P
THE SCOTT LIBRARY.
WALDEN.
*** FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES,
SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK.
WALDEN. BY HENRY DAVID
THOREAU. WITH AN INTRO
DUCTORY NOTE BY WILL H.
DIRCKS.
London: Walter Scott, Ltd.,
24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
CONTENTS.
PAQU
THOREATT Introductory Note .... rii-xxviii
ECONOMY . .., .. .1
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED Full . , .79
HEADING . .. . . . , . . .97
SOUNDS . ....... 109
SOLITUDE . . . . . . " . , 127
VISITORS .... ... 138
THE BEAN-FIELD ....... 153
THE VILLAGE , . . . . . .165
THE PONDS ....... 172
BAKER FARM . . . , . . . 200
HIGHER LAWS .... . . 209
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS . . . . .222
HOUSE-WARMING ....... 237
FORMER INHABITANTS ; AND WINTER VISITORS . . . 255
WINTER ANIMALS . . . . . .270
THE POND IN WINTER ...... 281
SPRING ........ 297
CONCLUSION . . . . . . .317
APPENDIX :
Excerpt from Week on the Concord and Mcrrimack Rivers . 333
Sic Vita . . . . . . .334
Mist 335
Haze . . 336
A clover tuft is pillow for my head^
And violets quite overtop my shoes.
THOREAU.
/ tJiynkefor to touche also
The ivorlde whiche newcth everie dale,
So as I can, so as I maie.
GOWER.
And thrtf the fields the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot.
LORD TENNYSON,
THOREAU.
" Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It
writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations
beheld God and Nature face to face ; we, through their eyes. Why should
we not also enjoy an original relation [to the universe ? Why should not
we have a poetry and. philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a
religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs ? . . . The sun
shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. Let us
demand our own works, and laws, and worship." EMERSON.
5OUT twenty miles north-west of Boston (whereof
it is recorded that whoso is born there need not
be born again), in Massachusetts, New England,
lies the little village of Concord, on the banks of
the river Concord, anciently called Musketaquid,
or Grass-ground River, which, with a silent motion, like " the
moccasined tread of an Indian warrior," indolently bears way
northward to join, at Lowell, its greater brother Merrimac.
The Concord River, to steal a vignette from the pages of an
exquisite painter, " idles its sluggish life away in lazy liberty,
without turning a solitary spindle, or affording even water-
power enough to grind the corn that grows upon its banks. . . .
It slumbers between broad prairies, kissing the long meadow
grass, and bathes the overhanging boughs of elder bushes and
willows, or the roots of elms and ash trees, and clumps of
viii THOREAU.
maple." And the same exquisite painter, Hawthorne, elsewhere
speaks of the quiet beauty, in keeping with the river, of the
scenery of Concord ; of the broad and peaceful meadows, of its
hills, wide swells of land or long and gradual ridges, covered
with wood, which border them, and of the little white village
which appears to be embosomed among the hills.
Into this little white village embosomed among the hills was
born, on the I2th of July, in the year 1817, Henry David
Thoreau, scholar-gipsy, poet, naturalist, moralist, and above all,
what is called transcendentalist. The township of Concord,
says Mr. F. B. Sanborn, a friend of Thoreau, and one of
his latest biographers (and to whose little volume, in the
American Men of Letters series, I may at once express par
ticular indebtedness), was, in Thoreau s childhood, as it is
to-day, dotted with frequent old farm-houses, of the ample and
picturesque kind that bespeaks antiquity and hospitality. In
such an old farm-house the lad Thoreau grew up. Mr. William
Ellery Channing, a nephew of Dr. Channing, the poet-
friend and early biographer of Thoreau, describes it as a
perfect piece of the old New England style of building, with
its grey, unpainted boards, and grassy, unfenced door-yard.
" The house," he says, " stood somewhat isolate and remote
from thoroughfares ; on the Virginia Road, an old-fashioned,
winding, at length deserted pathway, the more smiling for its
forked orchards, tumbling walls, and mossy banks." In front
ran a constant stream, and about it lay pleasant meadows, with
deep beds of peat
Henry David Thoreau was the last male descendant in New
England of Philippe Thoreau and his wife Marie le Gallais, who,
a hundred years ago, lived in the parish of St. Helier in Jersey.
His character, says Emerson in his biographical and critical
sketch, exhibits occasional traits drawn from his French blood
in singular combination with a very strong Saxon genius. To
his native "hauntings of Celtism," we may be inclined, indeed, to
impute his exuberant ironical wit ; to the French grace in him
the sentiment of balance and propriety that enables him to
correct and recover himself in the wildest flights of his extra-
THOREA U. ix
vagance, his most wilful indictments of society and apotheosis
of gipsydom, and to invest them with a persuasive air of reason
ableness. One John Thoreau, a son of this Jersey Philippe and
Marie, stung, we may suppose, to the spirit of enterprise and
adventure by the sea-winds of the Channel, took ship to New
England about 1773, an d in Boston, a few years later, married
a young lady of Scotch descent, as her name, Burns, would
imply. Of this marriage, a son, born in 1787, named also John,
was the father of Henry Thoreau. Mr. Sanborn speaks of
Thoreau s father as a grave and silent, but inwardly cheerful and
social person ; a little man, deaf and unobtrusive, who went
about plainly clad ; which little man, about 1823, after some
characteristically quiet extravagances, having lost the small
estate inherited from his father, turned his attention to the then
lucrative business of pencil-making, and thereby afterwards
obtained his livelihood. He married, when about twenty-five,
Miss Cynthia Dunbar, daughter of a Reverend Asa Dunbar. "I
recollect Mrs. Thoreau," says a lady, " as a handsome, high-
spirited woman, half-a-head taller than her husband, accom
plished, after the manner of those days, with a voice of
remarkable power and sweetness in singing." Thoreau s
mother, it would appear, was a talkative lady, of a dramatic
air, earnest, kindly, shrewd, dressy. It was in Concord, in
April of 1775, that the first armed resistance was made to the
troops of George III. in the colonial struggle for independence,
where, (to make the inevitable quotation) :
" Where once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world, "
and the submerged buttresses of the old bridge remained to
attest where " the first faint tide " of war once flowed. And in
the anti-slavery agitation preceding the great armed struggle
between North and South, Concord again came into patriotic
prominence. According to Mr. Sanborn, Mrs. Thoreau (and we
can imagine it of the impressionable, earnest, dramatic woman),
and not only Mrs. Thoreau, but the whole Thoreau family, en
gaged zealously in this, their homestead being for years regarded
x THOREAU.
as the head-quarters of abolitionists and a place of refuge for
fugitive slaves. " The atmosphere of earnest purpose," says
Mr. Sanborn, whom I cannot do better than quote here in full,
" which pervaded the great movement for the emancipation of
the slaves, gave to the Thoreau family an elevation of character
which was ever after perceptible, and imparted an air of dignity
to the trivial details of life," and the household our Thoreau
had a sister and brother older than himself, and a sister younger
possessed a distinct and marked individuality of its own.
" To meet one of the Thoreaus was not the same as to encounter
any other person who might cross your path. Without wealth,
or power, or social prominence, they still held a rank of their
own, in scrupulous independence, and with qualities that put
condescension out of the question. Altogether, this New
England homestead presents to us a not unpleasant picture.
But to return to our Bohemian in particular. He was taken
away to Chelmsford, a place a few miles north of Concord, until
he was a youngster of six, when he was brought back to his
native village, and soon began, like other village urchins, and
like Emerson when a youngster in Boston, to drive his mother s
cow to pasture in Concord s broad, peaceful meadows. He
attended school in the village, and prepared for Harvard at one
Academy, where he became proficient in Greek, and where in
later years he himself became for a time a master. He went to
Harvard College, Cambridge (which is no great distance north
of Concord), at the age of sixteen, and graduated there,
without academic distinction, some four years later. The
developing predilections of a decisive individuality would
naturally lead him from the paths of any prescribed curriculum ;
but his private reading was close and extensive, covering, as
Mr. Sanborn implies, Johnson, Goldsmith, Addison, and
classical English literature of Milton s time and backward
to Chaucer. Of George Herbert in particular he must
early have been a close and loving student ; certain verses,* in
their stanzaic structure, music, and turn of thought, which he
wrote as a young man, show most obviously Herbert s influence,
* See Appendix : Sic Vita.
THOREAU. xi
indeed, they might almost have a niche in Herbert s Temph
without one readily detecting the anachronism ; and one can
imagine the ascetic, delicate, passionate, striving spirit of Herbert
attracting the regard of the young poet and moralist. Thoreau
began early the practice of versifying, a practice which he
discontinued almost entirely after he arrived at the age of thirty.
His methods of versification were curious. It seems to have
been his habit to compose a couplet, a quatrain, or what not,
copy it in his journal, and when these stanzas had reached a
certain number, to string them together. Like Emerson
himself, Thoreau seems to have possessed but a meagre
rhythmical faculty, and Emerson criticised his verses as being
often rude and defective, and though, he says, " the thyme and
marjoram are not yet honey," marks them as the fruit of the
true poetic perception.
To the curriculum of the woods and fields Thoreau took more
readily than to the academic one ; he had begun his graduation
as a "bachelor of Nature" as a boy long before he went to
Harvard, where he was a diligent student of natural history,
and where he began collecting Indian relics. When about
twenty, shortly after the naturalist Agassiz s arrival in America,
Thoreau made collections of fish and turtle for him. " Beneath
low hills," chaunts Emerson :
" Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here in pine houses built of new fallen trees,
Supplauters of the tribe, the farmers dwell."
Among these farmers, whose wood-lots he surveyed, whose
pastures he measured, whose roads he laid out, Thoreau
delighted to go ; and came to see, says Channing, " the inside
of every farmer s house and head, his pot of beans, and mug of
hard cider." He knew the country around "like a fox or a
bird ;" he could find a path through the woods at night better
by his feet than his eyes ; " the birds which frequent the stream,
xii THOREAU.
heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey ; the snake, musk-rat,
otter, wood-chuck, and fox, on the banks ; the turtle, frog, hyla,
and cricket, which make the banks vocal, were all known to
him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures," as unto a
new-world St. Francis of Assisi.
As a diarist, for copiousness and persistency, he might almost
be compared to Henri Amiel. He left behind him some thirty
manuscript volumes. From his daily entries, the practice of
making which he began at twenty and continued till his death,
he composed his essays and lectures : thus he composed his
Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, the record of a
voyage taken with his much-loved brother John in the year 1839,
a record, too, " of other and much longer voyages upon less
tangible rivers than those named in the title." " The book is
purely American," wrote Alcott in his diary, just after a visit to
Thoreau, " fragrant with the life of New England woods and
streams, and could have been written nowhere else. Especially
am I touched by his (Thoreau s) sufficiency and soundness, his
aboriginal vigour, as if a man had once more come into
Nature who knew what Nature meant him to do with her,
Virgil, and White of Selborne, and Izaak Walton, and Yankee
settler all in one." He gave his first lecture in Concord Lyceum
when only twenty, and after the year 1847 Mr. Sanborn says he
may be considered to have fairly entered on the career of
lecturer and author ; and though for twenty years Thoreau
devoted himself to authorship, his income from the profession
was too scanty to provide for the wants even of one of such
austere parsimoniousness and simplicity of living as himself.
A man must earn his daily bread somehow, or, as Thoreau put
it, Apollo must serve Admetus ; and Admetus, according to Mr.
Stevenson s sympathetic plaint for that immortal, never got less
work out of any servant since the world began than out of
Thoreau. In his system of personal economics, says the friend
of Admetus, he displayed a vast amount of truly down-east cal
culation, and adopted poverty like a piece of business. Thoreau }
in the following pages, confesses that for five years he main
tained himself by a little simple gardening or primitive agriculture
Til ORE AU. xiii
during some six weeks of the year. " The man had as
good as stolen his livelihood ! " He says he tried trade, but
found it would take some years to get under-way in that, by
which time he would probably be on his way to the devil. And
so he defrauded Admetus in other ways. He would never be
pecuniarily indebted to another, and until about the age of
thirty, after which he supported himself mainly by land-
surveying, contributing to magazines and lecturing, he was
always ready to seek subsistence as pencil-maker, gardener,
fence-builder, or even white-washer. Among ourselves, here in
older England, we may indeed have the democratic member of
Parliament who ascends the pit-shaft to proceed direct to
Westminster ; but even he hardly presents to our mind such a
dramatic antinomy of calling and pursuit as does this New
England defrauder of Admetus.
