to
explain himself to his puzzled audience. For the
time, therefore, his pointed epigrams had the efiect,
and still have the effect, of making society look and
feel like the fretful porcupine in its attitude towards
him. Local prejudice was strong against this pre-
sumptuous village moralist, this "Yankee Diogenes"
or " Eural Humbug," as contemporary critics styled
him, who dared call in/ question the utility of nine-
tenths of the most cherished institutions of mankind' ;
and, as it is always cheering to believe that uncom-
fortable prophets whose admonitions trouble us are
themselves the victims of depravity or madness, a
INTRODUCTION XIX
phantom Thoreau was soon forthcoming (under the
usual working of the law of demand and supply),
who was so contrived as to fit in precisely with the
preconceived ideas of the Boston public. Insincerity
and self-conceit, cynicism and misanthropy, were
the qualities with which this unhappy lay figure was
most liberally endowed. If this were Thoreau, we
might well join with Mr. Lowell and the other critics
who have mistaken the phantom for the man in their
contempt for a personality so contemptible — a mix-
ture of indolence, misanthropy, and self-conceit. CBut
fortunately the writings of Thoreau^hemselves pro-
vide the most specific refutation of the error.
It is hoped that the following Selections, which,
though moderate in compass, are typical of Thoreau
in almost all his moods and aspects, and contain
much that is new to English readers, may be instru-
mental in quickening a more just and liberal appre-
ciation. I have endeavoured so to choose and
arrange the passages as to make them representative
not only of their author's strongly-marked opinions
on morals, society, politics, literature, and natural
history, but also of the various influences and
incidents that chiefly aff"ected his life — the scenery
of Concord, his study of Indian lore,(his_sojourn at
'sWaldem his daily walks, his longer excursions by
river, forest, or sea-coast, his solitary moods, and his
genial moods (as in his friendly " crack " with the
XX SELECTIONS FIIOM THOKEA.U
Wellfleet oysterman), his revolt against the State of
Massachusetts for its sanction of slavery, his unhesi-
tating championship of John Brown at a moment
which tried as in a fiery furnace the mettle of human
character. As a writer, Thoreau's great qualities
stand consjiicuous on every page, admitted even by
those critics who, like Mr. Lowell, are least in sym-
pathy with his aims. Not less remarkable, though
as yet but half recognised by the public, are his noble
qualities as a man.
H. S. Salt.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction . . . . . v
Prom The Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers—
CoNOOED River . . . . 1
Sunday Thoushts . .... 13
Friendship 29
From Walden, or Life in the Woods —
Where I Lived and what I Lived for . 42
Higher Laws . . . .64
House Warming . . ... 80
Prom The Maine Woods —
Primeval Nature . . 89
The Murder of the Moose . . 103
Forest Phenomena . . 118
Prom Gape God —
The Shipwreck . . . 124
The Beach .... .136
The Wellfleet Oysterman . 151
xxii SELECTIONS FEOM THOBEAU
From Excursions — page
Natural History of Massachusetts . 168
Walking .198
From Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers —
Civil Disobedience 238
A Plea fok Captain John Brown . . 267
Life without Principle .... 301
Portrait of Thoreau, from a Daguerreotype made about
1857, and photograplied by Mr. A. W. Hosmer of Con-
cord, Mass. . . Frontispiece
coNCOED eivp:e
The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground Eiver, though
probably as old as the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin
to have a place in civilised history until the fame
of its grassy meadows and its iish attracted settlers
out of England in 1635, when it received the other
but kindred name of Concord from the first planta-
tion on its banks, which appears to have been
commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony. It
will be Grass-ground Eiver as long as grass grows and
water runs here ; it will be Concord Eiver only while
men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct
race it was grass-ground, where they hunted and
fished, and it is still perennial grass-ground to Con-
cord farmers, who own the Great Meadows, and get
the hay from year to year. " One branch of it,"
according to the historian of Concord, for I love to
quote so good authority, " rises in the south part of
Hopkinton, and another from a pond and a large
cedar-swamp in Westborough," and flowing between
Hopkinton and Southborough, through Framingham,
and between Sudbury and Wayland, where it is
S> B
2 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
sometimes called Sudbury Eiver, it enters Concord
at the south part of the town, and after receiving the
North or Assabeth Eiver, which has its source a little
farther to the north and west, goes out at the north-
east angle, and flowing between Bedford and Carlisle,
and through Billerica, empties into the Merrimack '
at Lowell. In Concord it is, in summer, from four
to fifteen feet deep, and from one hundred to three
hundred feet wide, but in the spring freshets, when
it overflows its banks, it is in some places nearly
a mile wide. Between Sudbury and Wayland the
meadows acquire their greatest breadth, and when
covered with water, they form a handsome chain of
shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by numerous gulls
and ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge, between
these towns, is the largest expanse, and when the
wind blows freshly in a raw March day, heaving up
the surface into dark and sober billows or regular
swells, skirted as it is in the distance with alder-
swamps and smoke-like maples, it looks like a smaller
Lake Huron, and is very pleasant and exciting for
a landsman to row or sail over. The farm-houses
along the Sudbury shore, which rises gently to a
considerable height, command fine water prospects at
this season. The shore is more flat on the Wayland
side, and this town is the greatest loser by the flood.
Its farmers tell me that thousands of acres are flooded
now, since the dams have been erected, where they
remember to have seen the white honeysuckle or
clover growing once, and they could go dry with
shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but
CONCORD EITEE 3
blue-joint and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in
water all the year round. For a long time, they
made the most of the driest season to get their hay,
working sometimes till nine o'clock at night, sedu-
lously paring with their scythes in the twilight round
the hummocks left by the ice; but now it is not
worth the getting when they can come at it, and
they look sadly round to their wood-lots and upland
as a last resource.
It is worth the while to make a voyage up this
stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, only to
see how much country there is in the rear of us;
great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses,
and barns, and haystacks, you never saw before, and
men everywhere — Sudbury, that is Southhorough men,
and Wayland, and Mne-Acre-Corner men, and Bound
Eock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river,
Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves
are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh,
the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes
waving ; ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the surf,
in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going
off with a clatter and a whistling like riggers straight
for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed
wings, or else circling round first, with all their
paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to recon-
noitre you before they leave these parts ; gulls
wheeling overhead, musk-rats swimming for dear life,
wet and cold, vidth no fire to warm them by that
you know of ; their laboured homes rising here and
there like haystacks ; and countless mice and moles
4 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEBAU
and winged titmice along the sunny windy shore;
cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on
the beach, their little red skiffs beating about among
the alders; — such healthy natural tumult as proves
the last day is not yet at hand. And there stand all
around the alders, and birches, and oaks, and maples
full of glee and sap, holding in their buds until the
waters subside. You shall perh'apsTun aground on
Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's pipe-
grass above water, to show where the danger is, and
get as good a freezing there as anywhere on the
North-west Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my
life. You shall see men you never heard of before,
whose names you don't know, going away down
through the meadows with long ducking-guns, with
water-tight boots wading through the fowl-meadow
grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores, with guns at
half-cock ; and they shall see teal, blue-winged, green-
winged sheldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys,
and many other wild and noble sights, before night,
such as they who sit in parlours never dream of.
You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise
men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their sum-
mer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, — men
fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind
and rain, than a chestnut is of meat ; who were out
not only in '75 and 1812, but have been out every
day of their lives ; greater men than Homer, or
Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to
say so ; they never took to the way of writing. Look
at their fields, and imagine what they might write, if
CONCORD EIVBR 5
ever they should put pen to paper. Or what have
they not written on the face of the earth already,
clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing,
and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out
and out, and over and over, again and again, erasing
what they had already written for want of parchment.
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as
the work of to-day is present, so some flitting per-
spectives and demi-experiences of the life that is in
nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside
to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and
rain which never die.
The respectable folks, —
Where dwell they 1
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay ;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die.
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they ever mend,
To every asker readily lend ;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rooks strength,
To the stars light.
To the weary night.
To the busy day,
To the idle play ;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.^
' It should be stated, with reference to the poems with which
6 SELECTIONS FKOM THOBBAU
Concord Eiver is remarkable for the gentleness of
its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some
have referred to its influence the proverbial modera-
tion of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the
Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been pro-
posed that the town should adopt for its coat of arms
a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times
round. I have read that a descent of an eighth of an
inch in a mile is suflacient to produce a flow. Our
river has, probably, very near the smallest allowance.
The story is current, at any rate, though I believe
that strict history will not bear it out, that the only
bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within
the limits of the town, was driven up stream by the
wind. But wherever it makes a sudden bend it is
shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to be called
a river. Compared with the other tributaries of the
Merrimack, it appears to have been properly named
Musketaquid, or Meadow River, by the Indians. For
the most part, it creeps through broad meadows,
adorned with scattered oaks, where the cranberry
is found in abundance, covering the ground like a
moss-bed. A row of sunken dwarf willows borders
the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater
distance the meadow is skirted with maples, alders,
and other fluviatile trees, overrun with the grape-
vine, which bears fruit in its season, purple, red,
white, and other grapes. Still farther from the
stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the
Thoreau frequently interspersed his essays, that those which are
distinguished by inverted commas are quotations from other
writers, the rest by Thoreau himself.
CONCORD EIVER 7
gray and white dwellings of the inhabitants. Ac-
cording to the valuation of 1831, there were in
Concord two thousand one hundred and eleven acres,
or about one seventh of the whole territory in
meadow ; this standing next in the list after pastur-
age and unimproved lands, and, judging from the
returns of previous years, the meadow is not re-
claimed so fast as the woods are cleared.
Let us here read what old Johnson says of these
meadows in his Wonder-workinfj Providence, which
gives the account of New England from 1628 to 1652,
and see how matters looked to him. He says of the
Twelfth Church of Christ gathered at Concord : " This
town is seated upon a fair fresh river, whose rivulets
are filled with fresh marsh, and her streams with fish,
it being a branch of that large river of Merrimack.
Allwifes and shad in their season come up to this
town, but salmon and dace cannot come up, by reason
of the rocky falls, which causeth their meadows to
lie much covered with water, the which these people,
together with their neighbour town, have several
times essayed to cut through but cannot, yet it may
be turned another way with an hundred pound charge
as it appeared.'' As to their farming he says : " Hav-
ing laid out their estate upon cattle at 5 to 20 pound
a cow, when they came to winter them with inland
hay, and feed upon such wild fother as was never
cut before, they could not hold out the winter, but,
ordinarily the first or second year after their coming
up to a new plantation, many of their cattle died."
And this from the same author Of the Planting
8 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAD
of the I9th Church in the Mattachusets' Government,
called Sudbury: "This year [does he mean 1654]
the town and church of Christ at Sudbury began to
have the first foundation stones laid, taking up her
station in the inland country, as her elder sister
Concord had formerly done, lying further up the
same river, being furnished with great plenty of fresh
marsh, but, it lying very low is much indamaged with
land floods, insomuch that when the summer proves
wet they lose part of their hay ; yet are they so suffi-
ciently provided that they take in cattle of other
towns to winter."
The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals
thus unobserved through the town, without a murmur
or a pulse-beat, its general course from south-west to
north-east, and its length about fifty miles ; a huge
volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the
plains and valleys of the substantial earth with the
moccasined tread of an Indian warrior, making haste
from the high places of the earth to its ancient
reservoir. The murmurs of many a famous river
on the other side of the globe reach even to us here,
as to more distant dwellers on its banks ; many a
poet's stream floating the helms and shields of heroes
on its bosom. The Xanthus or Scamander is not a
mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but
fed by the everflowing springs of fame —
" And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea " ;
and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our
CONCOED KIVEE 9
muddy but much abused Concord River with the
most famous in history.
" Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon ; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those. "
The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those
journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the
Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind
of personal importance in the annals of the vrorld.
The heavens are not yet drained over their sources,
but the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual
tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the
Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his
revenue at the point of the sword. Rivers must
have been the guides which conducted the footsteps
of the first travellers. They are the constant lure,
when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise
and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the
dwellers on their banks will at length accompany
their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore
at their invitation the interior of continents. They
are the natural highways of all nations, not only
levelling the ground and removing obstacles from
the path of the traveller, quenching his thirst and
bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him
through the most interesting scenery, the most
populous portions of the globe, and where the animal
and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest per-
fection.
I had often stood on the banks of the Concord,
10 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all
progress, following the same law with the system,
with time, and all that is made; the weeds at the
bottom gently bending down the stream, shaken by
the watery wind, still planted where their seeds had
sunk, but ere long to die and go down likewise ; the
shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their
condition, the chips and weeds, and occasional logs
and stems of trees that floated past, fulfilling their
fate, were objects of singular interest to me, and at
last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and
float whither it would bear me.
At length, on Saturday, the last day of August,
1839, we two, brothers, and natives of Concord,
weighed anchor in this river port ; for Concord, too,
lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for
the bodies as well as the souls of men ; one shore at
least exempted from all duties but such as an honest
man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling rain
had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay
our voyage, but at length the leaves and grass were
dried, and it came out a mild afternoon, as serene
and fresh as if Nature were maturing some greater
scheme of her own. After this long dripping and
oozing from every pore, she began to respire again
more healthily than ever. So with a vigorous shove
we launched our boat from the bank, while the flags
and bulrushes courtesied a God-speed, and dropped
silently down the stream.
Our boat, which had cost us a week's labour in
CONCOED EIVEE 11
the spring, was in form like a fisherman's dory, fifteen
feet long by three and a half in breadth at the widest
part, painted green below, with a border of blue, with
reference to the two elements in which it was to
spend its existence. It had been loaded the evening
before at our door, half a mile from the ri-ver, with
potatoes and melons from a patch which we had
cultivated, and a few utensils, and was provided with
wheels in order to be rolled around falls, as well as
with two sets of oars, and several slender poles for
shoving in shallow places, and also two masts, one
of which served for a tent-pole at night; for a
bufialo-skin was to be our bed, and a tent of cotton
cloth our roof. It was strongly built, but heavy,
and hardly of better model than usual. If rightly
made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal,
a creature of two elements, related by one half its
structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the
other to some strong-winged and graceful bird. The
fish shows where there should be the greatest breadth
of beam and depth in the hold ; its fins direct where
to set the oars, and the tail gives some hint for the
form and position of the rudder. The bird shows
how to rig and trim the sails, and what form to give
to the prow that it may balance the boat, and divide
the air and water best. These hints we had but
partially obeyed. But the eyes, though they are no
sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, how-
ever fashionable, which does not answer all the
requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a ship
but the wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely
12 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
serve the purpose of a ship, so our boat, being of
wood, gladly availed itself of the old law that the
heavier shall float the lighter, and though a dull
water-fowl, proved a sufficient buoy for our purpose.
" Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough. "
Some village friends stood upon a promontory
lower down the stream to wave us a last farewell ;
but we, having already performed these shore rites,
with excusable reserve, as befits those who are
embarked on unusual enterprises, who behold but
speak not, silently glided past the firm lands of
Concord, both peopled cape and lonely summer
meadow, with steady sweeps. And yet we did
unbend so far as to let our guns speak for us,
when at length we had swept out of sight, and thus
left the woods to ring again with their echoes ; and
it may be many russet-clad children, lurking in those
broad meadows, with the bittern and the woodcock
and the rail, though wholly concealed by brakes and
hard-hack and meadow-sweet, heard our salute that
afternoon.
SUNDAY THOUGHTS
As we passed under the last bridge over the canal,
just before reaching the Merrimack, the people
coming out of church paused to look at us from
above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged
in some heathenish comparisons ; but we were the
truest observers of this sunny day. According to
Hesiod,
"The seventh is a holy day,
For then Latona hrought forth golden-rayed Apollo, "
and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the
week, and not the first. I find among the papers of
an old Justice of the Peace and Deacon of the town
of Concord, this singular memorandum, which is
worth preserving as a relic of an ancient custom.
After reforming the spelling and grammar, it runs
as follows : " Men that travelled with teams on the
Sabbath, Dec. 18th, 1803, were Jeremiah Eichardson
and Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They had teams
with rigging such as is used to carry barrels, and
they were travelling westward. Eichardson was
questioned by the Hon. Ephraim Wood, Esq., and he
14 SBLEOTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
said that Jonas Parker was his fellow-traveller, and
he further said that a Mr. Longley was his employer,
who promised to bear him out." We were the men
that were gliding northward, this 1st September 1839,
with still team, and rigging not the most convenient
to carry barrels, unquestioned by any Squire or
Church Deacon and ready to bear ourselves out if
need were. In the latter part of the seventeenth
century, according to the historian of Dunstable,
"Towns were directed to erect 'a cage' near the
meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the
sanctity of the Sabbath were confined." Society has
relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but
I presume that there is not less religion than formerly.
If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it
is only drawn the tighter in another.
You can hardly convince a man of an error in a
lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection
that the progress of science is slow. If he is not
convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists
tell us that it took one hundred years to pi'ove that
fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more,
to prove that they are not to be referred to the
Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake
myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of
Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah,
though with us he has acquired new attributes, is
more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more
divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentle-
man, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert
so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 15
many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the infinite
power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal
hardly as yet apotheosised, so wholly masculine, with
no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva,
to intercede for me, dvfim (j)vX,^ovaa re, Kr^Zofiivrj
re. The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen
gods, with the vices of men, but in many important
respects essentially of the divine race. In my
Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with
his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy
body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and
his chosen daughter lambe ; for the great god Pan
is not dead, as was rumoured. No god ever dies.
Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of
ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.
It seems to me that the god that is commonly
worshipped in civilised countries is not at all divine,
though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelm-
ing authority and respectability of mankind com-
bined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
If I thought that I could speak with discrimination
and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I
should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They
seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be
mistaken. Every people have gods to suit their cir-
cumstances ; the Society Islanders had a god called
Toahitu, " in shape like a dog ; he saved such as
were in danger of falling from rocks and trees." I
think that we can do without him, as we have not
much climbing to do. Among them a man could
make himself a god out of a piece of wood in a
16 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
few minutes, whicli would frighten him out of his
wits.
I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old
school, who had the supreme felicity to be bom in
" days that tried men's souls," hearing this, may say
with Nestor, another of the old school, "But you
are younger than I. For time was when I conversed
with greater men than you. For not at any time
have I seen such men, nor shall see them, as
Perithous, and Dryas, and Troi/Meva Xawv," that is
probably Washington, sole " Shepherd of the People."
And when Apollo has now six times rolled westward,
or seemed to roll, and now for the seventh time
shows his face in the east, eyes well-nigh glazed, long
glassed, which have fluctuated only between lamb's
wool and worsted, explore ceaselessly some good
sermon book. For six days shalt thou labour and
do all thy knitting, but on the seventh, forsooth, thy
reading. Happy we who can bask in this warm
September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well
when they rest as when they toil, not without a
feeling of gratitude ; whose life is as blameless, how
blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord's Mona-
day as on his Suna-day.
There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why
should we be alarmed at any of them ? What man
believes, G-od believes. Long as I have lived, and
many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have
never yet heard or witnessed any direct and conscious
blasphemy or irreverence ; but of indirect and habit-
ual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 17
direct and personal insolence to Him that made
him?
One memorable addition to the old mythology is
due to this era, — the Christian fable. With what
pains, and tears, and blood these centuries have
woven this and added it to the mythology of man-
kind. The new Prometheus. With what miraculous
consent, and patience, and persistency has this mythus
been stamped on the memory of the race ! It would
seem as if it were in the progress of our mythology
to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in his stead.
If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not
what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ,
— the history of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the
Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, un-
buried death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills,^
think of it. In Tasso's poem I trust some things are
sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with
which they preach Christianity still. What are time
and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years,
and a new world ? — that the humble life of a Jewish
peasant should have force to make a New York bishop
so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now
burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre ; — a
church-bell ringing; — some unaffected tears shed by
a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week. —
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may
my right hand forget her cunning."
" By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and
we wept when we remembered Zion."
I trust that some may be as near and dear to
18 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without
the pale of their churches. It is not necessary to be
Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of
the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard
thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named
beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing
they should love their Christ more than my Buddha,
for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.
"God is the letter Ku, as well as Khu." Why need
Christians be still intolerant and superstitious ? The
simple-minded sailors were unwilling to cast over-
board Jonah at his own request. —
" Where is this love become in later age ?
Alas ! 'tis gone in endless pilgrimage
From hence, and never to return, I doubt,
Till revolution wheel those times about. "
One man says, —
" The world's a popular disease, that reigns
Within the froward heart and frantic brains
Of poor distempered mortals."
Another, that
" all the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players."
The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand
within it. Old Drayton thought that a man that
lived here, and would be a poet, for instance, should
have in him certain " brave, translunary things," and
a "fine madness " should possess his brain. Certainly
it were as well, that he might be up to the occasion.
That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne that
"his life has been a miracle of thirty years, which to
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 19
relate, were not history but a piece of poetry, and
would sound like a fable." The wonder is, rather,
that all men do not assert as much. That would be
a rare praise, if it were true, which was addressed to
Francis Beaumont, — "Spectators sate part in your
tragedies.''
Think what a mean and wretched place this world
is ; that half the time we have to light a lamp that
we may see to live in it. This is half our life. Who
would undertake the enterprise if it were all ? And,
pray, what more has day to offer 1 A lamp that burns
more clear, a purer oil, say winter-strained, that so
we may pursue our idleness with less obstruction.
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints,
we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with
hymns.
I make ye an offer,
Ye gods, hear the scoffer,
The scheme will not hurt you,
If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue.
Though I am your creature,
And child of your nature,
I have pride still unbended,
And blood undescended.
Some free independence,
And my own descendants.
I cannot toil blindly,
Though ye behave kindly.
And I swear by the rood,
I'll be slave to no God.
If ye will deal plainly,
I will strive mainly,
If ye w.ill discover,
Great plans to your lover.
And give him a sphere'
Somewhat larger than here.
20 SELECTIONS FEOM THOKBAU
" Verily, my angels ! I was abashed on account of
my servant, who had no Providence but me ; there-
fore did I pardon him." — The Gulistan of Sadi.
Most people with whom I talk, men and women
even of some originality and genius, have their
scheme of the universe all cut and dried, — very dry,
I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted
and powder-post, methinks, — which they set up be-
tween you and them in the shortest intercourse ; an
ancient and tottering frame with all its boards blown
off. They do not walk without their bed. Some, to
me, seemingly very unimportant and unsubstantial
things and relations, are for them everlastingly
settled, — as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the
like. These are like the everlasting hills to them.
But in all my wanderings I never came across the
least vestige of authority for these things. They
have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower
of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate.
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no
scheme ; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against
the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more
clearly at one time than at another, the medimi]
through which I see is clearer. To see from earth tc
heaven, and see there standing, still a fixture, that
old Jewish scheme ! What right have you to hold
up this obstacle to my understanding you, to youi
understanding me ! You did not invent it ; it was
imposed on you. Examine your authority. Ever
Christ, we fear, had his scheme, his conformity t(
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 21
tradition, which slightly vitiates his teaching. He
had not swallowed all formulas. He preached some
mere doctrines. As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob are now only the subtilest imaginable essences,
which would not stain the morning sky. Your
scheme must be the framework of the universe; all
other schemes will soon be ruins. The perfect Grod
in his revelations of himself has never got to the
length of one such proposition as you, his prophets,
state. Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and
can count three 1 Do you know the number of God's
family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do
you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what
geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topo-
graphy 1 Whose friend are you that speak of God's
personality? Do you. Miles Howard, think that he
has made you his confidant ? Tell me of the height
of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of
space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history
of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.
Yet we have a sort of family history of our God, —
so have the Tahitians of theirs, — and some old poet's
grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine
everlasting truth, and God's own words. Pythagoras
says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God,
is an assertion of God " ; but we may well doubt if
there is any example of this in literature.
The New Testament is an invaluable book, though
I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it
in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath
school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the
22 SELECTIONS EEOM THOEEAU
yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped
from their meshes. It was hard to get the comment-
aries out of one's head and taste its true flavour.—
I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon
which has been preached from this text ; almost all
other sermons that I have heard, or heard of, have
been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor
story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ
because the book has been edited by Christians. In
fact, I love this book rarely, though it is a sort of
castle in the air to me, which I am permitted to
dream. Having come to it so recently and freshly,
it has the greater charm, so that I cannot find any to
talk with about it. I never read a novel, they have
so little real life and thought in them. The reading
which I love, best is the scriptures of the several
nations, though it happens that I am better ac-
quainted with those of the Hindoos, the Chinese,
and the Persians, than of the Hebrews, which I have
come to last. Give me one of these Bibles and you
have silenced me for a while. When I recover the
use of my tongue, I am wont to worry my neighbours
with the new sentences ; but commonly they cannot
see that there is any wit in them. Such has been my
experience with the New Testament. I have not
yet got to the crucifixion, I have read it over so many
times. I should love dearly to read it aloud to my
friends, some of whom are seriously inclined ; it is so
good, and I am sure that they have never heard it,
it fits their case exactly, and we should enjoy it so
much together, — but I instinctively despair of getting
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 23
their ears. They soon show, by signs not to be mis-
taken, that it is inexpressibly wearisome to them. I
do not mean to imply that I am any better than my
neighbours ; for, alas ! I know that I am only as good,
though I love better books than they.
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the univer-
sal favour with which the New Testament is out-
wardly received, and even the bigotry with which it
is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is
no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it
deals. I know of no book that has so few readers.
There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and un-
popular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and
Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block. There
are, indeed, severe things in it which no man should
read aloud more than once. — " Seek first the kingdom
of heaven." — "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
earth." — "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that
thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven." — "For what is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul?" — Think of this, Yankees! — "Verily, I say
unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
ye shall say unto this mountain, Eemove hence to
yonder place ; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall
be impossible unto you." — Think of repeating these
things to a New England audience ! thirdly, fourthly,
fifteenthly, till there are three barrels of sermons !
Who, without cant, can read them aloud? Who,
without cant, can hear them, and not go out of the
24 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEATJ
meeting-house? They never were read, they never
were heard. Let but one of these sentences be rightly -
read from any pulpit in the land, and there would
not be left one stone of that meeting-house upon
another.
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's
so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too
constantly moral and personal, to alone content me,
who am not interested solely in man's religious or
moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most
definite designs on the future. Absolutely speaking,
Do unto others as you would that they should do
unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best
of current silver. An honest man would have but
little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any
rule at all in such a case. The book has never been
written which is to be accepted without any allow-
ance. Christ was a sublime actor on the stage of the
world. He knew what he was thinking of when he
said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
words shall not pass away." I draw near to him at
such a time. Yet he taught mankind but imperfectly
how to live ; his thoughts were all directed toward
another world. There is another kind of success
than his. Even here we have a sort of living to get,
and must buffet it somewhat longer. There are
various tough problems yet to solve, and we must
make shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a
human life as we can.
A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-
chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 25
woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity.
The New Testament may be a choice book to him on
some, but not on all or most of his days. He will
rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles,
though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race
of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland
streams.
Men have a singular desire to be good without
being good for anything, because, perchance, they
think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the
end. The sort of morality which the priests inculcate
is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians,
and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the
policemen. It is not worth the while to let our im-
perfections disturb us always. The conscience really
does not, and ought not^to monopolise the whole of
our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It
is as liable to disease as any other part. I have seen
some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former
indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt
children, and at length gave them no peace. They
did not know when to swallow their cud, and their
lives of course yielded no milk.
I was once reproved by a minister who was driving
a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among
the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending
my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead
of a church, when I would have gone farther than he
to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He
declared that I was "breaking the Lord's fourth
commandment," and proceeded to enumerate, in a
26 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him
whenever he had done any ordinary work on the
Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the
watch to trip up those men who followed any secular
work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil
conscience of the workers that did it. The country
is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a
village, the church, not only really but from associa-
tion, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it
is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest
and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as
these shall ere long cease to deform the landscape.
There are few things more disheartening and dis-
gusting than when you are walking the streets of a
strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher
shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus
harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day.
You fancy him to have taken oflf his coat, as when
men are about to do hot and dirty work.
If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to let
me speak in his pulpit on a Sunday, he would object,
because I do not pray as he does, or because I am not
ordained. What under the sun are these things ?
Really, there is no infidelity, nowadays, so great
as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and
rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South
Pacific preaches a truer doctrine. The church is a
sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quack-
ery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are
taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or
Sailor's Snug Harbour, where you may see a row of
SUNDAY THOUGHTS 27
religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.
Let not the apprehension that he may one day have
to occupy a ward therein, discourage the cheerful
labours of the able-souled man. While he remembers
the sick in their extremities, let him not look thither
as to his goal. One is sick at heart of this pagoda
worship. It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo
subterranean temple. In dark places and dungeons
the preacher's words might perhaps strike root and
grow, but not in broad daylight in any part of the
world that I know. The sound of the Sabbath bell
far away, now breaking on these shores, does not
awaken pleasing associations, but melancholy and
sombre ones rather. One involuntarily rests on his
oar, to humour his unusually meditative mood. It is
as the sound of many catechisms and religious books
twanging a canting peal round the earth, seeming to
issue from some Egyptian temple and echo along the
shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace
and Moses in the bulrushes, startling a multitude of
storks and alligators basking in the sun.
Everywhere "good men" sound a retreat, and the
word has gone forth to fall back on innocence. Fall
forward rather on to whatever there is there. Chris-
tianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the
willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land.
It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet
welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells
her falsehoods to her child, but, thank Heaven, the
child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our
mother's faith has not grown with her experience.
28 SELECTIONS FROM THOKEAU
Her experience has been too much for her. The
lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.
It is remarkable that almost all speakers and
writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or
later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of
God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better
late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is
a sad mistake. In reading a work on agriculture, we
have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the
words "Providence" and "He" scattered along tha
page, to come at the profitable level of what he has
to say. What he calls his religion is for the most
part offensive to the nostrils. He should know better
than expose himself, and keep his foul sores covered
till they are quite healed. There is more religion in
men's science than there is science in their religion.
Let us make haste to the report of the committee on
swine.
A man's real faith is never contained in his creed,
nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is
never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile
ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And
yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw,
thinking that that does him good service because his
sheet anchor does not drag.
PEIENDSHIP
No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friend-
ship, and indeed no thought is more famihar to their
aspirations. Ml men are dreaming of it, and its
drama, which is always a tragedy, is enacted daily.
It is the secret of the universe. You may thread the
town, you may wander the country, and none shall
ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere busy
about it, and the idea of what is possible in this
respect affects our behaviour toward all new men
and women, and a great many old ones. Neverthe-
less, I can remember only two or three essays on this
subject in all literature. No wonder that the Myth-
ology, and Arabian Nights, and Shakespeare, and
Scott's novels, entertain us, — we are poets and fablers
and dramatists and novelists ourselves. We are
continually acting a part in a more interesting drama
than any written. We are dreaming that our Friends
are our Friends, and that we are our Friends' Friends.
Our actual Friends are but distant relations of those
to whom we are pledged. We never exchange more
than three words with a Friend in our lives on that
level to which our thoughts and feelings almost
30 SELECTIONS FROM THOKEAU
habitually rise. One goes forth prepared to say,
"Sweet Friends!" and the salutation is, "Damn
your eyes ! " But never mind ; faint heart never won
true Friend. my Friend, may it come to pass
once, that when you are my Friend I may be yours.
Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if
there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is for-
ever postponed to unimportant duties and relations 1
Friendship is first. Friendship last. But it is equally
impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them
answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then
indeed we begin to keep them company. How often
we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual
Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.
What is commonly honoured with the name of
Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct.
Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I
do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to
the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one
another. They are not often transfigured and trans-
lated by love in each other's presence. I do not
observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the
love of a man. If one abates a little the price of
his wood, or gives a neighbour his vote at town-
meeting, or a barrel of apples, or lends him his
waggon frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance of
Friendship. Nor do the farmers' wives lead lives
consecrated to Friendship. I do not see the pair of
farmer Friends of either sex prepared to stand against
the world. There are only two or three couples in
FRIENDSHIP 31
history. To say that a man is your Friend, means j
commonly no more than this, that he is not your "f
enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the i
accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as
that the Friend can assist in time of need, by his
substance, or his influence, or his counsel ; but he
who foresees such advantages in this relation proves
himself blind to its real advantage, or indeed wholly
inexperienced in the relation itself. Such services
are particular and menial, compared with the per-
petual and all-embracing service which it is. Even
the utmost good-will and harmony and practical
kindness are not suflBcient for Friendship, for Friends
do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in
melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and
clothe our bodies, — neighbours are kind enough for ,
that, — but to do the like office to our spirits. For 1
this few are rich enough, however well disposed they
may be. For the most part we stupidly confound
one man with another. The dull distinguish only
races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man,
individuals. To his Friend a man's peculiar character
appears in every feature and in every action, and it
is thus drawn out and improved by him.
Think of the importance of Friendship in the
education of men.
"He that hath love and judgment too,
Sees more than any other doe. "
It will make a man honest; it will make him a
hero; it will make him a saint. It is the state of
the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous
32 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere,
man with man.
y And it is well said by another poet,
"Why love among the virtues is not known,
Is that love is them all contract in one.''~\
All the abuses which are the object of reform with
the philanthropist, the statesman, and the house-
keeper are unconsciously amended in the intercourse
of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us
the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues,
and who can appreciate them in us. It takes two to
speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.
How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and
stone 1 If we dealt only with the false and dishonest,
we should at last forget how to speak truth. Only
lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth,
while traders prize a cheap honesty, and neighbours
and acquaintance a cheap civility. In our daily
intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dor-
mant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the
compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though
we have gold to give, they demand only copper.
We ask our neighbour to sufifer himself to be dealt
with truly, sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by
his deafness. He does not even hear this prayer.
He says practically, I will be content if you treat me
as "no better than I should be," as deceitful, mean,
dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we are con-
tented so to deal and to be dealt with, and we do not
think that for the mass of men there is any truer and
nobler relation possible. A man may have good
FRIENDSHIP 33
neighbours, so called, and acquaintances, and even
companions, wife, parents, brothers, sisters, children,
who meet himself and one another on this ground
only. The State does not demand justice of its
members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with
the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues
practise ; and so do the neighbourhood and the
family. What is commonly called Friendship even
is only a little more honour among rogues.
But sometimes we are said to love another, that is,
to stand in a true relation to him, so that we give the
best to, and receive the best from, him. Between
whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and in
proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one
another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and
answer to our ideal. There are passages of affection
in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such
as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which
transcend our earthly life, and anticipate Heaven for
us. What is this Love that may come right into the
middle of a prosaic Goffstown day, equal to any of
the gods ? that discovers a new world, fair and fresh
and eternal, occupying the place of the old one, when
to the common eye a dust has settled on the universe ?
which world cannot else be reached, and does not
exist. What other words, we may almost ask, are
memorable and worthy to be repeated than those
which love has inspired ? It is wonderful that they
were ever uttered. They are few and rare, indeed,
but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly
repeated and modulated by the memory. All other
D
34 SELECTIONS FROM THOBEAU
words crumble off with the stucco which overHes the
heart. We should not dare to repeat these now
aloud. We are not competent to hear them at all
^ , tiHies.3
' I The books for young people say a great deal about
the selection of Friends ; it is because they really have
nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates
and confidants merely. " Know that the contrariety
of foe and Friend proceeds from God." Friendship
takes place between those who have an affinity for
one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable
result. No professions nor advances will avail. Even
speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do with it ;
but it follows after silence, as the buds in the graft
do not put forth into leaves till long after the graft
has taken. It is a drama in which the parties have
no part to act. We are aU Mussulmen and fatalists
in this respect. Impatient and uncertain lovers
think that they must say or do something kind
whenever they meet ; they must never be cold. But
they who are Friends do not do what they think they
must, but what they nvust. Even their Friendship is
to some extent but a sublime phenomenon to them.
The true and not despairing Friend will address
his Friend in some such terms as these.
" I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,— I
have a right. I love thee not as something private
and personal, which is your own, but as something
universal and worthy of love, loliich I liave fmird. 0,
how I think of you ! You are purely good, — you are
infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not
FEIENDSHIP 35
think that humanity was so rich. Give me an oppor-
tunity to live."
" You are the fact in a fiction, — you are the truth
more strange and admirable than fiction. Consent
only to be what you are. I alone will never stand- in
your way."
"This is what I would like, — to be as intimate
with you as our spirits are intimate, — respecting you
as I respect my ideal. Never to profane one another
by word or action, even by a thought. Between us,
if necessary, let there be no acquaintance."
" I have discovered you ; how can you be concealed
from me ? "
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will
religipusly accept and wear and not disgrace his
'■^apoclfeosiis of him. They cherish each other's hopes.
They are kind to each other's dreams.
Though the poet says, '"Tis the pre-eminence of
Friendship to impute excellence,'' yet we can never
praise our Friend, nor esteem him praiseworthy, nor
let him think that he can please us by any behamour,
or ever treat us well enough. That kindness which
has so good a reputation elsewhere can least of all
consist with this relation, and no such affront can be
offered to a Friend, as a conscious good-will, a friend-
liness which is not a necessity of the Friend's nature.
\~The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to
one another, by constant constitutional diflFerences,
and are most commonly and surely the complements
of each other How natural and easy it is for man
36 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
to secure the attention of woman to what interests
himself. Men and women of equal culture, thrown
together, are sure to be of a certain value to one
another, more than men to men. There exists
already a natural disinterestedness and liberality in
such society, and I think that any man will more
confidently carry his favourite books to read to some
circle of intelligent women, than to one of his own
sex. The visit of man to man is wont to be an inter-
ruption, but the sexes naturally expect one another.
Yet Friendship is no respecter of sex ; and perhaps it
is more rare between the sexes than between two of
the same sex. '^
F" Friendship "Ts, at any rate, a relation of perfect
equality. It cannot well spare any outward sign of
equal obligation and advantage. The nobleman can
never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the
king among his subjects. Not that the parties to it
are in all respects equal, but they are equal in all
that respects or affects their Friendship. The one's
love is exactly balanced and represented by the
other's. Persons are only the vessels which contain
the nectar, and the hydrostatic paradox is the symbol
of love's law. It finds its level and rises to its
fountain-head in all breasts, and its slenderest column
balances the ocean.
"And love as well the shepherd can
As can the mighty nobleman."
The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than
the other. A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's. J
FKIENDSHIP 37
Confucius said, "Never contract Friendship with
a man who is not better than thyself." It is the
merit and preservation of Friendship, that it takes
place on a level higher than the actual characters of
the parties would seem to warrant. The rays of
light come to us in such a curve that every man whom
we meet appears to be taller than he actually is.
Such foundation has civility. My Friend is that one
whom I can associate with my choicest thought. P I
always assign to him a nobler employment in my
absence than I ever find him engaged in; /and I
imagine that the hours which he devotes to me were
snatched from a higher society. The sorest insult
which I ever received from a Friend was, when he
behaved with the license which only long and cheap
acquaintance allows to one's faults, in my presence,
without shame, and still addressed me in friendly
accents. Beware, lest thy Friend learn at last to
tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be
raised to the progress of thy love. There are times
when we have had enough even of our Friends, when
we begin inevitably to profane one another, and must
withdraw religiously into solitude and silence, the
better to prepare ourselves for a loftier intimacy.
Silence is the ambrosial night in the intercourse of
Friends, in which their sincerity is recruited and
takes deeper root.
Friendship is never established as an understood
relation. Do you demand that I be less your Friend
that you may know it 'i Yet what right have I to
think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for
38 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
me t It is a miracle which requires constant proofs.
It is an exercise of the purest imagination and the
rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent
behaviour, — "I will be so related to thee as thou
canst imagine ; even so thou mayest believe. I will
spend truth, — all my wealth on thee," — and the
Friend responds silently through his nature and life,
and treats his Friend with the same divine courtesy.
He knows us literally through thick and thin. He
never asks for a sign of love, but can distinguish it
by the features which it naturally wears. We never
need to stand upon ceremony with him with regard
to his visits. Wait not till I invite thee, but observe
that I am glad to see thee when thou comest. It
would be paying too dear for thy visit to ask for it.
Where my Friend lives there are all riches and every
attraction, and no slight obstacle can keep me from
him. Let me never have to teU thee what I have
not to teU. Let our intercourse be wholly above
ourselves, and draw us up to it.
The language of Friendship is not words, but
meanings. It is an intelligence above language.
One imagines endless conversations with his Friend,
in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be
spoken without hesitancy or end ; but the experience
is commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances may
come and go, and have a word ready for every
occasion ; but what puny word shall he utter whose
very breath is thought and meaning 1 Suppose you
go to bid farewell to your Friend who is setting out
on a journey ; what other outward sign do you know
FRIENDSHIP 39
than to shake his hand? Have you any palaver
ready for him then ? any box of salve to commit to
his pocket 1 any particular message to send by him 1
any statement which you had forgotten to make 1 —
as if you could forget anything. — No, it is much that
you take his hand and say Farewell ; that you could
easily omit ; so far custom has prevailed. It is even
painful, if he is to go, that he should linger so long.
If he must go, let him go quickly. Have you any
last words 1 Alas, it is only the word of words, which
you have so long sought and found not; you have
not a first word yet. There are few even whom I
should venture to call earnestly by their most proper
names. A name pronounced is the recognition of
the individual to whom it belongs. He who can
pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is
entitled to my love and service. Yet reserve is the
freedom and abandonment of lovers. It is the reserve
of what is hostile or indifferent in their natures, to
give place to what is kindred and harmonious.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as
that of hate. When it is durable it is serene and
equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the
ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all
would fain be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for
Friendship that he is able to do without that which
is cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is as
wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly
to the guidance of their love, and know no other law
nor kindness. It is not extravagant and insane, but
what it says is something established henceforth, and
40 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
will bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is
better and fairer news, and no time will ever shame
it, or prove it false. This is a plant which thrives
best in a temperate zone, where summer and winter
alternate with one another. The Friend is a neces-
sa/riws, and meets his Friend on homely ground ; not
on carpets and cushions, but on the ground and on
rocks they will sit, obeying the natural and primitive
laws. They will meet without any outcry, and part
without loud sorrow. Their relation implies such
qualities as the warrior prizes ; for it takes a valour
to open the hearts of men as well as the gates of
castles. It is not an idle sympathy and mutual
consolation merely, but a heroic ' sympathy of aspirar
tion and endeavour.
As surely as the sunset in my latest November
shall translate me to the ethereal world, and remind
me of the ruddy morning of youth ; as surely as the
last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear
shall make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the mani-
fold influences of nature survive during the term of
our natural life, so surely my Friend shall for ever he
my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time
shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship,
no less than the ruins of temples. As I love nature,
as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and
flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer
and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
But all that can be said of Friendship is like
FEIENDSHIP 41
botany to flowers. How can the understanding take
account of its friendliness ■?
Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much
as their lives. They will leave consolation to the
mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the
expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be
incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts,
as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss ;
for our Friends have no place in the graveyard. |
This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends.
WHEEE I LIVED AND WHAT I
LIVED FOE
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,
WHERE I LIVED 43
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 pro-
portion 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 posses-
sion was when I bought the HoUowell 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,
44 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEA.XT
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 neigh-
bour, 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 colour
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 neighbours I should have;
WHEKE I LIVED 45
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 un-
molested 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 Be Busticd is my "Cultiva-
tor," says, and the only translation I have seen makes
46 SELECTIONS FEOM THOKEAU
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 con-
venience, 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
neighbours 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 waUs
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
WHEEE I LIVED 47
of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited
the year before. This was an airy and unplastered
cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a
goddess might trail her garments. The winds which
passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the
ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or
celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morn-
ing wind for ever blows, the poem of creation is un-
interrupted; 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 crystallisation around me, and reacted on the
builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in
outlines. I did not need to go out doors 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 Earivansa says, "An abode without
birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such was
not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbour
to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but
having caged myself near them. I was not only
nearer to some of those which commonly frequent
the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and
48 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
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 neighbour
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
WHEEE I LIVED 49
portion of the air above it being shallow and
darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and
reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much
the more important. From a hill -top near by,
where the wood had been recently cut off, there
was a pleasing vista southward across the pond,
through a wide indentation in the hills which form
the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping
toward each other suggested a stream flowing out
in that direction through a wooded valley, but
stream there was none. That way I looked between
and over the near green hills to some distant and
higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed,
by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of
some of the peaks of the still bluer and more
distant mountain ranges in the north-west, those
true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also of
some portion of the village. But in other directions,
even from this point, I could not see over or beyond
the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have
some water in your neighbourhood, 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 distin-
guished 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 intervening
E
50 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
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, afibrd-
ing 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 for ever 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 vsdth as
fine a ray to my nearest neighbour, and to be seen
only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part
of creation where I had squatted ; —
WHAT I LIVED FOR 51
"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 1
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make
my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence,
with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a
worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up
early and bathed in the pond ; that was a religious
exercise, and one of the best things which I did.
They say that characters were engraven on the
bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect :
" Renew thyself completely each day ; do it again,
and again, and forever again.'' I can understand
that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was
as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito
making its invisible and unimaginable tour through
my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting
with door and windows open, as I could be by any
trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's
requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air,
singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was
something cosmical about it; a standing advertise-
ment, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigour 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
52 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
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 oui' own newly -acquired force and
aspirations from within, accompanied by the undula-
tions 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 Hght.
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 Ufe, 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 labours 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
WHAT I LIVED FOE 53
not been slumbering ^ Tbey 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 labour ;
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' endeavour. 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.
/ 1 went to the woods because I wished to live de-
liberately, 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
54 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
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 ex-
perience, 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 wretched-
ness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest
man has hardly need to count more than his ten
fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes,
and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity !
I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a
hundred or a thousand ; instead of a million count
half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb
nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilised
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
■WHAT I LIVED FOR 55
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 thrde
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 for ever
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 fhey 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 1
We do not ride on the railroad ; it rides upon us.
Did you ever think what those sleepers are that
56 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
underlie the railroad ? Each one is a man, an Irish-
man, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them,
and they are covered with sand, and the cars run
smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I
assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid
down and run over ; so that, if some have the pleasure
of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be
ridden upon. And when they run over a man that
is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in
the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly
stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if
this were an exception. I am glad to know that it
takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the
sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this
is a sign that they may sometime get up again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of
life t We are determined to be starved before we are
hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine,
and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save
nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven't any of any
consequence. We have the Saint Vitus's 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, notwith-
standing 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.
WHAT I LIVED FOR 57
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 hand-
somely ; 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 Eailroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot
58 SELECTIONS FfiOM THOKBAU
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 ofi&ces 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 bull-
fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true
to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact
state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct
and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers ;
and as for England, almost the last significant scrap
of news from that quarter was the revolution of
1649 ; and if you have learned the history of her
crops for an average year, you never need attend to
that thing again, unless your speculations are of a
merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who
rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does
ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution
not excepted.
WHAT I LIVED FOK 59
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?"
/..§hams and delusions are esteemed for soundest
truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would
steadily observe realities only, and not allow them-
selves 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 realityj This
60 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEBAU
is always exhilarating and sublimej By closing
the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be
deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their
daily hfe of routine and habit everywhere, which
still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children,
who play life, discern its true law and relations
more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily,
but who think that they are wiser by experience —
that is, by failure^ I have read in a Hindoo book,
that "there was a Mng's son, who, being erpelled in
infancy from his native city, was brought up by a
forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state,
imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race
with which he lived. One of his father's ministers
having discovered him, revealed to him what he was,
and the misconception of his character was removed,
and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul,"
continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the cir-
cumstances 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 " Mill-dam " go to 1 If he should give us
an account of the realities he beheld there, we should
not recognise the place in his description. Look at
a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop,
or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really
"WHAT I LIVED FOE 61
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 sy^em, 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 delibemely 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 un-
relaxed nerves, with morning vigour, sail by it,
looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses.
62 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse
for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run 1
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, tiU 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 lamp-post safely, or perhaps a
gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that
future ages might know how deep a freshet of
shams and appearances had gathered from time to
time. If you stand right fronting and face to face
to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its
surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet
edge dividing you through the heart and marrow,
and so you will happily conclude your mortal career.
Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are
really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and
feel cold in the extremities ; if we are alive, let us go
about our business.
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 ;
WHAT I LIVED FOR 63
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 vapours I judge ; and here I will
begin to mine.
HIGHEE LAWS
As I came home through the woods with my string
of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I
caught a glimpse of a wood-chuck stealing across my
path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and
was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw ;
not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness
which he represented. Once or twice, however,
while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging
the woods, like -a half-starved hound, with a strange
abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I
might devour, and no morsel could have been too
savage for me. The wildest scenes had become
unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and
still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is
named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another
toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I
reverence them both. I love the wild not less
than the good. The wildness and adventure that
are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like
sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my
day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed
to this employment and to hunting, when quite
HIGHER LAWS 65
young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They
early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with
which otherwisej__at that age, we should have little
acquaintance. \ Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers,
and others, spending their lives in the fields and
woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, .
are often in a more favourable mood for observing her, '^
in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers
or poets even, who approach her with expectationTD
She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The
traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the
head-waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper,
and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is
only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by
the halves, and is poor authority. We are most
interested when science reports what those men
already know practically or instinctively, for that,/
alone is a true humanity, or account of human
experience.
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few
amusements, because he has not so many public
holidays, and men and boys do not play so many
games as they do in England, for here the more
primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, i/
and the like, have not yet given place to the former.
Almost every New England boy among my con-
temporaries shouldered a fowling-piece between
the ages of ten and fourteen ; and his hunting and
fishing grounds were not limited like the preserves
of an English nobleman, but were more boundless
even than those of a savage. No wonder, then,
F
66 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
that he did not oftener stay to play on the common.
But already a change is taking place, owing, not to
an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity
of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest
friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the
Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes
to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually
fished from the same kind of necessity that the first
fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure
up against it was all factitious, and concerned my
philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of
fishing only now, for I had long felt differently
about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to
the woods. Not that I am less humane than others,
but I did not perceive that my feehngs were much
affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms.
This was habit. As for fowling, during the last
years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I
was studying ornithology, and sought only new or
rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to
think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology
than this. It requires so much closer attention to
the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only,
I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet not-
withstanding the objection on the score of humanity,
I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports
are ever substituted for these ; and when some of my
friends have asked me anxiously about their boys,
whether they should let them hunt, I have answered,
yes, — remembering that it was one of the best parts
HIGHEE LAWS 67
of my education, — make them tunters, though sports-
men only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last,
so that they shall not find game large enough for
them in this or any vegetable wilderness, — hunters
as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion
of Chaucer's nun, who
" yave not of the text a pulled hen
That saith that hunters ben not holy men."
There is a period in the history of the individual, as
of the race, when the hunters are the " best men," as
the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity
the boy who has never fired a gun ; he is no more ,
humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.''
This was my answer with respect to those youths
who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they
would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the
thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder
any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure
that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like
a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies
do not always make the usual phU-anihropic distinc-
tions.
Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to
the forest, and the most original part of himself. He
goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at
last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he
distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist"^
it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind.
The mass of men are still and always young in this
respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no
68 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good
shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good
Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that
the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping,
ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my
knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole
half day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers
or children of the town, with just one exception, was
fishing. Commonly they did not think that they
were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they
got a long string of fish, though they had the
opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. They
might go there a thousand times before the sediment
of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their
purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying
process would be going on aU the while. The
governor and his councU faintly remember the
pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were
boys ; but now they are too old and dignified to go
a-fishing, and so they know it no more for ever. Yet
even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the
legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the
number of hooks to be used there ; but they know
nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle
for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a
bait. Thus, even in civilised communities, the
embryo man passes through the hunter stage of
development.
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot
fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have
tried it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like
HIGHER LAWS 69
many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which
revives from time to time, but always when I have
done I feel that it would have been better if I had
not fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a
faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of morning.
There is unquestionably this instinct in me which
belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with
every year I am less a fisherman, though without
more humanity or even wisdom ; at present I am no
fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in
a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a
fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is some-
thing essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh,
and I began to see where housework commences, and
whence the endeavour, which costs so much, to wear
a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep
the house sweet and free from all ill odours and
sights. Having been my own butcher and scullion
and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the
dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually
complete experience. The practical objection to
animal food in my case was its uncleanness ; and,
besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked
and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me
essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary,
and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a
few potatoes would have done as well, with less
trouble and filth. Like many of my contemporaries,
I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea,
or coffee, etc. ; not so much because of any ill effects <
which I had traced to them, as because they were not
70 SELECTIONS FROM THOREA.U
t' agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to
animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an
instinct. It appealed more beautiful to live low and
fare hard in many respects ; and though I never did
so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I
believe that every man who has ever been earnest to
preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best
condition has been particularly inclined to abstain
from animal food, and from much food of any kind.
It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists, — I find
it in Kirby and Spence, — that " some insects in their
perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding,
make no use of them ; " and they lay it down as " a
general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat
much less than in that of larvse. The voracious
caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly,'' . . .
"and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly,''
content themselves with a drop or two of honey or
some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the
wings of the butterfly still represents the larva.
This is the tid-bit which tempts his insectivorous fate.
The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and
there are whole nations in that condition, nations
without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens
betray them.
It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean
^ a diet as will not offend the imagination ; but this, I
think, is to be fed when we feed the bodyj they
should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps
this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need
not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt
HIGHER LAWS 71
the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment
into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not
worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men
would feel shame if caught preparing with their own
hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or
vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by
others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilised,
and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and
women. This certainly suggests what change is to
be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination
will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied
that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a
carnivorous animal ? True, he can and does live, in
a great measure, by preying on other animals ; but
this is a miserable way, — as any one who will go to
snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn, —
and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race
who shall teach man to confine himself to a more
innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own
practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of
the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improve-
ment, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the
savage tribes have left off eating each other when
they came in contact with the more civilised.
If one listens to the faintest but constant sugges-
tions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees
not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead
him ; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute
and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured
objection which one healthy man feels will at length
prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind.
72 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
No man ever followed his genius till it misled Hm.
Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps
no one can say that the consequences were to be
regretted, for these were a life in conformity to
higher principles. If the day and the night are such
that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fra-
grance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more
elastic, more starry, more immortal, — ^that is your
success. ^All nature is your congratulation, and you
have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The
greatest gains and values are furthest from being
appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist.
We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are
never communicated by man to man. The true
harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible
and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.
It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rain-
bow which I have clutched. )
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish ;
I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish,
if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water
so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural
^sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep
jsober always ; and there are infinite degrees of
/drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink
for a wise man ; wine is not so noble a liquor ; and
think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup
of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea !
Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them !
Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently
HIGHER LAWS 73
slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will
destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who
does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he
breathes? I have found it to be the most serious
objection to coarse labours long continued, that they
compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to
tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less
particular in these respects. I carry less religion to
the table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser
than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because,
however much it is to be regretted, with years I have
grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these
questions are entertained only in youth, as most
believe of poetry. My practice is "nowhere,'' my
opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regarding
myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the
C5£d>ref ers when it says, that " he who has true faith
in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that
exists," — that is, is not bound to inquire what is his
food, or who prepares it ; and even in their case it is
to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has
remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to
"the time of distress."
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible
satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no
share 1 I have been thrilled to think that I owed a
mental perception to the commonly gross sense of
taste, that I have been inspired through the palate,
that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside had
fed my genius. " The soul not being mistress of her-
self," says Thseng-tseu, " one looks, and one does not
74 SELECTIONS FROM THORBAU
see ; one listens, and one does not hear ; one eats,
and one does not know the savour of food." He who
distinguishes the true savour of his food can never be
a glutton ; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A
puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as
gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle.
Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth
a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is
neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion
to sensual savours ; when that which is eaten is not
a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual
life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the
hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, musk-rats, and
other such savage tid-bits, the fine lady indulges a
taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sardines from
over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the
mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is
how they, how you and I, can live this slimy beastly
life, eating and drinking.
Our whole life is startlingly moral. Thejp is never
an instant's truce between virtue and vice^ Goodness
is the only investment that never fails. In the music
of the harp which trembles round the world it is the
insisting on this which thrills usi^The harp is the
travelling patterer for the Universe's Insurance Com-
pany, recommending its laws, and our little goodness
is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth
at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are
not indifferent, but are for ever on the side of the
most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some
reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate
HIGHER LAWS 75
who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or
move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us.
Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard
as music, a proud sweet satire on the meanness of
our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens
in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is
reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly
expelled; like the worms which, even in life and
health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may with-
draw from it, but never change its nature. I fear
that it may enjoy a certain health of its own ; that
we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I
picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and
sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there
was an animal health and vigour distinct from the
spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means
than temperance and purity. " That in which men
differ from brute beasts,'' says Mencius, " is a thing
very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very
soon; superior men preserve it carefully.'' Who
knows what sort of life would result if we had attained
to purity 1 If I knew so wise a man as could teach
me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. "Ai
command over our passions, and over the external
senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the
Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation
to God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade
and control every member and function of the body,
and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality
into purity and devotion. The generative energy.
76 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us
unclean, when we are continent invigorates and
inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man ; and
what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the
like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man
flows at once to God when the channel of purity is
open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity
casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that
the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the
divine being established. Perhaps there is none but
has cause for shame on account of the inferior and
brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we
are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs,
the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite,
' and that, to some extent, our very life is our dis-
' ' How happy's he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and disaforested his mind !
Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest !
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
But he's those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse."
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms ;
all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat,
or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are
but one appetite, and we only need to see a person
do any one of these things to know how great a
sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor
sit with pui'ity. When the reptile is attacked at one
mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
HIGHEE LAWS 77
If you would be chaste, you must be temperate, l/
What is chastity ? How shall a man know if he is
chaste 1 He shall not know it. We have heard of
this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak
conformably to the rumour which we have heard.
From exertion come wisdom and purity ; from sloth
ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality
is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is
universally a slothful one, — one who sits by a stove,
whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes with-
out being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness,
and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at
cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome,
but she must be overcome. What avails it that you
are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen,
if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more ]/'
religious? I know of many systems of religion
esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader
with shame, and provoke him to new endeavours,
though it be to the performance of rites merely. ''
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because
of the subject, — I care not how obscene my words
are, — but because I cannot speak of them without
betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without
shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about
another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak ,,
simply of the necessary functions of human nature. '
In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was
reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing
was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however
offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches
78 SELECTIONS EKOM THOEEAU
how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine,
and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not
falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.
/ Every man is the builder of a temple, called his
body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his
own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead.
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material
is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any noble-
ness begins at once to refine a man's features, any
meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening,
after a hard day's work, his mind stUl running on his
labour more or less. Having bathed he sat down to
recreate his intellectual man. It was a rather cool
evening, and some of his neighbours were apprehend-
ing a frost. He had not attended to the train of his
thought;. 1 3ng when he heard some one playing on a
flute, and that sound harmonised with his mood.
Still he thought of his work ; but the burden of his
thought was, that though this kept running in his
head, and he found himself planning and contriving
it against his will, yet it concerned him very little.
It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was
constantly shuffled ofi'. But the notes of the flute
came home to his ears out of a different sphere from
that he worked in, and suggested work for certain
faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did
away with the street, and the village, and the state
in which he lived. A voice said to him, — Why do
you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when
a glorious existence is possible for you ? Those same
HIGHER LAWS 79
stars twinkle over other fields than these.- — But how
to come out of this condition and actually migrate
thither "i All that he could think of was to practise
some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his
body and redeem it, and, treat himself with ever-in-
creasing respect.
HOUSE-WAEMING
In October I went a-graping to the river meadows,
and loaded myself with clusters more precious for
their beauty and fragrance than for food. There too
I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries,
small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass,
pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an
ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl,
heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the
dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to
Boston and New York, destined to be jammed, to
satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there. So
butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie
grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. The
barberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my
eyes merely; but I collected a small store of wild
apples for coddling, which the proprietor and tra-
vellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe
I laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very
exciting at that season to roam the then boundless
chestnut woods of Lincoln, — they now sleep their long
sleep under the railroad, — with a bag on my shoulder,
and a stick to open burrs with in my hand, for I did
HOUSE-WARMING 81
not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of
leaves and the loud reproofs of the red squirrels and
the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole,
for the burrs which they had selected were sure to
contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and
shook the trees. They grew also behind my house,
and one large tree which almost overshadowed it,
was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the
whole neighbourhood, but the squirrels and the jays
got most of its fruit ; the last coming in flocks early
in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burrs
before they fell. I relinquished these trees to them
and visited the more distant woods composed wholly
of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were a
good substitute for bread. Many other substitutes
might, perhaps, be found. Digging one day for ilsh-
worms I discovered the ground-nut {Apios tuherosa)
on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of
fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had
ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and
had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its
crimpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems
of other plants without knowing it to be the same.
Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a
sweetish taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato,
and I found it better boiled than roasted. This tuber
seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own
children and feed them simply here at some future
period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving
grain -fields, this humble root, which was once the
totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known
G
82 SELECTIONS EEOM THOREAU
only'by its flowering vine ; but let wild Nature reign
here once more, and the tender and luxurious English
grains will probably disappear before a myriad of
foes, and without the care of man the crow may
carry back even the last seed of corn to the great
corn-field of the Indian's God in the south-west,
whence he is said to have brought it ; but the now
almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive
and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove
itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance
and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some
Indian Ceres or Minerva must have been the in-
ventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of
poetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts
may be represented on our works of art.
Already, by the first of September, I had seen two
or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond,
beneath where the white stems of three aspens
diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water.
Ah, many a tale their colour told ! And gradually
from week to week the character of each tree came
out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth
mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of
this gallery substituted some new picture, distin-
guished by more brilliant or harmonious colouring,
for the old upon the walls.
The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in
October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my
windows within and on the walls overhead, sometimes
deterring visitors from entering. Each morning,
when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of
HOUSE-WAEMING 83
them out, but I did not trouble myself much to get
rid of them ; I even felt complimented by their
regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They
never molested me seriously, though they bedded
with me ; and they gradually disappeared, into what
crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeak-
able cold.
Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter
quarters in November, I used to resort to the north-
east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the
pitch-pine woods and the stony shore, made the fire-
side of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and
wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can
be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself
by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a
departed hunter, had left.
When I came to build my chimney I studied
masonry. My bricks being second-hand ones required
to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more
than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels.
The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was
said to be still growing harder; but this is one of
those sayings which men love to repeat whether they
are true or not. Such sayings themselves grow
harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it
would take many blows with a trowel to clean an
old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of
Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a
very good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon,
and the cement on them is older and probably harder
84 SELECTIONS FROM THOREA0
still. However that may be, I was struck by the
peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so many
violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks
had been in a chimney before, though I did not read
the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out
as many fireplace bricks as I could find, to save work
and waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks
about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore,
and also made my mortar with the white sand from
the same place. I lingered most about the fireplace,
as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, I
worked so deliberately, that though I commenced
at the ground in the morning, a course of bricks
raised a few inches above the floor served for my
pillow at night ; yet I did not get a stiff neck for it
that I remember ; my stiff neck is of older date. I
took a poet to board for a fortnight about those
times, which caused me to be put to it for room.
He brought his own knife, though I had two, and we
used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth.
He shared with me the labours of cooking. I was
pleased to see my work rising so square and solid by
degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it
was calculated to endure a long time. The chimney
is to some extent an independent structure, standing
on the ground and rising through the house to the
heavens ; even after the house is burned it still stands
sometimes, and its importance and independence are
apparent. This was toward the end of summer.
It was now November.
The north wind had already begun to cool the
HOUSE-WAEMING 85
pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing
to accomplish it, it is so deep. When I began to
have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house,
the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because
of the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I
passed some cheerful evenings in that cool and airy
apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards
fuU of knots, and rafters with the bark on high over-
head. My house never pleased my eye so much
after it was plastered, though I was obliged to
confess that it was more comfortable. Should not
every apartment in which man dwells be lofty
enough to create some obscurity overhead, where
flickering shadows may play at evening about the
rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the
fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other
the most expensive furniture. I now first began to
inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it
for warmth as well as shelter. I had got a couple of
old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and
it did me good to see the soot form on the back of
the chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire
with more right and more satisfaction than usual. My
dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an
echo in it ; but it seemed larger for being a single
apartment and remote from neighbours. All the
attractions of a house were concentrated in one
room ; it was kitchen, chamber, parlour, and keeping-
room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child,
master or servant, derive from living in a house, I
enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family
86 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
(patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa " cellam
oleariam, vinaraim, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem
expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et glorias erit,"— that is,
" an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may
be pleasant to expect hard times ; it will be for his
advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my
cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas
with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little
rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a
peek each.
I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous
house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials,
and without ginger-bread work, which shall still
consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial,
primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with
bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower
heaven over one's head, — useful to keep off rain and
snow ; where the king and queen posts stand out to
receive your homage, when you have done reverence
to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on
stepping over the sill ; a cavernous house, wherein
you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the
roof ; where some may live in the fireplace, some in
the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at
one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft
on rafters with the spiders, if they choose ; a house
which you have got into when you have opened the
outside door, and the ceremony is over ; where the
weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse,
and sleep, without further journey ; such a shelter
as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous
HOUSE-WARMING 87
night, containing all the essentials of a house, and
nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all
the treasures of the house at one view, and every-
thing hangs upon its peg that a man should use ;
at once kitchen, pantry, parlour, chamber, store-
house, and garret ; where you can see so necessary
a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing
as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your
respects to the fire that cooks your dinner and the
oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary
furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments;
where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor
the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes re-
quested to move from off the trap-door, when the
cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn
whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you
without stamping. A house whose inside is as open
and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in
at the front door and out at the back without seeing
some of its inhabitants ; where to be a guest is to be
presented with the freedom of the house, and not to
be carefully excluded from seven-eighths of it, shut
up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at
home there, — in solitary confinement. Nowadays
the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has
got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere
in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you
at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy
about the cooking as if he had a design to poison
you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's
premises, and might have been legally ordered off".
88 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
but I am not aware that I have been in many men's
houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and
queen who lived simply in such a house as I have
described, if I were going their way; but backing
out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire
to learn, if ever I am caught in one.
PEIMEVAL NATUEEi
Pekhaps I most fully realised that this was primeval,
untamed, and for ever untamable Natwe, or whatever
else men call it, while coming down this part of the
mountain. We were passing over "Burnt Lands,"
burnt by lightning, perchance, though they showed
no recent marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred
stump, but looked rather like a natural pasture for
the moose and deer, exceedingly wild and desolate,
with occasional strips of timber crossing them, and
low poplars springing up, and patches of blueberries
here and there. I found myself traversing them
familiarly, like some pasture run to waste, or partially
reclaimed by man ; but when I reflected what man,
what brother or sister or kinsman of our race made it
and claimed it, I expected the proprietor to rise up
and dispute my passage. It is difficult to conceive of
a region uninhabited by man. We habitually pre-
sume his presence and influence everywhere. And
yet we have not seen pure Nature, unless we have
seen her thus vast and drear and inhuman, though in
* Thoreau visited the Maine Woods in 1846, 1853, and 1857,
chiefly to gratify his interest in wild nature and the Indians.
90 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEBAU
the midst of cities. Nature was here something
savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with
awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers
had made there, the form and fashion and material of
their work. This was that Earth of which we have
heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was
no man's garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was
not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor
lea, nor arable, nor waste-land. It was the fresh and
natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made
for ever and ever, — to be the dwelling of man, we
say, — so Nature made it, and man may use it if he
can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was
Matter, vast, terrific, — not his Mother Earth that we
have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried
in, — no, it were being too familiar even to let his
bones lie there, — the home, this, of Necessity and
Fate. There was there felt the presence of a force
not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for
heathenism and superstitious rites,- — to be inhabited
by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild
animals than we. We walked over it with a certain
awe, stopping, from time to time, to pick the blue-
berries which grew there, and had a smart and spicy
taste. Perchance where our wild pines stand, and
leaves lie on their forest floor, in Concord, there were
once reapers, and husbandmen planted grain; but
here not even the surface had been scarred by man,
but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make
this world. What is it to be admitted to a museum,
to see a myriad of particular things, compared with
PRIMEVAL NATURE 91
being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in
its home ! I stand in awe of my body, this matter
to which I am bound has become so strange to me.
I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one, — that my
body might, — but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet
them. What is this Titan that has possession of me ?
Talk of mysteries ! — Think of our life in nature,
— daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with
it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks ! the solid earth !
the actual world ! the common sense ! Contact ! Con-
tact I WTio are we 1 where are we ?
About four o'clock, the same afternoon, we com-
menced our return voyage, which would require but
little if any poling. In shooting rapids the boatmen
use large and broad paddles, instead of poles, to guide
the boat with. Though we glided so swiftly, and
often smoothly, down, where it had cost us no slight
effort to get up, our present voyage was attended
with far more danger : for if we once fairly struck
one of the thousand rocks by which we were sur-
rounded the boat would be swamped in an instant.
When a boat is swamped under these circumstances,
the boatmen commonly find no difficulty in keeping
afloat at first, for the current keeps both them and
their cargo up for a long way down the stream ; and
if they can swim, they have only to work their way
gradually to the shore. The greatest danger is of
being caught in an eddy behind some larger rock,
where the water rushes up stream faster than else-
where it does down, and being carried round and
round under the surface till they are drowned.
92 SELECTIONS FKOM THOREAU
M'Causlin pointed out some rocks which had been
the scene of a fatal accident of this kind. Sometimes
the body is not thrown out for several hours. He
himself had performed such a circuit once, only his
legs being visible to his companions; but he was
fortunately thrown out in season to recover his
breath. In shooting the rapids, the boatman has
this problem to solve : to choose a circuitous and safe
course amid a thousand sunken rocks, scattered over
a quarter or half a mile, at the same time that he is
moving steadily on at the rate of fifteen miles an
hour. Stop he cannot ; the only question is, where
will he go? The bow-man chooses the course with
all his eyes about him, striking broad off with his
paddle, and drawing the boat by main force into her
course. The stern-man faithfully follows the bow.
We were soon at the Aboljacarmegus Falls.
Anxious to avoid the delay, as well as the labour, of
the portage here, our boatmen went forward first to
reconnoitre, and concluded to let the batteau down
the falls, carrying the baggage only over the portage.
Jumping from rock to rock until nearly in the middle
of the stream, we were ready to receive the boat and
let her down over the first fall, some six or seven feet
perpendicular. The boatmen stand upon the edge of
a shelf of rock, where the fall is perhaps nine or ten
feet perpendicular, in from one to two feet of rapid
water, one on each side of the boat, and let it shde
gently over, till the bow is run out ten or twelve feet
in the air; then, letting it drop squarely, while one
holds the painter, the other leaps in, and his compan-
PRIMEVAL NATURE 93
ion following, they are whirled down the rapids to a
new fall, or to smooth water. In a very few minutes
they had accomplished a passage in safety, which
would be as foolhardy for the unskilful to attempt as
the descent of Niagara itself. It seemed as if it
needed only a little familiarity, and a little more
skill, to navigate down such falls as Niagara itself
with safety. At any rate, I should not despair of
such men in the rapids above table-rock, until I saw
them actually go over the falls, so cool, so collected,
so fertile in resources are they. One might have
thought that these were falls, and that falls were not
to be waded through with impunity, like a mud-
puddle. There was really danger of their losing
their sublimity in losing their power to harm us.
Familiarity breeds contempt. The boatman pauses,
perchance, on some shelf beneath a table-rock under
the fall, standing in some cove of back-water two feet
deep, and you hear his rough voice come up through
the spray, coolly giving directions how to launch the
boat this time.
Having carried round Pockwockomus Falls, our
oars soon brought us to the Katepskonegan, or Oak
Hall carry, where we decided to camp half way over,
leaving our batteau to be carried over in the morning
on fresh shoulders. One shoulder of each of the
boatmen showed a red spot as large as one's hand,
worn by the batteau on this expedition; and this
shoulder, as it did all the work, was perceptibly
lower than its fellow, from long service. Such toil
soon wears out the strongest constitution. The
94 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
drivers are accustomed to work in the cold water in
the spring, rarely ever dry; and if one falls in all
over he rarely changes his clothes till night, if then,
even. One who takes this precaution is called by a
particular nickname, or is turned off. None can lead
this life who are not almost amphibious. M'Causlin
said soberly, what is at any rate a good story to tell,
that he had seen where six men were wholly under
water at once, at a jam, with their shoulders to hand-
spikes. If the log did not start, then they had to put
out their heads to breathe. The driver works as long
as he can see, from dark to dark, and at night has
not time to eat his supper and dry his clothes fairly,
before he is asleep on his cedar bed. We lay that
night on the very bed made by such a party,
stretching our tent over the poles which were still
standing, but reshingling the damp and faded bed
with fresh leaves.
In the morning we carried our boat over and
launched it, making haste lest the wind should rise.
The boatmen ran down Passamagamet, and, soon
after, Ambejijis Falls, while we walked round with
the baggage. We made a hasty breakfast at the
head of Ambejijis Lake, on the remainder of our
pork, and were soon rowing across its smooth surface
again, under a pleasant sky, the mountain being now
clear of clouds, in the north-east. Taking turns at
the oars, we shot rapidly across Deep Cove, the foot
of Pamadumcook, and the North Twin, at the rate of
six miles an hour, the wind not being high enough to
disturb us, and reached the Dam at noon. The boat-
PRIMEVAL NATURE 95
men went through one of the log sluices in the
batteau, where the fall was ten feet at the bottom,
and took us in below. Here was the longest rapid
in our voyage, and perhaps the running this was as
dangerous and arduous a task as any. Shooting down
sometimes at the rate, as we judged, of fifteen miles
an hour, if we struck a rock we were split from end
to end in an instant. Now, like a bait bobbing for
some river monster, amid the eddies, now darting to
this side of the stream, now to that, gliding swift and
smooth near to our destruction, or striking broad off
with the paddle and drawing the boat to right or left
with all our might, in order to avoid a rock. I
suppose that it was like running the rapids of the
Saute de St. Marie, at the outlet of Lake Superior,
and our boatmen probably displayed no less dexterity
than the Indians there do. We soon ran through
this mile, and floated in Quakish Lake.
After such a voyage, the troubled and angry
waters, which once had seemed terrible and not to be
trifled with, appeared tamed and subdued ; they had
been bearded and worried in their channels, pricked
and whipped into submission with the spike-pole and
paddle, gone through and through with impunity,
and all their spirit and their danger taken out of
them, and the most swollen and impetuous rivers
seemed but playthings henceforth. I began, at
length, to understand the boatman's familiarity with,
and contempt for, the rapids. " Those Fowler boys,"
said Mrs. M'Causlin, " are perfect ducks for the water."
They had run down to Lincoln, according to her,
96 SELECTIONS FROM THOREA.U
thirty or forty miles, in a batteau, in the night, for
a doctor, when it was so dark that they could not see
a rod before them, and the river was swollen so as to
be almost a continuous rapid, so that the doctor cried,
when they brought him up by daylight, " Why, Tom,
how did you see to steer?" "We didn't steer
much, — only kept her straight." And yet they met
with no accident. It is true, the more difficult rapids
are higher up than this.
When we reached the Millinocket, opposite to
Tom's house, and were waiting for his folks to set
us over, for we had left our batteau above the Grand
Falls, we discovered two canoes, with two men in
each, turning up this stream from Shad Pond, one
keeping the opposite side of a small island before us,
while the other approached the side where we were
standing, examining the banks carefully for musk-rats
as they came along. The last proved to be Louis
Neptune and his companion, now, at last, on their
way up to Chesuncook after moose ; but they were
so disguised that we hardly knew them. At a little
distance they might have been taken for Quakers,
with their broad-brimmed hats, and overcoats with
broad capes, the spoils of Bangor, seeking a settlement
in this Sylvania, — or, nearer at hand, for fashionable
gentlemen the morning aiter a spree. Met face to
face, these Indians in their native woods looked like
the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet
picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city.
There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resem-
blance between the degraded savage and the lowest
PRIMEVAL NATURE 97
classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of
nature than the other. In the progress of degradation
the distinction of races is soon lost. Neptune at first
was only anxious to know what we "kill," seeing
some partridges in the hands of one of the party, but
we had assumed too much anger to permit of a reply.
We thought Indians had some honour before. But —
"Me been sick. 0, me unwell now. You make
bargain, then me go." They had in fact been de-
layed so long by a drunken frolic at the Five Islands,
and they had not yet recovered from its effects.
They had some young musquash in their canoes,
which they dug out of the banks with a hoe, for food,
not for their skins, for musquash are their principal
food on these expeditions. So they went on up the
Millinocket, and we kept down the bank of the
Penobscot, after recruiting ourselves with a draught
of Tom's beer, leaving Tom at his home.
Thus a man shall lead his life away here on the
edge of the wilderness, on Indian Millinocket stream,
in a new world, far in the dark of a continent, and
have a flute to play at evening here, while his strains
echo to the stars, amid the howling of wolves; shall
live, as it were, in the primitive age of the world,
a primitive man. Yet he shall spend a sunny day,
and in this century be my contemporary ; perchance
shall read some scattered leaves of literature, and
sometimes talk with me. Why read history, then,
if the ages and the generations are now 1 He lives
three thousand years deep into time, an age not yet
described by poets. Can you well go further back in
H
98 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
history than this 1 Ay ! ay ! — for there turns up but
now into the mouth of Millinooket stream a still
more ancient and primitive man, whose history is not
brought down even to the former. In a bark vessel
sewn with the roots of the spruce, with hornbeam
paddles, he dips his way along. He is but dim and
misty to me, obscured by the aeons that lie between
the bark-canoe and the batteau. He builds no house
of logs, but a wigwam of skins. He eats no hot
bread and sweet cake, but musqflash and moose-meat
and the fat of bears. He glides up the Millinocket
and is lost to my sight, as a more distant and misty
cloud is seen flitting by behind a nearer, and is lost
in space. So he goes about his destiny, the red face
of man.
After having passed the night, and buttered our
boots for the last time, at Uncle George's, whose
dogs almost devoured him for joy at his return, we
kept on down the river the next day, about eight
miles on foot, and then took a batteau, with a man to
pole it, to Mattawamkeag, ten more. At the middle
of that very night, to make a swift conclusion to a
long story, we dropped our buggy over the half-
finished bridge at Oldtown, where we heard the
confused din and clink of a hundred saws, which
never rest, and at six o'clock the next morning one
of the party was steaming his way to Massachusetts.
What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is
the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open
intervals or glades than you had imagined Except
PRIMEVAL NATURE 99
the few burnt-lands, the narrow intervals on, the
rivers, the bare tops of the high mountainSj^ and the
lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted. It is
even more grim and wild than you had anticipated,
a damp and intricate wilderness; in the spring every-
where wet and miry. The" aspect of the country,
indeed, is universally stern and savage, excepting the
distant views of the forest from hills, and the lake
prosfcsct?, which are mild and civilising in a degree.