In 1832, after his dispute with his Boston pastorate, Emerson
resigned his cure, and it was in 1834 that he took up his abode,
thence to live there permanently, in Concord, dwelling in the
home of his clerical ancestors, the classical Old Manse of
Hawthorne, till, marrying in the following year, he removed to
a house not far from Walden Woods. It was as a young man
of twenty that Thoreau made Emerson s acquaintance, and in
1840 he was regarded as one of the coterie as one of the inner
circle of chivalry of the " intellectual Round Table" of the new-
world transcendental Camelot, over which Emerson came to
bear sway as Arthur. At the meetings of this circle in
Emerson s library there figured notably Alcott, " tall, slender,
blond ;" young Curtis, fresh from Cambridge ; Hawthorne, shy,
reclusive, observant, reticent ; and above all, Margaret Fuller,
plain and even disagreeable in appearance, very unlike extern
ally the exotic and overwhelmingly beautiful Zenobia into which
she was transformed by Hawthorne in his Blithedale Romance.
" The effect of the presence of these superior persons," writes
one who first met Emerson in Concord, " upon the village itself
was most remarkable : it was as if a new climate had breath-ik
upon it and worked germs and growths hitherto unsuspectl- g,
This little agricultural village presently had libraries, scien* Jly
xiv THOREA U.
classes, and lectures, such as many large cities could not show. 1
And of this transcendental Camelot the chansons de geste, very
comical chansons too, sometimes, are recorded in the pages of
the Dial, a magazine which, during four years, from 1840 to
1844, set forth the views of the group, and to nearly every
number of which Thoreau was a contributor. " Ideas," says Mr.
Nichol in his American Literature^ " which filter slowly through
English soil, and abide there for a generation, flash like comets
over the electric atmosphere of America." The influence of Emer
son s thought radiated through an atmosphere already prepared
to admit its free transit, and to allow the full force of its impact.
Thus pilgrims, smitten from afar by the Emersonian bolt, soon
found their way to Concord ; " young visionaries, to whom just
so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a
labyrinth around them, came to seek the clue that should guide
them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Grey-headed
theorists, whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned
them in an iron framework, travelled painfully to his door, not
to seek deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own
thraldom. . . . Uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers through
the midnight of the moral world beheld his intellectual fire as a
beacon on the hill-top, and, climbing the difficult ascent, looked
forth into the surrounding obscurity more hopefully than
hitherto. . . . Never was a poor little country village infested
with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved
mortals." Fortunate Concord, thus so busy ! with " a great
intellectual thinker at one end of the village, an exquisite teller
of tales at the other, and the rows of New England elms
between." In the heart of all that was going on Thoreau lived
and moved ; in 1841 he became an inmate of Emerson s house,
where he remained till the spring of 1843 > a d he would
participate in these excitements of such anomalous rusticity.
However, the intellectual stir was there, and often enough
Efficiently erratic and absurd as its manifestations no doubt
cu p, Thoreau himself would be influenced to an increased
j n ital activity and readiness by it. And speaking of Emerson s
ta ;^ence particularly, as Hawthorne says, it was impossible to
THOREA U. xv
dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain
atmosphere of his lofty thought, and Thoreau undoubtedly did
inhale it, and copiously. Mr. James, who, in his monograph on
Hawthorne, glances casually with an air of genial cosmopolitan
cynicism on Thoreau, refers to him as Emerson s moral man
made flesh, living for the ages and not for Saturday and Sun
day for the Universe and not for Concord. And Mr. Nichol
compares him to Emerson in his combination of pantheistic
theory with intense practical individualism ; in his lofty ideas
of friendship, religion, love ; in his " communion with fine
translunary things ; " in the polish of his paragraphs, in the
fragmentary form of his thought, all apt comparisons enough.
Though his likeness to Emerson is unquestionable, his pro
found originality is equally unquestionable, an originality that
is immediately apprehended, and one which is realised very
vividly after reading certain Emersonian imitators. He assimi
lated, but the assimilation was Shakespeare-wise, organic.
His idiosyncrasy was such that it was constituted to reflect the
precise phase of the Zeit-geist of which Emerson happened to
catch the character and be the prime exponent : had it not been
such he would not have been Thoreau. He is not much more
responsible for his internal traits of likeness to Emerson than
for his external traits of likeness, his large nose and sloping
shoulders.
And this suggests the introduction here of some portraiture of
the external man. " How deep and clear is the mark that thought
sets upon a man s face ! " said, startled, a youth, who first beheld
the Dantesque intensity of his visage, a face not easily to be
forgotten, as his last biographer declares. " His features were
prominent, his eyes large, round, and deep-set, under bold brows ;
the colour verging from blue to grey, as if with the moods of his
mind." Channing describes him as being of about the average
height, and of spare build ; and Emerson, descending to biographi
cal minutiae, records how he was in the habit of wearing a straw
hat, stout shoes, and strong grey trousers, fit to brave shrub-oak
and smilax, or to climb a tree for the nest of hawk or squirrel, g,
The abolition movement has already been alluded to, and oly
ser
xvJ THOREA U.
the year 1859, when his friend John Brown, after his Quixotic
and ill-starred raid, lay wounded and a prisoner, Thoreau, in face
of the strongest adverse opinion even among abolitionists, and
his own distaste for public vapouring, came forward, and
championed the cause of his friend in words which, as Mr.
Burroughs says, it thrills the blood to read. To the abolitionist
committee who informed him of their objection, he returned the
autocratic response : " I did not send to you for advice, but to
announce that I am to speak ! " and speak he did, despite
opposition and possible consequences, as a man should speak
for a friend and a cause he loves. " If this man s acts do not
create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the
acts and words that do." " I plead not for his life, but his
character, his immortal life." And after Brown s death he
wrote : " I never hear of a man named Brown now and I hear
of them pretty often, I never hear of any particularly brave
and earnest man, but my first thought is of John Brown and
what relation he may be to him." This was not the action,
these were not the words, of a callous indifferentist, as Thoreau
has been made out to be. He delighted in the society of
children, of the rustic and unlettered. But unbending in
ordinary intercourse, refusing to subordinate his individuality
to that of others, maintaining, as for the most part he did
throughout his career, a proud isolation, he suffered perhaps a
refrigeration of spirit, the result of his consistent aloofness
rather than of an original coldness of disposition. The meaner
cares and interests which engage most were not for him ; he
was a man who must necessarily live aloof. Gifted with a
critical ethical intuition, as habitual as with a Marcus Aurelius,
and finer, it was inevitable that he should attend to its delicate
promptings. To him life was a thing to be lived " as tenderly
and daintily as one would pluck a flower." " To keep the eye
clear by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness,"
this, with his intimate sense of the relation between physical
and spiritual, was an object of perpetual solicitude. " The
G oetic beauty of mere clearness of mind the actually aesthetic
in iarm of a cold austerity of thought ; as if the kinship of that
ta
THOREAU. xvii
to the clearness of physical light were something more than a
figure of speech," this, too, to quote again from the beautiful
pages of Mr. Pater s Marius the Epicurean^ expresses some
thing of which the spirit of Thoreau was peculiarly apprehen
sive. In his ethical devoutness Thoreau perhaps overshot the
mark. As the weakness of most men lies in indulgence, so of
Thoreau it lay in denial, and in his asceticism there was, per
haps, a subtle element of sensualism ; he indulged himself in
fine renouncements.
Thoreau never married. He never made the European
campaign like other good Americans ; " he listened impatiently
to ban mots gleaned from London circles." He made excursions,
often on foot, but these did not extend beyond Maine or Canada,
and he always returned to Concord. He had a sublime
parochialism. In his citadel of haughty idealism he could front
with composure whatever of nobly valiant the world could bring
against it.
With this casual introduction to the man, we approach a
certain episode of his life and considerations suggested by it.
And so to raise the curtain on WALDEN.
" If any of my readers," says Hawthorne, " should decide to
give up civilised life, cities, houses, and whatever moral or
material enormities in addition to these the perverted ingenuity
of our race has contrived, let it be in the early autumn. Then
Nature will love him better than at any other season, and will
take him to her bosom with a more motherly tenderness."
However, it was not in early autumn, but in early spring, that
Thoreau went a-gipsying among the pines, there to build for
himself a sort of cloistral rustic Academe, where he himself
only should be master and scholar, both pupil and doctor in
one. Let us imagine him, then, as one day towards the end of
March 1845, when, a young fellow of twenty-eight, looking,
perhaps, at first sight, like a not very picturesque but tolerably
well-to-do mendicant, rugged and browned, but, on closer
xviii THOREAU.
approach, in his glance, in his air, suggesting something
indefinable, something both wildish and intellectual, faring,
with the trace of an ironical smile, and the reminiscence of a
Gallic shrug, to the domicile of the orphic Alcott, and there to
him preferring his modest petition for the loan of an axe, the
axe which, he says, with Yankee afterthought, he returned sharper
than he got. What induced Thoreau to take the step which
has become so memorable ? why did he retire to the woods ?
He went to the woods, primarily, not, in Milton s phrase (for
Thoreau s was very vigorous), because of a " fugitive andcloistered
virtue, unexercised and unbreathed " that was afraid to sally out
for its adversary, but must seek a rustic valitudinarian refuge ;
not, because he was, to summon Mr. Stevenson s stalwart
euphemism, a skulker 1 though he went for one thing to elude
as usual his friend Admetus the shepherd, who now most affects
the town. He went for leisure to complete his literary appren
ticeship, to test his powers, to know himself and define his
proper bent ; he went " not to be shipwrecked on vain realities, -
" to front only the essential facts of life " ; he went that he
might retire as to a tower of vision whence to survey the world
and its shows in better optique. It was no affectation that sent
him thither ; the action was quite native and fit for him, says
Emerson. He went as, in the circumstances, it was a natural
and simple thing for him to do. And here he formulated his
criticism of life, of gipsy naivete ; of noble culture ; and of
impossible transcendentalism, not, however, without import.
The narrow view, the little aims, of an unheroic age were
especially distasteful to him ; and he cries out like a paradoxical
latter-day John the Baptist in the desert of modern materialism.
" Come, spur away,
I have no patience for a longer stay,
But must go down
And leave the chargeable noise of this great town.
I will the country see,
Where old simplicity,
Though hid in grey,
Doth look more gay
Than foppery in plush and scarlet clad,"
THOREA U. xix
sings Randolph, like a blithe Cockney Arcadian, posting off to
country meadows where he shall see
"... the wholesome girls make hay,"
to a Herrick-land
" Of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,"
of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails. But Thoreau was no
trim Arcadian, after the fashion of these idyllic roysterers;
the Nature whom he knew so intimately, and with whom
he went to form a closer alliance, was not the Nature
as they liked to see and paint her, and he went in a
different spirit, in a different manner, and with a different
quest. As a sensation of contrast, for the sake of striking red
against grey, it is worth while thus to picture to ourselves such
quaint old youthful poetic figures as Randolph and Herrick,
dancing gaily towards Arcadia figures of another time, another
land ; to recall natures so sunny, rich, sanguine ; we realise
the ethnological differences, the differences which climate and
circumstance, which another environment and a later period,
have produced. And travelling into another such English
Arcadia as they sought, we may recall old Izaak Walton, who
to Alcott suggests Thoreau, sitting on his primrose banks, hear
ing his birds sing, looking down the meadows whenas he
thought, " as Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence,
that they were too pleasant to be looked on, but only on holi
days ;" watching, " here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks,
and there a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make
garlands suitable to this present month of May." Or turning
quite from a bit of old England such as this, and coming into
the present century and passing abroad, we may think of the rich,
throbbing, orientalised nature such as Heine, of whose diablerie
and peculiar grace there is a touch in Thoreau, often gives us
all roses and nightingales and warm perfume. Thoreau, before
he went to Walden, and while there, went in the spirit to the
Persian poetic garden ; but it was not its musky fragrance that
drew him thither; he quotes the philosophic Sadi rather than the
sensuous, houri-loving Hafiz. It was with no pretty Arcadianism
xx THOREAU.
that Thoreau went to the woods : he went, as Wordsworth
did to his Westmoreland mountains, to take possession as by
right of birth ; he went
" A minstrel of the natural year,"
where he might most fittingly exercise his vocation, and
his prose minstrelsy of nature has in it something clear
and cool and grey, something autumnal, occidental, some
thing suggestive of the Wordsworthian baldness ; it suggests
a lack of warmth which, in Wordsworth s case at least,
whoso has tramped his Westmoreland and Cumberland
hill-country, in all the glow and glory of summer, is
inclined to wonder at. Thoreau seems rather to present to us
a nature, which, however exquisite the charm of its clear, cold
light may be, has about it a sentiment of dim correspondence
with that suggested by the melancholy leafage of the magical
woods of Arden in one of its moods, as we have glimpses of it
through its aisles just permitted us by Shakespeare.