The lakes are something which you are unprepared
for ; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the
forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges,
with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst
jewels set around some jewel of the first water, — so
anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to
take place on their shores, even now civil and
refined, and fair as they can ever be. These are not
the artificial forests of an English king, — a royal
preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laws but
those of nature. The aborigines have never been
dispossessed, nor nature disforested.
It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy
silver birches and watery maples, the ground dotted
with insipid, small, red berries, and strewn with damp
and moss-grown rocks, — a country diversified with
innumerable lakes and rapid streams, peopled with
trout and various species of leucisci, with salmon,
shad, and pickerel, and other fishes ; the forest
resounding at rare intervals with the note of the
chicadee, the blue-jay, and the woodpecker, the
scream of the fish-hawk and the eagle, the laugh of
'**^ylOO SELECTIONS FKOM THOREAU
the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary
streard^jcat night, with the hooting of owls and
howling OTv wolves; in summer, swarming with
myriads of blaxsk flies and mosquitoes, more formid-
able than wolves iS^^the white man. Such is the
home of the moose, the'lbsM', the caribou, the wolf,
the beaver, and the Indian. T^ho shall describe the
inexpressible tenderness and immQrtal life of the
grim forest, where Nature, though it be'^i(i-wkiter,
is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and
decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a per-
petual youth ; and blissful, innocent Nature, like a
serene infant, is too happy to make a noise, except
by a few tinkling, lisping birds and trickling rills ?
What a place to live, what a place to die and be
buried in ! There certainly men would live for ever,
and laugh at death and the grave. There they could
have no such thoughts as are associated with the
village graveyard, — that make a grave out of one of
those moist evergreen hummocks !
Die and be buried who will,
I mean to live here stUl ;
My nature grows ever more young
The primitive pines among.
I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly
new this country still is. You have only to travel
for a few days into the interior and back parts even
of many of the old States, to come to that very
America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and
Gosnold, and Smith, and Ealeigh visited. If
Columbus was the first to discover the islands,
PKIMEVAL NATUEB 101
Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and
we their descendants, have discovered only the shores
of America. While the republic has already acquired
a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and
unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we
live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and
hardly know where the rivers come from which float
our navy. The very timber and boards and shingles
of which our houses are made, grew but yesterday in
a wilderness where the Indian still hunts and the
moose runs wild. New York has her wilderness
within her own borders ; and though the sailors of
Europe are familiar with the soundings of her
Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steam-
boat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to
guide her scientific men to its head-waters in the
Adirondac country.
Have we even so much as discovered and settled
the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the
coast, from the Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, or to
the Eio Bravo, or to wherever the end is now, if he
is swift enough to overtake it, faithfully following
the windings of every inlet and of every cape, and
stepping to the music of the surf, — ^with a desolate
fishing-town once a week, and a city's port once a
month to cheer him, and putting up at the light-
houses, when there are any, — and tell me if it looks
like a discovered and settled country, and not rather,
for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-
man's Land.
We have advanced by leaps to the Pacific, and
102 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEBAU
left many a lesser Oregon and California unexplored
behind us. Though the railroad and the telegraph
have been established on the shores of Maine, the
Indian still looks out from her interior mountains
over all these to the sea. There stands the city of
Bangor, fifty miles up the Penobscot, at the head of
navigation for vessels of the largest class, the principal
lumber depot on this continent, with a population of
twelve thousand, like a star on the edge of night, still
hewing at the forests of which it is buUt, already
overflowing with the luxuries and refinement of
Europe, and sending its vessels to Spain, to England,
and to the West Indies, for its groceries, — and yet
only a few axe-men have gone " up river," into the
howling wilderness which feeds it. The bear and
deer are still found within its limits ; and the moose,
as he swims the Penobscot, is entangled amid its
shipping, and taken by foreign sailors in its harbour.
Twelve miles in the rear, twelve miles of railroad, are
Orono and the Indian Island, the home of the Penob-
scot tribe, and then commence the batteau and the
canoe, and the military road ; and sixty miles above,
the country is virtually unmapped and unexplored,
and there still waves the virgin forest of the New
World.
THE MUEDEE OF THE MOOSE
Here, about two o'clock, we turned up a small
branch three or four rods wide, which comes in on
the right from the south, called Pine-Stream, to look
for moose signs. We had gone but a few rods before
we saw very recent signs along the water's edge, the
mud lifted up by their feet being quite fresh, and Joe
declared that they had gone along there but a short
time before. We soon reached a small meadow on
the east side, at an angle in the stream, which was,
for the most part, densely covered with alders. As
we were advancing along the edge of this, rather
more quietly than usual, perhaps, on account of the
freshness of the signs, — the design being to camp up
this stream, if it promised well, — I heard a slight
crackling of twigs deep in the alders, and turned
Joe's attention to it ; whereupon he began to push
the canoe back rapidly ; and we had receded thus half
a dozen rods, when we suddenly spied two moose
standing just on the edge of the open part of the
meadow which we had passed, not more than six or
seven rods distant, looking round the alders at us.
They made me think of great frightened rabbits, with
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their long ears and half-inquisitive, half-frightened
looks ; the true denizens of the forest (I saw at once),
tilling a vacuum which now first I discovered had not
been filled for me, — moose-men, wood-eaters, the word
is said to mean, — clad in a sort of Vermont gray, or
homespun. Our Nimrod, owing to the retrograde
movement, was now the farthest from the game ; but
being warned of its neighbourhood, he hastily stood
up, and, while we ducked, fired over our heads one
barrel at the foremost, which alone he saw, though
he did not know what kind of creature it was;
whereupon this one dashed across the meadow and
up a high bank on the north-east, so rapidly as to
leave but an indistinct impression of its outlines on
my mind. At the same instant, the other, a young
one, but as tall as a horse, leaped out into the stream,
in full sight, and there stood cowering for a moment,
or rather its disproportionate lowness behind gave it
that appearance, and uttering two or three trumpeting
squeaks. I have an indistinct recollection of seeing
the old one pause an instant on the top of the bank
in the woods, look toward its shivering young, and
then dash away again. The second barrel was levelled
at the calf, and when we expected to see it drop in
the water, after a little hesitation, it, too, got out of
the water, and dashed up the hill, though in a some-
what different direction. All this was the work of a
few seconds, and our hunter, having never seen a
moose before, did not know but they were deer, for
they stood partly in the water, nor whether he had
fired at the same one twice or not. From the style
THE MUBDEE OF THE MOOSE 105
in which they went off, and the fact that he was not
used to standing up and firing from a canoe, I judged
that we should not see anything more of them. The
Indian said that they were a cow and her calf, — a
yearling, or perhaps two years old, for they accom-
pany their dams so long ; but, for my part, I had not
noticed much difference in their size. It was but two
or three rods across the meadow to the foot of the
bank, which, like all the world thereabouts, was
densely wooded ; but I was surprised to notice that,
as soon as the moose had passed behind the veil of
the woods, there was no sound of footsteps to be
heard from the soft, damp moss which carpets that
forest, and long before we landed, perfect silence
reigned. Joe said, "If you wound 'em moose, me
sure get 'em."
We all landed at once. My companion reloaded ;
the Indian fastened his birch, threw off his hat,
adjusted his waistband, seized the hatchet, and set
out. He told me afterward, casually, that before we
landed he had seen a drop of blood on the bank, when
it was two or three rods off. He proceeded rapidly
up the bank and through the woods, with a peculiar,
elastic, noiseless, and stealthy tread, looking to right
and left on the ground, and stepping in the faint
tracks of the wounded moose, now and then pointing
in silence to a single drop of blood on the handsome,
shining leaves of the Clintonia Borealis, which, on
every side, covered the ground, or to a dry fern-stem
freshly broken, all the while chewing some leaf or
else the spruce gum. I followed, watching his
106 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
motions more than the trail of the moose. After
following the trail about forty rods in a pretty direct
course, stepping over fallen trees and winding between
standing ones, he at length lost it, for there were
many other moose-tracks there, and, returning once
more to the last blood-stain, traced it a little way
and lost it again, and, too soon, I thought, for a good
hunter, gave it up entirely. He traced a few steps,
also, the tracks of the calf ; but, seeing no blood, soon
relinquished the search.
I observed, while he was tracking the moose, a
certain reticence or moderation in him. He did not
communicate several observations of interest which
he made, as a white man would have done, though
they may have leaked out afterward. At another
time, when we heard a slight crackling of twigs and
he landed to reconnoitre, he stepped lightly and
gracefully, stealing through the bushes with the
least possible noise, in a way in which no white
man does, — as it were, finding a place for his foot
each time.
About half an hour after seeing the moose, we
pursued our voyage up Pine-Stream, and soon, coming
to a part which was very shoal and also rapid, we
took out the baggage, and proceeded to carry it
round, while Joe got up with the canoe alone. We
were just completing our portage and I was absorbed
in the plants, admiring the leaves of the aster macro-
phyllus, ten inches wide, and plucking the seeds of
the great round-leaved orchis, when Joe exclaimed
from the stream that he had killed a moose. He had
THE MURDER OF THE MOOSE 107
found the cow-moose lying dead, but quite warm, in
the middle of the stream, which was so shallow that
it rested on the bottom, with hardly a third of its
body above water. It was about an hour after it
was shot, and it was swollen with water. It had run
abovit a hundred rods and sought the stream again,
cutting off a slight bend. No doubt, a better hunter
would have tracked it to this spot at once. I was
surprised at its great size, horse-like, but Joe said it
was not a large cow-moose. My companion went in
search of the calf again. I took hold of the ears of
the moose, while Joe pushed his canoe down stream
toward a favourable shore, and so we made out,
though with some difficulty, its long nose frequently
sticking in the bottom, to drag it into still shallower
water. It was a brownish black, or perhaps a dark
iron-gray, on the back and sides, but lighter beneath
and in front. I took the cord which served for the
canoe's painter, and with Joe's assistance measured it
carefully, the greatest distances first, making a knot
each time. The painter being wanted, I reduced
these measures that night with equal care to lengths
and fractions of my umbrella, beginning with the
smallest measures, and untying the knots as I pro-
ceeded ; and when we arrived at Chesuncook the
next day, finding a two-foot rule there, I reduced the
last to feet and inches ; and, moreover, I made myself
a two-foot rule of a thin and narrow strip of black
ash, which would fold up conveniently to six inches.
All this pains I took because I did not wish to be
obliged to say merely that the moose was very large.
108 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
Of the various dimensions which I obtained I will
mention only two. The distance from the tips of
the hoofs of the fore-feet, stretched out, to the top of
the back between the shoulders, was seven feet and
five inches. I can hardly believe my own measure,
for this is about two feet greater than the height of
a tall horse. (Indeed, I am now satisfied that this
measurement was incorrect, but the other measures
given here I can warrant to be correct, having proved
them in a more recent visit to those woods.) The
extreme length was eight feet and two inches.
Another cow-moose, which I have since measured in
those woods with a tape, was just six feet from the
tip of the hoof to the shoulders, and eight feet long
as she lay.
When afterward I asked an Indian at the carry
how much taller the male was, he answered, " Eighteen
inches," and made me observe the height of a cross-
stake over the fire, more than four feet from the
ground, to give me some idea of the depth of his
chest Another Indian, at Oldtown, told me that
they were nine feet high to the top of the back, and
that one which he tried weighed eight hundred
pounds. The length of the spinal projections between
the shoulders is very great. A white hunter, who
was the best authority among hunters that I could
have, told me that the male was not eighteen inches
taller than the female ; yet he agreed that he was
sometimes nine feet high to the top of the back, and
weighed a thousand pounds. Only the male has
horns, and they rise two feet or more above the
MUKDEK OF THE MOOSE 109
shoulders, — spreading three or four, and sometimes
six feet, — which would make him in all, sometimes,
eleven feet high ! According to this calculation, the
moose is as tall, though it may not be as large, as the
great Irish elk, Megaceros Hibernicus, of a former
period, of which Mantell says that it "very far
exceeded in magnitude any living species, the skele-
ton " being " upward of ten feet high from the ground
to the highest point of the antlers." Joe said, that,
though the moose shed the whole horn annually, each
new horn has an additional prong ; but I have noticed
that they sometimes have more prongs on one side
than on the other. I was struck with the delicacy
and tenderness of the hoofs, which divide very far
up, and the one half could be pressed very much
behind the other, thus probably making the animal
surer-footed on the uneven ground and slippery moss-
covered logs of the primitive forest. They were
very unlike the stiff and battered feet of our horses
and oxen. The bare, horny part of the fore-foot was
just six inches long, and the two portions could be
separated four inches at the extremities.
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward
to look at. Why should it stand so high at the
shoulders ? Why have so long a head ? Why have
no tail to speak of? for in my examination I over-
looked it entirely. Naturalists say it is an inch and
a half long. It reminded me at once of the camelo-
pard, high before and low behind, — and no wonder,
for, like it, it is fitted to browse on trees. The upper
lip projected two inches beyond the lower for this
110 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
purpose. This was the kind of man that was at
home there; for, as near as I can learn, that has
never been the residence, but rather the hunting-
ground of the Indian. The moose will perhaps one
day become extinct ; but how naturally then, when
it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that,
may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal
with similar branching and leafy horns, — a sort of
fucus or lichen in bone, — to be the inhabitant of such
a forest as this !
Here, just at the head of the murmuring rapids,
Joe now proceeded to skin the moose with a pocket-
knife, while I looked on ; and a tragical business it
was, — to see that still warm and palpitating body
pierced with a knife, to see the warm milk stream
from the rent udder, and the ghastly naked red
carcass appearing from within its seemly robe, which
was made to hide it. The ball had passed through
the shoulder-blade diagonally and lodged under the
skin on the opposite side, and was partially flattened.
My companion keeps it to show to his grandchildrea
He has the shanks of another moose which he has
since shot, skinned and stuffed, ready to be made into
boots by putting in a thick leather sole. Joe said, if
a moose stood fronting you, you must not fire, but
advance toward him, for he will turn slowly and give
you a fair shot. In the bed of this narrow, wild, and
rocky stream, between two lofty walls of spruce and
firs, a mere cleft in the forest which the stream had
made, this work went on. At length Joe had stripped
off the hide and dragged it trailing to the shore,
MUEDEE OF THE MOOSE 111
declaring that it weighed a hundred pounds, though
probably fifty would have been nearer the truth.
He cut off a large mass of the meat to carry along,
and another, together with the tongue and nose, he
put with the hide on the shore to lie there all night,
or till we returned. I was surprised that he thought
of leaving this meat thus exposed by the side of the
carcass, as the simplest course, not fearing that any
creature would touch it; but nothing did. This
could hardly have happened on the bank of one of
our rivers in the eastern part of Massachusetts ;
but I suspect that fewer small wild animals are
prowling there than with us. Twice, however, in
this excursion I had a glimpse of a species of large
mouse.
This stream was so withdrawn, and the moose-
tracks were so fresh, that my companions, still bent
on hunting, concluded to go farther up it and camp,
and then hunt up or down at night. Half a mile
above this, at a place where I saw the aster puniceus
and the beaked hazel, as we paddled along, Joe,
hearing a slight rustling amid the alders, and seeing
something black about two rods off, jumped up and
whispered, " Bear ! " but before the hunter had dis-
charged his piece, he corrected himself to " Beaver ! "
— " Hedgehog ! " The bullet killed a large hedgehog
more than two feet and eight inches long. The quills
were rayed out and flattened on the hinder part of
its back, even as if it had lain on that part, but were
erect and long between this and the tail. Their
points, closely examined, were seen to be finely
112 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
bearded or barbed, and shaped like an awl, that is, a
little concave, to give the barbs effect. After about
a mile of still water, we prepared our camp on the
right side, just at the foot of a considerable fall.
Little chopping was done that night, for fear of
scaring the moose. We had moose-meat fried for
supper. It tasted like tender beef, with perhaps
more flavour, — sometimes like veal.
After supper, the moon having risen, we proceeded
to hunt a mile up this stream, first " carrying " about
the falls. We made a picturesque sight, wending
single-file along the shore, climbing over rocks and
logs, — Joe, who brought up the rear, twirling his
canoe in his hands as if it were a feather, in places
where it was difi&cult to get along without a burden.
We launched the canoe again from the ledge over
which the stream fell, but after half a mile of still
water, suitable for hunting, it became rapid again,
and we were compelled to make our way along the
shore, while Joe endeavoured to get up in the birch
alone, though it was still very difficult for him to
pick his way amid the rocks in the night. We on
the shore found the worst of walking, a perfect chaos
of fallen and drifted trees, and of bushes projecting
far over the water, and now and then we made our
way across the mouth of a small tributary on a kind
of network of alders. So we went tumbling on in
the dark, being on the shady side, effectually scaring
all the moose and bears that might be thereabouts.
At length we came to a standstill, and Joe went
forward to reconnoitre ; but he reported that it was
MURDER OF THE MOOSE 113
still a continuous rapid as far as he went, or half a
mile, with no prospect of improvement, as if it were
coming down from a mountain. So we turned about,
hunting back to the camp through the still water.
It was a splendid moonlight night, and I, getting
sleepy as it grew late, — for I had nothing to do, —
found it difficult to realise where I was. This stream
was much more unfrequented than the main one,
lumbering operations being no longer carried on in
this quarter. It was only three or four rods wide,
but the firs and spruce through which it trickled
seemed yet taller by contrast. Being in this dreamy
state, which the moonlight enhanced, I did not clearly
discern the shore, but seemed, most of the time, to
be floating through ornamental grounds, — for I asso-
ciated the fir-tops with such scenes ; — very high up
some Broadway, and beneath or between their tops,
I thought I saw an endless succession of porticoes and
columns, cornices and fa9ades, verandas and churches.
I did not merely fancy this, but in my drowsy state
such was the illusion. I fairly lost myself in sleep
several times, still dreaming of that architecture and
the nobility that dwelt behind and might issue from
it ; but all at once I would be aroused and brought
back to a sense of my actual position by the sound
of Joe's birch horn in the midst of all this silence
calling the moose, ugh, ugh, oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo, and I
prepared to hear a furious moose come rushing and
crashing through the forest, and see him burst out on
to the little strip of meadow by our side.
But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough
114 SELECTIONS FROM THOKEAU
of moose-hunting. I had not come to the woods for
this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I had been
willing to learn how the Indian manoeuvred ; but one
moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen.
The afternoon's tragedy, and my share in it, as it
affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my
adventure. It is true, I came as near as is possible
to come to being a hunter and miss it, myself ; and
as it is, I think that I could spend a year in the
woods, fishing and hunting, just enough to sustain
myself, with satisfaction. This would be next to
living like a philosopher on the fruits of the earth
which you had raised, which also attracts me. But
this hunting of the moose merely for the satisfaction
of killing him, — not even for the sake of his hide, —
without making any extraordinary exertion or run-
ning any risk yourself, is too much like going out by
night to some wood-side pasture and shooting your
neighbour's horses. These are God's own horses,
poor, timid creatures, that will run fast enough as
soon as they smell you, though they are nine feet
high. Joe told us of some hunters who a year or
two before had shot down several oxen by night,
somewhere in the Maine woods, mistaking them for
moose. And so might any of the hunters; and
what is the difference in the sport, but the name?
In the former case, having killed one of God's and
your own oxen, you strip off its hide, — because that is
the common trophy, and, moreover, you have heard
that it may be sold for moccasins, — cut a steak from
its haunches, and leave the huge carcass to smell to
MURDER OF THE MOOSE 115
heaven for you. It is no better, at least, than to
assist at a slaughter-house.
This afternoon's experience suggested to me how
base or coarse are the motives which commonly carry
men into the wilderness. The explorers and lum-
berers generally are all hirelings, paid so much a day
for their labour, and as such they have no more love
for wild nature than wood-sawers have for forests.
Other white men and Indians who come here are for
the most part hunters, whose object is to slay as
many moose and other wild animals as possible.
But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years
in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other
employments than these, — employments perfectly
sweet and innocent and ennobling? For one that
comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand
come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and
imperfect use Indians and hunters make of Nature !
No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.
I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature
the coarser for this part of my woodland experience,
and was reminded that our life should be lived as
tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.
With these thoughts, when we reached our camp-
ing-ground, I decided to leave my companions to
continue moose-hunting down the stream, while I
prepared the camp, though they requested me not to
chop much nor make a large fire, for fear I should
scare their game. In the midst of the damp fir-wood,
high on the mossy bank, about nine o'clock of this
bright moonlight night, I kindled a fire, when they
116 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
were gone, and, sitting on the fir-twigs, within sound of
the falls, examined by its light the botanical specimens
which I had collected that afternoon, and wrote down
some of the reflections which I have here expanded ;
or I walked along the shore and gazed up the stream,
where the whole space above the falls was filled with
mellow light. As I sat before the fire on my fir-twig
seat, without walls above or around me, I remembered
how far on every hand that wilderness stretched,
before you came to cleared or cultivated fields, and
wondered if any bear or moose was watching the
light of my fire ; for Nature looked sternly upon me
on account of the murder of the moose.
Strange that so few ever come to the woods to
see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting
its evergreen arms to the light, — to see its perfect
success; but most are content to behold it in the
shape of many broad boards brought to market, and
deem that its true success ! But the pine is no more
lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and
houses is no more its true and highest use than the
truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into
manure. There is a higher law afi'ecting our relation
to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead
pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is
a man. Can he who has discovered only some of the
values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have
discovered the true use of the whale ? Can he who
slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have " seen
the elephant " ? These are petty and accidental uses ;
just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to
MUEDEE OF THE MOOSE 117
make buttons and flageolets of our bones ; for every-
thing may serve a lower as well as a higher use.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and
moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it
aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and
lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands
its nature best ? Is it the tanner who has barked it,
or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity
will fable to have been changed into a pine at last ?
No ! no ! it is the poet ; he it is who makes the
truest use of the pine, — who does not fondle it with
an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a
plane, — who knows whether its heart is false without
cutting into it, — ^who has not bought the stumpage
of the township on which it stands. All the pines
shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on the
forest floor. No, it is the poet, who loves them as
his own shadow in the air, and lets them stand. I
have been into the lumber-yard, and the carpenter's
shop, and the tannery, and the lampblack-factory,
and the turpentine clearing ; but when at length I
saw the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the
light at a distance high over all the rest of the forest,
I realised that the former were not the highest use of
the pine. It is not their bones or hide or tallow that
I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not
its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathise, and
which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and
perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower
above me still.
FOKEST PHENOMENA
When we got to the camp, the canoe was taken
out and turned over, and a log laid across it to
prevent its being blown away. The Indian cut
some large logs of damp and rotten hard-wood to
smoulder and keep fire through the night. The
trout was fried for supper. Our tent was of thin
cotton cloth and quite small, forming with the ground
a triangular prism closed at the rear end, six feet
long, seven wide, and four high, so that we could
barely sit up in the middle. It required two forked
stakes, a smooth ridge-pole, and a dozen or more pins
to pitch it. It kept off dew and wind, and an
ordinary rain, and answered our purpose well enough.
We reclined within, it till bedtime, each with his
baggage at his head, or else sat about the fire, having
hung our wet clothes on a pole before the fire for the
night.
As we sat there, just before night, looking out
through the dusky wood, the Indian heard a noise
which he said was made by a snake. He imitated it
at my request, making a low whistling note, — pheet —
FOREST PHENOMENA 119
pheet, — two or three times repeated, somewhat like
the peep of the hylodes, but not so loud. In answer
to my inquiries, he said that he had never seen them
while making it, but going to the spot he iinds the
snake. This, he said on another occasion, was a sign
of rain. When I had selected this place for our
camp, he had remarked that there were snakes there,- —
he saw them. "But they won't do any hurt," I said.
" no," he answered, " just as you say, it makes no
difference to me."
He lay on the right side of the tent, because, as
he said, he was partly deaf in one ear, and he wanted
to lie with his good ear up. As we lay there, he
inquired if I ever heard "Indian sing.'' I replied
that I had not often, and asked him if he would not
favour us with a song. He readily assented, and
lying on his back, with his blanket wrapped around
him, he commenced a slow, somewhat nasal, yet
musical chant, in his own language, which probably
was taught his tribe long ago by the Catholic mis-
sionaries. He translated it to us, sentence by
sentence, afterward, wishing to see if we could
remember it. It proved to be a very simple religious
exercise or hymn, the burden of which was, that
there was only one God who ruled all the world.
This was hammered (or sung) out very thin, so that
some stanzas well-nigh meant nothing at all, merely
keeping up the idea. He then said that he would
sing us a Latin song; but we did not detect any
Latin, only one or two Greek words in it, — the rest
may have been Latin with the Indian pronunciation.
120 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
His singing carried me back to the period of the
discovery of America, to San Salvador and the Incas,
when Europeans first encountered the simple faith of
the Indian. There was, indeed, a beautiful simplicity
about it ; nothing of the dark and savage, only the
mild and infantile. The sentiments of humility and
reverence chiefly were expressed.
It was a dense and damp spruce and fir wood in
which we lay, and, except for our fire, perfectly dark ;
and when I awoke in the night, I either heard an owl
from deeper in the forest behind us, or a loon from a
distance over the lake. Getting up some time after
midnight to collect the scattered brands together,
while my companions were sound asleep, I observed,
partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a per-
fectly regular elliptical ring of light, about five inches
in its shortest diameter, six or seven in its longer,
and from one eighth to one quarter of an inch wide.
It was fully as bright as the fire, but not reddish or
scarlet like a coal, but a white and slumbering light,
like the glowworm's. I could tell it from the fire
only by its whiteness. I saw at once that it must be
phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of,
but never chanced to see. Putting my finger on it,
with a little hesitation, I found that it was a piece of
dead moose-wood {Acer striatum) which the Indian
had cut off' in a slanting direction the evening before.
Using my knife, I discovered that the light proceeded
from that portion of the sap-wood immediately under
the bark, and thus presented a regular ring at the
end, which, indeed, appeared raised above the level
FOREST PHENOMENA 121
of the wood, and when I pared off the bark and cut
into the sap, it was all aglow along the log. I was
surprised to find the wood quite hard and apparently
sound, though probably decay had commenced in the
sap, and I cut out some little triangular chips, and
placing them in the hollow of my hand, carried them
into the camp, waked my companion, and showed
them to him. They lit up the inside of my hand,
revealing the lines and wrinkles, and appearing
exactly like coals of fire raised to a white heat, and I
saw at once how, probably, the Indian jugglers had
imposed on their people and on travellers, pretending
to hold coals of fire in their mouths.
I also noticed that part of a decayed stump within
four or five feet of the fire, an inch wide and six
inches long, soft and shaking wood, shone with equal
brightness.
I neglected to ascertain whether our fire had any-
thing to do with this, but the previous day's rain
and long-continued wet weather undoubtedly had.
I was exceedingly interested by this phenomenon,
and already felt paid for my journey. It could
hardly have thrilled me more if it had taken the
form of letters, or of the human face. If I had met
with this ring of light while groping in this forest
alone, away from any fire, I should have been still
more surprised. I little thought that there was
such a light shining in the darkness of the wilderness
for me.
The next day the Indian told me their name for
this light, — Artoosogu', — and on my inquiring concern-
122 SELECTIONS FROM THOKEAU
ing the will-o'-the-wisp, and the like phenomena, he
said that his "folks" sometimes saw fires passing
along at various heights, even as high as the trees,
and making a noise. I was prepared after this to
hear of the most startling and unimagined phenomena
witnessed by " his folks," they are abroad at all hours
and seasons in scenes so unfrequented by white men.
Nature must have made a thousand revelations to
them which are still secrets to us.
I did not regret my not having seen this before,
since I now saw it under circumstances so favourable.
I was in just the frame of mind to see something
wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to
my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on
the alert to see more like it. I exulted like " a pagan
suckled in a creed " that had never been worn at all,
but was bran new, and adequate to the occasion. I
let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had
been a fellow-creature. I saw that it was excellent,
and was very glad to know that it was so cheap. A
scientific explanation, as it is called, would have been
altogether out of place there. That is for pale day-
light. Science with its retorts would have put me to
sleep ; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I
improved. It suggested to me that there was some-
thing to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer
of me more than before. I belie\'ed that the woods
were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits
as good as myself any day, — not an empty chamber,
in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an
inhabited house, — and for a few moments I enjoyed
FOREST PHENOMENA 123
fellowship with them. Your so-called wise man goes
trying to persuade himself that there is no entity
there but himself and his traps, but it is a great deal
easier to believe the truth. It suggested, too, that
the same experience always gives birth to the same
sort of belief or religion. One revelation has been
made to the Indian, another to the white man. I
have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the
missionary. I am not sure but all that would tempt
me to teach the Indian my religion would be his
promise to teach me his. Long enough I had heard
of irrelevant things ; now at length I was glad to
make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten
wood. Where is all your knowledge gone to ? It
evaporates completely, for it has no depth.
I kept those little chips and wet them again the
next night, but they emitted no light.
THE SHIPWEECK
Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of
the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two-
thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a
few miles inland may never see any trace, more than
of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in
October 1849, another the succeeding June, and
another to Truro in July 1855; the first and last
time with a single companion, the second time alone.
I have spent, in all, about three weeks on the Cape ;
walked from Eastham to Provincetown twice on the
Atlantic side, and once on the Bay side also,, except-
ing four or five miles, and crossed the Cape half a
dozen times on my way ; but having come so fresh
to the sea, I have got but little salted. My readers
must expect only so much saltness as the land breeze
acquires from blowing over an arm of the sea, or is
tasted on the windows and the bark of trees twenty
miles inland, after Septembei' gales. I have been
accustomed to make excursions to the ponds within
ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have extended
my excursions to the seashore.
THE SHIPWEECK 125
I did not see why I might not make a book on
Cape Cod, as well as my neighbour on Human
Culture. It is but another name for the same
thing, and hardly a sandier phase of it. As for my
title, I suppose that the word Cape is from the
French cap ; which is from the Latin caput, a head ;
which is, perhaps, from the verb capere, to take, —
that being the part by which we take hold of a
thing : — Take Time by the forelock. It is also the
safest part to take a serpent by. And as for Cod,
that was derived directly from that "great store of
cod-fish" which Captain Bartholomew Gosnold caught
there in 1602; which fish appears to have been so
called from the Saxon word codde, " a case in which
seeds are lodged," either from the form of the fish,
or the quantity of spawn it contains ; whence also,
perhaps, codling ("pomum coctile " ?) and coddle, — to
cook green like peas. (V. Die.)
Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massa-
chusetts : the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay ; the
elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist
at Truro ; and the sandy fist at Provincetown, —
behind which the State stands on her guard, with
her back to the Green Mountains, and her feet
planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete
protecting her Bay, — boxing with north-east storms,
and, ever and anon, heaving up her Atlantic adver-
sary from the lap of earth, — ready to thrust forward
her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her
breast at Cape Ann.
On studying the map, I saw that there must be
126 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
an uninterrupted beach on the east or outside of the
forearm of the Cape, more than thirty miles from
the general line of the coast, which would afford a
good sea view, but that, on account of an opening in
the beach, forming the entrance to Nauset Harbour,
in Orleans, I must strike it in Eastham, if I approached
it by land, and probably I could walk thence straight
to Eace Point, about twenty -eight miles, and not
meet with any obstruction.
We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday,
9th October 1849. On reaching Boston, we found
that the Provincetown steamer, which should have
got in the day before, had not yet arrived, on account
of a violent storm ; and, as we noticed in the streets
a handbill headed, " Death ! one hundred and forty-
five lives lost at Cohasset," we decided to go by way
of Cohasset. We found many Irish in the cars, going
to identify bodies and to sympathise with the sur-
vivors, and also to attend the funeral which was to
take place in the afternoon ; — and when we arrived
at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly all the passengers
were bound for the beach, which was about a mile
distant, and many other persons were flocking in
from the neighbouring country. There were several
hundreds of them streaming oflF over Cohasset common
in that direction, some on foot and some in waggons,
— and among them were some sportsmen in their
hunting-jackets, with their guns, and game-bags, and
dogs. As we passed the graveyard we saw a large
hole, like a cellar, freshly dug there, and, just before
reaching the shore, by a pleasantly winding and
THE SHIPWRECK 127
rocky road, we met several hay-riggings and farm-
waggons coming away toward the meeting-house,
each loaded with three large, rough deal boxes. We
did not need to ask what was in them. The owners
of the waggons were made the undertakers. Many
horses in carriages were fastened to the fences near
the shore, and, for a mile or more, up and down, the
beach was covered with people looking out for bodies,
and examining the fragments of the wreck. There
was a small island called Brook Island, with a hut on
it, lying just off the shore. This is said to be the
rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from Nantasket to
Scituate, — hard sienitic rocks, which the waves have
laid bare, but have not been able to crumble. It
has been the scene of many a shipwreck.
The brig St. John, from Galway, Ireland, laden
with emigrants, was wrecked on Sunday morning;
it was now Tuesday morning, and the sea was still
breaking violently on the rocks. There were eighteen
or twenty of the same large boxes that I have men-
tioned, lying on a green hillside, a few rods from the
water, and surrounded by a crowd. The bodies
which had been recovered, twenty-seven or eight in
all, had been collected there. Some were rapidly
nailing down the lids, others were carting the boxes
away, and others were lifting the lids, which were
yet loose, and peeping under the cloths, for each
body, with such rags as still adhered to it, was
covered loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no
signs of grief, but there was a sober dispatch of
business which was affecting. One man was seeking
128 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
to identify a particular body, and one undertaker or
carpenter was calling to another to know in what
box a certain child was put. I saw many marble
feet and matted heads as the cloths were raised, and
one livid, swollen, and mangled body of a drowned
girl, — who probably had intended to go out to
service in some American family, — to which some
rags still adhered, with a string, half concealed by
the flesh, about its swollen neck ; the coiled-up wreck
of a human hulk, gashed by the rocks or fishes, so
that the bone and muscle were exposed, but quite
bloodless, — merely red and white, — with wide-open
and staring eyes, yet lustreless, deadlights ; or like
the cabin windows of a stranded vessel, filled with
sand. Sometimes there were two or more children,
or a parent and child, in the same box, and on the
lid would perhaps be written with red chalk, " Bridget
such-a-one, and sister's child." The surrounding
sward was covered with bits of sails and clothing.
I have since heard, from one who lives by this beach,
that a woman who had come over before, but had
left her infant behind for her sister to bring, came
and looked into these boxes, and saw in one — prob-
ably the same whose superscription I hare quoted
— her child in her sister's arms, as if the sister had
meant to be found thus ; and within three days after,
the mother died from the effect of that sight.
We turned from this and walked along the rocky
shore. In the first cove were strewn what seemed
the fragments of a vessel, in small pieces mixed with
sand and seaweed, and great quantities of feathers ;
THE SHIPWRECK 129
but it looked so old and rusty, that I at first took it
to be some old wreck which had lain there many
years. I even thought of Captain Kidd, and that
the feathers were those which sea-fowl had cast
there ; and perhaps there might be some tradition
about it in the neighbourhood. I asked a sailor if
that was the St. John. He said it was. I asked
him where she struck. He pointed to a rock in
front of us, a mile from the shore, called the Grampus
Rock, and added, —
" You can see a part of her now sticking up ; it
looks like a small boat."
I saw it. It was thought to be held by the chain-
cables and the anchors. I asked if the bodies which
I saw were all that were drowned.
" Not a quarter of them," said he.
" Where are the rest 1 "
"Most of them right underneath that piece you
see."
It appeared to us that there was enough rubbish
to make the wreck of a large vessel in this cove
alone, and that it would take many days to cart it
off. It was several feet deep, and here and there
was a bonnet or a jacket on it. In the very midst
of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with
carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm
had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of
the tide, though they were often obhged to separate
fragments of clothing from it, and they might at
any moment have found a human body under it.
Drown who might, they did not forget that this
K
130 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had
not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of
society.
About a mile south we could see, rising above the
rocks, the masts of the British brig which the St.
John had endeavoured to follow, which had slipped
her cables, and, by good luck, run into the mouth
of Cohasset Harbour. A little farther along the
shore we saw a man's clothes on a rock; farther, a
woman's scarf, a gown, a straw bonnet, the brig's
caboose, and one of her masts high and dry, broken
into several pieces. In another rocky cove, several
rods from the water, and behind rocks twenty feet
high, lay a part of one side of the vessel, still hanging
together. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by four-
teen wide. I was even more surprised at the power
of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment,
than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments
before. The largest timbers and iron braces were
broken superfluously, and I saw that no material
could withstand the power of the waves ; that iron
must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel
would be cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks.
Some of these timbers, however, were so rotten that
I could almost thrust my umbrella through them.
They told us that some were saved on this piece, and
also showed where the sea had heaved it into this
cove which was now dry. When I saw where it had
come in, and in what condition, I wondered that any
had been saved on it. A little farther on a crowd
of men was collected around the mate of the St. John,
THE SHIPWRECK 131
who was telling his story. He was a slim-looking
youth, who spoke of the captain as the master, and
seeined a little excited. He was saying that when
they jumped into the boat, she filled, and, the vessel
lurching, the weight of the water in the boat caused
the painter to break, and so they were separated.
Whereat one man came away, saying, —
"Well, I don't see but he tells a straight story
enough. You see, the weight of the water in the
boat broke the painter. A boat full of water is very
heavy," — and so on, in a loud and impertinently
earnest tone, as if he had a bet depending on it, but
had no humane interest in the matter.
Another, a large man, stood near by upon a rock,
gazing into the sea, and chewing large quids of
tobacco, as if that habit were for ever confirmed with
him.
"Come," says another to his companion, "let's be
off. We've seen the whole of it. It's no use to stay
to the funeral."
Further, we saw one standing upon a rock, who, we
were told, was one that was saved. He was a sober-
looking man, dressed in a jacket and gray pantaloons,
with his hands in the pockets. I asked him a few
questions, which he answered j but he seemed un-
willing to talk about it, and soon walked away. By
his side stood one of the lifeboat men, in an oil-cloth
jacket, who told us how they went to the relief of
the British brig, thinking that the boat of the St.
John, which they passed on the way, held all her
crew, — for the waves prevented their seeing those
132 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEBATT
who were on the vessel, though they might have
saved some had they known there were any there.
A little farther was the flag of the St. John spread
on a rock to dry, and held down by stones at the
corners. This frail, but essential and significant
portion of the vessel, which had so long been the
sport of the winds, was sure to reach the shore.
There were one or two houses visible from these
rocks, in which were some of the survivors recover-
ing from the shock which their bodies and minds
had sustained. One was not expected to live.
"We kept on down the shore as far as a promontory
called Whitehead, that we might see more of the
Cohasset Rocks. In a little cove, within half a mile,
there were an old man and his son collecting, with
their team, the seaweed which that fatal storm had
cast up, as serenely employed as if there had never
been a wreck in the world, though they were within
sight of the Grrampus Rock, on which the St. John
had struck. The old man had heard that there was
a wreck and knew most of the particulars, but he
said that he had not been up there since it happened.
It was the wrecked weed that concerned him most,
rockweed, kelp, and seaweed, as he named them,
which he carted to his barnyard; and those bodies
were to him but other weeds which the tide cast up,
but which were of no use to him. We afterwards
came to the lifeboat in its harbour, waiting for
another emergency, — and in the afternoon we saw
the funeral procession at a distance, at the head of
which walked the captain with the other survivors.