And so we may follow him to his cabin-cloister among the
pines, and see what sort of a haunt he chose for himself. The
outpost was not pitched very far from the main battalions, after
all ; in measurement of mere furlongs, the sanctuary was not
remote. Crossing the pastures on the south of Concord village,
and passing through a belt of wood, you would arrive, after a
mile-and-a-half trudge, at the lakelet of Walden, -a-mile
long and three-quarters in circumference, " a pure white crystal
in a setting of emerald ; " "a perfect forest mirror." A few
rods only from the pond itself, the opposite wooded shore of
which was the most distant horizon, on the side of a hill edging
the wood beyond which lay Concord, stood the little cabin,
clean and airy, in which the atmosphere, charged with the
pungent perfume of the surrounding pines, lost none of its
freshness," fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a god
dess might trail her garments." In this retreat he installed
himself for two years and two months, and entertained
himself in his sylvan fashion, finally leaving it with the
same insouciance with which he went. Here he gardened
THOREAU. xxl
and farmed after his own methods ; here he mused and
read " the books that circulate round the world ; " here he
maintained his surveillance over birds, squirrels, muskrats,
flowers, and trees; and here he chronicled his observations.
While at Walden he wrote his essay on Carlyle, and edited his
Week on the Concord and Merrimack River s^ already mentioned,
and here wrote the greater part of the following pages. Like
Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Lowell stigmatises him as an idle man, but
idleness is so alien to the tenour of Thoreau s ethics and think
ing, that it is impossible to conceive of him as such. A certain
sublimated sort oifar nietile was part of his system. He con
fesses that of a summer morning, after bathing, he has sat in
his sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, in
undisturbed solitude and stillness. " I grew in these seasons
like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work
of the hands would have been." "The most glorious fact of
our experience," he says elsewhere, " is not anything we have
done or may hope to do, but a transient thought, or vision, or
dream that we have had." Here in fancy presents itself to us a
picture of Whitman, a fellow poetic vagabond, prone on the
yellow sand-bank loafing and inviting his soul, " observing a
spear of summer-grass grow." Thoreau was constantly making
excursions into the neighbouring village for what he calls his
homoeopathic doses of gossip, and as one of the lions of the
place he was frequently besieged by visitors, entertaining some
times twenty-five or thirty at a time, often many oddities and
curiosity-hunters among them, no doubt, who bored him, but
often callers whom he could receive without restraint, " children
come a-berrying, railroad-men taking a Sunday morning walk
in clean shirts ; " " in short, all honest pilgrims who came out
to the woods for freedom s sake," and truly did leave the village
behind them. Thus the recluse and idler had rather a busy
time of it, what with doing nothing at all, in the ordinary sense,
and, in the ordinary sense, doing many things, entertaining
visitors among them.
As a physical resource Thoreau needed the open-air life, of
which he had abundance at Walden. " I think," he says in his
xxii THOREAU.
essay entitled Walking^ " 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," and further on, that he cannot stay in
his chamber a single day without acquiring some rust. He
expatiates on the art of walking. It requires, he says, a direct
dispensation from heaven to become a walker ; ambulator
nascitur nonfit. He complains of having met but few people
who had the genius for right walking, or 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," and so got to be
denominated sainte-terrers, saunterers. " Every walk is a sort
of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go
forth and reconquer the Holy Land from the hand of the
Infidels." Thoreau crusaded the woods in perennial quest of a
new sylvan Jerusalem. As Mr. Burroughs says in his admirably
penetrative essay (in which, altogether, probably, is said the
most significant word about Thoreau), and it is very credible
of a man who died of pulmonary consumption, that he seems
to have reacted strongly from a marked tendency to physical
invalidism. Though somewhere in this volume, in a passage of
Heinesque suggestion, he declares he is no worshipper of
Hygeia, but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was
probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and
robust young lady that ever walked the globe ; though he
professes to prize an unconscious physical sanity which is above
health ; yet the very care he manifests over that sanity, and the
stress he lays upon it, seem to imply that for him there was
something precarious in its possession. And to quote Mr.
Burroughs again : " What was this never-ending search of his
for the wild, but a search for health, for something tonic and
antiseptic in nature? Health, health, give me health, is his
cry. He had an inappeasable hunger for the pungent, the
aromatic, the bitter-sweet, for the very rind and salt of the
globe." Thoreau himself says, " I sometimes feel that I need
to sit in a far-away cave through three weeks storm, cold and
THOREA U. xxlli
wet, to give a tone to my system ! " And in this love of the
savage, the wild, the cold, is to be discerned, too, a racial
derivation ; the primitive " untamable French core in him,"
something of the native latent ferocity that underlies even the
modern Gallic varnish, the " dash of the grey wolf that stalks
through his ancestral folk-lore." Once or twice he found
himself ranging the woods like a half-starved hound, with a
strange abandonment, " seeking some kind of venison which he
might devour, and no rribrsel could have been too savage."
Catching glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across his path, he,
the fastidious vegetarian, was tempted to seize him to devour
raw ; whereon we behold the talons of the grey wolf
unconsciously showing out, the wolf gnawed by inward hunger
who best knows himself speeding recklessly over the snow.
Hawthorne is said to have derived from Thoreau his idea of the
character of Donatello in his novel Transformation, but there is
little of Donatello in Thoreau in so far as Donatello resembles
the mythical Praxitelean faun, whose woodland traits Hawthorne
so imaginatively conceives and blends in his conception of
Donatello ; the creature whose life expands most in the warm,
sensuous, sunny side of nature. If wild creatures both, Thoreau
and Donatello, one of the north, the other of the south, are very
remote kinsmen.
" That strange apparition," exclaims the writer in Frazer who
has already been quoted, "who bore the name of Thoreau ! a
man of such wonderful, even unparalleled, intimacy with nature,
that his biography, when it is written, will seem like a myth."
His power of observation seemed to indicate additional senses,
says Emerson, adding, in the transcendental manner, that "he
saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his
memory was a photographic register of all he saw and heard."
"As we read him," says Mr. Lowell, "it seems to us as if all out-
of-doors had kept a diary and become its own Montaigne ; we
look at the landscape as in a Claude Lorraine glass ; compared
with his all books of similar aim, even White s Selborne, seem
dry as a country clergyman s meteorological almanac." Of
Thoreau s observation of nature, already touched upon, a good
xxiv THOREAU.
deal has been written with various differences of critical opinion.
He had a profound belief in the import of direct observation.
" What is a course of poetry, or philosophy, or poetry ... or
the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared
with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?"
" The things immediate to be done are very trivial. I could
postpone them all to hear this locust sing." "To him who
contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor dis
appointment can come." To Thoreau, as Emerson says,
there was no such thing as size ; the Walden pond was a
small ocean, the Atlantic a large pond. To him every micro
cosm was a macrocosm. He was not what is called a scientific
observer ; he did not investigate anatomy, he made no
classifications, attempted no systematic co-ordination of the
organs and traits of bird or animal or plant that interested him ;
he did not label. Mr. Burroughs, who is qualified to speak as
a naturalist, says, without desiring to undervalue Thoreau s
natural history notes, that although he failed to make any new
scientific contribution, what makes them charming and valuable
is his rare descriptive power ; " he will give you the simple fact
with the freshest and finest poetic bloom upon it." He had the
self-consciousness of the man of culture. His mood was
subjective rather than objective. His eye, adds Mr. Burroughs,
was sophisticated with literature, with Concord, with himself.
He did not love bird or flower for their own sake, with the
disinterested love of a Gilbert White ; it was their " fine
effluence " that was his quest ; natural history was but one of
the doors through which he sought to gain admittance to the
inner and finer heaven of things." Thoreau says himself that
man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at nature directly,
but only with the side of his eye. " To look at her is as fatal as
to look at the head of Medusa. It turns the man of science
into stone." To Thoreau was the gift, of which the manifest
ation in literature Mr. Matthew Arnold as critic has chiefly
taught us to discern by his disengagement of exquisite
examples, the gift, the power, " of so dealing with things as to
awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense
THOREAU. xxv
of them, and of our relations to them " ; and it is this power, this
gift, the quality of which is not scientific, but poetic, the charm
of which in its frequent expression in Walden will chiefly
attract the reader.
In the month of January 1842, Emerson gave in Boston a
lecture in which occurs the following passage :
"It is a sign of our times . . that many intelligent and religious
persons withdraw themselves from the common labours and competi
tions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain
solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet
appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof:
they feel the disproportion between their faculties and the work
offered them, and they prefer to remain in the country and perish of
ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the
city can propose to them ... to their lofty dream the writing of
Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities or empires, seems
drudgery."
The very braggadocip, truly, of transcendentalism, delineated
here, in the attitude of these estimable persons! We recall as akin
the overdone melodrama of the self-conscious Romanticist of 1830
at once. So far in contemplating the Walden of Concord, a
Walden situated in the near, crude, phantasmagoric realities of
space and time, the transcendental Walden, " as far off as many
a region viewed nightly by astronomers ; " the Walden in " a
withdrawn, but for ever new and unprofaned part of the
Universe," wherein, translated by the spirit of its star-aspiring
habitant, it had its site just as truly as in Concord, Massachusetts,
has been overlooked. For Thoreau, the revolter against the
" despotism of fact," of fact which lies apparently near and
patent ; the devotee of " the most indefinite waking dream ; "
the Alpine climber after the elusive, dim, ever-inaccessible
edelweiss of the spirit, "the everlasting Something j" the
idealist, the transcendentalist par excellence ; at times to whom,
though he wrote Walden, the writing of Iliads or Hamlets
would seem drudgery, must be remembered. In this Walden
of interlunar space he was at home : why should he be lonely
xxvi THOREA U.
there 1 " is not our planet in the Milky Way ? " " How far apart,
think you, dwell the inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of
whose disc cannot be appreciated by our instruments?"
" What sort of space is that which separates a man from his
fellows and makes him solitary ? " Let us not be shipwrecked
on vain realities ; let us make no compromises with space and
time " We know not where we are." For this puissant,
delicate, arrogant spirit was haunted with the intuition of a
vast potentiality and destiny, of something star-like and trans
cendent in the human soul something occult, grandiose,
supernal. It is the old expression of the amour de Fimpossible
over again ; the modern reassertion of the medieval Faust-
spirit in its most supersensible and impalpable form. What is
called Transcendentalism is that particular shape, which, after
traversing the Atlantic, in New England a world-wide move
ment of thought, starting in the latter half of the last century,
put on. It is the latest outcome, the culminant wave of that
reaction, the latest development of a European revolution of
ideas the reaction against the classical literary canons, the
cut-and-dried philosophy, the social conventions of the
Eighteenth Century ; of the neo-renascence, now assuming
new forms. The notable signs and symbols for us of this revo
lution are, in social theory, names such as that of Rousseau and
of his spiritual children ; in literature, in England, of Words
worth, Shelley, Byron, Scott ; in France, of Victor Hugo and
his accomplices ; in Germany, of Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and
later Heine ; and in philosophy, of Kant and his successors.
Emerson, says Mr. Arnold, cannot be called a great philo
sophical writer ; he is not constructive^ systematic, as an
Aristotle, Spinoza, or Kant are. Viewing the transcendental
movement as a prolongation of a vast preceding movement,
as a tendency of ideas to which birth was given and impulse con
veyed by a train of anterior ideas, in the phases of philosophic
idealism and social and individualist theory which it chiefly
represents, it had got beyond the stage when systematic self-
justification was necessary to command attention and ensure
existence j and the Emersonian philosophy is thin, eclectic,
THOREA U. Jocvii
volatile ; it expresses the idealistic spirit without seeking, or
making the effort, to systematically formulate it. In the reaction
against social convention, the recoil upon nature, the democratic
idealisation of the individual, Transcendentalism went all to
the extreme. In the beginnings of the social reaction Rousseau
is heard protesting against people du bel atr, fashionable
ladies, against the excessive refinements of the town, and
professing the admirableness of la vie rustique, not incompatible
with choiceness of spirit, delicacy, taste ; the life to which a man
may retire and live a life equal to that of the town ; while,
later, his continuator St. Pierre decries the many absurdities
and disorders of social institutions, turning with delight to
a contemplation of the virgin earth and its first inhabitants, with
everything in a refreshing state of nature. In all this is the
genesis of the Thoreau of Walden : without his spiritual ancestry
he would not have been born and gone there. The belief that
" a marts a man for d that" means not much more than that a
poor man is as good as a rich man, perhaps, though it is
temerity to think so, as a lord ; it means the idealisation of
the individual in its primitive form, and symptomises a gradual
convergence of attention towards rights and powers in the
democratic many, as well as of the aristocratic few. In America
the idea assumes special dominance in the appearance of the
Owen and Fourier socialistic communities, contemning even the
democratic institutions around, and concerned with a bettering
of the estate of the individual greater than they could expect
from those institutions, indicating the advancing audacity of
social criticism, and the greater and greater convergence of
attention upon the individual, and in the transcendental move
ment the individual and not the society is placed in the supreme
foreground. Speaking of it in connection with Carlyle, Mr.