THE SHIPWRECK 133
On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene as
I might have expected. If I had found one body
cast upon the beach in some lonely place, it would
have affected me more. I sympathised rather with
the winds and waves, as if to toss and mangle these
poor human bodies was the order of the day. If
this was the law of Nature, why waste any time in
awe or pity "! If the last day were come, we should
not think so much about the separation of friends or
the blighted prospects of individuals. I saw that
corpses might be multiplied, as on the field of battle,
till they no longer affected us in any degree, as
exceptions to the common lot of humanity. Take
all the graveyards together, they are always the
majority. It is the individual and private that
demands our sympathy. A man can attend but one
funeral in the course of his life, can behold but one
corpse. Yet I saw that the inhabitants of the shore
would be not a little affected by this event. They
would watch there many days and nights for the
sea to give up its dead, and their imaginations and
sympathies would supply the place of mourners far
away, who as yet knew not of the wreck. Many
days after this, something white was seen floating on
the water by one who was sauntering on the beach.
It was approached in a boat, and found to be the
body of a woman, which had risen in an upright
position, whose white cap was blown back with the
wind. I saw that the beauty of the shore itself was
wrecked for many a lonely walker there, until he
could perceive, at last, how its beauty was enhanced
134 SELECTIONS FROM THOEBAU
by wrecks like this, and it acquired thus a rarer and
sublimer beauty still.
Why care for these dead bodies? They really
have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their
owners were coming to the New World, as Columbus
and the Pilgrims did, — they were within a mile of
its shores ; but, before they could reach it, they
emigrated to a newer world than ever Columbus
dreamed of, yet one of whose existence we believe
that there is far more universal and convincing
evidence — though it has not yet been discovered by
science — than Columbus had of this: not merely
mariners' tales and some paltry driftwood and sea-
weed, but a continual drift and instinct to all our
shores. I saw their empty hulks that came to land ;
but they themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some
shore yet farther west, toward which we are all
tending, and which we shall reach at last, it may be
through storm and darkness, as they did. No doubt,
we have reason to thank God that they have not
been "shipwrecked into life again." The mariner
who makes the safest port in heaven, perchance,
seems to his friends on earth to be shipwrecked, for
they deem Boston Harbour the better place ; though
perhaps invisible to them, a skilful pilot comes to
meet him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow
off that coast, his good ship makes the land in hal-
cyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture there,
while his old hulk tosses in the surf here. It is
hard to part with one's body, but, no doubt, it is easy
enough to do without it when once it is gone. All
THE SHIPWRECK 135
their plans and hopes burst like a bubble ! Infants
by the score dashed on the rocks by the enraged
Atlantic Ocean ! No, no ! If the St. John did not
make her port here, she has been telegraphed there.
The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it is a
Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be
split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself
will split rocks till it succeeds.
THE BEACH
At length we reached the seemingly retreating bound-
ary of the plain, and entered what had appeared at a
distance an upland marsh, but proved to be dry sand
covered with beach -grass, the bearberry, bayberry,
shrub -oaks, and beach -plum, slightly ascending as
we approached the shore ; then, crossing over a belt
of sand on which nothing grew, though the roar of
the sea sounded scarcely louder than before, and we
were prepared to go half a mile farther, we suddenly
stood on the edge of a bluff overlooking the Atlantic.
Far below us was the beach, from half a dozen to a
dozen rods in width, with a long line of breakers
rushing to the strand. The sea was exceedingly
dark and stormy, the sky completely overcast, the
clouds still dropping rain, and the wind seemed to
blow not so much as the exciting cause, as from
sympathy with the already agitated ocean. The
waves broke on the bars at some distance from the
shore, and curving green or yellow as if over so
many unseen dams, ten or twelve feet high, like a
thousand waterfalls, rolled in foam to the sand.
THE BEACH 137
There was nothing but that savage ocean between
us and Europe.
Having got down the bank, and as close to the
water as we could, where the sand was the hardest,
leaving the Nauset Lights behind us, we began to
walk leisurely up the beach, in a north-west direction,
toward Provincetown, which was about twenty-five
miles distant, still sailing under our umbrellas with a
strong aft wind, admiring in silence, as we walked,
the great force of the ocean stream, —
The white breakers were rushing to the shore; the
foam ran up the sand, and then ran back as far as we
could see (and we imagined how much farther along
the Atlantic coast, before and behind us), as regularly,
to compare great things with, small, as the master of
a choir beats time with his white wand ; and ever
and anon a higher wave caused us hastily to deviate
from our path, and we looked back on our tracks
filled with water and foam. The breakers looked
Kke droves of a thousand wild horses of Neptune,
rushing to the shore, with their white manes stream-
ing far behind ; and when, at length, the sun shone
for a moment, their manes were rainbow-tinted.
Also, the long kelp-weed was tossed up from time to
time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in the brine.
There was not a sail in sight, and we saw none
that day, — ^for they had all sought harbours in the
late storm, and had not been able to get out again ;
and the only human beings whom we saw on the
138 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
beach for several days were one or two wreckers
looking for drift-wood, and fragments of wrecked
vessels. After an easterly storm in the spring, this
beach is sometimes strewn with eastern wood from
one end to the other, which, as it belongs to him who
saves it, and the Cape is nearly destitute of wood, is
a godsend to the inhabitants. We soon met one of
these wreckers, — a regular Cape Cod man, with whom
we parleyed, with a bleached and weather-beaten face,
within whose wrinkles I distinguished no particular
feature. It was like an old sail endowed with life,
— a hanging-cliff of weather-beaten flesh, — like one of
the clay boulders which occurred in that sand-bank.
He had on a hat which had seen salt water, and a
coat of many pieces and colours, though it was
mainly the colour of the beach^ as if it had been
sanded. His variegated back — for his coat had many
patches, even between the shoulders — was a rich
study to us when we had passed him and looked
round. It might have been dishonourable for him to
have so many scars behind, it is true, if he had not
had many more and more serious ones in front. He
looked as if he sometimes saw a dough-nut, but never
descended to comfort ; too grave to laugh, too tough
to cry ; as indiff'erent as a clam, — like a sea-clam with
hat on and legs, that was out walking the strand.
He may have been one of the Pilgrims, — Peregrine
White, at least, — who has kept on the back side of
the Cape, and let the centuries go by. He was
looking for wrecks, old logs, water-logged and covered
with barnacles, or bits of boards and joists, even
THE BEACH 139
chips which he drew out of the reach of the tide, and
stacked up to dry. When the log was too large to
carry far, he cut it up where the last wave had left
it, or rolling it a few feet, appropriated it by sticking
two sticks into the ground crosswise above it. Some
rotten trunk, which in Maine cumbers the ground,
and is, perchance, thrown into the water on purpose,
is here thus carefully picked up, split and dried, and
husbanded. Before vnnter the wrecker painfully
carries these things up the bank on his shoulders by
a long diagonal slanting path made with a hoe in the
sand, if there is no hollow at hand. You may see
his hooked pike-staff always lying on the bank, ready
for use. He is the true monarch of the beach, whose
" right there is none to dispute," and he is as much
identified with it as a beach-bird.
Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes
Dalagen's relation of the ways and usages of the
Grreenlanders, and says, " Whoever finds drift-wood,
or the spoils of a shipwreck on the strand, enjoys it
as his own, though he does not live thera But he
must haul it ashore and lay a stone upon it, as a
token that some one has taken possession of it, and
this stone is the deed of security, for no other Green-
lander will offer to meddle with it afterwards,"
Such is the instinctive law of nations. We have
also this account of drift-wood in Orantz : "As he
(the Founder of Nature) has denied this frigid rocky
region the growth of trees, he has bid the streams of
the Ocean to convey to its shores a great deal of
wood, which accordingly comes floating thither, part
140 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
without ice, but the most part along with it, and lodges
itself between the islands. Were it not for this, we
Europeans should have no wood to burn there, and the
poor Greenlanders (who, it is true, do not use wood,
but train, for burning) would, however, have no wood
to roof their houses, to erect their tents, as also to build
their boats, and to shaft their arrows (yet there grew
some small but crooked alders, etc.), by which they
must procure their maintenance, clothing and train
for warmth, light, and cooking. Among this wood
are great trees torn up by the roots, which, by driving
up and down for many years and rubbing on the ice, are
quite bare of branches and bark, and corroded with
great wood-worms. A small part of this drift-wood
are willows, alder and birch trees, which come out of
the bays in the south (i.e. of Greenland) ; also large
trunks of aspen trees, which must come from a greater
distance ; but the greatest part is pine and fir. We
find also a good deal of a sort of wood finely veined,
with few branches ; this I fancy is larch-wood, which
likes to decorate the sides of lofty, stony mountains.
There is also a solid, reddish wood, of a more
agreeable fragrance than the common fir, with visible
cross-veins ; which I take to be the same species as
the beautiful silver-firs, or zirbel, that have the smell
of cedar, and grow on the high Grison hills, and the
Switzers wainscot their rooms with them." The
wrecker directed us to a slight depression, called
Snow's Hollow, by which we ascended the bank,^ — for
elsewhere, if not difiicult, it was inconvenient to climb
it on account of the sliding sand which filled our shoes.
THE BEACH 141
This sand-bank — the backbone of the Cape — rose
directly from the beach to the height of a hundred
feet or more above the ocean. It was with singular
emotions that we first stood upon it and discovered
what a place we had chosen to walk on. On our
right, beneath us, was the beach of smooth and gently-
sloping sand, a dozen rods in width ; next, the endless
series of white breakers ; farther still, the light green
water over the bar, which runs the whole length of
the fore-arm of the Cape, and beyond this stretched
the unwearied and illimitable ocean. On our left,
extending back from the very edge of the bank, was
a perfect desert of shining sand, from thirty to eighty
rods in width, skirted in the distance by small sand-
hills fifteen or twenty feet high; between which,
however, in some places, the sand penetrated as much
farther. Next commenced the region of vegetation,
— a succession of small hills and valleys covered with
shrubbery, now glowing with the brightest imaginable
autumnal tints ; and beyond this were seen, here and
there, the waters of the bay. Here, in Wellfleet,
this pure sand plateau, known to sailors as the Table
Lands of Eastham, on account of its appearance, as
seen from the ocean, and because it once made a
part of that town, — full fifty rods in width, and in
many places much more, and sometimes full one
hundred and fifty feet above the ocean, — stretched
away northward from the southern boundary of the
town, without a particle of vegetation, — as level
almost as a table, — for two and a half or three miles,
or as far as the eye could reach ; slightly rising to-
142 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
wards the ocean, then stooping to the beach, by as
steep a slope as sand could lie on, and as regular as a
military engineer could desire. It was like the
escarped rampart of a stupendous fortress, whose
glacis was the beach, and whose champaign the ocean.
From its surface we overlooked the greater part of
the Cape. In short, we were traversing a desert,
with the view of an autumnal landscape of extra-
ordinary brilliancy, a sort of Promised Land, on the
one hand, and the ocean on the other. Yet, though
the prospect was so extensive, and the country for
the most part destitute of trees, a house was rarely
visible, — we never saw one from the beach, — and the
solitude was that of the ocean and the desert com-
bined. A thousand men could not have seriously
interrupted it, but would have been lost in the vast-
ness of the scenery as their footsteps in the sand.
The whole coast is so free from rocks, that we saw
but one or two for more than twenty miles. The
sand was soft like the beach, and trying to the eyes,
when the sun shone. A few piles of drift-wood, which
some wreckers had painfully brought up the bank and
stacked up there to dry, being the only objects in
the desert, looked indefinitely large and distant, even
like wigwams, though, when we stood near them,
they proved to be insignificant little " jags " of wood.
For sixteen miles, commencing at the Nauset
Lights, the bank held its height, though farther
north it was not so level as here, but interrupted by
slight hollows, and the patches of beach-grass and
bayberry frequently crept into the sand to its edge.
THE BEACH 143
There are some pages entitled A Description of the
Eastern Coast of the County of Barnstable, printed
in 1802, pointing out the spots on which the Trustees
of the Humane Society have erected huts called
Charity or Humane Houses, "and other places where
shipwrecked seamen may look for shelter." Two
thousand copies of this were dispersed, that every
vessel which frequented this coast might be provided
with one. I have read this Shipwrecked Seaman's
Manual with a melancholy kind of interest, — for the
sound of the surf, or, you might say, the moaning of
the sea, is heard all through it, as if its author were
the sole survivor of a shipwreck himself. Of this
part of the coast he says : " This highland approaches
the ocean with steep and lofty banks, which it is
extremely difficult to climb, especially in a storm.
In violent tempests, during very high tides, the sea
breaks against the foot of them, rendering it then
unsafe to walk on the strand which lies between
them and the ocean. Should the seaman succeed in
his attempt to ascend them, he must forbear to
penetrate into the country, as houses are generally so
remote that they would escape his research during the
night ; he must pass pn to the valleys by which the
banks are intersected. These valleys, which the inhab-
itants call Hollows, run at right angles with the shore,
and in the middle or lowest part of them a road leads
from the dwelling-houses to the sea." By the word
road must not always be understood a visible cart-track.
There were these two roads for us, — an upper
and a lower one, — the bank and the beach ; both
144 SELECTIONS FROM THOBEAU
stretching twenty-eight miles north-west, from Nauset
Harbour to Race Point, without a single opening into
the beach, and with hardly a serious interruption of
the desert. If you were to ford the narrow and
shallow inlet at Nauset Harbour, where there is not
more than eight feet of water on the bar at full sea,
you might walk ten or twelve miles farther, which
would make a beach forty miles long, — and the bank
and beach, on the east side of Nantucket, are but a
continuation of these. I was comparatively satisfied.
There I had got the Cape under me, as much as if I
were riding it barebacked. It was not as on the
map, or seen from the stage-coach ; but there I found
it all out of doors, huge and real. Cape Cod ! as it
cannot be represented on a map, colour it as you
will; the thing itself, than which there is nothing
more like it, no truer picture or account ; which you
cannot go farther and see. I cannot remember what
I thought before that it was. They commonly
celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on
them, not those which have a humane house alone.
But I wished to see that seashore where man's works
are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House,
where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and
comes ashore without a wharf for the landing ; where
the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is
but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.
We walked on quite at our leisure, now on the
beach, now on the bank, — sitting from time to time
on some damp log, maple, or yellow birch, which had
long followed the seas, but had now at last settled on
THE BEACH 145
land; or under the lee of a sand-hill, on the bank,
that we might gaze steadily on the ocean. The bank
was so steep, that, where there was no danger of its
caving, we sat on its edge as on a bench. It was
difficult for us landsmen to look out over the ocean
without imagining land in the horizon; yet the
clouds appeared to hang low over it, and rest on the
water as they never do on the land, perhaps on
account of the great distance to which we saw. The
sand was not without advantage, for, though it was
" heavy " walking in it, it was soft to the feet ; and,
notwithstanding that it had been raining nearly two
days, when it held up for half an hour, the sides of
the sand-hills, which were porous and sliding, afforded
a dry seat. All the aspects of this desert are beauti-
ful, whether you behold it in fair weather or foul,
or when the sun is just breaking out after a storm,
and shining on its moist surface in the distance, it is
so white, and pure, and level, and each slight in-
equality and track is so distinctly revealed ; and when
your eyes slide off this, they fall on .the ocean. In
summer the mackerel-gulls — which here have their
nests among the neighbouring sand-hills — pursue the
traveller anxiously, now and then diving close to his
head with a squeak, and he may see them, like
swallows, chase some crow which has been feeding on
the beach, almost across the Cape.
Though for some time I have not spoken of the
roaring of the breakers, and the ceaseless flux and
reflux of the waves, yet they did not for a moment
cease to dash and roar, with such a tumult that, if
L
146 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREA.XJ
you had been there, you could scarcely have heard my
voice the while; aud they are dashing and roaring
this very moment, though it may be with less din
and violence, for there the sea never rests. We were
wholly absorbed by this spectacle and tumult, and
like Chryses, though in a different mood from him,
we walked silent along the shore of the resounding
sea.
Bij S* aKcoiv Trapa diva, 7roAi;^A,ot(r/8oio 6aXacr(r»)s.l
I put in a little Greek now and then, partly
because it sounds so much like the ocean, — though I
doubt if Homer's Mediterranean Sea ever sounded so
loud as this.
The attention of those who frequent the camp-
meetings at Eastham is said to be divided between
the preaching of the Methodists and the preaching
of the billows on the back side of the Cape, for they
all stream over here in the course of their stay. I
trust that in this case the loudest voice carries it.
With what effect may we suppose the ocean to say,
"My hearers !" to the multitude on the bank ! On
that side some John N. Maffit ; on this, the Eeverend
Poluphloisboios Thalassa.
There was but little weed cast up here, and that
kelp chiefly, there being scarcely a rock for rock-weed
to adhere to. Who has not had a vision from some
vessel's deck, when he had still his land legs on, of
■' We have no word iu English to express the sound of many
waves dashing at once, whetlier gently or violently ToXvipXoiiT^ows
to the car, and, iu the ocean's gentle moods, an dvdpiff/iov ^Aacr/ui
to the eye.
THE BEACH 147
this great brown apron, drifting half upright, and
quite submerged through the green water, clasping a
stone or a deep-sea mussel in its unearthly fingers?
I have seen it carrying a stone half as large as my
head. We sometimes watched a mass of this cable-
like weed, as it was tossed up on the crest of a
breaker, waiting with interest to see it come in, as if
there was some treasure buoyed up by it; but we
were always surprised and disappointed at the insig-
nificance of the mass which had attracted us. As
we looked out over the water, the smallest objects
floating on it appeared indefinitely large, we were so
impressed by the vastness of the ocean, and each one
bore so large a proportion to the whole ocean, which
we saw. We were so often disappointed in the size
of such things as came ashore, the ridiculous bits of
wood or weed, with which the ocean laboured, that
we began to doubt whether the Atlantic itself would
bear a still closer inspection, and would not turn out
to be but a small pond, if it should come ashore to us.
This kelp, oar-weed, tangle, devil's apron, sole-leather,
or ribbon -weed, — as various species are called, — ■
appeared to us a singularly marine and fabulous
product, a fit invention for Neptune to adorn his car
with, or a freak of Proteus. All that is told of the
sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land,
and all its products have a certain fabulous quality,
as if they belonged to another planet, from seaweed
to a sailor's yarn, or a fish story. In this element
the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are
strangely mingled. One species of kelp, according to
148 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
Bory St. Vincent, has a stem fifteen hundred feet
long, and hence is the longest vegetable known, and
a brig's crew spent two days to no purpose collecting
the trunks of another kind cast ashore on the Falk-
land Islands, mistaking it for driftwood. ^ This
species looked almost edible ; at least, I thought that
if I were starving, I would try it. One sailor told me
that the cows ate it. It cut like cheese ; for I took
the earliest opportunity to sit down and deliberately
whittle up a fathom or two of it, that I might become
more intimately acquainted with it, see how it cut,
and if it were hollow all the way through. The
blade looked like a broad belt, whose edges had been
quilled, or as if stretched by hammering, and it was
also twisted spirally. The extremity was generally
worn and ragged from the lashing of the waves. A
piece of the stem which I carried home shrunk to one
quarter of its size a week afterward, and was com-
pletely covered with crystals of salt like frost. The
reader will excuse my greenness, — though it is not
sea-greenness, like his, perchance, — for I live by
a river shore, where this weed does not wash up.
When we consider in what meadows it grew, and
how it was raked, and in what kind of hay weather
got in or out, we may well be curious about it.
The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea-
jellies, which the wreckers called Sun-squall, one of
the lowest forms of animal life, some white, some
wine-coloured, and a foot in diameter. I at first
' See Harvey on AIqw.
THE BEACH 149
thought that they were a tender part of some marine
monster, which the storm or some other foe had
mangled. What right has the sea to bear in its
bosom such tender things as sea-jellies and mosses,
when it has such a boisterous shore, that the stoutest
fabrics are wrecked against it? Strange that it
should undertake to dandle such delicate children in
its arm. I did not at iirst recognise these for the
same which I had formerly seen in myriads in Boston
Harbour, rising, with a waving motion, to the surface,
as if to meet the sun, and discolouring the waters far
and wide, so that I seemed to be sailing through a
mere sun-fish soup. They say that when you en-
deavour to take one up, it will spill out the other
side of your hand like quicksilver. Before the land
rose out of the ocean, and became dry land, chaos
reigned; and between high and low water mark,
where she is partially disrobed and rising, a sort of
chaos reigns still, which only anomalous creatures
can inhabit. Mackerel-gulls were all the while flying
over our heads and amid the breakers, sometimes
two white ones pursuing a black one ; quite at home
in the storm, though they are as delicate organisations
as sea-jellies and mosses ; and we saw that they were
adapted to their circumstances rather by their spirits
than their bodies. Theirs must be an essentially
wilder, that is less human, nature, than that of larks
and robins. Their note was like the sound of some
vibrating metal, and harmonised well with the scenery
and the roar of the surf, as if one had rudely touched
the strings of the lyre, which ever lies on the shore ;
150 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
a ragged shred of ocean music tossed aloft on the
spray. But if I were required to name a sound, the
remembrance of which most perfectly revives the
impression which the beach has made, it would be
the dreary peep of the piping plover (Oharadrius
melodus) which haunts there. Their voices, too, are
heard as a fugacious part in the dirge which is ever
played along the shore for those mariners who have
been lost in the deep since first it was created. But
through all this dreariness we seem to have a pure
and unqualified strain of eternal melody, for always the
same strain which is a dirge to one household is a
morning song of rejoicing to another.
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN
Having walked about eight miles since we struck
the beach, and passed the boundary between Wellfleet
and Truro, a stone post in the sand, — for even this
sand comes under the jurisdiction of one town or
another, — we turned inland over barren hills and
valleys, whither the sea, for some reason, did not
follow us, and, tracing up a Hollow, discovered two
or three sober-looking houses within half a mile,
uncommonly near the eastern coast. Their garrets
were apparently so full of chambers, that their roofs
could hardly lie down straight, and we did not doubt
that there was room for us there. Houses near the
sea are generally low and broad. These were a story
and a half high; but if you merely counted the
windows in their gable ends, you would think that
there were many stories more, or, at any rate, that
the half-story was the only one thought worthy of
being illustrated. The great number of windows in
the ends of the houses, and their irregularity in size
and position, here and elsewhere on the Cape, struck
us agreeably, — as if each of the various occupants
152 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
who had their cunabula behind had punched a hole
where his necessities required it, and according to his
size and stature, without regard to outside effect.
There were windows for the grown folks, and windows
for the children, — three or four apiece ; as a certain
man had a large hole cut in his barn-door for the
cat, and another smaller one for the kitten. Some-
times they were so low under the eaves that I thought
they must have perforated the plate beam for another
apartment, and I noticed some which were triangular,
to fit that part more exactly. The ends of the houses
had thus as many muzzles as a revolver, and, if the
inhabitants have the same habit of staring out the
windows that some of our neighbours have, a traveller
must stand a small chance with them.
Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses
on the Cape looked more comfortable, as well as
picturesque, than the modern and more pretending
ones, which were less in hai'mony with the scenery,
and less firmly planted.
These houses were on the shores of a chain of
ponds, seven in number, the source of a small stream
called Herring River, which empties into the Ba}^
There are many Herring Rivers on the Cape ; they
will, perhaps, be more numerous than herrings soon.
We knocked at the door of the first house, but its
inhabitants were all gone away. In the meanwhile,
we saw the occupants of the next one looking out the
window at us, and before we reached it an old woman
came out and fastened the door of her bulkhead, and
went in again. Nevertheless, we did not hesitate to
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN 153
knock at her door, wken a grizzly-looking man
appeared, whom we took to be sixty or seventy years
old. He asked us, at first, suspiciously, where we
were from, and what our business was ; to which we
returned plain answers.
" How far is Concord from Boston ? " he inquired.
"Twenty miles by railroad."
" Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated.
"Didn't you ever hear of Concord of Revolu-
tionary fame ? "
" Didn't I ever hear of Concord ? Why, I heard
guns fire at the battle of Bunker Hill. [They hear
the sound of heavy cannon across the Bay.] I am
almost ninety ; I am eighty-eight year old. I was
fourteen year old at the time of Concord Fight, —
and where were you then 1 "
We were obliged to confess that we were not in
the fight.
" Well, walk in, we'll leave it to the women," said
he.
So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an old
woman taking our hats and bundles, and the old
man continued, drawing up to the large, old-fashioned
fire-place, —
"I am a poor, good-for-nothing ciittur, as Isaiah
says ; I am all broken down this year. I am under
petticoat government here."
The family consisted of the old man, his wife, and
his daughter, who appeared nearly as old as her
mother, a fool, her son (a brutish-looking, middle-
aged man, with a prominent lower face, who was
154 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEA.U
standing by the hearth when we entered, but immedi-
ately went out), and a little boy of ten.
While my companion talked with the women, I
talked with the old man. They said that he was old
and foolish, but he was evidently too knowing for
them.
"These women," said he to me, "are both of them
poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife.
I married her sixty-four years ago. She is eighty-
four years old, and as deaf as an adder, and the other
is not much better."
He thought well of the Bible, or at least he spoke
well, and did not think ill, of it, for that would not
have been prudent for a man of his age. He said
that he had read it attentively for many years, and
he had much of it at his tongue's end. He seemed
deeply impressed with a sense of his own nothingness,
and would repeatedly exclaim, — •
" I am a nothing. What I gather from my Bible is
just this ; that man is a poor good-for-nothing crittur,
and everything is just as God sees fit and disposes."
" May I ask your name % " I said.
"Yes," he answered, "I am not ashamed to tell
my name. My name is • . My great-grandfather
came over from England and settled here."
He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had
acquired a competency in that business, and had sons
still engaged in it.
Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was
not easily obtained ; it was raked up, but never on
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN 155
the Atlantic side, only cast ashore there in small
quantities in storms. The fisherman sometimes wades
in water several feet deep, and thrusts a pointed
stick into the sand before him. When this enters
between the valves of a clam, he closes them on it,
and is drawn out. It has been known to catch and
hold coot and teal which were preying on it. I
chanced to be on the bank of the Acushnet at New
Bedford one day since this, watching some ducks,
when a man informed me that, having let out his
young ducks to seek their food amid the samphire
(Salicornia) and other weeds along the riverside at
low tide that morning, at length he noticed that one
remained stationary, amid the weeds, something
preventing it from following the others, and going to
it he found its foot tightly shut in a quahog's shell.
He took up both together, carried them to his home,
and his wife opening the shell with a knife released
the duck and cooked the quahog. The old man said
that the great clams were good to eat, but that they
always took out a certain part which was poisonous,
before they cooked them. "People said it would
kill a cat." I did not tell him that I had eaten a
large one entire that afternoon, but began to think
that I was tougher than a cat. He stated that pedlers
came round there, and sometimes tried to sell the
women folks a skimmer, but he told them that their
women had got a better skimmer than they could
make, in the shell of their clams ; it was shaped jusf
right for this purpose.-^They call them " skim-alls "
in some places. He also said that the sun-squall
156 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
was poisonous to handle, and when the sailors came
across it, they did not meddle with it, but heaved it
out of their way. I told him that I had handled
it that afternoon, and had felt no ill effects as yet.
But he said it made the hands itch, especially if
they had previously been scratched, or if I put it
into my bosom, I should find out what it was.-
At length the fool, whom my companion called
the wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth,
" Damn book-pedlers, — all the time talking about
books. Better do something. Damn 'em. I'll shoot
'em. Got a doctor down here. Damn him, I'll get
a gun and shoot him ; " never once holding up his
head. Whereat the old man stood up and said in a
loud voice, as if he was accustomed to command, and
this was not the first time he had been obliged to exert
his authority there : "John, go sit down, mind your
business, — we've heard you talk before, ^precious
little you'll do, — your bark is worse than your bite."
But, without minding, John muttered the same
gibberish over again, and then sat down at the table
which the old folks had left. He ate aU there was
on it, and then turned to the apples, which his aged
mother was paring, that she might give her guests
some apple-sauce for breakfast, but she drew them
away and sent him off.
When I approached this house the next summer,
(jver the desolate hills between it and the shore, which
arc worthy to have been the birthplace of Ossian, I saw
the wizard in the midst of a cornfield on the hillside,
THE WELLFLBET OYSTBEMAN 157
but, as usual, he loomed so strangely, that I mistook
him for a scarecrow.
This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen,
and one of the best preserved. His style of con-
versation was coarse and plain enough to have suited
Kabelais. He would have made a good Panurge.
Or rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the
boys Ohromis and Mnasilus, who listened to his story.
" Not by Hsemonian hills the Thraoiaii bard,
Nor awful Phcebiis was on Pindus heard
With deeper silence or with more regard. "
There was a strange mingling of past and present
in his conversation, for he had lived under King
George, and might have remembered when Napoleon
and the moderns generally were born. He said that
one day, when the troubles between the Colonies
and the mother country first broke out, as he, a boy
of fifteen, was pitching hay out of a cart, one Donne,
an old Tory, who was talking with his father, a good
Whig, said to him, "Why, Uncle Bill, you might as
well undertake to pitch that pond into the ocean with a
pitchfork, as for the Colonies to undertake to gain
their independence." He remembered well General
Washington, and how he rode his horse along the
streets of Boston, and he stood up to show us how
he looked.
"He was a r — a — ther large and portly-looking
man, a manly and resolute-looking officer, with a
pretty good leg as he sat on his horse." — "There, I'll
tell you, this was the way with Washington.'' Then
he jumped up again, and bowed gracefully to right
158 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
and left, making show as if he were waving his hat.
Said he, " That was Washington."
He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution, and
was much pleased when we told him that we had
read the same in history, and that his account agreed
with the written.
" Oh," he said, " I know, I know ! I was a young
fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open; and a
fellow of that age, you know, is pretty wide awake,
and likes to know everything that's going on. Oh, I
know ! "
He told us the story of the wreck of the Franklin
which took place there the previous spring; how a
boy came to his house early in the morning to know
whose boat that was by the shore, for there was a
vessel in distress, and he, being an old man, first ate
his breakfast, and then walked over to the top of the
hill by the shore, and sat down there, having found
a comfortable seat, to see the ship wrecked. She
was on the bar, only a quarter of a mile from him,
and still nearer to the men on the beach, who had
got a boat ready, but could render no assistance on
account of the breakers, for there was a pretty high
sea running. There were the passengers all crowded
together in the forward part of the ship, and some
were getting out of the cabin windows and were
drawn on deck by the others.
"I saw the captain get out his boat," said he;
" he had one little one ; and then they jumped into
it one after another, down as straight as an arrow.
I counted them. There were nine. One was a
THE WELLFLEBT OYSTEEMAN 159
woman, and she jumped as straight as any of them.
Then they shoved off. The sea took them back, one
wave went over them, and when they came up there
were six still clinging to the boat ; I counted them.
The next wave turned the boat bottom upward, and
emptied them all out. None of them ever came
ashore alive. There were the rest of them all crowded
together on the forecastle, the other parts of the ship
being under water. They had seen all that happened
to the boat. At length a heavy sea separated the
forecastle from the rest of the wreck, and set it inside
of the worst breaker, and the boat was able to reach
them, and it saved all that were left, but one woman."
He also told us of the steamer Cambria's getting
aground on this shore a few months before we were
there, and of her English passengers who roamed
over his grounds, and who, he said, thought the pro-
spect from the high hill by the shore, "the most
delightsome they had ever seen," and also of the
pranks which the ladies played with his scoop-net in
the ponds. He spoke of these travellers with their
purses full of guineas, just as our provincial fathers
used to speak of British bloods in the time of King
George the Third.
Quid loguar ? Why repeat what he told us ?
" Aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est,
Candida sucoinotam latrantibus inguina monstris,
DiilioHas vexasse rates, et gurgite in alto
Ah ! timidos uautas canibus lacerasse marinis ? "
In the course of the evening I began to feel the
potency of the clam which I had eaten, and I was
160 SKLEOTIONS FROM THOEEAU
obliged to confess to our host that I was no tougher
than the cat he told of; but he answered, that he
was a plain-spoken man, and he could tell me that it
was all imagination. At any rate, it proved an
emetic in my case, and I was made quite sick by it
for a short time, while he laughed at my expense. I
was pleased to read afterward, in Mourt's Belation
of the landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown
Harbour, these words : " We found great muscles (the
old editor says that they were undoubtedly sea-clams)
and very fat and full of sea-pearl ; but we could not
eat them, for they made us all sick that did eat, as
well sailors as passengers, . . . but they were soon
well again." It brought me nearer to the Pilgrims
to be thus reminded by a similar experience that I
was so like them. Moreover, it was a valuable
confirmation of their story, and I am prepared now
to believe every word of Mourt's Relation. I was
also pleased to find that man and the clam lay still
at the same angle to one another. But I did not
notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I must have
swallowed it. I have since dug these clams on a flat
in the Bay and observed them. They could squirt
full ten feet before the wind, as appeared by the
marks of the drops on the sand.
"Now I am going to ask you a question," said
the old man, " and I don't know as you can tell me ;
but you are a learned man, and I never had any
learning, only what I got by natur." — It was in vain
that we reminded him that he could quote Josephus
to our confusion. — "I've thought, if I ever met
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN 161
a learned man I should like to ask him this question.
Can you tell me how Axy is spelt, and what it means?
Axy," says he; "there's a girl over here is named
Axy. Now what is it ? What does it mean ? Is it
Scripture? I've read my Bible twenty-five years
over and over, and I never came across it."
" Did you read it twenty-five years for this object?"
I asked.
" Well, how is it spelt ? Wife, how is it spelt ? "
She said, " It is in the Bible ; I've seen it."
" Well, how do you spell it ? "
" I don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh, —
Achseh."
" Does that spell Axy ? Well, do you know what
it means ? " asked he, turning to me.
" No," I replied, " I never heard the sound before."
"There was a schoolmaster down here once, and
they asked him what it meant, and he said it had no
more meaning than a bean-pole."
I told him that I held the same opinion with the
schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster myself,
and had had strange names to deal with. I also
heard of such names as Zoheth, Beriah, Amaziah,
Bethuel, and Shearjashub, hereabouts.
At length the little boy, who had a seat quite in
the chimney-corner, took off his stockings and shoes,
warmed his feet, and having had his sore leg freshly
salved, went off to bed ; then the fool made bare his
knotty-looking feet and legs, and followed him ; and
finally the old man exposed his calves also to our
gaze. We had never had the good fortune to see an
M
162 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
old man's legs before, and were surprised to find
them fair and plump as an infant's, and we thought
that he took a pride in exhibiting them. He then
proceeded to make preparations for retiring, dis-
coursing meanwhile with Panurgic plainness of speech
on the ills to which old humanity is subject. We
were a rare haul for him. He could commonly get
none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes ten
of them at once, and he was glad to meet some of the
laity at leisure. The evening was not long enough
for him. As I had been sick, the old lady asked if I
would not go to bed, — ^it was getting late for old
people ; but the old man, who had not yet done his
stories, said, " You ain't particular, are you "i "
" Oh no," said I, " I am in no hurry. I believe I
have weathered the Clam cape.''
" They are good," said he ; "I wish I had some of
them now.''
" They never hurt me,'' said the old lady.
"But then you took out the part that killed a
cat," said I.
At last we cut him short in the midst of his stories,
which he promised to resume in the morning. Yet,
after all, one of the old ladies who came into our
room in the night to fasten the fire-board, which
rattled, as she went out took the precaution to fasten
us in. Old women are by nature more suspicious
than old men. However, the winds howled around
the house, and made the fire-boards as well as the
casements rattle well that night. It was probably a
windy night for any locality, but we could not dis-
THE WBLLFLBBT OYSTEEMAN 163
tinguish the roar which was proper to the ocean from
that which was due to the wind alone.
The sounds which the ocean makes must be very
significant and interesting to those who live near it.
When I was leaving the shore at this place the next
summer, and had got a quarter of a mile distant,
ascending a hill, I was startled by a sudden, loud
sound from the sea, as if a large steamer were letting
off steam by the shore, so that I caught my breath
and felt my blood run cold for an instant, and I
turned about, expecting to see one of the Atlantic
steamers thus far out of her course, but there was
nothing unusual to be seen. There was a low bank
at the entrance of the Hollow, between me and the
ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen into
another stratum of air in ascending the hill, — which
had wafted to me only the ordinary roar of the sea,
— I immediately descended again, to see if I lost
hearing of it ; but, without regard to my ascending
or descending, it died away in a minute or two, and
yet there was scarcely any wind all the while. The
old man said that this was what they called the " rut,"
a peculiar roar of the sea before the wind changes,
which, however, he could not account for. He
thought that he could tell all about the weather from
the sounds which the sea made.
Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638,
has it among his weather-signs, that " the resounding
of the sea from the shore, and murmuring of the
winds in the woods, without apparent wind, showeth
wind to follow."
164 SELECTIONS FEOM THOKEAU
Being on another part of the coast one night since
this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile distant, and
the inhabitants said it was a sign that the wind
would work round east, and we should have rainy
weather. The ocean was heaped up somewhere at
the eastward, and this roar was occasioned by its
effort to preserve its equilibrium, the wave reaching
the shore before the wind. Also the captain of a
packet between this country and England told me
that he sometimes met with a wave on the Atlantic
coming against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea,
which indicated that at a distance the wind was
blowing from an opposite quarter, but the undulation
had travelled faster than it. Sailors teU of "tide-
rips" and "ground-swells," which they suppose to
have been occasioned by hurricanes and earthquakes,
and to have travelled many hundred, and sometimes
even two or three thousand miles.
Before sunrise the next morning they let us out
again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun
come out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty-
four winters was already out in the cold morning
wind, bare-headed, tripping about like a young girl,
and driving up the cow to milk. She got the break-
fast with dispatch, and without noise or bustle ; and
meanwhile the old man resumed his stories, standing
before us, who were sitting, with his back to the
chimney, and ejecting his tobacco-juice right and left
into the fire behind him, without regard to the
various dishes which were there preparing. At
breakfast we had eels, buttermilk cake, cold bread.
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN 165
green beans, doughnuts, and tea. The old man talked
a steady stream ; and when his wife told him he had
better eat his breakfast, he said : "Don't hurry me;
I have lived too long to be hurried." I ate of the
apple-sauce and the doughnuts, which I thought had
sustained the least detriment from the old man's shots,
but my companion refused the apple-sauce, and ate
of the hot cake and green beans, which had appeared
to him to occupy the safest part of the hearth. But
on comparing notes afterward, I told him that the
buttermilk cake was particularly exposed, and I saw
how it suffered repeatedly, and therefore I avoided
it ; but he declared that, however that might be, he
witnessed that the apple-sauce was seriously injured,
and had therefore declined that. After breakfast we
looked at his clock, which was out of order, and
oUed it with some "hen's grease," for want of sweet
oil, for he scarcely could believe that we were not
tinkers or pedlers ; meanwhile, he told a story about
visions, which had reference to a crack in the clock-
case made by frost one night. He was curious to
know to what religious sect we belonged. He said
that he had been to hear thirteen kinds of preaching
in one month, when he was young, but he did not
join any of them, — he stuck to his Bible. There was
nothing like any of them in his Bible. While I was
shaving in the next room, I heard him ask my com-
panion to what sect he belonged, to which he
answered, —
"Oh, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood."
"What's that?" he asked, "Sons o' Temperance?"
166 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, which
he was pleased to find that we called by the same
name that he did, and paying for our entertainment,
we took our departure; but he followed us out of
doors, and made us tell him the names of the vege-
tables which he had raised from seeds that came out
of the Franklin. They were cabbage, broccoli, and
parsley. As I had asked him the names of so many
things, he tried me in turn with aU the plants which
grew in his garden, both wild and cultivated. It was
about half an acre, which he cultivated whoUy him-
self. Besides the common garden vegetables, there
were yellow-dock, lemon balm, hyssop, Gill-go-over-
the-ground, mouse-ear, chick-weed, Eoman wormwood,
elecampane, and other plants. As we stood there, I
saw a fish-hawk stoop to pick a fish out of his pond.
"There," said I, "he has got a fish."
" Well," said the old man, who was looking all the
while, but could see nothing, "he didn't dive, he
just wet his claws."
And, sure enough, he did not this time, though it
is said that they often do, but he merely stooped low
enough to pick him out with his talons ; but as he
bore his shining prey over the bushes, it fell to the
ground, and we did not see that he recovered it.
That is not their practice.
Thus, having had another crack with the old
man, he standing bareheaded under the eaves, he
directed us " athwart the fields," and we took to the
beach again for another day, it being now late in the
morning.
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN 167
It was but a day or two after this that the safe
of the Provincetown Bank was broken open and
robbed by two men from the interior, and we
learned that our hospitable entertainers did at least
transiently harbour the suspicion that we were the
N"ATUEAL HISTOEY OF
MASSACHUSETTS^
[1842]
Books of natural history make the most cheerful
winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of
delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the
magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-
breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton tree, and
the migrations of the rice-bird ; of the breaking up
of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow
on the forks of the Missouri ; and owe an accession
of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.
WitMn tlie circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The hest philosophy untrue that aims
' Reports — on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds ; the Herhaeeous
Plants and Quad,rupeds ; the Insects injurious to Vegetation ; and
the Invertebrate Animals of Massachusetts. Published agreeably
to an Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the
Zoological and Botanical Survey of the State.
NATUKAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 169
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun.
How in the shimmering noon of summer past
Some unrecorded beam slanted across
The upland pastures where the Johnswort gi-ew ;
Or heard, amid the verdure of my mind,
The bee's long smothered hum, on the blue flag
Loitering amidst the mead ; or busy rill,
Which now through all its course stands still and dumb
Its own memorial, — purling at its play
Along the slopes, and through the meadows next,
Until its youthful sound was hushed at last
In the staid current of the lowland stream ;
Or seen the furrows shine hut late upturned.
And where the fieldfare followed in the rear.
When all the fields around lay bound and hoar
Beneath a thick integument of snow.
So by God's cheap economy made rich
To go upon my winter's task again.
I am singularly refreshed in winter when I hear of
service-berries, poke-weed, juniper. Is not heaven
made up of these cheap summer glories ? There is a
singular health in those words, Labrador and East
Main, which no desponding creed recognises. How
much more than Federal are these States. If there
were no other vicissitudes than the seasons, our in-
terest would never tire. Much more is adoing than
Congress wots of. What journal do the persimmon
and the buckeye keep, and the sharp-shinned hawk 1
What is transpiring from summer to winter in the
Carolinas, and the Great Pine Forest, and the Valley
170 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
of the Moliawk 1 The merely political aspect of the
land is never very cheering ; men are degraded when
considered as the members of a political organisation.
On this side all lands present only the symptoms of
decay. I see but Bunker Hill and Sing-Sing, the
District of Columbia and Sullivan's Island, with a
few avenues connecting them. But paltry are they
all beside one blast of the east or the south wind
which blows over them.
In society you will not find health, but in nature.
Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature,
all our faces would be pale and livid. Society is
always diseased, and the best is the most so. There
is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines,
nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as
the life-everlasting in high pastures. I would keep
some book of natural history always by me as a sort
of elixir, the reading of which should restore the
tone of the system. To the sick, indeed, nature is
sick, but to the well, a fountain of health. To him
who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm
nor disappointment can come. The doctrines of
despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude,
were never taught by such as shared the serenity of
nature. Surely good courage will not flag here on
the Atlantic border, as long as we are flanked by the
Fur Countries. There is enough in that sound to
cheer one under any circumstances. The spruce, the
hemlock, and the pine will not countenance despair.
Methinks some creeds in vestries and churches do
forget the hunter wrapped in furs by the Great Slave
NATUKAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 171
Lake, and that the Esquimaux sledges are drawn by
dogs, and in the twilight of the northern night the
hunter does not give over to follow the seal and walrus
on the ice. They are of sick and diseased imagina-
tions who would toll the world's knell so soon. Can-
not these sedentary sects do better than prepare the
shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy
living men's The practical faith of all men belies
the preacher's consolation. What is any man's dis-
course to me, if I am not sensible of something in it
as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets ? In it
the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men
tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed
as by the flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is
the condition of life. Think of the young fry that
leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into
being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the
hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the
nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and
change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings,
or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current,
the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the attrition
is reflected upon the bank.
We fancy that this din of religion, literature, and
philosophy, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and
parlours, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic
a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle ; but if a
man sleep soundly, he will forget it all between sun-
set and dawn. It is the three-inch swing of a pen-
dulum in a cupboard, which the great pulse of nature
vibrates by and through each instant. When we lift
172 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
our eyelids and open our ears, it disappears with
smoke and rattle like the cars on a railroad. When
I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I
am reminded, by the serene and retired spirit in
which it requires to be contemplated, of the inex-
pressible privacy of a life, — how silent and unam-
bitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses must be
considered from the holiest, quietest nook. What an
admirable training is science for the more active war-
fare of life. Indeed, the unchallenged bravery, which
these studies imply, is far more impressive than the
trumpeted valour of the warrior. I am pleased to
learn that Thales was up and stirring by night not
unfrequently, as his astronomical discoveries prove.
Linnaeus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his " comb "
and "spare shirt," "leathern breeches "and "gauze
cap to keep oif gnats,'' with as much complacency as
Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign.
The quiet bravery of the man is admirable. His eye
is to take in fish, flower, and bird, quadruped and
biped. Science is always brave, for to know, is to
know good ; doubt and danger quail before her eye.
What the coward overlooks in his hurry, she calmly
scrutinises, breaking ground like a pioneer for the
array of arts that follow in her train. But cowardice
is unscientific ; for there cannot be a science of ignor-
ance. There may be a science of bravery, for that
advances ; but a retreat is rarely well conducted ; if
it is, then is it an orderly advance in the face of
circumstances.
But to draw a little nearer to our promised topics.
NATUKAL HISTOEY OF MASSACHUSETTS 173
Entomology extends the limits of being in a new
direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of
greater space and freedom. It suggests besides, that
the universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its
details. Nature will bear the closest inspection ; she
invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain. She has no
interstices ; every part is full of life. I explore, too,
with pleasure, the sources of the myriad sounds which
crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very
grain and stuff of which eternity is made. Who
does not remember the shrill roll-call of the harvest
fly? There were ears for these sounds in Greece
long ago, as Anacreon's ode will show.
" We pronounce thee happy, Cicada,
For on the tops of the trees,
Drinking a little dew,
Like any king thou singest,
For thine are they all,
Whatever thou seest in the fields,
And whatever the woods bear.
Thou art the friend of the husbandmen,
In no respect injuring any one ;
And thou art honoured among men,
Sweet prophet of summer.
The Muses love thee,
And Phcebus himself loves thee,
And has given thee a shrill song ;
Age does not wrack thee,
Thou skilful, earthborn, song-loving,
Unsuffering, bloodless one ;
Almost thou art like the gods. "
In the autumn days, the creaking of crickets is
heard at noon over aU the land, and as in summer
174 SELECTIONS EKOM THOREAU
they are heard chiefly at nightfall, so then by their
incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year.
Nor can all the vanities that vex the world alter one
whit the measure that night has chosen. Every pulse-
beat is in exact time with the cricket's chant and the
tickings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate
with these if you can.
About two hundred and eighty birds either reside
permanently in the State, or spend the summer only,
or make us a passing visit. Those which spend the
winter with us have obtained our warmest sympathy.
The nut-hatch and chicadee flitting in company through
the dells of the wood, the one harshly scolding at the
intruder, the other with a faint lisping note enticing
him on ; the jay screaming in the orchard ; the crow
cawing in unison with the storm ; the partridge, like
a russet link extended over from autumn to spring,
preserving unbroken the chain of summers ; the
hawk with warrior-like firmness abiding the blasts of
winter ; the robin ^ and lark lurking by warm springs
in the woods ; the familiar snow-bird culling a few
seeds in the garden, or a few crumbs in the yard;
and occasionally the shrike, with heedless and unfrozen
melody bringing back summer again ; —
His steady sails he never furls
At any time o' year,
And perching now on Winter's curls,
He whistles in his ear.
^ A white robin and a white quail have occasionally been seen.
It is mentioned in Audubon as remarkable that the nest of a robin
should be found on the ground ; but this bird seems to be less
particular than most in the choice of a building spot. I have seen
NATURAL HlSTOfiY OF MASSACHUSETTS 175
As the spring advances, and the ice is melting in
the river, our earliest and straggling visitors make
their appearance. Again does the old Teian poet
sing, as well for New England as for Greece, in the
RETURN OF SPRING
" Behold how, Spring appearing,
The Graces send forth roses ;
Behold, how the wave of the sea
Is made smooth hy the calm ;
Behold, how the dnck dives ;
Behold, how the crane travels ;
And Titan shines constantly bright.
The shadows of the clouds are moving ;
The works of man shine ;
The earth puts forth fruits ;
The fruit of the olive puts forth.
The cup of Bacchus is crowned,
Along the leaves, along the branches.
The fruit, bending them down, flourishes."
The ducks alight at this season in the still water,
in company with the gulls, which do not fail to im-
prove an east wind to visit our meadows, and swim
about by twos and threes, pluming themselves, and
diving to peck at the root of the lily, and the cran-
berries which the frost has not loosened. The first
flock of geese is seen beating to north, in long harrows
and waving lines; the gingle of the song-sparrow
salutes us from the shrubs and fences ; the plaintive
its nest placed under the thatched roof of a deserted barn, and in
one instance, where the adjacent country was nearly destitute of
trees, together with two of the phcebe, upon the end of a board in
the loft of a saw-mill, but a few feet from the saw, which vibrated
several inches with the motion of the machinery [Thoreau's note].
176 SELECTIONS FROM THORBAU
note of the lark comes clear and sweet from the
meadow ; and the bluebird, like an azure ray, glances
past us in our walk. The fish-hawk, too, is occasion-
ally seen at this season sailing majestically over the
water, and he who has once observed it will not soon
forget the majesty of its flight. It sails the air like a
ship of the line, worthy to struggle with the elements,
falling back from time to time like a ship on its beam
ends, and holding its talons up as if ready for the
arrows, in the attitude of the national bird. It is a
great presence, as of the master of river and forest.
Its eye would not quail before the owner of the soil,
but make him feel like an intruder on its domains.
And then its retreat, sailing so steadily away, is a
kind of advance. I have by me one of a pair of
ospreys, which have for some years fished in this
vicinity, shot by a neighbouring pond, measuring more
than two feet in length, and six in the stretch of its
wings. Nuttall mentions that "The ancients, par-
ticularly Aristotle, pretended that the ospreys taught
their young to gaze at the sun, and those who were
unable to do so were destroyed. Linnseus even
believed, on ancient authority, that one of the feet
of this bird had all the toes divided, while the other
was partly webbed, so that it could swim with one
foot, and grasp a fish with the other." But that
educated eye is now dim, and those talons are nerve-
less. Its shrill scream seems yet to linger in its
throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There
is the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in
the erectile feathers of the head and neck. It re-
NATURAL HISTOEY OF MASSACHUSETTS 177
minds me of the Argonautic expedition, and
would inspire the diillest to take flight over
Parnassus.
The booming of the bittern, described by Gold-
smith and Nuttall, is frequently heard in our fens,
in the morning and evening, sounding like a pump,
or the chopping of wood in a frosty morning in some
distant farm-yard. The manner in which this sound
is produced I have not seen anywhere described. On
one occasion, the bird has been seen by one of my
neighbours to thrust its bill into the water, and suck
up as much as it could hold, then raising its head, it
pumped it out again with four or five heaves of the
neck, throwing it two or three feet, and making the
sound each time.
At length the summer's eternity is ushered in by
the cackle of the flicker among the oaks on the hill-
side, and a new dynasty begins with calm security.
In May and June the woodland quire is in full
tune, and given the immense spaces of hollow air,
and this curious human ear, one does not see how
the void could be better filled.
Each summer sound
Is a summer round.
As the season advances, and those birds which
make us but a passing visit depart, the woods become
silent again, and but few feathers ruffle the drowsy
air. But the solitary rambler may still find a response
and expression for every mood in the depths of the
wood.
N
178 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
Sometimes I hear the veery's ' clarion,
Or brazen trump of the impatient jay,
And in secluded woods the chicadee
Doles out her scanty notes, which sing the praise
Of heroes, and set forth the loveliness
Of virtue evermore.
The phcBbe still sings in harmony with the sultry
weather by the brink of the pond, nor are the de-
sultory hours of noon in the midst of the village
without their minstrel.
Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays
The vireo rings the changes sweet,
During the trivial summer days,
Striving to lift our thoughts above the street.
With the autumn begins in some measure a new
spring. The plover is heard whistling high in the
air over the dry pastures, the finches flit from tree
to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly in flocks, and
the goldfinch rides on the earliest blast, like a winged
hyla peeping amid the rustle of the leaves. The
crows, too, begin now to congregate ; you may stand
and count them as they fly low and straggling over
the landscape, singly or by twos and threes, at in-
tervals of half a mile, until a hundred have passed.
I have seen it suggested somewhere that the crow
^ This bird, which is so well described by Nuttall, but is
apparently unknown by the author of the Report, is one of the
most common in the woods in this vicinity, and in Cambridge I
have heard the college yard ring with its trill. The boys call it
yorrick, from the sound of its querulous and chiding note, as it
flits near the traveller through the underwood. The cowbird's
egg is occasionally found in its nest, as mentioned by Audubon
[Thoreau's note].
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 179
was brought to this country by the white man ; but
I shall as soon believe that the white man planted
these pines and hemlocks. He is no spaniel to follow
our steps ; but rather flits about the clearings like
the dusky spirit of the Indian, reminding me oftener
of Philip and Powhatan, than of Winthrop and Smith.
He is a relic of the dark ages. By just so slight, by
just so lasting a tenure does superstition hold the
world ever; there is the rook in England, and the
crow in New England.
Thou dusky spirit of the wood,
Bird of an ancient brood,
Flitting thy lonely way,
A meteor in the summer's day.
From wood to wood, from hill to hill,
Low over forest, field, and rill,
What wouldst thou say ?
Why shouldst thou haunt the day ?
What makes thy melancholy float ?
What bravery inspires thy throat.
And bears thee up above the clouds,
Over desponding human crowds,
Which far below
Lay thy haunts low ?
The late walker or sailor, in the October evenings,
may hear the murmurings of the snipe, circling over
the meadows, the most spirit-like sound in nature;
and still later in the autumn, when the frosts have
tinged the leaves, a solitary loon pays a visit to our
retired ponds, where he may lurk undisturbed till
the season of moulting is passed, making the woods
ring with his wild laughter. This bird, the Great
Northern Diver, well deserves its name; for when
180 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
pursued with a boat, it will dive, and swim like a
fish under water, for sixty rods or more, as fast as a
boat can be paddled, and its pursuer, if he would
discover his game again, must put his ear to the
surface to hear where it comes up. When it comes
to the surface, it throws the water off with one shake
of its wings, and calmly swims about until again
disturbed.
These are the sights and sounds which reach our
senses oftenest during the year. But sometimes one
hears a quite new note, which has for background
other Carolinas and Mexicos than the books describe,
and learns that his ornithology has done him no
service.
It appears from the Beport that there are about
forty quadrupeds belonging to the State, and among
these one is glad to hear of a few bears, wolves,
lynxes, and wildcats.
When our river overflows its banks in the spring,
the wind from the meadows is laden with a strong
scent of musk, and by its freshness advertises me of
an unexplored wildness. Those backwoods are not
far off then. I am affected by the sight of the cabins
of the musk-rat, made of mud and grass, and raised
three or four feet along the river, as when I read of
the barrows of Asia. The musk-rat is the beaver of
the settled States. Their number has even increased
within a few years in this vicinity. Among the
rivers which empty into the Merrimack, the Concord
is known to the boatmen as a dead stream. The
Indians are said to have called it Musketaquid, or
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 181
Prairie River. Its current being much more sluggish,
and its water more muddy than the rest, it abounds
more in fish and game of every kind. According to
the History of the town, " The fur-trade was here once
very important. As early as 1641, a company was
formed in the colony, of which Major Willard of
Concord was superintendent, and had the exclusive
right to trade with the Indians in furs and other
articles ; and for this right they were obliged to pay
into the public treasury one twentieth of all the furs
they obtained." There are trappers in our midst
still, as well as on the streams of the far West, who
night and morning go the round of their traps, with-
out fear of the Indian. One of these takes from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred musk-rats in a
year, and even thirty-six have been shot by one man
in a day. Their fur, which is not nearly as valuable
as formerly, is in good condition in the winter and
spring only ; and upon the breaking up of the ice,
when they are driven out of their holes by the water,
the greatest number is shot from boats, either swim-
ming or resting on their stools, or slight supports of
grass and reeds, by the side of the stream. Though
they exhibit considerable cunning at other times, they
are easily taken in a trap, which has only to be placed
in their holes, or wherever they frequent, without
any bait being used, though it is sometimes rubbed
with their musk. In the winter the hunter cuts
holes in the ice, and shoots them when they come
to the surface. Their burrows are usually in the
high banks of the river, with the entrance under
182 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
water, and rising within to above the level of high
water. Sometimes their nests, composed of dried
meadow grass and flags, may be discovered where the
bank is low and spongy, by the yielding of the ground
under the feet. They have from three to seven or
eight young in the spring.
Frequently, in the morning or evening, a long
ripple is seen in the still water, where a musk-rat is
crossing the stream, with only its nose above the
surface, and sometimes a green bough in its mouth to
build its house with. When it finds itself observed,
it will dive and swim five or six rods under water,
and at length conceal itself in its hole, or the weeds.
It will remain under water for ten minutes at a time,
and on one occasion has been seen, when undisturbed,
to form an air-bubble under the ice, which contracted
and expanded as it breathed at leisure. When it
suspects danger on shore, it will stand erect like a
squirrel, and survey its neighbourhood for several
minutes, without moving.
In the fall, if a meadow intervene between their
burrows and the stream, they erect cabins of mud
and grass, three or four feet high, near its edge.
These are not their breeding-places, though young
are sometimes found in them in late freshets, but
rather their hunting-lodges, to which they resort in
the winter with their food, and for shelter. Their
food consists chiefly of flags and fresh-water muscles,
the shells of the latter being left in large quantities
around their lodges in the spring.
The Penobscot Indian wears the entire skin of a
NATUEAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 183
musk-rat, with the legs and tail dangling and the
head caught under his girdle, for a pouch, into which
he puts his iishing-tackle, and essences to scent his
traps with.
The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and
marten, have disappeared ; the otter is rarely if ever
seen here at present ; and the mink is less common
than formerly.
Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox
tas obtained the widest and most familiar reputation,
from the time of Pilpay and ^sop to the present
day. His recent tracks still give variety to a winter's
walk. I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone
before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have
started, with such a tiptoe of expectation, as if I were
on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the
wood, and expected soon to catch it in its lair. I
am curious to know what has determined its graceful
curvatures, and how surely they were coincident
with the fluctuations of some mind. I know which
way a mind wended, what horizon it faced, by
the setting of these tracks, and whether it moved
slowly or rapidly, by their greater or less intervals
and distinctness; for the swiftest step leaves yet a
lasting trace. Sometimes you will see the trails of
many together, and where they have gambolled and
gone through a hundred evolutions, which testify to
a singular listlessness and leisure in nature.
When I see a fox run across the pond on the snow,
with the carelessness of freedom, or at intervals trace
his course in the sunshine along the ridge of a hill, I
184 SELECTIONS FROM THOEBAU
give up to him sun and earth as to their true pro-
prietor. He does not go in the sun, but it seems to
follow him, and there is a visible sympathy between
him and it. Sometimes, when the snow lies light,
and but five or six inches deep, you may give chase
and come up with one on foot. In such a case he
will show a remarkable presence of mind, choosing
only the safest direction, though he may lose ground
by it. Notwithstanding his fright, he will take no
step which is not beautiful. His pace is a sort of
leopard canter, as if he were in nowise impeded by
the snow, but were husbanding his strength all the
while. When the ground is uneven, the course is a
series of graceful curves, conforming to the shape of
the surface. He runs as though there were not a
bone in his back. Occasionally dropping his muzzle
to the ground for a rod or two, and then tossing his
head aloft, when satisfied of his course. When he
comes to a declivity, he will put his forefeet together,
and slide swiftly down it, shoving the snow before
him. He treads so softly that you would hardly
hear it from any nearness, and yet with such expres-
sion that it would not be quite inaudible at any
distance.
Of fishes, seventy-five genera and one hundred
and seven species are described in the Repmt. The
fisherman will be startled to learn that there are but
about a dozen kinds in the ponds and streams of any
inland town ; and almost nothing is known of their
habits. Only their names and residence make one
NATaEAL HISTOKY OF MASSACHUSETTS 185
love fishes. I would know even the number of their
fin-rays, and how many scales compose the lateral
line. I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges,
and the better qualified for all fortunes, for knowing
that there is a minnow in the brook. Methinks I
have need even of his sympathy, and to be his fellow
in a degree.
I have experienced such simple delight in the
trivial matters of fishing and sporting, formerly, as
might have inspired the muse of Homer or Shakespeare ;
and now, when I turn the pages and ponder the plates
of the Angler's Souvenir, I am fain to exclaim, —
' ' Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud ? "
Next to nature, it seems as if man's actions were
the most natural, they so gently accord with her.
The small seines of flax stretched across the shallow
and transparent parts of our river, are no more in-
trusion than the cobweb in the sun. I stay my boat
in midcurrent, and look down in the sunny water to
see the civil meshes of his nets, and wonder how the
blustering people of the town could have done this
elvish work. The twine looks like a new river weed,
and is to the river as a beautiful memento of man's
presence in nature, discovered as silently and delicately
as a footprint in the sand.
When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect
the wealth under my feet ; that there is as good as
a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel
are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain.
186 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
The revolution of the seasons must be a curious
phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind
brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens
again.
Early in the spring, after the ice has melted, is the
time for spearing fish. Suddenly the wind shifts
from north-east and east to west and south, and every
icicle, which has tinkled on the meadow grass so
long, trickles down its stem, and seeks its level un-
erringly with a million comrades. The steam curls
up from every roof and fence.
I see tlie civil sun drying eartt's tears,
Her tears of joy, whicli only faster flow.
In the brooks is heard the slight grating sound of
small cakes of ice, floating with various speed, full of
content and promise, and where the water gurgles
under a natural bridge, you may hear these hasty
rafts hold conversation in an undertone. Every riU
is a channel for the juices of the meadow. In the
ponds the ice cracks with a merry and inspiriting
din, and down the larger streams is whirled grating
hoarsely, and crashing its way along, which was so
lately a highway for the woodman's team and the
fox, sometimes with the tracks of the skaters still
fresh upon it, and the holes cut for pickerel. Town
committees anxiously inspect the bridges and cause-
ways, as if by mere eye-force to intercede with the
ice, and save the treasury.
The river swolleth more and more,
Like some sweet influence stealing o'er
The passive town ; and for a while
NATUKAL mSTOKY OF MASSACHUSETTS 187
Each tussuok makes a tiny isle,
Where, on some friendly Ararat,
Resteth the weary water-rat.
No ripple shows Musketaquid,
Her very current e'en is hid,
As deepest souls do calmest rest.
When thoughts are swelling in the breast,
And she that in the summer's drought
Doth make a rippUng and a rout,
Sleeps from Nahshawtuok to the Cliff,
UnrufSed by a single skiff.
But by a thousand distant hills
The louder roar a thousand rills,
And many a spring which now is dumb,
And many a stream with smothered hum.
Doth swifter well and faster glide.
Though buried deep beneath the tide.
Our village shows a rural Venice,
Its brood lagoons where yonder fen is ;
As lovely as the Bay of Naples
Yon placid cove amid the maples ;
And in my neighbour's field of corn
I recognise the Golden Horn.
Here Nature taught from year to year.
When only red men came to hear,
Methinks 'twas in this school of art
Venice and Naples learned their part ;
But still their mistress, to my mind,
Her young disciples leaves behind.
The fisherman now repairs and launches his boat.
The best time for spearing is at this season, before
the weeds have begun to grow, and while the fishes
lie in the shallow water, for in summer they prefer
the cool depths, and in the autumn they are still more
or less concealed by the grass. The first requisite is
188 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
fuel for your crate ; and for this purpose the roots
of the pitch-pine are commonly used, found under
decayed stumps, where the trees have been felled
eight or ten years.
With a crate, or jack, made of iron hoops, to
contain your fire, and attached to the bow of your
boat about three feet from the water, a fish-spear
with seven tines, and fourteen feet long, a large
basket, or barrow, to carry your fuel and bring back
your fish, and a thick outer garment, you are equipped
for a cruise. It should be a warm and still evening ;
and then with a fire crackling merrily at the prow,
you may launch forth like a cucullo into the night.
The dullest soul cannot go upon such an expedition
without some of the spirit of adventure ; as if he had
stolen the boat of Charon and gone down the Styx
on a midnight expedition into the realms of Pluto.
And much speculation does this wandering star afibrd
to the musing nightwalker, leading him on and on,
jack-o'lantern-like, over the meadows ; or, if he is
wiser, he amuses himself with imagining what of
human life, far in the silent night, is flitting mothlike
round its candle. The silent navigator shoves his
craft gently over the water, with a smothered pride
and sense of benefaction, as if he were the phosphor,
or light-bringer, to these dusky realms, or some sister
moon, blessing the spaces with her light. The waters,
for a rod or two on either hand and several feet in
depth, are lit up with more than noonday distinctness,
and he enjoys the opportunity which so many have
desired, for the roofs of a city are indeed raised, and
NATDEAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 189
he surveys the midnight economy of the fishes. There
they lie in every variety of posture ; some on their
back, with their white bellies uppermost, some sus-
pended in midwater, some sculling gently along with
a dreamy motion of the fins, and others quite active
and wide-awake, — a scene not unlike what the human
city would present. Occasionally he will encounter
a turtle selecting the choicest morsels, or a musk-rat
resting on a tussuck. He may exercise his dexterity,
if he sees fit, on the more distant and active fish, or
fork the nearer into his boat, as potatoes out of a
pot, or even take the sound sleepers with his hands.
But these last accomplishments he will soon learn to
dispense with, distinguishing the real object of his
pursuit, and find compensation in the beauty and
never-ending novelty of his position. The pines
growing down to the water's edge will show newly as
in the glare of a conflagration ; and as he floats under
the willows with his light, the song-sparrow will often
wake on her perch, and sing that strain at midnight,
which she had meditated for the morning. And
when he has done, he may have to steer his way
home through the dark by the north star, and he will
feel himself some degrees nearer to it for having lost
his way on the earth.
The fishes commonly taken in this way are pickerel,
suckers, perch, eels, pouts, breams, and shiners, — from
thirty to sixty weight in a night. Some are hard to
be recognised in the unnatural light, especially the
perch, which, his dark bands being exaggerated,
acquires a ferocious aspect. The number of these
190 SELECTIONS FROM THOKEAU
transverse bands, which the Report states to be seven,
is, however, very variable, for in some of our ponds
they have nine and ten even.
It appears that we have eight kinds of tortoises,
twelve snakes, — but one of which is venomous, — nine
frogs and toads, nine salamanders, and one lizard, for
our neighbours.
I am particularly attracted by the motions of the
serpent tribe. They make our hands and feet, the
wings of the bird, and the fins of the fish seem very
superfluous, as if nature had only indulged her fancy
in making them. The black snake will dart into a
bush when pursued, and circle round and round with
an easy and graceful motion, amid the thin and bare
twigs, five or six feet from the ground, as a bird fiits
from bough to bough, or hang in festoons between
the forks. Elasticity and flesdbleness in the simpler
forms of animal life are equivalent to a complex
system of limbs in the higher ; and we have only to
be as wise and wUy as the serpent, to perform as
difficult feats without the vulgar assistance of hands
and feet.
In May, the snapping tm:\l&,Emysau'msserpentina,\s,
frequently taken on the meadows and in the river.
The fisherman, taking sight over the calm surface,
discovers its snout projecting above the water, at the
distance of many rods, and easily secures his prey
through its unwillingness to disturb the water by
swimming hastily away, for, gradually drawing its
head under, it remains resting on some limb or clump
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 191
of grass. Its eggs, which are buried at a distance
from the water, in some soft place, as a pigeon-bed, are
frequently devoured by the skunk. It will catch fish
by daylight, as a toad catches flies, and is said to emit
a transparent fluid from its mouth to attract them.
Nature has taken more care than the fondest
parent for the education and refinement of her
children. Consider the silent influence which flowers
exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than
the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods,
I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there
before me ; my most delicate experience is typified
there. I am struck with the pleasing friendships and
unanimities of nature, as when the lichen on the
trees takes the form of their leaves. In the most
stupendous scenes you will see delicate and fragile
features, as slight wreaths of vapour, dewlines, feathery
sprays, which suggest a high refinement, a noble
blood and breeding, as it were. It is not hard to
account for elves and fairies ; they represent this
light grace, this ethereal gentility. Bring a spray
from the wood, or a crystal from the brook, and
place it on your mantel, and your household orna-
ments will seem plebeian beside its nobler fashion
and bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used
to a more refined and polished circle. It has a salute
and a response to all your enthusiasm and heroism.
In the winter, I stop short in the path to admire
how the trees grow up without forethought, regardless
of the time and circumstances. They do not wait as
man does, but now is the golden age of the sapling.
192 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
Earth, air, sun, and rain, are occasion enough ; they
were no better in primeval centuries. The " winter
of their discontent " never comes. Witness the buds
of the native poplar standing gayly out to the frost
on the sides of its bare switches. They express a
naked confidence. With cheerful heart one could be
a sojourner in the wilderness, if he were sure to find
there the catkins of the willow or the alder. When
I read of them in the accounts of northern adven-
turers, by Baffin's Bay or Mackenzie's river, I see
how even there too I could dwell. They are our little
vegetable redeemers. Methinks our virtue will hold
out till they come again. They are worthy to have
had a greater than Minerva or Ceres for their inventor.
Who was the benignant goddess that bestowed them
on mankind 1
Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works
with the licence and extravagance of genius. She
has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.
Having a pilgrim's cup to make, she gives to the
whole, stem, bowl, handle, and nose, some fantastic
shape, as if it were to be the car of some fabulous
marine deity, a Nereus or Triton.
In the winter, the botanist needs not confine him-
self to his books and herbarium, and give over his
out-door pursuits, but may study a new department
of vegetable physiology, what may be called crystal-
line botany, then. The winter of 1837 was unusu-
ally favourable for this. In December of that year,
the Genius of vegetation seemed to hover by night
over its summer haunts with unusual persistency.
NATUEAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 193
Such a hoar-frost, as is very uncommon here or any-
where, and whose full effects can never be witnessed
after sunrise, occurred several times. As I went
forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees
looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping ;
on this side huddled together with their gray hairs
streaming in a secluded valley, which the sun had
not penetrated ; on that hurrying off in Indian file
along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses,
like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide
their diminished heads in the snow. The river, viewed
from the high bank, appeared of a yellowish green
colour, though all the landscape was white. Every
tree, shrub, and spire of grass, that could raise its
head above the snow, was covered with a dense ice-
foliage, answering, as it were, leaf for leaf to its
summer dress. Even the fences had put forth leaves
in the night. The centre, diverging, and more minute
fibres were perfectly distinct, and the edges regularly
indented. These leaves were on the side of the twig
or stubble opposite to the sun, meeting it for the
most part at right angles, and there were others
standing out at all possible angles upon these and
upon one another, with no twig or stubble supporting
them. When the first rays of the sun slanted over
the scene, the grasses seemed hung with innumerable
jewels, which jingle^ merrily as they were brushed
by the foot of the traveller, and reflected all the hues
of the rainbow as he moved from side to side. It
struck me that these ghost leaves, and the green ones
whose forms they assume, were the creatures of but
194 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
one law; that in obedience to the same law the
vegetable juices swell gradually into the perfect leaf,
on the one hand, and the crystalline particles troop
to their standard in the same order, on the other.
As if the material were indifferent, but the law one
and invariable, and every plant in the spring but
pushed up into and filled a permanent and eternal
mould, which, summer and winter for ever, is waiting
to be filled.
This foliate structure is common to the coral and
the plumage of birds, and to how large a part of
animate and inanimate nature. The same independ-
ence of law on matter is observable in many other
instances, as in the natural rhymes, when some
animal form, colour, or odour, has its counterpart
in some vegetable. As, indeed, all rhymes imply
an eternal melody, independent of any particular
sense.
As confirmation of the fact, that vegetation is but
a kind of crystallisation, every one may observe how,
upon the edge of the melting frost on the window,
the needle-shaped particles are bundled together so
as to resemble fields waving \vith grain, or shocks
rising here and there from the stubble; on one
side the vegetation of the torrid zone, high-towering
palms and wide-spread banyans, such as are seen in
pictures of oriental scenery ; on the other, arctic pines
stiff frozen, with downcast branches.
Vegetation has been made the type of all growth ;
but as in crystals the law is more obvious, their-
material being more simple, and for the most part
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 195
more transient and fleeting, would it not be as philo-
sophical as convenient to consider all growth, all
filling up within the limits of nature, but a crystallisa-
tion more or less rapid 1
On this occasion, in the side of the high bank of
the river, wherever the water or other cause had
formed a cavity, its throat and outer edge, like the
entrance to a citadel, bristled with a glistening ice-
armour. In one place you might see minute ostrich-
feathers, which seemed the waving plumes of the
warriors filing into the fortress ; in another, the
glancing, fan-shaped banners of the Lilliputian host ;
and in another, the needle-shaped particles collected
into bundles, resembling the plumes of the pine,
might pass for a phalanx of spears. From the under
side of the ice in the brooks, where there was a thicker
ice below, depended a mass of crystallisation, four or
five inches deep, in the form of prisms, with their
lower ends open, which, when the ice was laid on its
smooth side, resembled the roofs and steeples of a
Gothic city, or the vessels of a crowded haven under
a press of canvas. The very mud in the road, where
the ice had melted, was crystallised with deep recti-
linear fissures, and the crystalline masses in the sides
of the ruts resembled exactly asbestos in the disposi-
tion of their needles. Around the roots of the stubble
and flower-stalks, the frost was gathered into the
form of irregular conical shells, or fairy rings. In
some places the ice-crystals were lying upon granite
rocks, directly over crystals of quartz, the frost-work
of a longer night, crystals of a longer period, but to
196 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
some eye unprejudiced by the short term of human
life, melting as fast as the former.
In the Report on the Invertebrate Animals, this
singular fact is recorded, which teaches us to put a
new value on time and space. "The distribution of
the marine shells is well worthy of notice as a geologi-
cal fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Common-
wealth, reaches out into the ocean, some fifty or sixty
miles. It is nowhere many miles wide; but this
narrow point of land has hitherto proved a barrier
to the migrations of many species of MoUusca.
Several genera and numerous species, which are
separated by the intervention of only a few miles of
land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the
Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other. ,
... Of the one hundred and ninety-seven marine
species, eighty-three do not pass to the south shore,
and fifty are not found on the north shore of the
Cape."
That common muscle, the Unio complanatus, or
more properly fluviatilis, left in the spring by the
musk-rat upon rocks and stumps, appears to have
been an important article of food with the Indians.
In one place, where they are said to have feasted,
they are found in large quantities, at an elevation of
thirty feet above the river, iilling the soil to the
depth of a foot, and mingled with ashes and Indian
remains.
The works we have placed at the head of our
chapter, with as much license as the preacher selects
his text, are such as imply more labour than enthusiasm.
NATUKAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS 197
The State wanted complete catalogues of its natural
riches, with such additional facts merely as would be
directly useful.
The reports on Fishes, Keptiles, Insects, and In-
vertebrate Animals, however, indicate labour and re-
search, and have a value independent of the object
of the legislature.
Those on Herbaceous Plants and Birds cannot be
of much value, as long as Bigelow and Nuttall are
accessible. They serve but to indicate, with more or
less exactness, what species are found in the State.
We detect several errors ourselves, and a more prac-
tised eye would no doubt expand the list.
The Quadrupeds deserved a more final and in-
structive report than they have obtained.
These volumes deal much in measurements and
minute descriptions, not interesting to the general
reader, with only here and there a coloured sentence
to allure him, like those plants growing in dark forests,
which bear only leaves without blossoms. But the
ground was comparatively unbroken, and we will not
complain of the pioneer, if he raises no flowers with
his first crop. Let us not underrate the value of a
fact ; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonish-
ing how few facts of importance are added in a
century to the natural history of any animal. The
natural history of man himself is still being gradually
written. Men are knowing enough after their fashion.
Every countryman and dairymaid knows that the
coats of the fourth stomach of the calf will curdle
milk, and what particular mushroom is a safe and
198 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
nutritious diet. You cannot go into any field or
wood, but it will seem as if every stone had been
turned, and the bark on every tree ripped up. But,
after all, it is much easier to discover than to see
when the cover is off. It has been well said that
" the attitude of inspection is prone." Wisdom does
not inspect, but behold. We must look a long time
before we can see. Slow are the beginnings of philo-
sophy. He has something demoniacal in him, who
can discern a law or couple two facts. We can
imagine a time when, — " Water runs dovm hill," —
may have been taught in the schools. The true man of
science will know nature better by his finer organisa-
tion ; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than
other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience.
We do not learn by inference and deduction, and the
application of mathematics to philosophy, but by
direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science
as with ethics, — we cannot know truth by contrivance
and method ; the Baconian is as false as any other,
and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the
most scientific will still be the healthiest and friend-
liest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom.
WALKING
[1862]
I WISH to speak a word for Nature, for absolute
freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom
and culture merely civil, — to regard man as an in-
habitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than
a member of society. I wish to make an extreme
statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for
there are enough champions of civilisation : the
minister and the school-committee, and every one of
you will take care of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the
course of my life who understood the art of Walking,
that is, of taldng walks, — who had a genius, so to
speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully
derived "from idle people who roved about the
country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under
pretence of going A la Sainte Terre," to the Holy
Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a
Sainte- Terr er," a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander. They
who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as
'W"^
200 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEBAU
they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds ;
but they who do go there are saunterers in the good
sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive
the word from sans terre, without land or a home,
which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having
no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.
For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He
who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest
vagrant of all ; but the saunterer, in the good sense,
is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which
is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course
to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is
the most probable derivation. For every walk is a
sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit
in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from
the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even
the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering,
never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but
tours, and come round again at evening to the old
hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is
but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the
shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying
adventure, never to return, — prepared to send back
our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate
kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and
mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child
and friends, and never see them again, — if you have
paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all
your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready
for a walk.
WALKING 201
To come down to my own experience, my companion
and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure
in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an
old, order, — not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Eitters
or riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and
honourable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic
spirit which once belonged to the Eider seems now
to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the
Walker, — not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He
is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State
and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts
practised this noble art ; though, to tell the truth, at
least, if their own assertions are to be received, most
of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do,
but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite
leisure, freedom, and independence, which are the
capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace
of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven
to become a walker. You must be born into the
family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit.
Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and
have described to me some walks which they took
ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods ; but I
know very well that they have confined themselves
to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they
may make to belong to this select class. No doubt
they were elevated for a moment as by the remin-
iscence of a previous state of existence, when even
they were foresters and outlaws.
202 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAXJ
' ' When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.
" It is feiTe gone, sayd Robyn,
That I was last here ;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere."
I think that I cannot preserve my health and
spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least, — and
it is commonly more than that, — sauntering through
the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely
free from all worldly engagements. You may safely
say, A penny for your thoughts or a thousand pounds.