Lowell says that in its motives, preaching, and results, it
radically differs from his doctrine ; and of Emerson particularly,
how his teaching tended notably to the independent develop
ment of the individual man. With Thoreau society lapses very
hopelessly into the background indeed, there to be decried, and
the individual steps to the front, not humbly, but with decision,
xxviii THOREAU.
and haunted by a supernal belief in his potentiality. As
Transcendentalism is the final deliverance of a vast array of
anterior forces, so the final deliverance of the curious and
momentous movement thus called is Thoreau. We are now in
a new current of ideas, the tendencies of which are exemplified
in art, in criticism, in the novel, in the drama, in the advance of
science ; tendencies which have been summed up in the most
elaborated and representative philosophy of the time, called
Positive. Against what is perhaps impossible, forgetfulness of
the eternal horizons, the special safeguard and preventative lies
in the catholicity of the modern spirit, for which the Thoreaus of
the world have not lived in vain, though to-day it is engaged in
the study of a lesson other than they taught
THOREAU, the writer of Walden, died on the 6th of May 1862,
at the early age of forty-five. His grave, close to that of
Hawthorne, lies in the beautiful Sleepy Hollow in his native
Concord. In the words of the great friend who survived him :
" Wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, where-
ever there is beauty, he will find a home."
W. H. D.
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNR, March 1886.
WALDEN.
ECONOMY.
HEN I wrote the following pages, or rather
the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the
woods, a mile from any neighbour, in a
house which I had built myself, on the
shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massa
chusetts, and earned my living by the
labour of my hands only. I lived there two years and
two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilised life
again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of
my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made,
by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some
would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at
all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very
natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to
eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid ; and
tho like. Others have been curious to learn what portion
2 IVALDEN.
of my income I devoted to charitable purposes ; and some,
who have large families, how many poor children I main
tained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel
no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to
answer some of these questions in this book. In most
books, the /, or first person, is omitted ; in this it will be
retained ; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.
We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always
the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so
much about myself if there were anybody else whom I
knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme
by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my
side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and
sincere account of his own life, and not merely what ho
has heard of other men s lives; some such account as he
would send to his kindred from a distant land ; for if he has
lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.
Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to
poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will
accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none
will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do
good service to him whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the
Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these
pages, who are said to live in New England ; something
about your condition, especially your outward condition
or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is,
whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it
cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good
deal in Concord : and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and
fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing
penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have
board of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking
ECONOMY. 3
in the face of the sun ; or hanging suspended, with their
heads downward, over flames ; or looking at the heavens
over their shoulders, "until it becomes impossible for them
to resume their natural position, while from the twist of
the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach ; "
or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree ; or
measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth
of vast empires ; or standing on one leg on the tops of
pillars even these forms of conscious penance are hardly
more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I
daily witness. The twelve labours of Hercules were trifling
in comparison with those which my neighbours have under
taken ; for they were only twelve, and had an end \ but I
could never see that these men slew or captured any monster
or finished any labour. They have no friend lolas to bum
with a hot iron the root of the hydra s head, but as soon as
one head is crushed, two spring up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is
to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming
tools ; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.
Better if they had been born in the open pasture and
suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer
eyes what field they were called to labour in. Who made
them serfs of the soil 1 Why should they eat their sixty
acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt ?
Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they
are born ? They have got to live a man s life, pushing all
these things before them, and get on as well as they can.
How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh
crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the
road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by
forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred
acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The
4 WALDEN.
portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary in
herited encumbrances, find it labour enough to subdue and
cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labour under a mistake. The better part of
the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a
seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed,
as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth
and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.
It is a fool s life, as they will find when they get to the end
of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha
created men by throwing stones over their heads behind
them :
"Iiulc genus durum sumus, experiensque labornm,
Et documeuta damns qua simus origine nati."
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way :
"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."
So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle,
throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not
seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country,
through mere ignorance and mistake, arc so occupied with
the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labours of life
that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their
fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble
too much for that. Actually, the labouring man has not
leisure for a true integrity day by day ; he cannot afford
to sustain the manliest relations to men ; his labour would
be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be
anything but a machine. How can he remember well his
ignorance which his growth requires who has so of ton
ECONOMY. 5
to use his knowledge ? We should feed and clothe him
gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials,
before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature,
liko the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most
delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one
another thus tenderly.
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live,
are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no
doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to
pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or
for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or already
worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or
stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very
evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live,
for my sight has been whetted by experience ; always on
the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out
of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins ces
alienum, another s brass, for some of their coins were made
of brass ; still living, and dying, and buried by this other s
brass ; always promising to pay, promising to pay, to
morrow, and dying to-day, insolvent ; seeking to curry
favour, to get custom, by how many modes, only not
state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting
yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an
atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may
persuade your neighbour to let you make his shoes, or his
hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for
him; making yourself sick, that you may lay up some
thing against a sick day, something to be tucked away in
an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or,
more safely, in the brick bank ; no matter where, no
matter how much or how little.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I
6 WALDEN,
may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat
foreign form of servitude called -Negro Slavery, there are
so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north
and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer ; it
is worse to have a northern one ; but worst of all when
you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity
in man ! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending
to market by day or night ; does any divinity stir within
him ? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses !
What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping
interests ? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir ?
How godlike, how immortal, is he 1 See how he cowers
and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being
immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own
opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public
opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private
opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which
determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation
even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and
imagination, what Wilberforce is there to bring that
about ? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving
toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too
green an interest in their fates ! As if you could kill
time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What
is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the
desperate city you go intp the desperate country, and
have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and
muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is
concealed even under what are called the games and
amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for
this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom
not to do desperate things.
ECONOMY. 7
When wo consider what, to use the words of the cate
chism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true
necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had
deliberately chosen the common mode of living because
they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think
there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures
remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to
give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing,
however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What
everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day
may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of
opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would
sprinkle fertilising rain on their fields. What old people
say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old
deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people
did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fuel to keep
the fire a-going ; new people put a little dry wood under a
pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of
birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is
no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as
youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One
may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything
of absolute value by living Practically, the old have no
very important advice to give the young, their own experi
ence has been so partial, and their lives have been such
miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must
believe ; and it may be that they have some faith left
which belies that experience, and they are only less young
than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this
planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable
or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told
me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything, to the
purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent
8 WALDEN.
untried by me ; Lut it docs not avail me that they have tried
it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I
am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing
about.
One farmer says to me, " You cannot live on vegetable
food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with ; "
and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supply
ing his system with the raw material of bones ; walking all
the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-
made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in
spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries
of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which
in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely
unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been
gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the
valleys, pid all things to have been cared for. According
to Evelyn, " the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the
very distances of trees ; and the Roman praetors have
decided how often you may go into your neighbour s land
to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and
what share belongs to that neighbour." Hippocrates has
even left directions how we should cut our nails ; that is,
even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor
longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which
presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life
are as old as Adam. But man s capacities have never been
measured ; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any
precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been
thy failures hitherto, " be not afflicted, my child, for who
shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone ? "
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests ; as,
for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans
ECONOMY. 9
illumines at once a system of earths like ours. Jf I had
remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes.
This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars
are the apexes of what wonderful triangles ! What distant
arid different beings in the various mansions of the universe
are contemplating the same one at the same moment !
Natui e and human life are as various as our several con
stitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to
another ? Could a greater miracle take place than for us
to look through each other s eyes for an instant 1 We
should live in all the ages of the world in an hour ; ay, in
all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology !
I know of no reading of another s experience so startling
and informing as this would be.
The greater part of what my neighbours call good I
believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything,
it is very likely to be my good behaviour. What demon
possessed me that I behaved so well ? You may say the
wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy
years, not without honour of a kind, I hear an irresist
ible voice which invites me away from all that. One
generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded
vessels.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than
\ve do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves
as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well
adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant
anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of
disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of
what work we do ; and yet how much is not done by us !
or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we
are ! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it ; all
the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say
io WALDEN.
our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So
thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, re
verencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.
This is the only way, we say ; but there are as many ways
as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change
is a miracle to contemplate ; but it is a miracle which is
taking place every instant. Confucius said, " To know
that we know what we know, and that we do not know what
we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one
man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to
his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length
establish their lives on that basis.
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble
and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how
much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least,
careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive
and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward
civilisation, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries
of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them ;
or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to
see what it was that the men most commonly bought at the
stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest
groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but
little influence on the essential laws of man s existence : as
our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from
those of our ancestors.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all
that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the
first, or from long use has become, so important to human
life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty,
or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many
creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life
ECONOMY. ii
Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of
palatable grass, with water to drink ; unless he seeks the
Shelter of the forest or the mountain s shadow. None of
the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter.
The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accu
rately enough, be distributed under the several heads of
Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel ; for not till we have
secured these are we prepared to entertain the true
problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.
Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked
food ; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the
warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a
luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We
observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature.
By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our
own internal heat ; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel,
that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal,
may not cookery properly be said to begin ? Darwin, the
naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that
while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting
close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages,
who were farther off , were observed, to his great surprise,
" to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a
roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked
with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes.
Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages
with the intellectualncss of the civilised man ? According
to Liebeg, man s body is a stove, and food the fuel which
keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold
weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is
the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take
place when this is too rapid ; or for want of fuel, or from
some defect in the draught, the tire goes out. Of course
12 WALDEN.
the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire ; but so
much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above
list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous
with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be
regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us
and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase
the warmth of our bodies by addition from without
Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heal thus
generated and absorbed.
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep
warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we
accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing,
and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes,
robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter
within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves
at the end of its burrow ! The poor man is wont to com
plain that this is a cold world ; and to cold, no less physical
than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The
summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of
Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then un
necessary ; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are
sufficiently cooked by its -rays ; while Food generally is
more various, and more easily obtained,-and Clothing and
Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present
day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience,
a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow,
etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access
to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be
obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the
other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions,
and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in
order that they may live that is, keep comfortably warm
and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich
ECONOMY, 13
are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally
hot ; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course cl la,
mode.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts
of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hin
drances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to
luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more
simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philo
sophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a
class than which none lias been poorer in outward riches,
none so rich in inward. We know not much about them.
It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we
do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and
benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or
wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground
of what ive should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of
luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or com
merce, or literature, or art. There are now-a-days professors
of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable
to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a
philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even
to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accord
ing to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, mag
nanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems
of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success
of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like
success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live
merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and
arc in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.
But why do men degenerate ever 1 ? What makes families
run out ? What is the nature of the luxury which ener
vates and destroys nations ? Are we sure that there is
none of it in our own lives 1 Th<> philosopher is in advance
14 WALDEN.
of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not
fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries.
How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital
heat by better methods than other men 1
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I
have described, what does he want next 1 Surely not more
warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger
and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing,
more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like.
When he has obtained those things which are necessary to
life, there is another alternative than to obtain the super
fluities ; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation
from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears,
is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward,
and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence.
Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but
that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens
above ? for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they
bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and
are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though
they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have
perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this
purpose, so that most would not know them in their
flowering season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant
natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven
or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend
more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing
themselves, not knowing how they live, if, indeed, there
are any such, as has been dreamed ; nor to those who find
their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present
condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and
enthusiasm of lovers, and, to some extent, I reckon
ECONOMY, 15
myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are
well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know
whether they are well employed or not ; but mainly to
the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining
of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they
might improve them. There are some who complain most
energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, aa
they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that
seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of
all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use
it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden
or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend
my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of
my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual
history ; it would certainly astonish those who know no
thing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises
which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have
been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on
my stick too ; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, tho
past and future, which is precisely the present moment ; to
toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there
are more secrets in my trade than in most men s, and yet
not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.
I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint
" No Admittance " on my gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove,
and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have
spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what
calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had
heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen
16 WALDEN.
the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed aa
anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but,
if possible, Nature herself ! How many mornings, summer
and winter, before yet any neighbour was stirring about his
business, have I been about mine ! No doubt, many of my
townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise,
farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers
going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun
materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last
importance only to be present at it.
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the
town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and
carry it express ! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and
lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of
it. If it had concerned either of the political parties,
depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with
the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the
observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new
arrival ; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky
to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught
much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun.
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very
wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to
print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common
with writers, I got only my labour for my pains. However,
in this case my pains were their own reward.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow
.storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully ; sur
veyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths all across-lot
routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and pass
able at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to
their utility.
ECONOMY. 17
I have looked after the wild stock of tho town, which
give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping
fences ; and I have had an eye to tho unfrequented nooks
and corners of the farm, though I did not always know
whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field
to-day that was none of my business. I have watered
the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle troo,
the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the
yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry
seasons.
Jn short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it
without boasting, faithfully minding my business, till it
became more and more evident that my townsmen would
not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor
make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My
accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I
have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still
less paid and, settled. However, I have not set my heart
on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at
the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighbourhood.
"Do you wish to buy any baskets 1" he asked. "No, we
do not want any," was the reply. " What ! " exclaimed
the Indian, as he went out the gate, " do you mean to
starve us ? " Having seen his industrious white neighbours
so well off, that the lawyer had only to weave arguments,
and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he had
said to himself : I will go into business ; I will weave
baskets ; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when
he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and
then it would be the white man s to buy them. He had not
discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth
the other s while to buy them, or at least make him think
18 WALDEN.
that it was so, or to make something else which it would be
worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket
of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth anyone s
while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I
think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of
studying how to make it worth men s while to buy my
baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of sell
ing them. The life which men praise and regard as suc
cessful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any
one kind at the expense of the others ?
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer
me any room in the court-house, or any curacy or living
anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my
face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was
better known. I determined to go into business at once,
and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender
means as I had already got. My purpose in going to
Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live clearly
there, but to transact some private business with the fewest
obstacles ; to be hindered from accomplishing which, for
want of a little common-sense, a little enterprise, and
business talent, appeared not so bad as foolish.
I have always endeavoured to acquire strict business
habits ; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade
is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting-house
on the coast, in some Salem harbour, will be fixture enough.
You will export such articles as the country affords, purely
native products, much ice and pine timber and a little
granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good
ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person ; to be
at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter ; to buy
and sell and keep the accounts ; to read every letter received,
and write and read every letter sent; to superintend
ECONOMY. 19
the discharge of imports night and day ; to bo upon
many parts of the coast almost at the same time ; often the
richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore ; to
be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon,
speaking all passing vessels bound coast-wise ; to keep up a
steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a
distant and exorbitant market ; to keep yourself informed
of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace
everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and
civilisation, taking advantage of the results of all exploring
expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in
navigation ; charts to be studied, the position of reefs and
new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever,
the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of
some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that
should have reached a friendly pier, there is the untold
fate of La Perouse; universal science to be kept pace
with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and naviga
tors, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the
Phoenicians down to our day ; in fine, account of stock to
be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It
is a labour to task the faculties of a man, such problems
of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging
of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.
I have thought that Walclen Pond would be a good place
for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the
ice trade ; it oilers advantages which it may not be good
policy to divulge ; it is a good post and a good founda
tion. No Neva marshes to be filled ; though you must
everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is
said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in
the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of
the earth.
20 WALDEN.
As this business was to be entered into without tlio
usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those
means, that will still be indispensable to every such under
taking, were to be obtained. As for clothing, to come at
once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are
led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the
opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility.
Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of
clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly,
in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may
judge how much of any necessary or important work may
be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings
and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by
some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know
the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no
better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on.
Every day our garments become more assimilated to our
selves, receiving the impress of the wearer s character,
until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay
and medical appliances and some such solemnity even
as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my
estimation for having a patch in his clothes : yet I am sure
that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable,
or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound
conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps
the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try
my acquaintances by such tests as this ; who could wear a
patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most
behaved as if they believed that their prospects for life
would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier
for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a
broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a
gentleman s legs, they can be mended ; but if a similar
CLOTHING. 21
accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no
help for it ; for he considers, not what is truly respectable,
but what is respected. Wo know but few men, a great
many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last
shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest
salute the scarecrow 1 Passing a cornfield the other day,
close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognised the owner of
the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than
when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked
at every stranger who approached his master s premises
with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their
relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could
you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilised
men, which belonged to the most respected class ? When
Madam Pfeifler, in her adventurous travels round the
world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic
llussia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other
than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authori
ties, for she " was now in a civilised country, where
people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our
democratic New England towns the accidental possession of
wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone,
obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But
they who yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so
far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them.
Ueside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you
may call endless ; a woman s dress, at least, is never done.
A man who has at length found something to do will not
need to get a new suit to do it in ; for him the old will do,
that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate
period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have
served his valet, if a hero ever has a valet, bare feet are
22 WALDEN.
older than shoos, and ho can make them do. Only ilioy
who go to soirees and legislative halls must have new coats,
coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But
if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to
worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever
saw his old clothes, his old coat, actually worn out, re
solved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed
of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance
to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer,
who could do with less 1 I say, beware of all enterprises
that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of
clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new
clothes be made to fit ? If you have any enterprise before
you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not some
thing to do with, but something to do, or rather something
to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, how
ever ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so
enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new
men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping
new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of
the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to
solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its
slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal
industry and expansion ; for clothes are but our outmost
cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sail
ing under false colours, and be inevitably cashiered at last
by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exo
genous plants by addition without. Our outside and often
thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis or false skin,
which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here
and there without fatal injury ; our thicker garments, con
stantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but
CLOTHING. 23
our shirts arc our liber or truo bark, which cannot be re
moved without girdling and so destroying the man. I
believe that all races at some seasons wear something
equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad
so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark,
and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly,
that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old phil
osopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as
three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at
prices really to suit customers ; while a thick coat can be
bought for five dollars, which Avill last as many years, thick
pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and
a-half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a
winter cap for sixty-two and a-half cents, or a better be
made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that,
clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be
found wise men to do him reverence 1
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my
tailoress tells me gravely, "They do not make them so
now," not emphasising the " They " at all, as if she quoted
an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it dif
ficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot
believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When
I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed
in thought, emphasising to myself each word separately that
I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by
what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and
what authority they may have in an affair which affects mo
so nearly ; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with
equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the
" they," "It is true, they did not make them so recently,
but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if she
24 WALDEN.
docs not measure my character, but only the breadth of my
shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on ? We wor
ship not the Graces, nor the Fame, but Fashion. She spins
and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey
at Paris puts on a traveller s cap, and all the monkeys in
America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting any
thing quite simple and honest done in this world by the
help of men. They would have to be passed through a
powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of
them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again,
and then there would be some one in the company with a
maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there
nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things,
and you would have lost your labour. Nevertheless, we
will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed clown
to us by a mummy.
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained
that dressing has in this or any country risen to the
dignity of an art. At present men make shift to wear
what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put
on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance,
whether of space or time, laugh at each other s masquerade.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows
religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the
costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as much as
if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal
Islands. All costume oft a man is pitiful or grotesque.
It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere
life passed within it, which restrain laughter and con
secrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be
taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have
to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a
cannon-ball, rags are as becoming as purple.
SHELTER. 25
The childish and savage taste of men and women for
new patterns keep how many shaking and squinting through
kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure
which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers
have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two
patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of
u particular colour, the one will be sold readily, the other
lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that, after
the lapse of a season, the latter becomes the most fashion
able. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom
which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the
printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode
by which men may get clothing. The condition of tho
operatives is becoming every day more like that of the
English ; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as
I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that
mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestion
ably, that the corporations may be enriched. In the long
run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though
they should fail immediately, they had better aim at
something high.
As for a Shelter, I do not deny that this is now a
necessary of life, though there are instances of men having
done without it for long periods in colder countries than
this. Samuel Laing says that " The Laplander in his skin
dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and
shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow in
a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one
exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen
them asleep thus. Yet he adds, " They are not hardier than
other people." But, probably, man did not live long on
26 WALDEN.
earth without discovering the convenience which there is
in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have
originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than
of the family ; though these must bo extremely partial
and occasional in those climates where the house is
associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season
chiefly, and two-thirds of the year, except for a parasol,
is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was
formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian
gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day s march, and
a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified
that so many times they had camped. Man was not made
so large-limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow
his world, and wall iu a space such as fitted him. He
was at first bare and out of doors ; but though this was
pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight,
the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the
torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the
bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the
shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable,
wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a
home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical
warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the
human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow
in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again,
to some extent, and loves to stay out-doors, even in wet
and cold. It plays house as well as horse, having an
instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with
which when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any
approach to a cave ? It was the natural yearning of that
portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived
in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm
SHELTER. 27
leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched,
of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and
tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air,
and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think.
From the hearth to the field is a great distance. It would
IK! well perhaps if we were to spend more of our clays
and nights without any obstruction between us and the
celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from
under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds
do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence
in dovecots.
However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house,
it behoves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest
after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without
a clew, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid
mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter
is absolutely necessary. I have .seen Pcnobscot Indians,
in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the
snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought
that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the
wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly,
with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question
which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortun
ately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large
box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which
the labourers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested
to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a
one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to
admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at
night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in
his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the
wor^t, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You
could sit up a:i late as you pleased, and, whenever you got
23 WALDEN.
up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging
you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the
rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not
have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from
jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being
treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A
comfortable house, for a rude and hardy race, that lived
mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of
such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands.
Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject
to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, "The
best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and
warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at
those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great
flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are
green. . . . The meaner sort are covered with mats which
they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently
tight and warm, but not so good as the former. . . . Some
I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet
broad. ... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and
found them as warm as the best English houses." lie
adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within
with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished
with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as
to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over
the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge
was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at
most, and taken down and put up in a few hours ; and
every family owned one, or its apartment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good
as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants ;
but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that,
though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes
SHEL TER. 29
their holes, and tho savages their wigwams, in modern
civilised society not more than one-half the families own a
shelter. In tho largo towns and cities, where, civilisation
especially prevails, tho number of those who own a shelter
is a very small fraction of tho whole. The rest pay an
annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indis
pensable summer and winter, which would buy a village
of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as
long as thoy live. I do not mean to insist hero on tho dis
advantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident
that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little,
while the civilised man hires his commonly because ho
cannot afford to own it ; nor can he, in tho long run, any
better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying
this tax the poor civilised man secures an abode which is a
palace compared with tho savage s. An annual rent of
from twenty-five to a hundred dollars these are tho coun
try rates entitles him to the benefit of tho improvements
of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper,
Rum ford fire-place, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper
pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other
things. But how happens it that ho who is said to enjoy
these things is so commonly a. poor civilised man, while tho
savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage ? If it is
asserted that civilisation is a real advance in the condition
of man, and I think that it is, though only the wise
improve their advantages, it must be shown that it has
produced better dwellings without making them more
costly ; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I
will call life which is required to bo exchanged for it, imme
diately or in tho long run. An average house in this
neighbourhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to
lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the
3 o WALDEN.
labourer s life, even if he is not encumbered with a family
estimating the pecuniary value of every man s labour at
one dollar t a-day, for if some receive more, others receive
less so that he must have spent more than half his life
commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we sup
pose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice
of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his
wigwam for a palace on these terms 1
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advan
tage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store
against the future, so far as the individual is concerned,
mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps
a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless this
points to an important distinction between the civilised
man and the savage ; and, no doubt, they have designs on
us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilised people
an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a
great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that
of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this
advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we
may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without
suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by say
ing that the poor ye have always with you, or that the
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children s teeth are
set on edge ?
" As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
any more to use this proverb in Israel."
" Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father,
so also the soul of the son is mine : the soul that sinncth it
shall die."
When I consider my neighbours, the farmers of Concord,
who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that
for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or
SHELTER. 31
forty years, that thoy may become the real owners of their
farms, which commonly they have inherited with encum
brances, or else bought with hired money, and we may
regard one-third of that toil as the cost of their houses,
but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true,
the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of tho
farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance,
and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted
with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am
surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in
the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would
know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank
where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually
paid for his farm with labour on it is so rare that every
neighbour can point to him. I doubt if there are three
guch men in Concord. What has been said of the mer
chants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a
hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers.
With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says
pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine
pecuniary failures, but mere failures to fulfil their engage
ments, because it is inconvenient that is, it is the moral
character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely
worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably
not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but
are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail
honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring
boards from which much of our civilisation vaults and
turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic
plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off
here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the
agricultural machine were suent.
The farmer is endeavouring to solve the problem of a
32 WALDEN.
livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem
itself. To get his shoe strings he speculates in herds of
cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a
hair-spring to catch comfort arid independence, and then, as
ho turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the
reason he is poor ; and for a similar reason we are all poor
in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded
by luxuries. As Chapman sings,
"The false society of men
for earthly greatness
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air."
And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be
the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that
has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection
urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made,
that she " had not made it movable, by which means a bad
neighbourhood might be avoided ; " and it may still be
urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property, that we
are often imprisoned rather than housed in them ; and the
bad neighbourhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves.
I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for
nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses
in the outskirts and move into the village, but have
not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set
them free.
Granted that the majority are able at last either to own
or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While
civilisation has been improving our houses, it has not
equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has
created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen
and kings. And if the civilised man s y>ursuits are no
worthier than the savage s, if he is employed the greater part
SHELTER. 33
of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely,
why should he have a better dwelling than the former.