When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics
and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the
forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed
legs so many of them, — as if the legs were made to
sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon, — I think
that they deserve some credit for not having all com-
mitted suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single
day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes
I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour
of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem
the day, when the shades of night were already be-
ginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as
if I had committed some sin to be atoned for, — I
confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance,
to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my
neighbours who confine themselves to shops and offices
the whole day for weeks and months, ay, and years
WALKING 203
almost together. I know not what manner of stuff
they are of, — sitting there now at three o'clock in the
afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning.
Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning
courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can
sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over
against one's self whom you have known all the
morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are
bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder
that about this time, or say between four and five
o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning
papers and too early for the evening ones, there is
not a general explosion heard up and down the street,
scattering a legion of antiquated and house -bred
notions and whims to the four winds for an airing, —
and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house
still more than men, stand it I do not know ; but I
have ground to suspect that most of them do not
staiid it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon,
we have been shaking the dust of the village from
the skirts of our garments, making haste past those
houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which
have such an air of repose about them, my companion
whispers that probably about these times their occu-
pants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate
the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself
never tiu'ns in, but for ever stands out and erect,
keeping watch over the slumberers.
No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have
a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older.
204 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations
increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the
evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth
only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that
he requires in half an hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in
it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick
take medicine at stated hours, — as the swinging of
dumb-bells or chairs ; but is itself the enterprise and
adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go
in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's
swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs
are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him !
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is
said to be the only beast which ruminates when
walking. When a traveller asked Wordsworth's
servant to show him her master's study, she answered,
" Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind,
will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character,
— will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of
the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and
hands, or as severe manual labour robs the hands of
some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the
house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and
smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied
by an increased sensibility to certain impressions.
Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some
influences important to our intellectual and moral
growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on
us a little less ; and no doubt it is a nice matter to
WALKING 205
proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But
methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough,
— that the natural remedy is to be found in the
proportion which the night bears to the day, the
winter to the summer, thought to experience. There
will be so much the more air and sunshine in our
thoughts. The callous palms of the labourer are con-
versant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism,
whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers
of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies
abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the
tan and callus of experience.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and
woods : what would become of us, if we walked only
in a garden or a mall 1 Even some sects of philo-
sophers have felt the necessity of importing the
woods to themselves, since they did not go to the
woods. "They planted groves and walks of Platanes,"
where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticoes
open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct
our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither.
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a
mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in
spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget
all my morning occupations and my obligations to
society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot
easily shake off the village. The thought of some work
will run in my head and I am not where my body is,
—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain
return to my senses. What business have I in the
woods, if 1 am thinking of something out of the
206 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
woods 1 I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder,
when I find myself so implicated even in what are
called good works, — for this may sometimes happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks ; and though
for so many years I have walked almost every day,
and sometimes for several days together, I have not
yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect
is a great happiness, and I can still get this any after-
noon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me
to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A
single farmhouse which I had not seen before is some-
times as good as the dominions of the King of
Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony dis-
coverable between the capabilities of the landscape
within a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of
an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten
of human life. It will never become quite familiar
to you.
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so
called, as the building of houses, and the cutting
down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform
the landscape, and make it more and more tame and
cheap. A people who would begin by burning the
fences and let the forest stand ! I saw the fences
half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the
prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor look-
ing after his bounds, while heaven had taken place
around him, and he did not see the angels going to
and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the
midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him
standing in the middle of a boggy, stygian fen,
WALKING 207
surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds
without a doubt, three httle stones, where a stake
had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the
Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number
of miles, commencing at my own door, without going
by any house, without crossing a road except where
the fox and the mink do : first along by the river,
and then the brook, and then the meadow and the
wood-side. There are square miles in my vicinity
which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can
see civilisation and the abodes of man afar. The
farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious
than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his
affairs, church and state and school, trade and com-
merce, and manufactures and agriculture, even politics,
the most alarming of them all, — I am pleased to see
how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics
is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway
yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveller
thither. If you would go to the political world,
follow the great road, — follow that market-man, keep
his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight
to it ; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not
occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean-field
into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour
I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface
where a man does not stand from one year's end to
another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for
they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.
208 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the
land is not private property; the landscape is not
owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom.
But possibly the day will come when it will be parti-
tioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a
few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, —
when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and
other engines invented to confine men to the public
road, and walking over the surface of God's earth
shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentle-
man's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is
commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoy-
ment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then,
before the evil days come.
What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to
determine whither we will walk 1 I believe that there
is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we un-
consciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is
not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a
right way ; but we are very liable from heedlessness
and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain
take that walk, never yet taken by us through this
actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the
path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal
world ; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difiicult
to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist
distinctly in our idea.
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain
as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit
myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange
WALKING 209
and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and
inevitably settle south-west, toward some particular
wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that
direction. My needle is slow to settle, — varies a few
degrees, and does not always point due south-west, it
is true, and it has good authority for this variation,
hut it always settles between west and south-south-
west. The future lies that way to me, and the earth
seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The
outline which would bound my walks would be, not
a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those
cometary orbits which have been thought to be non-
returning curves, in this case opening westward, in
which my house occupies the place of the sun. I
turn round and round irresolute sometimes for a
quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a thousandth
time, that I will walk into the south-west or west.
Eastward I go only by force ; but westward I go free.
Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to
believe that I shall find fair landscapes or suflS.cient
wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I
am not excited by the prospect of a walk thither ;
but I believe that the forest which I see in the western
horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the setting
sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough
consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I
will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness,
and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and
withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so
much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that
something like this is the prevailing tendency of my
210 SELECTIONS FROM THOEBATJ
countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and not
toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving,
and I may say that mankind progress from east to
west. Within a few years we have witnessed the
phenomenon of a south-eastward migration, in the
settlement of Australia ; but this affects us as a retro-
grade movement, and, judging from the moral and
physical character of the first generation of Australians,
has not yet proved a successful experiment. The
eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west
beyond Thibet. " The world ends there," say they,
"beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is
unmitigated East where they live.
We go eastward to realise history and study the
works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the
race ; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit
of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a
Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have
had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its
institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there
is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it
arrives on the banks of the Styx ; and that is in the
Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide.
I know not how significant it is, or how far it is
an evidence of singularity, that an individual should
thus consent in his pettiest walk with the general
movement of the race ; but I know that something
akin to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,
— which, in some instances, is known to have affected
the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and
mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say
WALKING 211
somBj crossing the broadest rivers, each on its par-
ticular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging
narrower streams with their dead,- — that something
like the fwror which aflFects the domestic cattle in the
spring, and which is referred to a worm in their
tails, — affects both nations and individuals, either
perennially or from time to time. Not a flock of
wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some
extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if
I were a broker, I should probably take that disturb-
ance into account.
" Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken sti-ange strondes."
Every sunset which I witness inspires me with
the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as
that into which the sun goes down. He appears to
migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him.
He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations
follow. We dream all night of those mountain-ridges
in the horizon, though they may be of vapour only,
which were last gilded by his rays. The island of
Atlantis, and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides,
a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been
the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery
and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination,
when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens
of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those
fables?
Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly
than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New
212 SELECTIONS FROM THOEBAU
World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men in
those days scented fresh pastures from afar.
" And now the sun had stretched out all the hlUs,
And now was dropped into the western bay ;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue ;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
Where on the globe can there be found an area of
equal extent with that occupied by the bulk of our
States, so fertile and so rich and varied in its produc-
tions, and at the same time so habitable by the
European, as this is ? Michaux, who knew but part
of them, says that "the species of large trees are
much more numerous in North America than in
Europe ; in the United States there are more than one
hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in
height; in France there are but thirty that attain
this size." Later botanists more than confirm his
observations. Humboldt came to America to realise
his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he
beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive
forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness
on the earth, which he has so eloquently described.
The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes
further, — further than I am ready to foUow him ; yet
not when he says, — "As the plant is made for the
animal, as the vegetable world is made for the animal
world, America is made for the man of the Old World.
. . . The man of the Old World sets out upon his
way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends
from station to station towards Europe. Each of
his steps is marked by a new civilisation superior to
WALKING 213
the preceding, by a greater power of development.
Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of
this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows
not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant."
"When he has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and
reinvigorated himself, " then recommences his adven-
turous career westward as in the earliest ages.'' So
far Guyot.
From this western impulse coming in contact with
the barrier of the Atlantic sprang the commerce
and enterprise of modern times. The younger
Michaux, in his Travels West of the AUeghanies in 1802,
says that the common inquiry in the newly settled
West was, " ' From what part of the world have you
come"!' As if these vast and fertile regions would
naturally be the place of meeting and common country
of all the inhabitants of the globe."
To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex
Oriente Iwx, ; ex Occidente FRUX. From the East light ;
from the West fruit.
The West of which I speak is but another name
for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to
say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the
World. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of
the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men
plough and sail for it. From the forest and wilder-
ness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.
Our ancestors were savages. The story of Eomulus
and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaning-
less fable. The founders of every State which has
214 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and
vigour from a similar wild source. It was because the
children of the Empire were not suckled by the
wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the
children of the Northern forests who were.
I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in
the night in which the corn grows. We require an
infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vitse in our tea.
There is a difference between eating and drinking for
strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots
eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other ante-
lopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our Northern
Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer,
as well as various other parts, including the summits
of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein,
perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of
Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire.
This is probably better than stall-fed beef and
slaughter-house pork to make a man of. Give me
a wildness whose glance no civilisation can endure,
— as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured
raw.
There are some intervals which border the strain
of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate, — wild
lands where no settler has squatted; to which,
methinks, I am already acclimated.
The African hunter Cummings tells us that the
skin of the eland, as well as that of most other ante-
lopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of
trees and grass. I would have every man so much
like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of
WALKING 215
Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly
advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us
of those parts of Nature which he most haunts. I
feel no disposition to be satirical, when the trapper's
coat emits the odour of musquash even ; it is a sweeter
scent to me than that which commonly exhales from
the merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I
go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments,
I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads
which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants'
exchanges and libraries rather.
A tanned skin is something more than respectable,
and perhaps olive is a fitter colour than white for a
man, — a denizen of the woods. "The pale white
man ! " I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
Darwin the naturalist says, "A white man bathing
by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by
the gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark green
one, growing vigorously in the open fields."
Ben Jonson exclaims, — •
" How near to good is what is fair!"
So I would say, —
How near to good is what is wild !
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the
wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence re-
freshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly
and never rested from his labours, who grew fast and
made infinite demands on life, would always find
himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded
216 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEATJ
by the raw material of life. He would be climbing
over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and
cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the
impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly,
I have analysed my partiality for some farm which
I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently
found that I was attracted solely by a few square
rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog, — a natural
sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which
dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from
the swamps which surround my native town than
from the cultivated gardens in the village. There
are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense
beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra calyculata) which
cover these tender places on the earth's surface.
Botany cannot go further than tell me the names of
the shrubs which grow there, — the high -blueberry,
panicled andromeda, lamb-kiU, azalea, and rhodora,
— all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often
think that I should like to have my house front on
this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower
plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box,
even gravelled walks, — to have this fertile spot under
my windows, not a few imported barrow-fuUs of soil
only to cover the sand which was thrown out in
digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my
parlour, behind this plot, instead of behind that meagre
assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a
Nature and Art, which I call my front-yard ? It is
an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance
WALKING 217
when the carpenter and mason have departed, though
done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within.
The most tasteful front -yard fence was never an
agreeable object of study to me ; the most elaborate
ornaments, acorn -tops, or what not, soon wearied
and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very
edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the
best place for a dry cellar), so that there be no access
on that side to citizens. Front-yards are not made
to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go
in the back way.
Yes, though, you may think me perverse, if it
were proposed to me to dwell in the neighbourhood
of the most beautiful garden that ever human art
contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should cer-
tainly decide for the swamp. How vain, then, have
been all your labours, citizens, for me !
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the
outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert
or the wilderness ! In the desert, pure air and solitude
compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The
traveller Burton says of it, — " Your morale improves ;
you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-
minded. ... In the desert, spirituous liquors excite
only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere
animal existence." They who have been travelling
long on the steppes of Tartary say, — " On reentering
cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil
of civilisation oppressed and suffocated us ; the air
seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if
about to die of asphyxia." When I would recreate
218 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEATJ
myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most
interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp.
I enter a swamp as a sacred place, — a sandwn sa/nctorum.
There is the strength, the marrow of Nature. The
wild -wood covers the virgin mould, — and the same
soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health
requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as
his farm does loads of muck. There are the strong
meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more
by the righteous men in it than by the woods and
swamps that surround it. A township where one
primitive forest waves above while another primitive
forest rots below, — such a town is fitted to raise not
only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers
for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and
Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness
comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.
To preserve wild animals implies generally the
creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to.
So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold
bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In
the very aspect of those primitive and rugged
trees, there was, methinks, a tanning principle which
hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts.
Ah ! already I shudder for these comparatively de-
generate days of my native village, when you cannot
collect a load of bark of good thickness, — and we no
longer produce tar and turpentine.
The civilised nations — Greece, Rome, England —
have been sustained by the primitive forests which
anciently rotted where they stand. They survive
■WALKING 219
as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human
culture ! little is to be expected of a nation, when the
vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to
make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the
poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous
fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-
bones.
It is said to be the task of the American " to work
the virgin soil," and that " agriculture here already
assumes proportions unknown everywhere else.'' I
think that the farmer displaces the Indian even be-
cause he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself
stronger and in some respects more natural. I was
surveying for a man the other day a single straight
line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through
a swamp, at whose entrance might have been written
the words which Dante read over the entrance to
the infernal regions, — "Leave all hope, ye that enter,"
— that is, of ever getting out again ; where at one
time I saw my employer actually up to his neck and
swimming for his life in his property, though it was
still winter. He had another similar swamp which I
could not survey at all, because it was completely
under water, and nevertheless, with regard to a third
swamp, which I did survey from a distance, he re-
marked to me, true to his instincts, that he would
not part with it for any consideration, on account of
the mud which it contained. And that man intends
to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course
of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of
his spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.
220 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
The weapons with which we have gained our
most important victories, which should be handed
down as heirlooms from father to son are not the
sword and the lance, but the bush-whack, the turf-
cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the
blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the
dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds
blew the Indian's corn-field into the meadow, and
pointed out the way which he had not the skill to
follow. He had no better implement with which to
intrench himself in the land than a clam-sheU. But
the farmer is armed with plough and spade.
In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us.
Dulness is but another name for tameness. It is the
uncivilised free and wild thinking in Hamlet and
the Iliad, in all the Scriptures and Mythologies,
not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the
wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the
tame, so is the wild — the mallard — thought, which
'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A
truly good book is something as natural, and as un-
expectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a
wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or
in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which
makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash,
which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge
itself, — and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of
the race, which pales before the light of common day.
English literature, from the days of the minstrels
to the Lake Poets, — Chaucer and Spenser and Milton,
and even Shakespeare, included — breathes no quite
WALKING 221
fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially
tame and civilised literature, reflecting Greece and
Eome. Her wilderness is a green wood, — her wild
man a Eobin Hood. There is plenty of genial love
of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her
chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not
when the wild man in her, became extinct.
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is
another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all
the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning
of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
Where is the literature which gives expression to
Nature 1 He would be a poet who could impress the
winds and streams into his service, to speak for him ;
who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers
drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has
heaved ; who derived his words as often as he used
them, — transplanted them to his page with earth
adhering to their roots; whose words were so true
and fresh and natural that they would appear to
expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though
they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in
a library, — ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after
their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sym-
pathy with surrounding Nature.
I do not know of any poetry to quote which
adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild.
Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame.
I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient
or modern, any account which contents me of that
Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will
222 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
perceive that I demand sometliing whicli no Augustan
nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can
give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything.
How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian
mythology its root in than English literature !
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore
before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and
imagination were affected with blight ; and which it
still bears, wherever its pristine vigour is unabated.
All other literatures endure only as the elms which
overshadow our houses ; but this is like the great
dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind,
and, whether that does or not, will endure as long ;
for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in
which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those
of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the NUe,
and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains
to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate,
the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi
will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of
ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the
past, — as it is to some extent a fiction of the present, —
the poets of the world will be inspired by American
mythology.
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not
the less true, though they may not recommend them-
selves to the sense which is most common among
Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every
truth that recommends itself to the common sense.
Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as
WALKING 223
for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are
reminiscent, — others raerely sensible, as the phrase is,
— others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even,
may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has
discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying
dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry,
have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species
which were extinct before man was created, and hence
"indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a
previous state of organic existence.'' The Hindoos
dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and
the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a
serpent; and though it may be an unimportant
coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state,
that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in
Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess
that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend
the order of time and development. They are the
sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge
loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
In short, all good things are wild and free. There
is something in a strain of music, whether produced
by an instrument or by the human voice, — take the
sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,- —
which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds
me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native
forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can
understand. Give me for my friends and neighbours
wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage
is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which
good men and lovers meet.
224 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
I love even to see the domestic animals reassert
their native rights, — any evidence that they have not
wholly lost their original wild habits and vigour ; as
when my neighbour's cow breaks out of her pasture
early in the spring and boldly swims the river, a cold,
gray tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by
the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing the
Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on
the herd in my eyes, — already dignified. The seeds
of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of
cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels of the
earth, an indefinite period.
Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw
one day a herd of a dozen bullocks and cows running
about and frisking in unwieldy sport, like huge rats,
even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised
their tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I
perceived by their horns, as well as by their activity,
their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas ! a sudden
loud TFJioa ! would have damped their ardour at once,
reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened
their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who
but the Evil One has cried, " Whoa ! " to mankind ?
Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is
but a sort of locomotiveness ; they move a side at a
time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the
horse and the ox half-way. Whatever part the whip
has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever
think of a sids of any of the supple cat tribe, as we
speak of a side of beef %
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken
WALKING 225
before they can be made tbe slaves of men, and that
men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow
before they become submissive members of society.
Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for
civilisation ; and because the majority, like dogs and
sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no
reason why the others should have their natures
broken that they may be reduced to the same level.
Men are in the main alike, but they were made several
in order that they might be various. If a low use
is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as
well as another ; if a high one, individual excellence
is to be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep
the wind away, but no other man could serve so rare
a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius
says, — " The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when
they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the
sheep tanned." But it is not the part of a true culture
to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep
ferocious ; and tanning their skins for shoes is not
the best use to which they can be put.
When looking over a list of men's names in a
foreign language, as of military officers, or of authors
who have written on a particular subject, I am re-
minded once more that there is nothing in a name.
The name MenschikofF, for instance, has nothing in
it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may
belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and
Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if
they had been named by the child's rigmarole, — lery
Q
226 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in my mind a herd
of wild creatures swarming over the earth and to each
the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his
own dialect. The names of men are of course as
cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names
of dogs.
Methinksit would be some advantage to philosophy,
if men were named merely in the gross, as they are
known. It would be necessary only to know the
genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the
individual. We are not prepared to believe that
every private soldier in a Eoman army had a name
of his own, — because we have not supposed that he
had a character of his own. At present our only
true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who,
from his peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by
his playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Chris-
tian name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian
had no name given him at first, but earned it, and
his name was his fame ; and among some tribes he
acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is
pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience
merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions
for me, but still see men in herds for all them. A
familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me.
It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his
own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild
savage in us and a savage name is perchance some-
where recorded as* ours. I see that my neighbour,
who bears the familiar epithet William, or Edwin,
WALKING 227
takes it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to
him when asleep or in anger, or arouse(J by any
passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by
some of his kin at such a time his original wild name
in some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue.
Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours.
Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such
affection for her children, as the leopard ; and yet we
are so early weaned from her breast to society, to
that culture which is exclusively an interaction of
man on man, — a sort of breeding in and in, which
produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilisa-
tion destined to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is
easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should
still be growing children, we are already little men.
Give me a culture which imports much muck from
the meadows, and deepens the soil, — not that which
trusts to heating manures, and improved implements
and modes of culture only !
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard
of would grow faster, both intellectually and physic-
ally, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly
slumbered a fool's allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light.
Niepce, a Frenchman, discovered "actinism," that
power in the sun's rays which produces a chemical
effect, — that granite rocks, and stone structures, and
statues of metal, "are all alike destructively acted
upon during the hours of sunshine, and, but for pro-
228 SELECTIONS FKOM THOKEAU
visions of Nature no less wonderful, would soon
perish under the delicate touch of the most subtile of
the agencies of the universe." But he observed that
"those bodies which underwent this change during
the daylight possessed the power of restoring them-
selves to their original conditions during the hours of
night, when this excitement was no longer influencing
them." Hence it has been inferred that " the hours
of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic creation
as we know night and sleep are to the organic king-
dom." Not even does the moon shine every night,
but gives place to darkness.
I would not have every man nor every part of a
man cultivated, any more than I would have every
acre of earth cultivated : part will be tiUage, but the
greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serv-
ing an immediate use, but preparing a mould against
a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegeta-
tion which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than
those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have
a good term to express this wild and dusky know-
ledge, — Gramdtica parda, tawny grammar, — a kind
of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to
which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is
power ; and the like. Methinks there is equal need
of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance,
what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge
useful in a higher sense : for what is most of our
WALKING 229
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit ttat we
know something, which robs us of the advantage of
our actual ignorance ? What we call knowledge is
often our positive ignorance ; ignorance our negative
knowledge. By long years of patient industry and
reading of the newspapers, — for what are the libraries
of science but files of newspapers 'i — a man accumu-
lates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and
then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad
into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes
to grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind
in the stable. I would say to the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, — Go to
grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The spring
has come with its green crop. The very cows are
driven to their country pastures before the end of
May ; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer
who kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all
the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the
Diffasion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful,
but beautiful, — while his knowledge, so called, is
oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.
Which is the best man to deal with, — he who knows
nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare,
knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows
something about it, but thinks that he knows all.
My desire for knowledge is intermittent ; but my
desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to
my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that
we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy
230 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher
knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a
novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of
the insufficiency of all that we caUed Knowledge
before, — a discovery that there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philo-
sophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun.
Man cannot know in any higher sense than this, any
more than he can look serenely and with impunity in
the face of sun : 'O9 t\ voSiV ov KeZvov vorjaei'i, —
" You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular
thing," say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking
after a law which we may obey. We may study the
laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a suc-
cessful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate dis-
covery certainly, that of a law which binds us where
we did not know before that we were bound. Live
free, child of the mist, — and with respect to know-
ledge we are all children of the mist. The man who
takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by
virtue of his relation to the law -maker. " That is
active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not
for our bondage ; that is knowledge which is for our
liberation : all other duty is good only unto weariness ;
all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist."
It is remarkable how few events or crises there
are in our histories; how little exercised we have
been in our minds; how few experiences we have
had. I would fain be assured that I am growing
WALKING 231
apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb
this dull equanimity, — though it be with struggle
through long, dark muggy nights or seasons of gloom.
It would be well, if all our lives were a divine tragedy
even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce. Dante,
Bunyan, and others, appear to have been exercised in
their minds more than we : they were subjected to a
kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges
do not contemplate. Even Mahomet, though many
may scream at his name, had a good deal more to
live for, ay, and to die for, than they have commonly.
When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one,
as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then indeed
the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon,
by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars
return.
" Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
Traveller of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon ? "
While almost all men feel an attraction drawing
them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature.
In their relation to Nature men appear to me for
the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than
the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as
in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of
the beauty of the landscape there is among us ! We
have to be told that the Greeks called the world
Kotr/(,o9, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly
why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a
curious philological fact.
232 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I
live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world
into which I make occasional and transitional and tran-
sient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance
to the State into whose territories I seem to retreat
are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call
natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp
through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon
nor fire-fly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature
is a personality so vast and universal that we have
never seen one of her features. The walker in the
familiar fields which stretch around my native town
sometimes finds himself in another land than is de-
scribed in their owners' deeds, as it were in some far-
away field on the confines of the actual Concord, where
her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word
Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These
farms which I have myself surveyed, these bounds
which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a
mist ; but they have no chemistry to fix them ; they
fade from the surface of the glass ; and the picture
which the painter painted stands out dimly from
beneath. The world with which we are commonly
acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no
anniversary.
I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other after-
noon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite
side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled
into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall.
I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether
admirable and shining family had settled there in
WALKING 233
that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,
— to whom the sun was servant, — who had not gone
into society in the village, — who had not been called
on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond
through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow.
The pines furnished them with gables as they grew.
Their house was not obvious to vision ; the trees grew
through it. I do not know whether I heard the
sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed
to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and
daughters. They are quite well. The farmer's cart-
path, which leads directly through their hall, does
not in the least put them out, — as the muddy bottom
of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies.
They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know
that he is their neighbour, — notwithstanding I heard
him whistle as he drove his team through the house.
Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their
coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on
the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of
the trees. They are of no politics. There was no
noise of labour. I did hot perceive that they were
weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the
wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest
imaginable sweet musical hum, — as of a distant hive
in May, which perchance was the sound of their
thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one
without could see their work, for their industry was
not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
But I find it difficult to remember them. They
fade irrevocably out of my mind even now while I
234 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
speak and endeavour to recall them, and recollect
myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to
recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware
of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families
as this, I think I should move out of Concord.
We are accustomed to say in New England that
few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our
forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem,
few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from
year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste,
— sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to
mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch
on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In
some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow
flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the
tilings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migra-
tion, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the
substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts
are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they
attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China grandeur.
Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of !
We hug the earth, — how rarely we mount ! Me-
thinks we might elevate ourselves a little more. We
might climb a tree, at least. I found my account in
climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the
top of a hill ; and though I got well pitched, I was
well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in
the horizon which I had never seen before, — so much
more of the earth and the heavens. I might have
WALKING 235
walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years
and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen
them. But, above all, I discovered around me, — it
was near the end of June, — on the ends of the topmost
branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like
blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking
heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the
topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who
walked the streets, — for it was court-week, — and to
farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and
hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, but
they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of
ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of
columns as perfectly as on the lower and more visible
parts ! Nature has from the first expanded the minute
blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above
men's heads and unobserved by them. We see only
the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
The pines have developed their delicate blossoms on
the highest twigs of the wood every summer for ages,
as well over the heads of Nature's red children as of
her white ones ; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in
the land has ever seen them.
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the
present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no
moment of the passing life in remembering the past.
Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every
barnyard within our horizon, it is belated. That
sound commonly reminds us that we are growing
rusty and antique in our employments and habits of
236 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
thought. His philosophy comes down to a more
recent time than ours. There is something suggested
by it that is a newer testament, — the gospel according
to this moment. He has not fallen astern ; he has
got up early and kept up early and to be where he is
to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is
an expression of the health and soundness of Nature,
a brag for all the world, — healthiness as of a spring
burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate
this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive
slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his
master many times since last he heard that note 1
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom
from all plaintiveness. The singer can easily move
us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can
excite in us a pure morning joy ? When, in doleful
dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden
sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the
house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near,
I think to myself, " There is one of us well, at any
rate," — and with a sudden gush return to my senses.
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November.
I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small
brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after
a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon,
and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the
dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite
horizon and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the
hill-side, while our shadows stretched long over the
meadow eastward, as if we are the only motes in its
WALKING 237
beams. It was such a light as we could not have
imagined a moment before, and the air also was so
warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make
a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that
this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen
again, but that it would happen for ever and ever an
infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure
the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious
still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no
house is visible, with all the glory and splendour that
it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as it has never
set before, — where there is but a solitary marsh-
hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a mus-
quash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little
black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just
beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decay-
ing stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light,
gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and
serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such
a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it.
The west side of every wood and rising ground
gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun
on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving
us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day
the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has
done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts,
and light up our whole lives with a great awakening
light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-
side in autumn.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
I HEARTILY accept the motto, — "That government
is best which governs least " ; and I should like to
see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I
believe, — "That government is best which governs
not at all " ; and when men are prepared for it, that
will be the kind of government which they will have.
Government is at best but an expedient ; but most
governments are usually, and all governments are
sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have
been brought against a standing army, and they are
many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also
at last be brought against a standing government.
The standing army is only an arm of the standing
government. "^ The government itself, which is only
the mode which the people have chosen to execute
their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted
before the people can act through it." Witness the
present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a
few individuals using the standing government as
their tool ; for, in the outset, the people would not
have consented to this measure.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 239
This American government, — what is it but a tra-
dition, though a recent one, endeavouring to transmit
itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing
some of its integrity 1 It has not the vitality and
force of a single living man; for a single man can
bend it to his 'will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the
people themselves. But it is not the less necessary
for this ; for the people must have some complicated
machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that
idea of government which they have. Governments
show thus how successfully men can be imposed on,
even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this govern-
ment never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by
the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It
does not keep the country free. It does not settle
the West. It does not educate. The character in-
herent in the American people has done all that
has been accomplished; and it would have done
somewhat more, if the government had not some-
times got in its way. For government is an ex-
pedient by which men would fain succeed in letting
one another alone ; and, as has been said, when it is
most expedient, the governed are most let alone
by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not
made of India-rubber, would never manage to
bounce over the obstacles which legislators are
continually putting in their way ; and, if one were to
judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions
and not partly by their intentions, they would de-
serve to be classed and punished with those mis-
240 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAIT
chievous persons who put obstructions on the
railroads.
But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike
those who call themselves no-government men, I ask
for, not at once no government, but at once a better
government. Let every man make known what kind
of government would command his respect, and that
will be one step toward obtaining it.
After all, the practical reason why, when the
power is once in the hands of the people, a majority
are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule,
is not because they are most likely to be in the right,
nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but
because they are physically the strongest. But a
government in which the majority rule in all cases
cannot be based on justice, even as far as men
understand it. Can there not be a government in
which majorities do not virtually decide right and
wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide
only those questions to which the rule of expediency
is applicable ? Must the citizen ever for a moment,
or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the
legislator ? Why has every man a conscience, then 1
I think that we should be men first, and subjects
afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect
for the law, so much as for the right. The only
obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at
any time what I think right, d It is truly enough said,
that a corporation has no conscience; but a cor-
poration of conscientious men is a corporation with a
conscience. Law never made men a whit more just ;
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 241
and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-
disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A
common and natural result of an undue respect for
law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel,
captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all,
marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the
wars, against their wills, ay, against their common
sense and consciences, which makes it very steep
marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the
heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable
business in which they are concerned ; they are all
peaceably inclined. Now, what are they 1 Men at
all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the
service of some unscrupulous man in power f Visit
the Navy- Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as
an American government can make, or such as it can
make a man with its black arts, — a mere shadow and
reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and
standing, and already, as one may say, buried under
arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may
be—
" Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried ;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried. "
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men
mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They
are the standing army, and the militia, jailers,
constables, posse cmnitatus, etc. In most cases there
is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of
the moral sense ; but they put themselves on a level
K
242 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
with -wood and earth and stones; and wooden men
can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the
purpose as well. Such command no more respect
than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the
same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet
such as these even are commonly esteemed good
citizens. Others, — as most legislators, politicians,
lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, — serve the
state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely
make any moral distinctions, they are as hkely to
serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A
very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in
the great sense, and men, serve the state with their
consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the
most part ; and they are commonly treated as
enemies by it. A wise man wiU only be useful as a
man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop
a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office
to his dust at least : —
" I am too Mgh-born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control,
Or useful serving-man and instrument
To any sovereign state throughout the world."
He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men
appears to them useless and selfish ; but he who
gives himself partially to them is pronounced a
benefactor and philanthropist.
How does it become a man to behave toward
this American government to-day 1 I answer, that
he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I
cannot for an instant recognise that political organ-
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 243
isation as my government which is the slave's govern-
ment also.
All men recognise the right of revolution; that
is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the
government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are
great and unendurable. But almost all say that such
is not the case now. But such was the case, they
think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell
me that this was a bad government because it taxed
certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it
is most probable that I should not make an ado
about it, for I can do without them. All machines
have their friction ; and possibly this does enough
good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a
great evil to make a stir about it. But when the
friction comes to have its machine, and oppression
and robbery are organised, I say, let us not have
such a machine any longer. In other words, when
a sixth of the population of a nation which has
undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves,
and a whole country is unjustly overrun and con-
quered by a foreign army, and subjected to military
law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men
to rebel and revolutionise. What makes this duty
the more urgent is the fact, that the country so
overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading
army.
Paley, a common authority with many on moral
questions, in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission
to Civil Government," resolves all civil obligation
into expediency ; and he proceeds to say, " that so
244 SELECTIONS FEOM THOREAU
long as the interest of the whole society requires it,
that is, so long as the established government cannot
be resisted or changed without public inconveniency,
it is the will of God that the established government
be obeyed, and no longer. . . This principle being
admitted, the justice of every particular case of resist-
ance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the
danger and grievance on the one side, and of the
probability and expense of redressing it on the other."
Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself.
But Paley appears never to have contemplated those
cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply,
in which a people, as well as an individual, must do
justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested
a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to
him though I drown myseK. This, according to
Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would
save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people
must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico,
though it cost them their existence as a people.
In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but
does any one think that Massachusetts does exactly
what is right at the present crisis 1
" A drab of state, a cloth-o' -silver slut,
To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt"
Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in
Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians
at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and
farmers here, who are more interested in commerce
and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 245
not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico,
cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but
with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and
do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom
the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed
to say, that the mass of men are unprepared ; but
improvement is slow, because the few are not
materially wiser or better than the many. It is not
so important that many should be as good as you, as
that there be some absolute goodness somewhere ; for
that will leaven the whole lump. There are
thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery
and to the war, who yet in effect -do nothing to put
an end to them ; who, esteeming themselves children
of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their
hands in their pockets, and say that they know not
what to do, and do nothing ; who even postpone the
question of freedom to the question of free-trade,
and quietly read the prices-current along with the
latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may
be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-
current of an honest man and patriot to-day?
They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes
they petition; but they do nothing in earnest
and with effect. They will wait, well disposed,
for others to remedy the evil, that they may no
longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a
cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed,
to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine
hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one
virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the
24:6 SELECTIONS FEOM THOKEAU
real possessor of a thing than with the temporary
guardian of it.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or
backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a
playing with right and wrong, with moral questions ;
and betting naturally accompanies it. The character
of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, per-
chance, as I think right; but I am not vitally
concerned that that right should prevail. I am
willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation,
therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even
voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only
expressing to meil feebly your desire that it should
prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the
mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the
power of the majority. There is but little virtue in
the action of masses of men. When the majority
shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it
will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or
because there is but little slavery left to be abolished
by their vote. They wiU then be the only slaves.
Only his vote can hasten the aboHtion of slavery
who asserts his own freedom by his vote.
I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or
elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the
Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men
who are politicians by profession; but I think,
what is it to any independent, intelligent, and
respectable man what decision they may come to 1
Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and
honesty, nevertheless'? Can we not count upon
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 247
some independent votes? Are there not many
individuals in the country who do not attend con-
ventions 1 But no : I find that the respectable man,
so called, has immediately drifted from his position,
and despairs of his country, when his country has
more reason to despair of him. He forthwith
adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the
only available one, thus proving that he is himself
available for any purposes of the demagogue. His
vote is of no more worth than that of any un-
principled foreigner or hireling native, who may
have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and,
as my neighbour says, has a bone in his back which
you cannot pass your hand through ! Our statistics
are at fault : the population has been returned too
large. How many men are there to a square
thousand miles in this country ? Hardly one.
Does not America offer any inducement for men
to settle here? The American has dwindled into
an Odd Fellow, — one who may be knovm by the
development of his organ of gregariousness, and
a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance ;
whose first and chief concern, on coming into the
world, is to see that the Almshouses are in good
repair ; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the
virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the
widows and orphans that may be ; who, in short,
ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insur-
ance company, which has promised to bury him
decently.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to
248 SELECTIONS FKOM THOREAU
devote himself to the eradication of any, even the
most enormous vs^rong; he may still properly have
other concerns to engage him ; but it is his duty,
at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it
no thought longer, not to give it practically his
support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and
contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do
not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.
I must get off him first, that he may pursue his con-
templations too. See what gross inconsistency is
tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say,
" I should like to have them order me out to help
put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to
march to Mexico ; — see if I would go " ; and yet
these very men have each, directly by their allegiance,
and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished
a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses
to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse
to sustain the unjust government which makes the
war; is applauded by those whose own act and
authority he disregards and sets at naught ; as if the
State were penitent to that degree that it hired one
to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree
that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under
the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all
made at last to pay homage to and support our own
meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its
indifference ; and from immoral it becomes, as it were,
Mjimoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which
we have made.
The broadest and most prevalent error requires
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 249
the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The
slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is
commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.
Those who, while they disapprove of the character
and measures of a government, yield to it their
allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most
■ conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most
serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning
the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the
requisitions of the President. Why do they not
dissolve it themselves, — the union between them-
selves, and the State, — and refuse to pay their
quota into its treasury ? Do not they stand in the
same relation to the State, that the State does to the
Union ? And have not the same reasons prevented
the State from resisting the Union, which have pre-
vented them from resisting the State ?
How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion
merely, and enjoy it ? Is there any enjoyment in it,
if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are
cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbour, you
do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are
cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even
with petitioning him to pay you your due ; but you
take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount,
and see that you are never cheated again. Action
-from principle, the perception and the performance
of right, changes things and relations ; it is essentially
revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with any-
thing which was. It not only divides states and
churches, it divides families ; ay, it divides the
250 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
individual, separating the diabolical in him from the
divine.
Unjust laws exist : shall we be content to obey
them, or shall we endeavour to amend them, and
obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we
transgress them at once? Men generally, under
such a government as this, think that they ought to
wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter
them. They think that, if they should resist, the
remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the
fault of the government itself that the remedy is
worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it
not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform ?
Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why
does it cry and resist before it is hurt 1 Why does
it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to
point out its faults, and do better than it would have
them ? Why does it always crucify Christ, and ex-
communicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce
Washington and Franklin rebels ?
One would think, that a deliberate and practical
denial of its authority was the only offence never
contemplated by government; else, why has it not
assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate
penalty ? If a man who has no property refuses but
once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in
prison for a period unlimited by any law that I
know, and determined only by the discretion of those
who placed him there ; but if he should steal ninety
times nine shillings from the State, he is soon per-
mitted to go at large again.
CiViL DISOBEDIENCE 251
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of
the machine of government, let it go, let it go : per-
chance it will wear smooth, — certainly the machine
will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a
pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself
then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy
will not be worse than the evil ; but if it is of such a
nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice
to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life
be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I
have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend
myself to the wrong which I condemn.
As for adopting the ways which the State has
provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such
ways. They take too much time, and a man's life
will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I
came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good
place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
A man has not everything to do, but something ; and
because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary
that he should do something wrong. It is not my
business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legis-
lature any more than it is theirs to petition me ; and,
if they should not hear my petition, what should I
do then ? But in this case the State has provided no
way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may
seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory ;
but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and con-
sideration the only spirit that can appreciate or
deserves it. So is all change for the better, like
birth and death, which convulse the body.
252 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
I do not hesitate to say, that those who call them-
selves Abolitionists should at once effectually with-
draw their support, both in person and property,
from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait
till they constitute a majority of one, before they
suffer the right to prevail through them. I think
that it is enough if they have God on their side,
without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any
man more right than his neighbours constitutes a
majority of one already.