But how do the poor minority fare 1 Perhaps it will bo
found, that just in proportion as some have been placed in
outward circumstances above the savage, others have been
degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counter
balanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is
the palace, on the other are the almshouso and " silent
poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs
of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not
decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the
cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not
so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a
country where the usual evidences of civilisation exist,
the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may
not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the
degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know
this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties
which everywhere border our railroads, that last improve
ment in civilisation ; where I see in my daily walks human
beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for
the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable,
wood pile, and the forms of both old and young are
permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from
cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and
faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that
class by whose labour the works which distinguish this
generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less
extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomina
tion in England, which is the great workhouse of the world.
Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of
the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the
physical condition of the Irish with that of the North
34 WALDEN.
American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other
savage race before it was degraded by contact with the
civilised man. Yet I have no doubt that that people s rulers
are as wise as the average of civilised rulers. Their condition
only proves what squalidness may consist with civilisation.
I hardly need refer now to the labourers in our Southern
States who produce the staple exports of this country, and are
themselves a staple production of the South. But to confine
myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances.
Most men appear never to have considered what a house
is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives
because they think that they must have such a one as their
neighbours have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat
which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually
leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain
of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a
crown ! It is possible to invent a house still more con
venient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would
admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we
always study to obtain more of these things, and not
sometimes to be content with less ? Shall the respectable
citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the
necessity of the young man s providing a certain number of
superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest
chambers for empty guests, before he dies ? Why should
not our furniture be as simple as the Arab s or the Indian s?
When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we
have apotheosised as messengers from heaven, bearers of
divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue
at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture. Or
what if I were to allow would it not be a singular allow
ance ? that our furniture should be more complex than the
Arab s, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually
SHELTER. 35
his superiors ! At the present our houses are cluttered
with it, and a good housewife would soon sweep out the
greater part into the dust-hole, and not leave her morning s
work undone. Morning work ! By the blushes of Aurora
and the music of Memnon, what should be man s morning
work in this world ? I had three pieces of limestone on my
desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be
dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all
undusted still, and I threw them out the window in
disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I
would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the
grass, unless where man has broken ground.
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions
which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who
stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for
the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he
resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be
completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car
we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety
and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these
to become no better than a modern drawing-room, with its
divans, and ottomans, and sunshades, and a hundred other
oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented
for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of
the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed
to know the names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin
and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet
cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox -cart with a
free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an
excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.
The very simplicity and nakedness of man s life in the
primitive ages imply this advantage at least, that they left
him still but a sojouruer in nature. When he was refreshed
36 WALDEN.
with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again.
He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either
threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climljing the
mountain tops. But lo ! men have become the tools of
their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits
when he was hungry is become a farmer ; and he who stood
under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer
camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and
forgotten heaven. Wo have adopted Christianity merely
as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for
this world a family mansion, and for the next a family
tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man s
struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect
of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and
that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no
place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come
down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets,
furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to
hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or
a saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid
for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed
and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way
under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon
the mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to
some solid and honest, though earthy foundation. I
cannot but perceive that this so-called rich and refined
life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the
enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention
being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that
the greatest genuine leap, clue to human muscles alone, oa
record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to
have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without
factitious support, man is sure to come to earth u^aiu
SHELTER. 37
beyond that distance. The first question which I am
tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety
is, ^Vllo bolsters you ? Are you one of the ninety-seven
who fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these
questions, and then perhaps I may look at your baubles
and find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is
neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our
houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped,
and our lives must bo stripped, and beautiful housekeeping
and beautiful living be laid for a foundation : now, a taste for
the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is
no house and no housekeeper.
Old Johnston, in his " Wonder- Working Providence,"
speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he
was contemporary, tells us that " they burrow themselves in
the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and,
casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire
against the earth, at the highest side." They did not
" provide them houses," says he, " till the earth, by the
Lord s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and the
first year s crop was so light that " they were forced to cut
their bread very thin for a long season." The secretary of
the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in
1G50, for the information of those who wished to take up
land there, states more particularly, that " those in New
Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no
means to build farm-houses at first according to their wishes,
dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven
feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case
the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the
wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent
the caving-in of the earth ; floor this cellar with plank, and
wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear
38 WALDEN.
up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so tliat
they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire
families for two, three, and four years, it being understood
that partitions are run through those cellars which are
adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and prin
cipal men in New England, in the beginning of the colonies,
commenced their first dwelling-houses in this fashion, for
two reasons : firstly, in order not to waste time in building,
and not to want food the next season ; secondly, in order
not to discourage poor labouring people whom they brought
over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three
or four years, when the country became adapted to agri
culture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on
them several thousands."
In this course which our ancestors took there was a show
of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the
more pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants
satisfied now ? When I think of acquiring for myself one
of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak,
the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we
are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than
our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architec
tural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods ;
but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they
come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the
shell-fish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas ! I have been
inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined
with.
Though we are not so degenerate but that we might
possibly live in a cave or a wigwam, or wear skins to-day, it
certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly
bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer.
In such a neighbourhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and
BUILDING THE HOUSE. 39
bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable
caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even
well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly
on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it
both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit, we
might use these materials so as to become richer than the
richest now are, and make our civilisation a blessing. The
civilised man is a more experienced and wiser savage. But
to make haste to my own experiment.
Near the end of March 1845 I borrowed an axe and
went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where
I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some
tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It
is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the
most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to
have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the
axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the
apple of his eye ; but I returned it sharper than I received
it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered
with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond,
and a small open field in the woods where pines and
hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not
yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it
was all dark-coloured and saturated with water. There
were some slight flurries of snow during the day that I
worked there ; but for the most part when I came out on to
the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap
stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the
rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and
pewee and other birds already come to commence another
year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which
the winter of man s discontent was thawing as well as
40 WALDEN.
the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch
itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut
a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had
placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell
the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he
lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as
long as I staid there, or more than a quarter-of-an-hour ;
perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid
state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain
in their present low and primitive condition ; but if they
.should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing
them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more
ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty
mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still
numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them.
On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in
the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a
stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if
lost, or like the spirit of the fog.
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber,
and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not
having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts,
singing to myself,
Men say they know many things ;
But lo ! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances ;
The wind that blows
}s all that anybody knows. "
T hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the
studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers
on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they
BUILDING THE HOUSE. 41
were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones.
Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump,
for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in
the woods were not very long ones ; yet I usually carried
my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in
which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine
boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted
some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered
with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more
the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut
clown some of them, having become better acquainted with
it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the
sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips
which I made.
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work,
but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and
ready for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of
James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg
Railroad, for boards. James Collins shanty was considered
au uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was
not at home. I walked about the outside, at first unob
served from within, the window was so deep and high. It
was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and
not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all
round as if it were a compost heap. The roof was the
soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle
by the sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial pas
sage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. came to
the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The
hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and
had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and
aguish, only here a board and there a board which would
not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside
42 WALDEN.
of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor
extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the
cellar, a sort of dust-hole two feet deep. In her own words,
they were " good boards overhead, good boards all around,
and a good window," of two whole squares originally, only
the cat had passed out that way lately. There was a stove,
a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it
was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a
patent new coffee-mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told.
The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the mean
while returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents
to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to
nobody else meanwhile : I to take possession at six. It
were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate cer
tain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of
ground-rent and fuel. This he assured me was the only
encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the
road. One large bundle held their all, bed, coffee-mill,
looking-glass, hens, all but the cat; she took to the woods
and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in
a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.
I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the
nails, and removed it to the pond-side by small cartloads,
spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp
back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or
two as I drove along the woodland path. I was informed
treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbour Seeley, an
Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the
still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and
spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to
pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with
spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of
work, as he said. Ho was there to represent spectatordom,
LVILDING THE HOUSE. 43
and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with
the removal of the gods of Troy.
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south,
where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down
through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain
of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand
where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides
were left shelving, and not stoned ; but the sun having never
shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but
two hours work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking
of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth
for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid
house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they
store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure
has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth.
The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a
burrow.
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of
some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an
occasion for neighbourliness than from any necessity, I set
up the frame of my house. No man was ever more
honoured in the character of his raisers than I. They
are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier
structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the
4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the
boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it
was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid
the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cart
loads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I
built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire
became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the
meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the morn
ing; which mode I still think is in some respects more
44 WALDEN.
convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it
stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards
over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and
passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days,
when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but
the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my
holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment j
in fact, answered the same purpose as the Iliad.
It would be worth the while to build still more delibcr*
ately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation
a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of
man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until
we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities
even. There is some of the same fitness in a man s building
his own house that there is in a bird s building its own nest.
Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with
their own hands, and provided food for themselves and
families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty
would be universally developed, as birds universally sing
when they are so engaged ? But alas ! we do like cow-
birds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which
other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with
their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever
resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?
What does architecture amount to in the experience
of the mass of men ? I never in all my walks came
across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occu
pation as building his house. We belong to the community.
It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man :
it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the
farmer. Where is this division of labour to end ? and
what object does it finally serve? No doubt another niay
ARCHITECTURE. 45
also think for me ; but it is not therefore desirable that he
should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Truo, there are architects so-called in this country, and I
have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making
architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity,
and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All
very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little
better than the common dilettantism. A sentimental re
former in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at the
foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within
the ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an
almond or caraway seed in it, though I hold that almonds aro
most wholesome without the sugar, and not how the inhab
itant, the ind\vellcr, might build truly within and without,
and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reason
able man ever supposed that ornaments were something out
ward and in the skin merely, that the tortoise got his
spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-of pearl tints, by
such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity
Church 1 But a man has no more to do with the style of
architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its
shell : nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the
precise colour of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will
find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This
man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly
whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really
knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now
see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out
of the necessities and character of the indwellcr, who is the
only builder, out of some unconscious truthfulness, and
nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance ; and
whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to bo
produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of
46 WALDEN.
life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the
painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts
and cottages of the poor commonly ; it is the life of the
inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity
in these surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque;
and equally interesting will be the citizen s suburban box,
when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the
imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in
the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural
ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would
strip them oft , like borrowed plumes, without injury to the
substantials. They can do without architecture who have
no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado
were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and
the architects of our Bibles spent as much time about their
cornices as the architects of our churches do 1 So are made
the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors.
Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are
slanted over him or under him, and what colours are daubed
upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any
earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it ; but the spirit
having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with
constructing his own coffin, the architecture of the grave
and " carpenter " is but another name for " coffin-maker."
One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, Take up
a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that
colour. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house ? Toss
up a copper for it as well, What an abundance of leisure
he must have ! Why do you take up a handful of dirt 1
Better paint your house your own complexion ; let it turn
pale or blush for you. An enterprise to improve the style
of cottage architecture ! When you have got my ornaments
ready I will wear them.
ARCHITECTURE. 47
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of
my house, which were already impervious to rain, with
imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice of
the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a
plane.
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet
wide by fifteen long, eight-feet posts, with a garret and a
closet, a large window on each side, two trap-doors, one
door at the end, and a brick fire-place opposite. The exact
cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials
as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done
by myself, was as follows : and I give the details because
very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and
fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials
which compose them :
Boards $8 03 Mostly shanty boards.
Refuse shingles for roof ami sides
4 00
Laths
1 25
Two second-hand windows with glass
2 43
One thousand old bricks .
4 00
Two casks of lime ....
2 40
That was high.
Hair
31
More than I needed.
Mantle-tree iron ....
15
Nails .....
3 90
Hinges and screws .
14
Latch
10
Chalk ......
01
Transportation . . .
1 40
J my back.
In all . . |
28 12 :
k
These are all the materials excepting the timbor, stones,
and sand, which I claimed by squatter s right. I have also
a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which
was left after building the house.
48 WALDEN.
I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on
the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon
as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than
my present one.
I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter
can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than
the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast
more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for
humanity rather than for myself ; and my shortcomings and
inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.
Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy, chaff which I
find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which
I am as sorry as any man, I will breathe freely and
stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the
moral and physical system ; "and I am resolved that I will
not through humility become the devil s attorney. I will
endeavour to speak a good word for the truth. At Cam
bridge College the mere rent of a student s room, which is
only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each
year, though the corporation had the advantage of building
thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the
occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy
neighbours, and perhaps a residence in the fourth storey.