I meet this American government, or its repre-
sentative, the State government, directly, and face to
face, once a year — no more — in the person of its tax-
gatherer ; this is the only mode in which a man
situated as I am necessarily meets it ; and it then
says distinctly, Eecognise me ; and the simplest, the
most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs,
the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this
head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and
love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbour,
the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with,
— for it is, after all, with men and not with parch-
ment that I quarrel, — and he has voluntarily chosen
to be an agent of the government. How shall he
ever know well what he is and does as an officer of
the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to
consider whether he shall treat me, his neighbour, for
whom he has respect, as a neighbour and well-disposed
man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and
see if he can get over this obstruction to his neigh-
bourliness without a ruder and more impetuous
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 253
thought or speech corresponding with his action. I
know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred,
if ten men whom I could name, — if ten honest men
only, — ay, if one honest man, in this State of
Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to
withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up
in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition
of slavery in America. For it matters not how small
the beginning may seem to be : what is once well
done is done foij ever. But we love better to talk
about it : that we say is our mission. Reform keeps
many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one
man. If my esteemed neighbour, the State's am-
bassador, who will devote his days to the settlement
of the question of human rights in the Council
Chamber, instead of being threatened with the
prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of
Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist
the sin of slavery upon her sister, — though at present
she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be
the ground of a quarrel with her, — the Legislature
would not wholly waive the subject the following
winter.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,
the true place for a just man is also a prison. The
proper place to-day, the only place which Massachu-
setts has provided for her freer and less desponding
spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out
of the State by her own act, as they have already
put themselves out by their principles. It is there
that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on
254 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of
his race, should find them ; on that separate, but more
free and honourable ground, where the State places
those who are not tdth her, but against her, — the only-
house in a slave State in which a free man can abide
with honour. If any think that their influence
would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict
the ear of the State, that they would not be as an
enemy within its walls, they do not know by how
much truth is stronger than error, nor how much
more eloquently and effectively he can combat in-
justice who has experienced a little in his own person.
Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but
your whole influence. A minority is powerless while
it conforms to the majority ; it is not even a minority
then ; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole
weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in
prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not
hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were
not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be
a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay
them, and enable the State to commit violence and
shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition
of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If
the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me,
as one has done, "But what shall I do ?" my answer
is, " If you really wish to do anything, resign your
office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and
the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution
is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow.
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 255
is wounded ? Through this wound a man's real man-
hood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an
everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.
I have contemplated the imprisonment of the
offender, rather than the seizure of his goods, —
though both will serve the same purpose, — because
they who assert the purest right, and consequently
are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly
have not spent much time in accumulating property.
To such the State renders comparatively small
service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant,
particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special
labour with their hands. If there were one who lived
wholly without the use of money, the State itself
would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich
man, — not to make any invidious comparison, — is
always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue ;
for money comes between a man and his objects, and
obtains them for him ; and it was certainly no great
virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions
which he would otherwise be taxed to answer ; while
the only new question which it puts is the hard but
superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral
ground is taken from under his feet. The oppor-
tunities of living are diminished in proportion as
what are called the "means" are increased. The
best thing a man can do for his culture when he is
rich is to endeavour to carry out those schemes which
he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered
the Herodians according to their condition. " Show
256 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
me the tribute-money," said he; — and one took a
penny out of his pocket ; — if you use money which
has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made
current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State,
and gladly enjoy the advantages of Csesar's govern-
ment, then pay him back some of his own when he
demands it; "Eender therefore to Caesar that which
is Caesar's, and to G-od those things which are God's, "
— leaving them no wiser than before as to which was
which ; for they did not wish to know.
When I converse with the freest of my neighbours,
I perceive that, whatever they may say about the
magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their
regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the
short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the
protection of the existing government, and they
dread the consequences to their property and
families of disobedience to it. For my own part,
I should not like to think that I ever rely on the
protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority
of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon
take and waste all my property, and so harass me
and my children without end. This is hard. This
makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and
at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.
It will not be worth the while to accumulate pro-
perty ; that would be sure to go again. You must
hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop,
and eat that soon. You must live within yourself,
and depend upon yourself, always tucked up and
ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 257
man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in
all respects a good subject of the Turkish govern-
ment. Confucius said : " If a state is governed by
the principles of reason, poverty and misery are
subjects of shame ; if a state is not governed by the
principles of reason, riches and honours are the
subjects of shame." No : until I want the pro-
tection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in
some distant Southern port, where my liberty is
endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up
an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford
to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right
to my property and life. It costs me less in every
sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the
State, than it would to obey. I should feel as if I
were worth less in that case.
Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of
the Church, and commanded me to pay a certain
sum toward the support of a clergyman whose
preaching my father attended, but never I myself.
"Pay,'' it said, "or be locked up in the jail." I
declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man
saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the school-
master should be taxed to support the priest, and
not the priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the
State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by
voluntary subscription. I did not see why the
lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the
State to back its demand, as well as the Church.
However, at the request of the selectmen, I con-
descended to make some such statement as this in
S
258 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
writing : — " Know all men by these presents, that I,
Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a
member of any incorporated society which I have
not joined." This I gave to the town clerk; and
he has it. The State, having thus learned that I
did not wish to be regarded as a member of that
church, has never made a like demand on me since ;
though it said that it must adhere to its original
presumption that time. If I had known how to
name them, I should then have signed off in detail
from all the societies which I never signed on to ;
but I did not know where to find a complete list.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put
into a jail once on this account, for one night ; and,
as I stood considering the walls of soHd stone, two
or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot
thick, and the iron grating which strained the light,
I could not help being struck with the foolishness
of that institution which treated me as if I were
mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I
wondered that it should have concluded at length
that this was the best use it could put me to, and had
never thought to avail itself of my services in some
way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone be-
tween me and my townsmen, there was a still more
difficult one to climb or break through, before they
could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a
moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great
waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all
my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did
not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 259
who are underbred. In every threat and in every
compliment there was a blunder; for they thought
that my chief desire was to stand on the other
side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see
how industriously they locked the door on my medi-
tations, which followed them out again without let or
hindrance, and tJiey were really all that was danger-
ous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved
to punish my body ; just as boys, if they cannot come
at some person against whom they have a spite, will
abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted,
that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver
spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its
foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and
pitied it.
Thus the State never intentionally confronts a
man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body,
his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or
honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was
not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own
fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What
force has a multitude 1 They only can force me who
obey a higher law than I. They force me to become
like themselves. I do not hear of rmn being forced
to live this way or that by masses of men. What
sort of life were that to live? When I meet a
government which says to me, " Your money or your
Ufe," why should I be in haste to give it my money ?
It may be in a great strait, and not know what to
do : I cannot help that. It must help itself ; do as
I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it
260 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
I am not responsible for the successful working of
the machinery of society. I am not the son of the
engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a
chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain
inert to make way for the other, but both obey their
own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best
they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys
the other. If a plant cannot live according to its
nature, it dies ; and so a man.
The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. ^
The prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and
the evening air in the doorway, when I entered. But the
jailer said, "Come, boys, it is time to lock up" ; and so they
dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into
the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me
by the jailer, as " a first-rate fellow and a clever man." When
the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and
how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed
once a month ; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most
simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in .the
town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and
what brought me there ; and, when I had told him, I asked
him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to' be an
honest man, of course ; and, as the world goes, I believe he
was. "Why," said he, "they accuse me of burning a barn ;
but I never did it. " As near as I could discover, he had prob-
ably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe
there ; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of
being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting
for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer ;
but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his
board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated.
He occupied one window, and I the other ; and I saw, that,
if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look
out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left
there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out,
and where a grate had been sawed on, and heard the history of
the various occupants of that room ; for I found that even here
there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond
the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the
' This refers to Thoreau's imprisonment in 1845 for his refusal
to pay the poll-tax.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 261
town where verses are composed, whioli are afterward printed
in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a
long list of verses which were composed by some young men
who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged
themselves by singing them.
I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I
should never see him again ; but at length he showed me which
was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp.
It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never
expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me
that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the
evening sounds of the village ; for we slept with the windows
open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native
village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was
turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles
passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I
heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and audi-
tor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent
village-inn, — a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was
a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I
never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its
peculiar institutions ; for it is a shire town. I began to com-
prehend what its inhabitants were about.
In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in
the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and
holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron
spoon. When they called for the vessels again, I was green
enough to return what bread I had left ; but my comrade seized
it, and said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner.
Soon after he was let out to work at haying in a neighbouring
field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till
noon ; so he bade me good-day, saying that he doubted if he
should see me again.
When I came out of prison, — for some one interfered, and
paid that tax,' — I did not perceive that great changes had
taken place on the common, such as he observed who went
in a youth, and emerged a tottering and gray-headed man ;
and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene, — the
town, and State, and country, — greater than any that mere
time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in
which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom
I lived could be trusted as good neighbours and friends ; that
their friendship was for summer weather only ; that they did
not greatly propose to do right ; that they were a distinct race
■^ This was not Emerson, as has been supposed, but Thoreau's
mother and aunts. The jailer, who is still living, says the pay-
ment of the tax made Thoreau "mad as the devil."
262 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen
and Malays are ; that, in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran
no risks, not even to their property ; that, after all, they were
not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them,
and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers,
and by walking in a particular straight though useless path
from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my
neighbours harshly ; for I believe that many of them are not
aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village.
It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor
debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him,
looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent
the grating of a jail window, ' ' How do ye do ? " My neighbours
did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one
another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put
into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which
was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I pro-
ceeded to finish my errand, and having put on my mended shoe,
joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put them-
selves under my conduct ; and in half an hour, — for the horse
was soon tackled, — was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on
one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was
nowhere to be seen.
This is the whole history of " My Prisons."
I have never declined paying the highway tax,
because I am as desirous of being a good neighbour
as I am of being a bad subject ; and, as for supporting
schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-
countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the
tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to
refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand
aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the
course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or
a musket to shoot one with, — the dollar is innocent,
— but I am concerned to trace the effects of my
allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the
State, after my fashion, though I will still make what
use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual
in such cases.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 263
If others pay the tax which is demanded of me,
from a sympathy with the State, they do but what
they have already done in their own case, or rather
they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State
requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken in-
■ terest in the individual taxed, to save his property,
or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have
not considered wisely how far they let their private
feelings interfere with the public good.
This, then, is my position at present. But one
cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest
his action be biassed by obstinacy, or an undue regard
for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does
only what belongs to himself and to the hour,
I think sometimes. Why, this people mean well ;
they are only ignorant ; they would do better if they
knew how : why give your neighbours this pain to
treat you as they are not inclined to ? But I think
again, this is no reason why I should do as they do,
or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a
different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself,
When many millions of men, without heat, without
ill will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand
of you a few shillings only, without the possibility,
such is their constitution, of retracting or altering
their present demand, and without the possibility, on
your side, of appeal to any other millions, why
expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force?
You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the
waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a
thousand similar necessities. You do not put your
264 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
head into the fire. But just in proportion as I
regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a
human force, and consider that I have relations to
those millions as to so many millions of men, and not
of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal
is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to
the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to
themselves. But, if I put my head deliberately into
the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker of
fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could
convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied
with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly,
and not according, in some respects, to my requisi-
tions and expectations of what they and I ought
to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I
should endeavour to be satisfied with things as they
are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all,
there is this difference between resisting this and
a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this
with some effect ; but I cannot expect like Orpheus,
to change the nature of the rocks and trees and
beasts.
I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation.
I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions,
or set myself up as better than my neighbours. I
seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conform-
ing to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to
conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect
myself on this head ; and each year, as the tax-
gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to re-
view the acts and position of the general and State
?
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 265
governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover
a pretext for conformity.
" "We must affect our country as our parents,
And if at any time we alienate
Our love or industry from doing it honour,
We must respect effects and teach the soul
Matter of conscience and religion,
And not desire of rule or benefit."
I believe that the State will soon be able to take all
my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I
shall be no better a patriot than my fellow-countrymen.
Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution,
with all its faults, is very good; the law and the
courts are very respectable ; even this State and this
American government are, in many respects, very
admirable and rare things, to be thankful for, such as
a great many have described them ; but seen from a
point of view a little higher, they are what I have
described them ; seen from a higher still, and
the highest, who shall say what they are, or that
they are worth looking at or thinking of at all 1 r
However, the government does not concern me
much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts
on it. It is not many moments that I live under a
government, even in this world. If a man is thought-
free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not
never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise
rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.
The authority of government, even such as I am
willing to submit to, — for I will cheerfully obey those
who know and can do better than I, and in many
266 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
things even those who neither know nor can do so
well, — is still an impure one : to be strictly just, it
must have the sanction and consent of the governed.
It can have no pure right over my person and pro-
perty but what I concede to it. The progress from
an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited
monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true
respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philo-
sopher was wise enough to regard the individual as
the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we
know it, the last improvement possible in govern-
ment 1 Is it not possible to take a step further towards
recognising and organising the rights of man?^There
will never be a really free and enlightened State, until
the State comes to recognise the individual as a higher
and independent power, from which all its own power
and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
I please myself with imagining a State at last which
can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the
individual with respect as a neighbour ; which even
would not think it inconsistent with its own repose,
if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with
it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of
neighbours and fellow-men. A State which bore this
kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it
ripened, would prepare the way for a still more
perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined,
but not yet anywhere seen. CK
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN^
I TRUST that you will pardon me for being here. I
do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I
feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain
Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone
and the statements of the newspapers, and of my
countrymen generally, respecting his character and
actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at
least express our sympathy with, and admiration of,
him and his companions, and that is what I now
propose to do.
First, as to his history. I will endeavour to omit,
as much as possible, what you have already read. I
need not describe his person to you, for probably
most of you have seen and will not soon forget him.
I am told that his grandfather, John Brown, was an
officer in the Eevolution ; that he himself was born
in Connecticut about the beginning of this century,
but early went with Tais father to Ohio. I heard him
say that his father was a contractor who furnished
beef to the army there, in the war of 1812 ; that he
1 Eead to the citizens of Concord, Mass., Sunday evening,
October 30, 1859.
268 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
accompanied him to the camp, and assisted him in
that employment, seeing a good deal of military life,
— more, perhaps, than if he had been a soldier ; for
he was often present at the councils of the officers.
Especially, he learned by experience how armies are
supplied and maintained in the field, — a work which,
he observed, requires at least as much experience and
skill as to lead them in battle. He said that few
persons had any conception of the cost, even the
pecuniary cost, of firing a single bullet in war. He
saw enough, at any rate, to disgust him with a
military life ; indeed, to excite in him a great abhor-
rence of it ; so much so, that though he was tempted
by the offer of some petty office in the army, when
he was about eighteen, he not only declined that,
but he also refused to train when warned, and was
fined for it. He then resolved that he would never
have anything to do withfany war, unless it were a
war for liberty, f
When the troubles in Kansas began, he sent
several of his sons thither to strengthen the party of
the Free State men, fitting them out with such
weapons as he had ; telling them that if the troubles
should increase, and there should be need of him, he
would follow, to assist them with his hand and
counsel. This, as you all know, he soon after did ;
and it was through his agency, far more than any
other's, that Kansas was made free.
For a«Jart of his life he was a surveyor, and at
one time he was engaged in wool-growing, and he
went to Europe as an agent about that business.
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 269
There, as everywhere, he had his eyes about him, and
made many original observations. He said, for in-
stance, that he saw why the soil of England was so
rich, and that of Germany (I think it was) so poor,
and he thought of writing to some of the crowned
heads about it. It was because in England the
peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but
in G-ermany they are gathered into villages, at night.
It is a pity that he did not make a book of his obser-
vations.
I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in
his respect for the Constitution, and his faith in the
permanence of this Union. Slavery he deemed to be
wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe.
He was by descent and birth a New England
farmer, a man of great common-sense, deliberate and
practical as that class is, and tenfold more so. He
was like the best of those who stood at Concord
Bridge once, on Lexington Common, and on Bunker
Hill, only he was firmer and higher principled than
any that I have chanced to hear of as there. It was
no abolition lecturer that converted him. Ethan
Allen and Stark, with whom he may in some respects
be compared, were rangers in a lower and less im-
portant field. They could bravely face their country's j
foes, but he had the courage to face his country her- /
self, when she was in the wrong. A "Western writer
says, to account for his escape from so many perils,
that he was concealed under a " rural exterior '' ; as
if, in that prairie land, a hero should, by good rights,
wear a citizen's dress only.
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He did not go to the college called Harvard, good
old Alma Mater as she is. He was not fed on the
pap that is there furnished. As he phrased it, "I
know no more of grammar than one of your calves.''
But he went to the great university of the West,
where he sedulously pursued the study of Liberty,
for which he had early betrayed a fondness, and
having taken many degrees, he finally commenced
the public practice of Humanity in Kansas, as you all
know. Such were his humanities and not any study
of grammar. He would have left a Greek accent
slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling
man.
He was one of that class of whom we hear a great
deal, but, for the most part, see nothing at all, — the
Puritans. It would be in vain to kill him. He died
lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared
here. Why should he not ? Some of the Puritan
stock are said to have come over and settled in New
England. They were a class that did something else
than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched
corn in remembrance of that time. They were
neither Democrats nor Eepublicans, but men of
simple habits, straightforward, prayerful ; not think-
ing much of rulers who did not fear God, not making
many compromises, nor seeking after available can-
didates.
"In his camp," as one has recently written, and
as I have myself heard him state, " he permitted no
profanity; no man of loose morals was suffered to
remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war.
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BKOWN 271
'1 would rather,' said he, 'have the small-pox, yellow-
fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a
man without principle. ... It is a mistake, sir,
that our people make, when they think that bullies
are the best fighters, or that they are the fit men to
oppose these Southerners. Give me men of good
principles, — God-fearing men, — men who respect
themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose
any hundred such men as these Buford rufiians.' "
He said that if one offered himself to be a soldier
under him, who was forward to tell what he could
or would do, if he could only get sight of the enemy,
he had but little confidence in him.
He was never able to find more than a score or so
of recruits whom he would accept, and only about a
dozen, among them his sons, in whom he had perfect
faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed
to a few a little manuscript book, — his "orderly
book " I think he called it, — containing the names of
his company in Kansas, and the rules by which they
bound themselves ; and he stated that several of
them had already sealed the contract with their blood.
When some one remarked that, with the addition of
a chaplain, it would have been a perfect Cromwellian
troop, he observed that he would have been glad to
add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one
who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough
to find one for the United States army. I believe
that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening,
nevertheless.
He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was
272 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
scrupulous about his diet at your table, excusing
himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and
fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was fitting
himself for diflficult enterprises, a life of exposure.
A man of rare common -sense and directness of
speech, as of action ; a transcendentalist above all, a
man of ideas and principles, — that was what dis-
tinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient
impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I
noticed that he did not overstate anything, but spoke
within bounds. I remember, particularly, how, in
his speech here, he referred to what his family had
suffered in Kansas, without ever giving the least vent
to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano with an
ordinary chimney-flue. Also referring to the deeds
of certain Border RufiSans, he said, rapidly paring
away his speech, like an experienced soldier, keeping
a reserve of force and meaning, " They had a perfect
right to be hung." He was not in the least a
rhetorician, was not talking to Buncombe or his con-
stituents anywhere, had no need to Invent anything
j but to tell the simple truth, and communicate his own
resolution ; therefore he appeared incomparably
strong, and eloquence in Congress and elsewhere
seemed to me at a discount. It was like the speeches
of Cromwell compared with those of an ordinary
king.
As for his tact and prudence, I will merely say,
that at a time when scarcely a man from the Free
States was able to reach Kansas by any direct route,
at least without having his arms taken from him, he,
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 273
carrying what imperfect guns and other weapons he
could collect, openly and slowly drove an ox- cart
through Missouri, apparently in the capacity of a
surveyor, with his surveying compass exposed in it,
and so passed unsuspected, and had ample opportunity
to learn the designs of the enemy. For some time
after his arrival he still followed the same profession.
When, for instance, he saw a knot of the ruflBans on
the prairie, discussing, of course, the single topic
which then occupied their minds, he would, perhaps,
take his compass and one of his sons, and proceed to
run an imaginary line right through the very spot on
which that conclave had assembled, and when he
came up to them, he would naturally pause and have
some talk with them, learning their news, and, at
last, all their plans perfectly ; and having thus com- -
pleted his real survey he would resume his imaginary
one, and run on his line till he was out of sight.
When I expressed surprise that he could live in
Kansas at all, with a price set upon his head, and so
large a number, including the authorities, exasperated
against him, he accounted for it by saying, " It is
perfectly well understood that I will not be taken."
Much of the time for some years he has had to skulk
in swamps, suffering from poverty and from sickness,
which was the consequence of exposure, befriended
only by Indians and a few whites. But though it
might be known that he was lurking in a particular
swamp, his foes commonly did not care to go in after
him. He could even come out into a town where
there were more Border Euffians than Free State
T
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men, and transact some business, without delaying
long, and yet not be molested ; for, said he, " No
little handful of men were willing to undertake it,
and a large body could not be got together in season."
As for his recent failure, we do not know the facts
about it. It was evidently far from being a wild and
desperate attempt. His enemy, Mr. Vallandigham,
is compelled to say, that "it was among the best
planned and executed conspiracies that ever failed."
Not to mention his other successes, was it a failure,
or did it show a want of good management, to dehver
from bondage a dozen human beings, and walk off
with them by broad daylight, for weeks if not months,
at a leisurely pace, through one State after another,
for half the length of the North, conspicuous to aU
parties, with a price set upon his head, going into a
court-room on his way and telling what he had done,
thus convincing Missouri that it was not profitable to
try to hold slaves in his neighbourhood ? — and this,
not because the government menials were lenient, but
because they were afraid of him.
Yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to
" his star,'' or to any magic. He said, truly, that the
reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed
before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed,
because they lacked a cause, — a kind of armour which
he and his party never lacked. When the time came,
few men were found willing to lay down their lives
in defence of what they knew to be wrong ; they did
not like that this should be their last act in this
world.
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 275
But to make haste to his last act, and its effects.
The newspapers seem to ignore, or perhaps are
really ignorant of the fact, that there are at least as
many as two or three individuals to a town through-
out the North who think much as the present speaker
does about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate
to say that they are an important and growing party.
We aspire to be something more than stupid and
timid chattels, pretending to read history and our
Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day
we breathe in. Perhaps anxious politicians may
prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes
were concerned in the late enterprise ; but their very
anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves
that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the
truth ? They are so anxious because of a dim
consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly
face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of
the United States would have rejoiced if it had
succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.
Though we wear no crape, the thought of that man's
position and probable fate is spoiling many a man's
day here at the North for other thinking. If any
one who has seen him here can pursue successfully
any other train of thought, I do not know what he is
made of. If there is any such who gets his usual
allowance of sleep, I will warrant him to fatten easily
under any circumstances which do not touch his body
or purse. I put a piece of paper and a pencil under
my pillow, and when I could not sleep, I wrote in
the dark.
276 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men,
except as one may outweigh a million, is not being
increased these days. I have noticed the cold-blooded
way in which newspaper writers and men generally
speak of this event, as if an ordinary malefactor,
though one of unusual " pluck," — as the Governor of
Virginia is reported to have said, using the language
of the cock-pit, " the gamest man he ever saw," — had
been caught, and were about to be hung. He was
not dreaming of his foes when the governor thought
he looked so brave. It turns what sweetness I have
to gall, to hear, or hear of, the remarks of some of my
neighbours. When we heard at first that he was
dead, one of my townsmen observed that " he died as
the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant
suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbour
living. Others, craven -hearted, said disparagingly,
that "he threw his life away," becaiise he resisted
the government. Which way have they thrown their
lives, pray "i — such as would praise a man for attack-
ing singly an ordinary band of thieves or murderers.
I hear another ask, Yankee-like, " What will he gain
by it 1 " as if he expected to fill his pockets by this
enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in
this wordly sense. If it does not lead to a " surprise "
party, if he does not get a new pair of boots, or a
vote of thanks, it must be a failure. " But he won't
gain anything by it." Well, no, I don't suppose he
could get four-and- sixpence a day for being hung,
take the year round ; but then he stands a chance to
save a considerable part of his soul, — and such a soul ! —
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 277
when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your
market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but
that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.
Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit,
and that, in the moral world, when good seed is
planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend
on our watering and cultivating; that when you
plant, or bury a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is
sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and
vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.
The momentary charge at Balaclava, in obedience
to a blundering command, proving what a perfect
machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been
celebrated by a poet laureate ; but the steady, and
for the most part successful, charge of this man, for
some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obed-
ience to an infinitely higher command, is as much
more memorable than that, as an intelligent and con-
scientious man is superior to a machine. Do you
think that that will go unsung ?
"Served him right," — "A dangerous man," — "He
is undoubtedly insane.'' So they proceed to live
their sane, and wise, and altogether admirable lives,
reading their Plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at
that feat of Putnam, who was let down into a wolf's
den; and in this wise they nourish themselves for
brave and patriotic deeds some time or other. The
Tract Society could aiFord to print that story of Put-
nam. You might open the district schools with the
reading of it, for there is nothing about Slavery or
the Church in it : unless it occurs to the reader that
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some pastors are wolves in sheep's clothing. "The
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis-
sions " even, might dare to protest against that wolf.
I have heard of boards, and of American boards, but
it chances that I never heard of this particular lumber
till lately. And yet I hear of Northern men, and
women, and children, by families, buying a "life-
membership " in such societies as these. A life-
membership in the grave ! You can get buried
cheaper than that.
Our foes are in our midst and all about us.
There is hardly a house but is divided against itself,
for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both
head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is
the effect of our vice ; and hence are begotten fear,
superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of aU
kinds. We are mere figure-heads upon a hulk, with
livers in the place of hearts. The curse is the worship
of idols, which at length changes the worshipper into
a stone image himself; and the New-Englander is
just as much an idolater as the Hindoo. This man
was an exception, for he did not set up even a
political graven image between him and his God.
A church that can never have done with excom-
municating Christ while it exists ! Away with your
broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall
churches ! Take a step forward, and invent a new
style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will save you,
and defend our nostrils.
The modern Christian is a man who has consented
to say all the prayers in the liturgy, provided you
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 279
will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly after-
ward. All his prayers begin with " Now I lay me
down to sleep," and he is for ever looking forward to
the time when he shall go to his "long rest." He has
consented to perform certain old-established charities,
too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to hear of
any new-fangled ones ; he doesn't wish to have any
supplementary articles added to the contract, to fit it
to the present time. He shows the whites of his
eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the
week. The evil is not merely a stagnation of blood,
but a stagnation of spirit. Many, no doubt, are weU
disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit,
and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by
higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pro-
nounce this man insane, for they know that they could
never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.
We dream of foreign -countries, of other times and
races of men, placing them at a distance in history or
space ; but let some significant event like the present
occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this
distance and this strangeness between us and our
nearest neighbours. They are our Austrias, and
Chinas, and South Sea Islands. Our crowded society
becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome
to the eye, — a city of magnificent distances. We
discover why it was that we never got beyond com-
pliments and surfaces with them before ; we become
aware of as many versts between us and them as
there are between a wandering Tartar and a Chinese
town. The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the
280 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable seas
suddenly find their level between us, or dumb steppes
stretch themselves out there. It is the difference of
constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not streams
and mountains, that make the true and impassable
boundaries between individuals and between states.
None but the like-minded can come plenipotentiary
to our court.
I read all the newspapers I could get within a
week after this event, and I do not remember in them
a single expression of sympathy for these men. I
have since seen one noble statement, in a Boston
paper, not editorial. Some voluminous sheets decided
not to print the full report of Brown's words to the
exclusion of other matter. It was as if a publisher
should reject the manuscript of the New Testament,
and print Wilson's last speech. The same journal
which contained this pregnant news, was chiefly filled,
in parallel columns, with the reports of the political
conventions that were being held. But the descent
to them was too steep. They should have been
spared this contrast, — been printed in an extra, at
least. To turn from the voices and deeds of earnest
men to the cackling of political conventions ! Office-
seekers and speech-makers, who do not so much as
lay an honest egg, but wear their breasts bare upon
an egg of chalk ! Their great game is the game of
straws, or rather that universal aboriginal game of
the platter, at which the Indians cried hub, hub!
Exclude the reports of religious and political con-
ventions, and publish the words of a living man.
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 281
But I object not so much to what they have
omitted, as to what they have inserted. Even the
Liberator called it " a misguided, wild, and apparently
insane effort." As for the herd of newspapers and
magazines, I do not chance to know an editor in the
country who will deliberately print anything which
he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the
number of his subscribers. They do not believe that
it would be expedient. How then can they print
truth 1 If we do not say pleasant things, they argue,
nobody will attend to us. And so they do like some
travelling auctioneers, who sing an obscene song, in
order to draw a crowd around them. Eepublican
editors, obliged to get their sentences ready for the
morning edition, and accustomed to look at every-
thing by the twilight of politics, express no admira-
tion, nor true sorrow even, but call these men
" deluded fanatics," — '' mistaken men," — " insane,"
or " crazed." It suggests what a sane set of editors
we are blessed with, not " mistaken men " ; who know
very well on which side their bread is buttered, at
least.
A man does a brave and humane deed, and at
once, on all sides, we hear people and parties declar-
ing, " I didn't do it, nor countenance him to do it, in
any conceivable way. It can't be fairly inferred from
my past career." I, for one, am not interested to
hear you define your position. I don't know that I
ever was, or ever shall be. I think it is mere egotism,
or impertinent at this time. Ye needn't take so
much pains to wash your skirts of him. No intelli-
282 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
gent man will ever be convinced that lie was any
creature of yours. He went and came, as he himself
informs us, " under the auspices of John Brown and
nobody else." The Republican party does not per-
ceive how many his failure will make to vote more
correctly than they would have them. They have
counted the votes of Pennsylvania & Co., but they
have not correctly counted Captain Brown's vote.
He has taken the wind out of their sails, — the little
wind they had, — and they may as well lie to and
repair.
What though he did not belong to your clique !
Though you may not approve of his method or his
principles, recognise his magnanimity. Would you
not like to claim kindredship with him in that,
though in no other thing he is like, or likely, to you?
Do you think that you would lose your reputation so ?
What you lost at the spUe, you would gain at the
bung.
If they do not mean all this, then they do not
speak the truth, and say what they mean. They are
simply at their old tricks still.
"It was always conceded to him," says one who
calls him crazy, " that he was a conscientious man, very
modest in his demeanour, apparently inoffensive, untD
the subject of Slavery was introduced, when he
would exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled."
The slave-ship is on her way, crowded with its
dying victims ; new cargoes are being added in mid-
ocean ; a small crew of slaveholders, countenanced by
a large body of passengers, is smothering four miUions
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 283
under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts
that the only proper way by which deliverance is to
be obtained, is by " the quiet diffusion of the senti-
ments of humanity," without any " outbreak." As if
the sentiments of humanity were ever found unac-
companied by its deeds, and you could disperse them,
all finished to order, the pure article, as easily as
water with a watering-pot, and so lay the dust.
What is that that I hear cast overboard ? The bodies
of the dead that have found deliverance. That is
the way we are " diffusing " humanity, and its senti-
ments with it.
Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to
deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower
grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted " on the
principle of revenge." They do not know the man.
They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him. I
have no doubt that the time will come when they
will begin to see him as he was. They have got to
conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle,
and not a politician or an Indian ; of a man who did
not wait till he was personally interfered with or
thwarted in some harmless business before he gave
his life to the cause of the oppressed.
If Walker may be considered the representative
of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the
representative of the North. He was a superior man.
He did not value his bodily life in comparison with
ideal things. He did not recognise unjust human
laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we
are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics
284 SELECTIONS FROM THOEBAU
into the region of truth and manhood. No man in
America has ever stood up so persistently and effec-
tively for the dignity of human nature, knowing
himself for a man, and the equal of any and all
governments. In that sense he was the most Ameri-
can of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making
false issues, to defend him. He was more than a
match for all the judges that American voters, or
office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He
could not have been tried by a jury of his peers,
because his peers did not exist. When a man stands
up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance
of mankind, rising above them literally ly a whole
body, — even though he were of late the vilest
murderer who has settled that matter with himself,
— the spectacle is a sublime one, — didn't ye know
it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans? — and
we become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves
the honour to recognise him. He needs none of your
respect.
As for the Democratic journals, they are not
human enough to affect me at aU. I do not feel
indignation at anything they may say.
I am aware that I anticipate a little, — that he was
still, at the last accounts, alive in the hands of his
foes ; but that being the case, I have all along found
myself thinking and speaking of him as physically
dead.
I do not believe in erecting statues to those who
still live in our hearts, whose bones have not yet
crumbled in the earth around us, but I would rather
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 285
see the statue of Captain Brown in the Massachusetts
State-House yard, than that of any other man whom
I know. I rejoice that I live in this age, that I am
his contemporary.
What a contrast, when we turn to that political
party which is so anxiously shuffling him and his
plot out of its way, and looking around for some
available slaveholder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at
least for one who will execute the Fugitive Slave Law,
and all those other unjust laws which he took up
arms to annul !
Insane ! A father and six sons, and one son-in-
law, and several more men besides, — as many at
least as twelve disciples, — all struck with insanity at
once; while the same tyrant holds with a firmer
gripe than ever his four millions of slaves, and a
thousand sane editors, his abettors, are saving their
country and their bacon ! Just as insane were his
efforts in Kansas. Ask the tyrant who is his most
dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane ! Do the
thousands who know him best, who have rejoiced at
his deeds in Kansas, and have afforded him material
aid there, think him insane 1 Such a use of this word
is a mere trope with most who persist in using it,
and I have no doubt that many of the rest have
already in silence retracted their words.
Eead his admirable answers to Mason and others.
How they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast !
On the one side, half-brutish, half-timid questioning ;
on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into
their obscene temples. They are made to stand with
286 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEBAU
Pilate, and Gesler, and the Inquisition. How ineffec-
tual their speech and action ! and what a void their
silence ! They are but helpless tools in this great
work. It was no human power that gathered them
about this preacher.
What have Massachusetts and the North sent a
few sane representatives to Congress for, of late
years ? — to declare with effect what kind of. senti-
ments ? All their speeches put together and boiled
down, — and probably they themselves will confess it,
— do not match for manly directness and force, and
for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John
Brown, on the floor of the Harper's Ferry engine-
house, — that man whom you are about to hang, to
send to the other world, though not to represent you
there. No, he was not our representative in any
sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to
represent the like of us. Who, then, were his constitu-
ents? If you read his words understandingly you
will find out. In his case there is no idle eloquence,
no made, nor maiden speech, no compliments to the
oppressor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the
polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose
his Sharpe's rifles, while he retained his faculty of
speech, — a Sharpe's rifle of infinitely surer and longer
range.
And the New York Herald reports the conversa-
tion verbatim ! It does not know of what undying
words it is made the vehicle.
I have no respect for the penetration of any man
who can read the report of that conversation, and
A PLEA FOK CAPTAIN JOHN BllOWN 287
still call the principal in it insane. It has the ring
of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and
habits of life, than an ordinary organisation, secure.
Take any sentence of it, — "Any questions that I can
honourably answer, I will ; not otherwise. So far as
I am myself concerned, I have told everything truth-
fully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk
about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire
his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble
man, no amalgam to combine with his pure gold.
They mix their own dross with it.
It is a relief to turn from these slanders to the
testimony of his more truthful, but frightened jailers
and hangmen. Governor Wise speaks far more justly
and appreciatingly of him than any Northern editor,
or politician, or public personage, that I chance to
have heard from. I know that you can afford to
hear him again on this subject. He says : " They
are themselves mistaken who take him to be a mad-
man. ... He is cool, collected, and indomitable,
and it is but just to him to say, that he was humane
to his prisoners. . . . And he inspired me with
great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He is
a fanatic, vain and garrulous " (I leave that part to
Mr. Wise), "but firm, truthful, and intelligent. His
men, too, who survive, are like him. . . Colonel
Washington says that he was the coolest and firmest
man he ever saw in defying danger and death. With
one son dead by his side, and another shot through,
he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, and
held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men
288 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEA0
with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be
firm, and to sell their lives as dear as they could. Of
the three white prisoners, Brown, Stephens, and
Coppic, it was hard to say which was most firm."
Almost the first Northern men whom the slave-
holder has learned to respect !
The testimony of Mr. Vallandigham, though less
valuable, is of the same purport, that " it is vain to
underrate either the man or his conspiracy. . . .
He is the furthest possible removed from the ordin-
ary ruflSan, fanatic, or madman."
"All is quiet at Harper's Ferry," say the journals.
What is the character of that calm which follows
when the law and the slaveholder prevail ? I regard
this event as a touchstone designed to bring out, with
glaring distinctness, the character of this government.
We needed to be thus assisted to see it by the light
of history. It needed to see itself. When a govern-
ment puts forth its strength on the side of injustice,
as ours to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of
the slave, it reveals itself a merely brute force, or
worse, a demoniacal force. It is the head of the Plug-
Uglies. It is more manifest than ever that tyranny
rules. I see this government to be efiectually allied
with France and Austria in oppressing mankind.
There sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions of
slaves ; here comes their heroic liberator. This most
hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from
its seat on the gasping foiu- millions, and inquires
with an assumption of innocence : " What do you
assault me for "! Am I not an honest man 1 Cease
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BKOWN 289
agitation on this subject, or I will make a slave of
you, too, or else hang you."
We talk about a representative government; but
what a monster of a government is that where the
noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are
not represented. A semi -human tiger or ox, stalk-
ing over the earth, with its heart taken out and the
top of its brain shot away. Heroes have fought well
on their stumps when their legs were shot oif, but I
never heard of any good done by such a government
as that.
The only government that I recognise, — and it
matters not how few are at the head of it, or how
small its army, — is that power that establishes justice
in the land, never that which establishes injustice.
What shall we think of a government to which all
the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies,
standing between it and those whom it oppresses?
A government that pretends to be Christian and
crucifies a million Christs every day !
Treason ! Where does such treason take its rise ?
I cannot help thinking of you as you deserve, ye
governments. Can you dry up the fountains of
thought? High treason, when it is resistance to
tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first
committed by, the power that makes and for ever
recreates man. When you have caught and hung all
these human rebels, you have accomplished nothing
but your own guilt, for you have not struck at the
fountain-head. You presume to contend with a foe
against whom West Point cadets and rifled cannon
U
290 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
point not. Can all the art of the cannon-founder
tempt matter to turn against its maker ? Is the form
in which the founder thinks he casts it more essential
than the constitution of it and of himself 1
The United States have a coffle of four millions of
slaves. They are determined to keep them in this
condition ; and Massachusetts is one of the confeder-
ated overseers to prevent their escape. Such are not
all the inhabitants of Massachusetts, but such are
they who rule and are obeyed here. It was Massa-
chusetts, as well as Virginia, that put down this insur-
rection at Harper's Ferry. She sent the marines
there, and she will have to pay the penalty of her sin.
Suppose that there is a society in this State that
out of its own purse and magnanimity saves aU
the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects
our coloured fellow -citizens, and leaves the other
work to the government, so-called. Is not that
government fast losing its occupation, and becoming
contemptible to mankind ? If private men are obliged
to perform the offices of government, to protect the
weak and dispense justice, then the government be-
comes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial
or indifferent services. Of course, that is but the
shadow of a government whose existence necessitates
a Vigilant Committee. What should we think of the
Oriental Cadi even, behind whom worked in secret a
vigilant committee 1 But such is the character of our
Northern States generally ; each has its Vigilant
Committee. And, to a certain extent, these crazy
governments recognise and accept this relation.
A PLEA FOK CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 291
They say, virtually, " We'll be glad to work for you
on these terms, only don't make a noise about it."
And thus the government, its salary being insured,
withdraws into the back shop, taking the Constitution
with it, and bestows most of its labour on repairing
that. When I hear it at work sometimes, as I go by,
it reminds me, at best, of those farmers who in winter
contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering
business. And what kind of spirit is their barrel
made to hold 1 They speculate in stocks, and bore
holes in mountains, but they are not competent to
lay out even a decent highway. The only free road,
the Underground Eailroad, is owned and managed
by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunnelled
under the whole breadth of the land. Such a
government is losing its power and respectability as
surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is
held by one that can contain it.
I hear many condemn these men because they
were so few. When were the good and the brave
ever in a majority 1 Would you have had him wait
till that time came'! — till you and I came over to
him 1 The very fact that he had no rabble or troop
of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him
from ordinary heroes. His company was small in-
deed, because few could be found worthy to pass
muster. Each one who there laid down his life for
the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out
of many thousands, if not millions ; apparently a man
of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity ;
ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the
292 SELECTIONS FKOM THOKEAU
benefit of his fellow-man. It may be doubted if
there were as many more their equals in these
respects in all the country ; — I speak of his followers
only; — for their leader, no doubt, scoured the land
far and wide, seeking to swell his troop. These alone
were ready to step between the oppressor and the
oppressed. Surely they were the very best men you
could select to be hung. That was the greatest com-
pliment which this country could pay them. They
were ripe for her gallows. She has tried a long time,
she has hung a good many, but never found the
right one before.
When I think of him, and his six sons, and his
son-in-law, not to enumerate the others, enlisted for
this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to
work, for months if not years, sleeping and waking
upon it, summering and wintering the thought, with-
out expecting any reward but a good conscience,
while almost all America stood ranked on the other
side, — I say again that it affects me as a sublime
spectacle. If he had had any journal advocating " his
cause,'' any organ, as the phrase is, monotonously and
wearisomely playing the same old tune, and then
passing round the hat, it would have been fatal to
his efficiency. If he had acted in any way so as to
be let alone by the government, he might have been
suspected. It was the fact that the tyrant must give
place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished
him from all the reformers of the day that I know.
It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a per-
fect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder,
A PLEA FOB CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 293
in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him.
They who are continually shocked by slavery have
some right to be shocked by the violent death of
the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more
shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be
forward to think him mistaken in his method who
quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for
the slave when I say, that I prefer the philanthropy
of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither
shoots me nor liberates me. At any rate, I do not
think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life
in talking or writing about this matter, unless he is
continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A
man may have other affairs to attend to. I do not
wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circum-
stances in which both these things would be by me
unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our
community by deeds of petty violence every day.
Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs ! Look
at the jail ! Look at the gallows ! Look at the
chaplain of the regiment ! We are hoping only to
live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army.
So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and main-
tain slavery. I know that the mass of my country-
men think that the only righteous use that can be
made of Sharpe's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels
with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or
to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them,
or the like. I think that for once the Sharpe's rifles
and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause.
The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.
294 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
The same indignation that is said to have cleared
the temple once will clear it again. The question is
not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you
use it. No man has appeared in America, as yet,
who loved his fellow-man so well, and treated him so
tenderly. He lived for him. He took up his life
and he laid it down for him. What sort of violence
is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by
peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by
ministers of the Gospel, no't so much by the fighting
sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker
men as by Quaker women 1
This event advertises me that there is such a fact
as death, — the possibility of a man's dying. It seems
as if no man had ever died in America before ; for
in order to die you must first have lived. I don't
believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that
they have had. There was no death in the case,
because there had been no life ; they merely rotted
or sloughed oif, pretty much as they had rotted or
sloughed along. No temple's veil was rent, only a
hole dug somewhere. Let the dead bury their dead.
The best of them fairly ran down like a clock.
Franklin, ^ — Washington, — they were let off without
dying ; they were merely missing one day. I hear
a good many pretend that they are going to die;
or that they have died, for aught that I know.
Nonsense ! I'll defy them to do it. They haven't
got life enough in them. They'll deliquesce like
fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot
where they left off. Only half a dozen or so have
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 295
died since the world began. Do you think that you
are going to die, sir ? No ! there's no hope of you.
You haven't got your lesson yet. You've got to stay
after school. We make a needless ado about capital
punishment, — taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Memento mori! We don't understand that sublime
sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his
gravestone once. We've interpreted it in a grovelling
and snivelling sense; we've wholly forgotten how to die.
But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your
work, and finish it. If you know how to begin, you
will know when to end.
These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the
same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts
and words do not create a revival, it will be the
severest possible satire on the acts and words that do.
It is the best news that America has ever heard. It
has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North,
and infused more and more generous blood into her
veins and heart, than any number of years of what
is called commercial and political prosperity could.
How many a man who was lately contemplating
suicide has now something to live for !
One writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania
made him to be " dreaded by the Missourians as a
supernatural being.'' Sure enough, a hero in the
midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. He is just
that thing. He shows himself superior to nature.
He has a spark of divinity in him.
" Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! "
296 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
Newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of
his insanity that he thought he was appointed to do
this work which he did, — that he did not suspect
himself for a moment ! They talk as if it were im-
possible that a man could be "divinely appointed"
in these days to do any work whatever ; as if vows
and religion were out of date as connected with any
man's daily work ; as if the agent to abolish slavery
could only be somebody appointed by the President,
or by some political party. They talk as if a man's
death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of
whatever character, were a success.
When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted
himself, and how religiously, and then reflect to what
cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily
and fluently devote themselves, I see that they are
as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder.
The amount of it is, our "leading men" are a
harmless kind of folk, and they know well enough
that they were not divinely appointed, but elected by
the votes of their party.
Who is it whose safety requires that Captain
Brown be hung '! Is it indispensable to any Northern
man ? Is there no resource but to cast this man also
to the Minotaur? If you do not wish it, say so
distinctly. While these things are being done,
beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie.
Think of him, — of his rare qualities ! — such a man as
it takes ages to make, and ages to understand; no
mock hero, nor the representative of any party. A
man such as the sun may not rise upon again in this
A PLEA FOE CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 297
benighted land. To whose making went the costhest
material, the finest adamant ; sent to be the redeemer'
of those in captivity ; and the only use to which you
can put him is to hang him at the end of a rope !
You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, consider
what you are about to do to him who offered him-
self to be the saviour of four millions of men.
Any man knows when he is justified, and all the
wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that
point. The murderer always knows that he is justly
punished ; but when a government takes the life of
a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an
audacious government, and is taking a step towards
its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an indi-
vidual may be right and a government wrong 1 Are
laws to be enforced simply because they were made 1
or declared by any number of men to be good, if they
are not good? Is there any necessity for a man's
being a tool to perform a deed of which his better
nature disapproves 1 Is it the intention of law-makers
that good men shall be hung ever 1 Are judges to in-
terpret the law according to the letter, and not the
spirit ? What right have you to enter into a compact
with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the
light within you 1 Is it for you to maJce up your mind,
• — to form any resolution whatever, — and not accept
the convictions that are forced upon you, and which
ever pass your understanding ? I do not believe in
lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a
man, because you descend to meet the judge on his
own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance.
298 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEATJ
it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a
human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.
Business men may arrange that among themselves.
If they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws
which rightfully bind man, that would be another
thing. A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in
a slave land and half in a free ! What kind of laws
for free men can you expect from that 1
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead
not for his life, but for his character, — his immortal
life ; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not
his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago
Christ was crucified ; this morning, perchance. Captain
Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain
which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown
any longer ; he is an angel of light.
I see now that it was necessary that the bravest
and humanest man in all the country should be hung.
Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may
yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged
life, if any life, can do as much good as his death.
"Misguided"! "Garrulous"! "Insane"! "Vin-
dictive " ! So ye write in your easy-chairs, and thus
he, wounded, responds from the floor of the Armoury,
clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature
is : " No man sent me here ; it was my own prompt-
ing and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master
in human form."
And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds,
addressing his captors, who stand over him : " I
think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BEOWN 299
against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly
right for any one to interfere with you so far as to
free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bond-
age."
And, referring to his movement: "It is, in my
opinion, the greatest service a man can render to
God."
"I pity the poor in bondage that have none to
help them ; that is why I am here ; not to gratify
any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit.
It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the
wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in
the sight of God."
You don't know your testament when you see it.
"I want you to understand that I respect the
rights of the poorest and weakest of coloured people,
oppressed by the slave power, just as much as I do
those of the most wealthy and powerful.
" I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better,
all you people at the South, prepare yourselves for a
settlement of that question, that must come up for
settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The
sooner you are prepared the better. You may
dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of
now; but this question is still to be settled, — this
negro question, I mean; the end of that is not
yet."
I foresee the time when the painter will paint that
scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject ; the
poet will sing it ; the historian record it ; and, with
the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of
300 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEBAU
Independence, it will be the ornament of some future
national gallery, wten at least the present form of
slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at
liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not
till then, we will take our revenge.
LIFE WITHOUT PEINOIPLE
At a lyceum, not long since, I felt that the lecturer
had chosen a theme too foreign to himself, and so
failed to interest me as much as he might have done.
He described things not in or near to his heart, but
toward his extremities and superficies. There was,
in this sense, no truly central or centralising thought
in the lecture. I would have had him deal with his
privatest experience, as the poet does. The greatest
compliment that was ever paid me was when one
asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this
happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me,
as if he were acquainted with the tool. Commonly,
if men want anything of me, it is only to know how
many acres I make of their land, — since I am a
surveyor, — or, at most, what trivial news I have
burdened myself with. They never will go to law for
my meat ; they prefer the shell. A man once came a
considerable distance to ask me to lecture on Slavery ;
but on conversing with him, I found that he and his
clique expected seven-eighths of the lecture to be
302 SELECTIONS FEOM THOKEAU
theirs, and only one-eighth mine; so I declined. I
take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture any-
where, — for I have had a little experience in that
business, — that there is a desire to hear what I think
on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool
in the country, — and not that I should say pleasant
things merely, or such as the audience wiU assent to ;
and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a
strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and
engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that
they shall have me, though I bore them beyond aU
precedent.
So now I would say something similar to you, my
readers. Since you are my readers, and I have not
been much of a traveller, I will not talk about people
a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can.
As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery,
and retain all the criticism.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our
lives.
This world is a place of business. What an in-
finite bustle ! I am awaked almost every night by
the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my
dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious
to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing
but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-
book to write thoughts in; they are commonly
ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing
me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted
that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed
out of a window when an infant, and so made a
LIFE WITHOUT PEINCIPLE 303
cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the
Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus
incapacitated for — business ! I think that there is
nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to
philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant
business.
There is a coarse and boisterous money-making
fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going to
build a bank-wall under the hill along the edge of his
meadow. The powers have put this into his head to
keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend
three weeks digging there with him. The result will
be that he will perhaps get some more money to
hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If
I do this, most will commend me as' an industrious
and hard-working man ; but if I choose to devote
myself to certain labours which yield more real
profit, though but little money, they may be inclined
to look on me as an idler. Nevertheless, as I do
not need the police of meaningless labour to regulate
me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy
in this fellow's undertaking, any more than in
many an enterprise of our own or foreign govern-
ments, however amusing it may be to him or them,
I prefer to finish my education at a dififerent
school.
If a man walk in the woods for love of them half
of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a
loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a specu-
lator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald
before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and
304 SELECTIONS FROM THOKBAU
enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in
its forests but to cut them down !
Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed
to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and
then in throwing them back, merely that they might
earn their wages. But many are no more worthily
employed now. For instance : just after sunrise, one
summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbours
walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing a
heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded
by an atmosphere of industry, — his day's work begun,
— his brow commenced to sweat, — a reproach to all
sluggards and idlers, — pausing abreast the shoulders
of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of
his merciful whip, while they gained their length on
him. And I thought. Such is the labour which the
American Congress exists to protect, — honest, manly
toil, — honest as the day is long, — that makes his
bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweet, — which
all men respect and have consecrated ; one of the
sacred band, doing the needful but irksome drudgery.
Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed
this from a window, and was not abroad and stirring
about a similar business. The day went by, and at
evening I passed the yard of another neighbour, who
keeps many servants, and spends much money fool-
ishly, while he adds nothing to the common stock,
and there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside
a whimsical structure intended to adorn this Lord
Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forth-
with departed from the teamster's labour, in my eyes.
LIFE WITHOUT PKINCIPLE 305
In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier
toil than this. I may add, that his employer has
since run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and,
after passing through Chancery, has settled some-
where else, there to become once more a patron of
the arts.
The ways by which you may get money almost
without exception lead downward. To have done
anything by which you earned money merely is to
have been truly idle or worse. If the labourer gets
no more than the wages which his employer pays
him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would
get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be
popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those
services which the community will most readily pay
for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid
for being something less than a man. The State does
not commonly reward a genius any more wisely.
Even the poet-laureate would rather not have to cele-
brate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed
with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is
called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.
As for my own business, even that kind of survey-
ing which I could do with most satisfaction, my em-
ployers do not want. They would prefer that I
should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not
well enough. When I observe that there are different
ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks
which will give him the most land, not which is most
correct. I once invented a rule for measuring cord-
wood, and tried to introduce it in Boston ; but the
X
306 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
measurer there told me that the sellers did not wish
to have their wood measured correctly, — that he was
already too accurate for them, and therefore they
commonly got their wood measured in Charlestown
before crossing the bridge.
The aim of the labourer should be, not to get his
living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a
certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it
would be economy for a town to pay its labourers so
well that they would not feel that they were working
for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for
scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man
who does your work for money, but him who does it
for love of it.
It is remarkable that there are few men so well
employed, so much to their minds, but that a little
money or fame would commonly buy them off from
their present pursuit. I see advertisements for adive
young men, as if activity were the whole of a young
man's capital. Yet I have been surprised when one
has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to
embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had abso-
lutely nothing to do, my life having been a complete
failure hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this
is to pay me ! As if he had met me half-way across
the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound
nowhere, and proposed to me to go along with him !
If I did, what do you think the underwriters would
say 1 No, no 1 I am not without employment at this
stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an
advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when I was a
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 307
boy, sauntering in my native port, and as soon as I
came of age I embarked.
The community has no bribe that will tempt a
wise man. You may raise money enough to timnel
a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to
hire a man who is minding his own business. An
efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether
the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient
offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are
for ever expecting to be put into office. One would
suppose that they were rarely disappointed.
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with re-
spect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with
and obligation to society are still very slight and
transient. Those slight labours which afford me a
livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to
some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as
yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often
reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am
successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be
much increased, the labour required to supply them
would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my
forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear
to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing
left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus
sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to
suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet
not spend his time well. There is no more fatal
blunderer than he who consumes the greater part
of his life getting his living. All great enterprises
are self -supporting. The poet, for instance, must
308 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEATJ
sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-
mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes.
You must get your living by loving. But as it is
said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred
fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this
standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely
prophesied.
Merely to come into the world the heir of a for-
tune is not to be born, but to be stiU-born, rather.
To be supported by the charity of friends, or a
government -pension, — provided you continue to
breathe, — by whatever fine synonymes you describe
these relations, is to go into the almshouse. On
Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to take an
account of stock, and finds, of course, that his out-
goes have been greater than his income. In the
Catholic Church, especially, they go into Chancery,
make a clean confession, give up all, and think to
start again. Thus men wiU lie on their backs, talk-
ing about the fall of man, and never make an eflfort
to get up.
As for the comparative demand which men make
on life, it is an important difference between two,
that the one is satisfied with a level success, that his
marks can all be hit by point-blank shots, but the
other, however low and unsuccessful his life may be,
constantly elevates his aim, though at a very slight
angle to the horizon. I should much rather be the
last man, — though, as the Orientals say, " Greatness
doth not approach him who is for ever looking down ;
and all those who are looking high are growing poor."
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 309
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to
be remembered written on the subject of getting a
living : how to make getting a living not merely
honest and honourable, but altogether inviting and
glorious ; for if getting a living is not so, then living
is not. One would think, from looking at literature,
that this question had never disturbed a solitary
individual's musings. Is it that men are too much
disgusted with their experience to speak of it "i The
lesson of value which money teaches, which the
Author of the Universe has taken so much pains to
teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. As for
the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent
men of all classes are about it, even reformers, so
called, — whether they inherit, or earn, or steal it. I
think that Society has done nothing for us in this
respect, or at least has undone what she has done.
Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature
than those methods which men have adopted and
advise to ward them off.
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied.
How can one be a wise man, if he does not know
any better how to live than other men? — if he is
only more cunning and intellectually subtle ? Does
Wisdom work in a tread-milH or does she teach how
to succeed hy her example 1 Is there any such thing as
wisdom not applied to life % Is she merely the miller
who grinds the finest logic % It is pertinent to ask if
Plato got his living in a better way or more success-
fully than his contemporaries, — or did he succumb to
the difficulties of life like other men % Did he seem
310 SELECTIONS FROM THOKEAU
to prevail over some of them merely by indifference,
or by assuming grand airs 1 or find it easier to live,
because his aunt remembered him in her will 1 The
ways in which most men get their living, that is, live,
are mere make -shifts, and a shirking of the real
business of life, — chiefly because they do not know,
but partly because they do not mean, any better.
The rush to California, for instance, and the atti-
tude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers
and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the
greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are
ready to live by luck, and so get the means of com-
manding the labour of others less lucky, without
contributing any value to society ! And that is
called enterprise ! I know of no more startling
development of the immorality of trade, and all the
common modes of getting a hving. The philosophy
and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not
worth the dust of a puff-ball. The hog that gets his
living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be
ashamed of such company. If I could command the
wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would
not pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew
that God did not make this world in jest. It makes
God to be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a hand-
ful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for
them. The world's raffle ! A subsistence in the
domains of Nature a thing to be raflled for ! What
a comment, what a satire, on our institutions ! The
conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself
upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the
LIFE WITHOUT PKINCIPLE 311
Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and
most admirable invention of the human race only an
improved muck-rake 1 Is this the ground on which
Orientals and Occidentals meet ? Did God direct us
so to get our living, digging where we never planted,
— and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps
of gold "i
God gave the righteous man a certiiicate entitling
him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man
found a, facsimile of the same in God's coffers, and
appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like
the former. It is one of the most extensive systems
of counterfeiting that the world has seen. I did not
know that mankind were suffering for want of gold.
I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very
malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of
gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a
grain of wisdom.
The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is
as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of
San Francisco. What difference does it make, whether
you shake dirt or shake dice 1 If you win, society
is the loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the
honest labourer, whatever checks and compensations
there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you
worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil
work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard
in many respects. The humblest observer who goes
to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the
character of a lottery ; the gold thus obtained is not
the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But,
312 SELECTIONS FEOM THOEEAU
practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has
seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into
trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly
proves another lottery, where the fact is not so
obvious.
After reading Howitt's account of the Australian
gold-diggings one evening, I had in my mind's eye,
all night, the numerous valleys, with their streams,
all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred
feet deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as
they can be dug, and partly filled with water, — the
locality to which men furiously rush to probe for
their fortunes, — uncertain where they shall break
ground, — not knowing but the gold is under then-
camp itself, — sometimes digging one hundred and
sixty feet before they strike the vein, or then missing
it by a foot, — turned into demons, and regardless of
each other's rights, in their thirst for riches, — whole
valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed by
the pits of the miners, so that even hundreds are
drowned in them, — standing in water, and covered
with mud and clay, they work night and day, dying
of exposure and disease. Having read this, and
partly forgotten it, I was thinking, accidentally, of
my own unsatisfactory life, doing as others do ; and
with that vision of the diggings stiU before me, I
asked myself, why /might not be washing some gold
daily, though it were only the finest particles, — why
/ might not sink a shaft down to the gold within
me, and work that mine. There is a Ballarat, a Ben-
digo for }'ou, — what though it were a sulky-gully?
LIFE WITHOUT PKINCIPLE 313
At any rate, I might pursue some path, however
solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could
walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man
separates from the multitude, and goes his own way
in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road,
though ordinary travellers may see only a gap in the
paling. His solitary path across-lots will turn out
the higher way of the two.
Men rush to California and Australia as if the
true gold were to be found in that direction; but
that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where
it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away
from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when
they think themselves most successful. Is not our
Tuitive soil auriferous 1 Does not a stream from the
golden mountains flow through our native valley 1
and has not this for more than geologic ages been
bringing down the shining particles and forming the
nuggets for us ? Yet, strange to tell, if a digger steal
away, prospecting for this true gold, into the un-
explored solitudes around us, there is no danger that
any will dog his steps, and endeavour to supplant
him. He may claim and undermine the whole valley
even, both the cultivated and the uncultivated
portions, his whole life long in peace, for no one will
ever dispute his claim. They will not mind his
cradles or his toms. He is not confined to a claim
twelve feet square, as at Ballarat, but may mine any-
where, and wash the whole wide world in his tom.
Howitt says of the man who foimd the great
nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the
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Beiidigo diggings in Australia : "He soon began to
drink ; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at
full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to
inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly
informed them that he was ' the bloody wretch that
had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed
against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out."
I think, however, there was no danger of that, for
he had already knocked his brains out against the
nugget. Howitt adds, " He is a hopelessly ruined
man." But he is a type of the class. They are all
fast men. Hear some of the names of the places
where they dig: "Jackass Flat," — " Sheep's-Head
Gully," — "Murderer's Bar," etc. Is there no satire
in these names ? Let them carry their ill-gotten
wealth where they will, I am thinking it wiU still be
"Jackass Fiat,'' if not "Murderer's Bar," where they
live.
The last resource of our energy has been the rob-
bing of graveyards on the Isthmus of Darien, an
enterprise which appears to be but in its infancy ;
for, according to late accounts, an act has passed its
second reading in the legislature of New Granada,
regulating this kind of mining ; and a correspondent
of the Trilune writes : " In the dry season, when
the weather will permit of the country being properly
prospected, no doubt other rich guacas [that is, grave-
yards] will bo found." To emigrants he says: "Do
not come before December ; take the Isthmus route
in preference to the Boca del Toro one ; bring no
useless baggage, and do not cumber yourself with a
LIFE WITHOUT PEINOIPLE 315
tent ; but a good pair of blankets will be necessary ;
a pick, shovel, and axe of good material will be
almost all that is required " : advice which might
have been taken from the Burker's Guide. And
he concludes with this line in italics and small
capitals : "If you are doing well at home, stay there,"
which may fairly be interpreted to mean, " If you are
getting a good living by robbing graveyards at home,
stay there."
But why go to California for a text ? She is the
child of New England, bred at her own school and
church.
It is remarkable that among all the preachers
there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are
employed in excusing the ways of men. Most rever-
end seniors, the illuminati of the age, tell me, with a
gracious, reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and
a shudder, not to be too tender about these things,
— to lump all that, that is, make a lump of gold of it.
The highest advice I have heard on these subjects
was grovelling. The burden of it was, — It is not
worth your while to undertake to reform the world
in this particular. Do not ask how your bread
is buttered ; it will make you sick, if you do, — and
the like. A man had better starve at once than
lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
If within the sophisticated man there is not an un-
sophisticated one, then he is but one of the Devil's
angels. As we grow old, we live more coarsely, we
relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent,
cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be
316 SELECTIONS FROM THOREATJ
fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the
gibes of those who are more unfortunate than our-
selves.
In our science and philosophy, even, there is
commonly no true and absolute account of things.
The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof
amid the stars. You have only to discuss the prob-
lem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order
to discover it. Why must we daub the heavens as
well as the earth 1 It was an unfortunate discovery
that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and that Sir John
Franklin was another. But it was a more cruel
suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the
former went in search of the latter. There is not a
popular magazine in this country that would dare to
print a child's thought on important subjects without
comment. It must be submitted to the D.D.s. I
would it were the chickadee-dees.
You come from attending the funeral of mankind
to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought
is sexton to all the world.
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so
broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in
his society. Most with whom you endeavour to talk
soon come to a stand against some institution in
which they appear to hold stock, — that is, some
particular, not universal, way of viewing things.
They will continually thrust their own low roof,
with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky,
when it is the unobstructed heavens you would view.
Get out of the way mth your cobwebs, wash your
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 317
windows, I say ! In some lyceums they tell me that
they have voted to exclude the subject of religion.
But how do I know what their religion is, and when
I am near to or far from it ? I have walked into
such an arena and done my best to make a clean
breast of what religion I have experienced, and the
audience never suspected what I was about. The
lecture was as harmless as moonshine to them.
Whereas, if I had read to them the biography of the
greatest scamps in history, they might have thought
that I had written the lives of the deacons of their
church. Ordinarily, the inquiry is. Where did you
come from ? or. Where are you going ? That was a
more pertinent question which I overheard one of
my auditors put to another once, — "What does he
lecture for 1 " It made me quake in my shoes.
To speak impartially, the best men that I know
are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most
part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect
only more finely than the rest. We select granite for
the underpinning of our houses and barns ; we build
fences of stone ; but we do not ourselves rest on an
underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive
rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man
made of who is not coexistent in our thought with
the purest and subtilest truth? I often accuse my
finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity ; for,
while there are manners and compliments, we do not
meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of
honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadi-
ness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is
318 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
commonly mutual, however ; for we do not habitually
demand any more of each other.
That excitement about Kossuth, consider how
characteristic, but superficial, it was ! — only another
kind of politics or dancing. Men were making
speeches to him all over the country, but each ex-
pressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of
the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were
merely banded together, as usual, one leaning on
another, and all together on nothing ; as the Hindoos
made the world rest on an elephant, the elephant on
a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent, and had
nothing to put under the serpent. For all fruit of
that stir we have the Kossuth hat.
Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part,
is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface.
When our life ceases to be inward and private, con-
versation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely
meet a man who can tell us any news which he has
not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neigh-
bour ; and, for the most part, the only difference
between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the
newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In
proportion as our inward life fails, we go more con-
stantly and desperately to the post-office. You may
depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away
with the greatest number of letters, proud of his
extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself
this long while.
I do not know but it is too much to read one news-
paper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 319
long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my
native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the
trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two
masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to
know and to possess the wealth of a day.
We may well be ashamed to tell what things we
have read or heard in our day. I do not know why
my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's
dreams and expectations are, why the developments
should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most
part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest
repetition. You are often tempted to ask, why such
stress is laid on a particular experience which you
have had, — that, after twenty-five years, you should
meet Hobbins, Eegistrar of Deeds, again on the side-
walk. Have you not budged an inch, then ? Such is
the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmo-
sphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and
impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our
minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a
parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of
such news. Of what consequence, though our planet
explode, if there is no character involved in the
explosion ? In health we have not the least curiosity
about such events. We do not live for idle amuse-
ment. I would not run round a corner to see the
world blow up.
All summer, and far into the autumn, perchance,
you unconsciously went by the newspapers and the
news, and now you find it was because the morning
and the evening were full of news to you. Your
320 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
walks were full of incidents. You attended, not to
the affairs of Europe, but to your own affairs in
Massachusetts fields. If you chance to live and move
and have your being in that thin stratum in which
the events that make the news transpire, — thinner
than the paper on which it is printed, — then these
things will fiU the world for you; but if you soar
above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember
nor be reminded of them. Really to see the sun rise
or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a
universal fact, would preserve us sane for ever.
Nations ! What are nations 1 Tartars, and Huns,
and Chinamen ! Like insects, they swarm. The
historian strives in vain to make them memorable.
It is for want of a man that there are so many men.
It is individuals that populate the world. Any man
thinking may say with the Spirit of Lodin —
" I look down from my height on nations,
And they become ashes before me ; —
Calm is my dwelling in the clouds ;
Pleasant are the great fields of my rest."
Pray, let us Hve without being drawn by dogs,
Esquimaux-fashion, tearing over hill and dale, and
biting each other's ears.
Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I
often perceive how near I had come to admitting
into my mind the details of some trivial affair, — the
news of the street ; and I am astonished to observe
how willing men are to lumber their minds with
such rubbish, — to permit idle rumours and incidents
of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground
LIFE WITHOUT PKINCIPLE 321
which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind
be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and
the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed 1 Or
shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, — an hypsethral
temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I
find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which
to me are significant that I hesitate to burden my
attention with those which are insignificant, which
only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the
most part, the news in newspapers and conversation.
It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this
respect. Think of admitting the details of a single
ease of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk
profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an
hour, ay, for many hours ! to make a very bar-room
of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the
dust of the street had occupied us, — the very street
itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had
passed through our thoughts' shrine ! Would it not
be an intellectual and moral suicide 1 When I have
been compelled to sit spectator and auditor in a court-
room for some hours, and have seen my neighbours,
who were not compelled, stealing in from time to
time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and
faces, it has appeared to my mind's eye, that, when
they took ofif their hats, their ears suddenly expanded
into vast hoppers for sound, between which even their
narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of wind-
mills, they caught the broad, but shallow stream of
sound, which, after a few titillating gyrations in their
coggy brains, passed out the other side. I wondered
T
322 SELECTIONS FKOM THOEEAU
if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash
their ears as before their hands and faces. It had
seemed to me, at such a time, that the auditors and
the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the judge and
the criminal at the bar, — ^if I may presume him guilty
before he is convicted, — were aU equally criminal,
and a thunderbolt might be expected to descend and
consume them all together.
By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening
the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such
trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred
to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than
useless to remember ! If I am to be a thoroughfare,
I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the
Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There
is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of
the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There
is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room
and the police court. The same ear is fitted to
receive both communications. Only the character
of the hearer determines to which it shall be open,
and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be
permanently profaned by the habit of attending to
trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged
with triviality. Our very intellect shall be mac-
adamised, as it were, — its foundation broken into
fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over ; and
if you would know what will make the most durable
pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and
asphaltum, you have only tolook into some of our minds
which have been subjected to this treatment so long.
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 323
If we have thus desecrated ourselves, — as who has
not?— the remedy will be by wariness and devotion
to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane
of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is,
ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose
guardians we are, and be careful what objects and
what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read
not the Times. Read the Eternities. Convention-
alities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the
facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness,
unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or
rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living
truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details,
but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every
thought that passes through the mind helps to wear
and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the
streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used.
How many things there are concerning which we
might well deliberate whether we had better know
them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven,
even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of
glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from
the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of
eternity ! Have we no culture, no refinement, — but
skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil 1 — to
acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty,
and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk
and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us?
Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burrs
which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the
fingers 1
Y 2
324 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
America is said to be the arena on which the
battle of freedom is to be fought ; but surely it can-
not be freedom in a merely political sense that is
meant. Even if we grant that the American has
freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the
slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that
the republic, — the res-puUica, — has been settled, it is
time to look after the res-privata, — the private state,
— to see, as the Roman senate charged its consuls,
"ne quid res-PBiVATA detrimenti caper et," that the
private state receive no detriment.
Do we call this the land of the free 1 What is it
to be free from King George and continue the slaves
of King Prejudice 1 What is it to be born free and
not to live free ? What is the value of any political
freedom, but as a means to moral freedom 1 Is it a
freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of
which we boast ? We are a nation of politicians, con-
cerned about the outmost defences only of freedom.
It is our children's children who may perchance be
really free. We tax ourselves unjustly. There is a
part of us which is not represented. It is taxation
without representation. We quarter troops, we
quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon ourselves.
We quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till
the former eat up all the latter's substance.
With respect to a true culture and manhood, we
are essentially pro^ancial still, not metropolitan, —
mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do
not find at home our standards, — because we do not
worship truth, but the reflection of truth, — because
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 325
we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devo-
tion to trade and commerce and manufactures and
agriculture and the like, which are but means, and
not the end.
So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere
country-bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any
more important question arises for them to settle,
the Irish question, for instance, — the English question
why did I not say ? Their natures are subdued to
what they work in. Their "good breeding " respects
only secondary objects. The finest manners in the
world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted
with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the
fashions of past days, — mere courtliness, knee-buckles
and small-clothes, out of date. It is the vice, but
not the excellence of manners, that they are continu-
ally being deserted by the character ; they are cast-
off clothes or shells, claiming the respect which
belonged to the living creature. You are presented
with the shells instead of the meat, and it is no
excuse generally, that, in the case of some fishes,
the shells are of more worth than the meat. The
man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he
were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of
curiosities, when I wished to see himself. It was
not in this sense that the poet Decker called Christ
"the first true gentleman that ever breathed." I
repeat, that in this sense the most splendid court
in Christendom is provincial, having authority to
consult about Transalpine interests only, and not
the affairs of Eome. A praetor or proconsul would
326 SELECTIONS FROM THOEEAU
suffice to settle the questions which absorb the atten-
tion of the English Parliament and the American
Congress.
Government and legislation ! these I thought were
respectable professions. We have heard of heaven-
born Numas, Lycurguses, and Solons, in the history
of the world, whose names at least may stand for
ideal legislators ; but think of legislating to regulate
the breeding of slaves, or the exportation of tobacco !
What have divine legislators to do with the exporta-
tion or the importation of tobacco? what humane
ones vnth the breeding of slaves ? Suppose you were
to submit the question to any son of God, — and has
He no children in the nineteenth century? is it a
family which is extinct? — in what condition would
you get it again ? What shall a State like Virginia
say for itself at the last day, in which these have
been the principal, the staple productions? What
ground is there for patriotism in such a State? I
derive my facts from statistical tables which the
States themselves have published.
A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of
nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for
this purpose ! I saw, the other day, a vessel which
had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her
cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds
were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly
worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea
between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a
cargo of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America
sending to the Old World for her bitters ! Is not the
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 327
sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make
the cup of life go down here ? Yet such, to a great
extent, is our boasted commerce ; and there are those
who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who
are so blind as to think that progress and civilisation
depend on precisely this kind of interchange and
activity, — the activity of ilies about a molasses-
hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were
oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mos-
quitoes.
Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent
to explore the Amazon, and, it is said, to extend the
area of slavery, observed that there was wanting
there "an industrious and active population, who
know what the comforts of life are, and who have
artificial wants to draw out the great resources of
the country." But what are the "artificial wants"
to be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like
the tobacco and slaves of, I believe, his native
Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other material
wealth of our native New England; nor are "the
great resources of a country " that fertility or barren-
ness of soil which produces these. The chief want,
in every State that I have been into, was a high and
earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws
out " the great resources " of Nature, and at last taxes
her beyond her resources; for man naturally dies
out of her. When we want culture more than
potatoes, and illumination more than sugar -plums,
then the great resources of a world are taxed and
drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is,
328 SELECTIONS PEOM THOEEAU
not slaves, nor operatives, but men, — those rare
fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and
redeemers.
In short, as a snow-drift is formed where there is
a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is
a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the
truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at
length blows it down.
What is called politics is comparatively something
so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have
never fairly recognised that it concerns me at all.
The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their
columns specially to politics or government without
charge ; and this, one would say, is all that saves
it ; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the
truth also, I never read those columns at any rate.
I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.
1 have not got to answer for having read a single
President's Message. A strange age of the world
this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come
a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their
complaints at his elbow ! I cannot take up a news-
paper but I find that some wretched government or
other, hard pushed, and on its last legs, is interced-
ing with me, the reader, to vote for it, — more im-
portunate than an Italian beggar; and if I have a
mind to look at its certificate, made, perchance, by
some benevolent merchant's clerk, or the skipper
that brought it over, for it cannot speak a word of
English itself, I shall probably read of the eruption of
some Vesuvius, or the overflowing of some Po, true
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 329
or forged, which brought it into this condition. I
do not hesitate, in such a case, to suggest work, or
the almshouse ; or why not keep its castle in silence,
as I do commonly ? The poor President, what with
preserving his popularity and doing his duty, is com-
pletely bewildered. The newspapers are the ruling
power. Any other government is reduced to a few
marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to
read the Daily Times, government will go down on
its knees to him, for this is the only treason in these
days.
Those things which now most engage the atten-
tion of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it
is true, vital functions of human society, but should
be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding
functions of the physical body. They are ivfra-
human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake
to a half-consciousness of them going on about me,
as a man may become conscious of some of the pro-
cesses of digestion in a morbid state, and so have
the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a thinker
submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard
of creation. Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of
society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political
parties are its two opposite halves, — sometimes split
into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other.
Not only individuals, but states, have thus a con-
firmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can
imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is
not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas ! to a great
extent, a remembering, of that which we should never
330 SELECTIONS FROM THOREAU
have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking
hours. Why should we not meet, not always as
dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as
«Mpeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever-
glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant
demand, surely.
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Poems, Plays, and Miscellaneous
Essays.
Mrs. Leicester's School, and other
Writings.
Tales from Shakespeare. By
Charles and Mary Lamb.
The Letters of Charles Lamb.
2 Vols.
Life of Charles Lamb. By Canon
Ainger.
Historical Essays. ByJ.B.LiGHTFooT,
D.D.
The Poetical Works of John Milton.
Edited, with Memoir, Introduction,
and Notes, by David Masson, M.A.
3 Vols,
Vol. I. The Minor Poems.
Vol z. Paradise Lost.
Vol, 3. Paradise Regained, and
Samson Agonistes.
Collected Works of John Morley.
J I Vols.
Voltaire. 1 Vol.
Rousseau. 2 Vols.
Diderot and the Encyclopedists.
3 Vols.
On Compromise, i Vol.
Miscellanies. 3 Vols,
Burke, i Vol.
Studies in Literature, i Vol.
Essays by F. W. H. Myers. 3 Vols.
Science and a Future Life, and
OTHER Essays.
Classical Essays.
Modern Essays.
Records of Tennyson, Buskin, and
Browning. By Anne Thackeray
Ritchie.
Workaby Sir John R. Seeley, K.O.M.G.,
Lltt.D. 5 Vols.
The Expansion of England. Two
Courses of Lectures.
Lectures and Essays.
Ecce Homo. A Survey of the Life and
Work of Jesus Christ.
Natural Religion.
Lectures on Political Science.
The Works of Shakespeare. 10 Vols,
With short Introductions and Foot-
notes by Professor C. H. Herford,
Vol. I. Love's Labour's Lost —
Comedy OF Errors — Two Gentle-
men of Verona — Midsummer-
Night's Dream.
Vol. 2. Taming of the Shrew —
Merchant of Venice — Merry
Wives of Windsor — Twelfth
Night — As You Like It.
Vol. 3. Much Ado about Nothing
— All's Well that Ends Well —
Measure for Measure— Troilus
AND Cressida.
Vol. 4. Pericles — Cymbeline — The
Winter's Tale — The Tempest.
Vol. 5. Henry VI.: First Part — Henry
VI.: Second Part — Henry VI.:
Third Part— Richard III.
Vol. 6. King John — Richard II.—
Henry IV.: First Part— Henry IV.:
Second Part.
Vol. 7. Henry V.— Henry VIIL —
Titus Andronicus — Romeo and
Juliet.
Vol. 8. Julius Cesar — Hamlet-
Othello.
Vol. 9. King Lear — Macbeth —
Antony and Cleopatra.
Vol. 10. CORIOLANUS — TiMON OF
Athens— Poems.
Works by James Smetham.
Letters. With an Introductory
Memoir. Edited by Sarah Smetham
and William Davies. With a
Portrait.
Literary Works. Edited by Willi am
Davies.
Life of Swift. By Sir Henry Craik,
K.C.E. 2 Vols. New Edition.
Selections from the Writings of
Thoreau. Edited by H. S. Salt.
Essays In the History of Religious
Thought In the West. By Bishop
Westcott, D.D.
The Works of William Wordsworth.
Edited by Professor Knight. 10 Vols.
Poetical Works. S Vols.
Prose Works. 2 Vols.
The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth.
2 Vols.
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
Open Library