I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in
these respects, not only less education would be needed,
because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired,
but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in
a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which the
student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or
somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they
would with proper management on both sides. Those
things for which the most money is demanded are never
the tilings which the student most wants. Tuition, for
ECONOMY. 49
instance, is an important item in the terra bill, while for
the far more valuable education which he gets by associating
with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is
made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to
get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then following
blindly the principles of a division of labour to its extreme,
a principle which should never be followed but with cir
cumspection, to call in a contractor, who makes this a
subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other
operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the
students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for
it ; and for these oversights successive generations have to
pay. I think that it would be better than this, for the
students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to
lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures
his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirk
ing any labour necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and
unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience
which alone can make leisure fruitful. " But," says one,
" you do not mean that the students should go to work with
their hands instead of their heads 1" I do not mqan that
exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good
deal like that ; I mean that they should not play life, or
study it merely, while the community supports them at this
expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to
end. How could youths better learn to live than by at
once trying the experiment of living 1 Methinks this would
exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished
a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for
instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is
merely to send him into the neighbourhood of some pro
fessor, where anything is professed and practised but tho
art of life ; to survey the world through a telescope or a
?o IVALDEN.
microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study
chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or
mechanics, and not learn how it is earned ; to discover new
satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes,
or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself ; or to be
devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him,
while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar.
Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month
the boy who had made his own jack-knife from the ore
which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would
be necessary for this, or the boy who had attended the
lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile,
and had received a Rogers penknife from his father 1
Which would be most likely to cut his fingers 1 ... To my
astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had
studied navigation ! why, if I had taken one turn down
the harbour I should have known more about it. Even the
poor student studies and is taught only political economy,
while that economy of living which is synonymous with
philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges.
The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith,
Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.
As with our colleges, so with a hundred " modern
improvements : " there is an illusion about them ; there is
not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting
compound interest to the last for his early share and
numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions
are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention
from serious things. They are but improved means to an
unimproved end, an end which it was already but too
easy to arrive at as railroads lead to Boston or Now
York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic
telegraph from Maine to Texas ; but Maine and Texas,
ECONOMY. 51
it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
Either is in such a predicament as the man who was
earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman,
but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet
was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the
main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly.
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the
old world some weeks nearer to the new ; but perchance
the first news that will leak through into the broad, flap
ping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide
has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose
horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most
important messages : he is not an evangelist, nor does
he come round eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt
if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to the
mill.
One says to me, " I wonder that you do not lay up
money ; you love to travel ; you might take the cars and go
to Fitchburg to-day and see the country." But I am
wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller
is he that goes a-foot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try
who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles ; the
fare ninety cents. That is almost a day s wages. I
remember when wages were sixty cents a-day for labourers
on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and got
there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the
week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned
your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, or
possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job
in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be
working here the greater part of the day, And so, if the
railroad reached round the world, T think that I should
keep ahead of you ; and as for seeing the country and
} 52 WALDEN.
getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your
acquaintance altogether.
Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit,
and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is
as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world
available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole
surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that
if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long
enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time,
and for nothing ; but though a crowd rushes to the depot,
and the conductor shouts " All aboard ! " when the smoke
is blown away and the vapour condensed, it will be per
ceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over,
and it will be called, and will be, " A melancholy accident."
No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their
fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably
have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time.
This spending of the best part of one s life earning money
in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least
valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who
went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he
might return to England and live the life of a poet. lie
should have gone up garret at once. " What ! " exclaim a
million Irishmen, starting up from all the shanties in the
land, " is not this railroad which we have built a good
thing ? " Yes, I answer, comparatively good that is, you
might have done worse ; but I wish, as you are brothers of
mine, that you could have spent your time better than
digging in this dirt.
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve
dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to
meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and
ECONOMY. 53
a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but
also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips.
The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to
pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for
eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that
it was " good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels
on." I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the
owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate
so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got
out several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied
me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin
mould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the
greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for
the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and
the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder
of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for
the ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm
outgoes for the first season were, for implements, seed,
work, etc., $14 72|. The seed corn was given me. This
never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant more
than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen
bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The
yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to anything.
My whole income from the farm was
$23 44.
Deducting the outgoes, ... 14 72
There are left $8 711,
beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this
estimate was made of the value of $4 50, the amount on
hand much more than balancing a little grass which I did not
raise. All things considered, that is, considering the im
portance of a man s soul and of to-day, notwithstanding
54 WALDEN.
the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even
because of its transient character, I believe that that was
doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the
land which I required, about a third of an acre, and I
learned from the experience of both years, not being in the
least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur
Young among the rest, that if one would live simply and
eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than
he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of
more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to
cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would
be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plough it,
and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure
the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work, as it
were, with his left hand at odd hours in the summer ; and
thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig,
as at present. I desire to speak impartially on this point,
and as one not interested in the success or failure of the
present economical and social arrangements. I was more
independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not
anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of
my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Beside being better off than they already, if my house had
been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been
nearly as well off as before.
I am wont to think that men are not so much the
keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the
former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange
work ; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen
will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so
much the larger. Man does some of his part of the
exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no
ECONOMY. 55
boy s play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all
respects that is, no nation of philosophers would commit
so great a blunder as to use the labour of animals. True,
there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of
philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there
should be. However, / should never have broken a horse
or bull, and taken him to board for any work he might do
for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds
man merely ; and if society seems to be the gainer by so
doing, are we certain that what is one man s gain is not
another s loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with
his master to be satisfied ? Granted that some public
works would not have been constructed without this aid,
and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse ;
does it follow that he could not have accomplished works
yet more worthy of himself in that case? When men
begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but lux
urious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable
that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in
other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus
not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol
of this, he works for the animal without him. Though we
have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the pros
perity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to
which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said
to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses here
abouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings ;
but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech
in this county. It should not be by their architecture,
but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that
nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How
much more admirable the Bhagvat-Gecta than all the ruing
of the East ! Towers and temples are the luxury of priuoes.
56 WALDEN.
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding
of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor,
nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a
trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone ham
mered 1 In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any
hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane
ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the
amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains
were taken to smooth and polish their manners 1 One
piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monu
ment as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in
place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur.
More sensible is a rod of stone-wall that bounds an honest
man s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered
farther from the true end of life. The religion and civilisa
tion which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid
temples, but what you might call Christianity does not.
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb
only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is
nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so
many men could be found degraded enough to spend their
lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom
it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in
the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might
possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have
no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of
the builders, it is much the same all the world over,
whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United
States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The main
spring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread
and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect,
designs it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil
and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson & Sons,
ECONOMY.
57
stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look down
ou it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high
towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in
this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he
got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and
kettles rattle : but I think that I shall not go out of my
way to admire the hole which he made. Many are con
cerned about the monuments of the West and the East,
to know who built them. For my part, I should like to
know who in those days did not build them, who were
above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labour of various other
kinds in the village in the meanwhile fcr I have as many
trades as fingers I had earned $13 34. The expense of
food for eight months namely, from July 4th to March
1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I
lived there more than two years not counting potatoes,
a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised,
nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last
date,
Cheapest form of the sacchariiie.
Cheaper than rye.
Rice .
Si 73J
Molasses . .
1 73
Ilye meal . ,
1 04|
Indian meal .
99|
Tork .
22
Flour .
88
Sugar
SO
Lard .
65
Apples
25
Dried apple
22
Sweet potatoes
10
One pumpkin
6
One water-melon .
2
Salt .
3
1 Costs more than Indian meal, ^
/ both money and trouble.
58 WALDEN.
Yes, I did eat $8 74, all told; but I should not thus
unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that
most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and
that their deeds would look no better in print. The next
year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and
once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which
ravaged my bean-field, effect his transmigration, as a
Tartar would say, and devour him, partly for experi
ment s sake; but though it afforded me a momentary
enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavour, I saw that
the longest use would not make that a good practice, how
ever it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed
by the village butcher
Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same
dates, though little can be inferred from this item,
amounted to
$8 40f
Oil and some household utensils . . 2 00
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing
and mending, which for the most part were done out of the
house, and their bills have not yet been received, and
these are all and more than all the ways by which money
necessarily goes out in this part of the world, were
House $28 12J
Farm, one year 14 72
Food, eight months . . . . 8 74
Clothing, etc. , eight months . , . 8 40|
Oil, etc., eight months . . . . 2 00
In all $61 99|
I address myself now to those of my readers who have a
living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce
sold
ECONOMY. 59
$23 44
Earned by day-labour .... 13 34
In all $36 78,
which, subtracted from the sum of the outgoes, leaves a
balance of $25 2lf on the one side, this being very nearly
the means with which I started, and the measure of ex
penses to be incurred, and, on the other, beside the leisure
and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable
house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.
Those statistics, however accidental and therefore unin-
structive they may appear, as they have a certain complete
ness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of
which I have not rendered some account. It appears from
the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money
about twenty-seven cents a-week. It was, for nearly two
years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, pota
toes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and
my drink water. It was fit that I should live on rice,
mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India. To
meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as
well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had
done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do again,
it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrange
ments. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, a
constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative
statement like this.
I learned from my two years experience that it would
cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one s necessary food
even in this latitude ; that a man may use as simple a diet
as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have
made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts,
simply oil a dish of purslane (Portulaoa oleracca) which I
60 WALDEN.
gathered in my corn-field, boiled and salted. I give the
Latin on account of the savouriness of the trivial name.
And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peace
ful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears
of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even
the little variety which I used was a yielding to the de
mands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come
to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of
necessaries, but for want of luxuries ; and I know a good
woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took
to drinking water only.
The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject
rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and
he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test
unless he has a well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt,
genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors
011 a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed oft* in
building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to
have a piny flavor. I tried flour also ; but have at last
found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and
agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement
to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending
and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching
eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and
they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble
fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping
them in cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indis
pensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as
offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention
of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts
and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of
this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies
BREAD. 6 1
through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is
supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the
various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good,
sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which
some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its
cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal
fire, some precious bottleful, I suppose, first brought
over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and
its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian
billows over the land, this seed I regularly and faithfully
procured from the village, till at length one morning I
forgot the rules and scalded mv yeast ; by which accident
I discovered that even this was not indispensable, for my
discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,
and I have gladly omitted it since, though most house
wives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread
without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied
a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to
be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a
year am still in the land of the living ; and I am glad
to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottleful in my
pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its
contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more
respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than
any other can adapt himself to all climates and circum
stances. Neither did I put any salt, soda, or other acid or
alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it
according to the receipt which Marcus Porcius Cato gavo
about two centuries before Christ. " Panem depsticium sic
facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in
mortarium indito, aquoe paulatim addito, subigitoque
pulchre. Ubi bcne subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub
tcstu." Which I take to mean " Make kneaded bread
62 WALDEN.
tli us : Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal
into the trough, and water gradually, and knead it
thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and
bake it under a cover," that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a
word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of
life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I
saw none of it for more than a month.
Every New Englander might easily raise all his own bread-
stuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend
on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are
we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord,
fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy
and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.
For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs
the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at
least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I
saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and
Indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land,
and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in
a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork ; and if I must
have some concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that
I could make a very good molasses either of pumpkins cr
beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few
maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were
growing I could use various substitutes beside those which
I have named. " For," as the Forefathers sang,
"We can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips."
Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain
this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the sea-shore, or, if
I did without it altogether, I should probably drink the
less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled
themselves to go after it.
FURNITURE. 63
Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food
was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only
remain to get clothing and .fuel. The pantaloons which I
now wear were woven in a farmer s family, thank Heaven
there is so much virtue still in man ; for I think the fall
from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as
that from the man to the farmer ; and in a new country
fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not
permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the
same price for which the land I cultivated was sold namely,
eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered
that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.
There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask
me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable
food alone ; and to strike at the root of the matter at once,
for the root is faith, I am accustomed to answer such, that I
can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that,
they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my
part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being
tried ; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on
hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar.
The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human
race is interested in these experiments, though a few old
women, who are incapacitated for them, or who own their
thirds in mills, may be alarmed.
My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest
cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account,
consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-
glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons,
a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl,
two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a,
jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None
64 WALDEN.
ft BO poor that he need rit on a pumpkin. That in shiftless-
B0H, There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the
village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture !
Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a
furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would
not be ashamed to see hia furniture packed in a cart and
going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes
of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That in
Hpaulding s furniture. I could never tell from inspecting
such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man
or a poor one ; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.
Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you
are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a
dozen shanties ; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen
times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever but to get
rid of our furniture, our exuvia; at last to go from this
world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be
burned T It is the same as if all these traps were buckled
to ft man s belt, and he could not move over the rou^li
country where our lines are cast without dragging them,
dragging hin trap. lie was a lucky fox that left his tail in
the trap. The muHkrat will gnaw his third leg off to be
free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often
he is at a dead get ! " Kir, if I may be so bold, what do
you mean by a dead set?" If you are a r.< <
you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much
that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his 1.
furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not
burn, and he will appear to bo harnessed to it and making
what headway he can. J think that the man is at I
;M, through a k
It follow him. J cannot but
{I OOmfNUHio :;man,
FURNITURE. 65
seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of 1m "furni-
is whether it is insured or not "But what shall I
do with my furniture t" My gay butterfly is entangled in
a spider s web then. Even those who seem for a long while
not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find
have some stored in somebody s barn. I look upon England
is an old gentleman who is travelling with a great
deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from
IOIIL; housekeeping, which ho has not the courage to burn ;
great trunk, little trunk, bandbox and bundle. Throw
awav the first three at least. It would surpass the powers
of a well man now-a-days to take up his bed and walk, and
I should certainly adviso a sick one to lay down his bed
and run. When I have met an immigrant tottering under
a bundle which contained his all looking like an enormous
wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck I have
pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had
all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will
take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital
part, r-ut perchance it would be -wisest never to put one s
paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for
curtains, for 1 have no gazers to shut out but the sun and
moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The
moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, :
the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he is
sometimes too warm a friend, T find it still better economy
to retreat behind some curtain which nature- has provided,
iton to the details of housekeeping.
A lady \1 me a mat, but as I had no room to
.thin the house, nor r. within or without
to shake it, T /. vlir.cd it, preferring to wipe my f
i the leginnings of evil.
66 WALDEN.
Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon s
effects, for his life had not been ineffectual :
" The evil that men do lives after them."
As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun
to accumulate in his father s day. Among the rest was a
dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half-a-century
in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not
burned ; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of
them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The
neighbours eagerly collected to view them, bought them all
and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust
holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they
will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.
The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be
profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the
semblance of casting their slough annually ; they have the
idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.
Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a
"busk," or "feast of first fruits," as Bartram describes
to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians 1
"When a town celebrates the busk," says he, "having
previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots,
pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they
collect all their worn-out clothes and other despicable
things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the
whole town, of their filth, which, with all the remaining
grain and other old provisions, they cast together into one
common heap, and consume it with fire. After having
taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the
town is extinguished. During the fast they abstain from
the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A
ECONOMY. 67
general amnesty is proclaimed ; all malefactors may return
to their town.
" On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry
wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from
whence every habitation in the town is supplied with tho
new and pure flame."
They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance
and sing for three days, "and the four following days
they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from
neighbouring towns, who have in like manner purified and
prepared themselves."
The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at tho
end of every fifty-two yeai s, in the belief that it was time
for the world to come to an end.
I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the
dictionary defines it, " outward and visible sign of an in
ward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt
that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven
to do thus, though they have no biblical record of the
revelation.
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely
by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working
about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of
living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my
summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly
tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in
proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I
was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe,
accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did
not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a
livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade ; but I
found that it would take ten years to get under way in
68 WALDEN.
that, and that then I should probably bo on my way to tho
devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time bo
doing what is called a good business. When formerly I
was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some-
sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being
fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and
seriously of picking huckleberries ; that surely I could do,
and its small profits might suffice, for my greatest skill has
been to want but little, so little capital it required, so
little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought.
While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or
the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like
theirs ; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries
which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of
them ; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed
that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to
such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to
the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that
trade curses everything it handles ; and though you trade
in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches
to the business.
As I preferred some things to others, and especially
valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed
well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich car
pets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house
in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are
any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things,
and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish
to them the pursuit. Some are " industrious," and appear
to love labour for its own sake, or pci-haps because it keeps
them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present no
thing to say. Those who would not know what to do with
more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work
ECONOMY. 69
twice as hard ar, they do, work till they pay fur them
selves, and get their free papers. For myself 1 found that
the occupation of a day-labourer was the most independent
of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in
a year to support one. The labourer s day ends with the
going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself
to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labour ; but his
employer, who speculates from month to month, has no
respite; from one end of the year to the other.
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience,
that to maintain one s self on this earth is not a hardship
but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely ; as the
pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the
more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn
his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier
than I do.
One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited
some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did,
if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt tny
mode of living on any account ; for, beside that before he
has fairly learned it I may have found out another for my
self, I desire that there may be as many different persons
in the world as possible ; but I would have each one be
very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not
his father s or his mother s or his neighbour s instead. The
youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not bo
hindered from doing that which he tolls me he would like to
do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise,
as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the pole-star in his
eye ; but that is sullicient guidance for all our life. We
may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but
we would preserve the true course.
Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer
70 WALDEN.
still for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally
more expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover,
one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several apart
ments. But for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling.
Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to Luild the whole
yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the
common wall ; and when you have done this, the common
partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that
other may prove a bad neighbour, and also not keep his side
in repair. The only co-operation which is commonly pos
sible is exceedingly partial and superficial ; and what little
true co-operation there is, is as if it were not, being a
harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith he will co
operate with equal faith everywhere ; if he has not faith, he
will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever
company he is joined to. To co-operate, in the highest as
well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together.
I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel
together over the world, the one without money, earning
his means as he went, before the mast and behind the
plough, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket.
It was easy to see that they could not long be companions
or co-operate, since one would not operate at all. They
would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures.
Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can
start to-day ; but he who travels with another must wait
till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before
they get off.
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my
townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged
very little in philanthropic enterprises. I have made some
sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have
PHILANTHROPY. 71
.sacriiieed lh is pleasure also. There are those who have used
;;11 their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some
poor family in the town ; and if I had nothing to do, for
the devil finds employment for the idle, I might try niy
hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have
thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their
Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor
persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself,
and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer,
they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain
poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted in so
many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at
least maybe spared to other arid less humane pursuits. You
must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else.
As for doing good, that is one of the professions which
are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it
may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my con
stitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliber
ately forsake my particular calling to do the good which
society demands of me, to save the universe from annihila
tion; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater
steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I
would not stand between any man and his genius; and
to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole
heart and soul and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the
world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will.
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no
doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence.
At doing something, I will not engage that my neighbours
shall pronounce it good, I do not hesitate to say that I
should be a capital fellow to hire ; but what that is, it is
for my employer to find out. What yood I do, in the
common sense of that word, must be aside from my main
72 WALDEN.
path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say,
practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, with
out aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with
kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to
preach at all in this strain, I should say rather, Set about
being good. As if the sun should stop when he had kindled
his fires up to the splendour of a moon or a star of the sixth
magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping
in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting
meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily
increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such
brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and
then, in the meanwhile too, going about the world in his
own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy
has discovered, the world going about him getting good.
When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his
beneficence, had the sun s chariot but one day, and drove
out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses
in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of
the earth, and dried up every spring, and made the great
desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled him headlong
to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief
at his death, did not shine for a year.
There is no odour so bad as that which arises from good
ness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew
for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the
conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life
as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts
called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears
and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear I should
get some of his good done to me, some of its virus mingled
with my blood. No, in this case I would rather suffer
evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to me
PHILANTHROPY. 73
because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm
me if I should be free/ing, or pull me out of a ditch if I
should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland
dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for
one s fellow-man in the broadest sense. Howard was no
doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and
lias his reward ; but, comparatively speaking, what are a
hundred Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help
us in our best estate, when we are most worthy to be
helped 1 I never heard of a philanthropic meeting in
which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or
the like of me.
The Jesuits were quite baulked by those Indians who,
being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture
to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering,
it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any con
solation which the missionaries could offer ; and the law to
do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on
the ears of those, who, for their part, did not care how they
were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion,
and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
Be ure that you give the poor the aid they most need,
though it be your example which leaves them far behind.
If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not
merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes
sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry
as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste,
and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he
will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity
the clumsy Irish labourers who cut ice on the pond, in such
mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy
and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter
cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my
74 WALDEN.
house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of
pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin,
though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and
that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I
offered him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was
the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and
I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a
flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a
thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is
striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the
largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the
most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he
strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder
devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a
Sunday s liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness
to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would
they not be kinder if they employed themselves there 1 ? You
boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity :
maybe you should spend the nine-tenths so, and done with
it. Society recovei S only a tenth part of the property then.
Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession
it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice?
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is suffi
ciently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly over
rated ; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A
robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a
fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to
the poor, meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of
the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers
and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England,
a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her
scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare,
Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next
PHIL A NTHROP Y. 7 ?
of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required
it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the
greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs.
Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this.
The last were not England s best men and women ; only,
perhaps, her best philanthropists.
I would not subtract anything from the praise that is
due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who
by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I
do not value chiefly a man s uprightness and benevolence,
which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of
whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick,
serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks.
I want the flower and fruit of a man ; that some fragrance
be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavour
our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and
transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which cost him
nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity
that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often
surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off
griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should
impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and
ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not
spread by contagion. From what southern plains comes up
the voice of wailing ? Under what latitudes reside the
heathen to whom we would send light ? Who is that
intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem ? If
anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his func
tions, if he have a pain in his bowels even, for that is the
scat of sympathy, he forthwith sets about reforming the
world. Being a microcosm himself, he discovers, and it is
a true discovery, and he is the man to make it, that the
world has been eating green apples ; to his eyes, in fact,
76 WALDEN.
the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is clanger
awful to think of that the children of men will nibble
before it is ripe ; and straightway his drastic philanthropy
seeks out the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces
the populous Indian and Chinese villages ; and, thus, by a
few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the mean
while using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures
himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on
one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe,
and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and whole
some to live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater
than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall
know, a worse man than myself.
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his
sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the
holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted,
let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch,
and he will forsake his generous companions without
apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use of
tobacco is, that I never chewed it ; that is a penalty which
reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay ; though there are
things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.
If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philan
thropies, do not let your left hand know what your right
hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drown
ing and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set
about some free labour.
Our manners have been corrupted by communication
with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melo
dious cursing of God and enduring him forever. One
would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather
consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There
is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction
PHILA NTHROP Y. 77
with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God. All
health and success does me good, hoAvever far off and
withdrawn it may appear ; all disease and failure helps
to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy
it may have with me or I with it. If, then, we would
indeed restore mankind \>y truly Inrlian, botanic, mag
netic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and
well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over
our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do
not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavour
to become one of the worthies of the world.
I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi
of Shiraz, that " They asked a wise man, saying, Of the
many celebrated trees which the Most High God has
created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free,
excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit ; what mystery is
there in this? He replied, Each has its appropriate
produce, and appointed season, during the continuance
of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence
dry and withered ; to neither of which states is the cypress
exposed, being always flourishing ; and of this nature are
the azads, or religious independents. Fix not thy heart
on that which is transitory ; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will
continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is
extinct : if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree ;
but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free
man, like the cypress."
COMPLEMENTAL VERSES.
THE PRETENSIONS OF POVERTY.
SI Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
To claim a station in the firmament,
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
With roots and pot-herbs ; where thy right hand,
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
We not require the dull society
Of your necessitated temperance,
Or of that unnatural stupidity
That knows no joy nor sorrow : nor your forc d
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds ; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
For which antiquity hath left no name,
But patterns only, such as Hercules,
Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath d cell ;
And when thou scest the new enlightened sphere,
Study to know but what those worthies were."
T, CAREW.
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I
LIVED FOR.
||T a certain season of our life wo 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, dis
coursed 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 scdes, a seat ? better if a country
scat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be
soon improved, which some might have thought too far
from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far
from it. Well, there I might live, I said ; and there I did
live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life ; saw how I
8o WALDEN.
could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and
sec the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this
region, wherever they may place thir 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 tho door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen
to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow per
chance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of
things which he can afford to let alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the
refusal of several farms, the refusal was all I wanted, but
I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The
nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought
the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and
collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to
carry it on or off with ; but before the owner gave me a deed
of it, his wife every man has such a wife changed her
mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to
release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents
in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was
that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars,
or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and
the farm too, for I had carried it far enough ; or rather, to be
generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and,
as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars,
and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a
wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man
without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the land
scape, and 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 i none to dispute."
WHERE I LIVED. Si
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 neighbour, 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 grey colour
and ruinous state of the house and barn, arid 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 ;
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 pro
prietor 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 have never heard what compensation ho
received for that, and do all those things which had no
other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be
unmolested in my possession of it ; for I knew all the while
that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I
wanted if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned
out as 1 have said.
82 WALDEN.
All that I could say, then, with ivspoct to funning on i\
largo 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 1 shall plant, I
shall bo less likely to bo disappointed. But I would say to
my fellows, onco for all, as long as possible live free and
uncommitted. It makes but little dillerenco whether you
are committed to a farm or the county jail.
Old Cato, whose " Do Ho Rustica" is my "Cultivator,"
says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer
nonsense of tho 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 thoro tho 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 1 live, and
be buried in it lirst, that it may please me the more at lust.
Tho present was my next experiment of this kind, which
I purpose to describe moro at length ; for convenience,
putting the experience of two years into one. As 1 h:i\<>
said, I do not propose to write an odo to dejection, but to
brag as lustily as chanticleer in tho morning, standing on
his roost, if only to wake my neighbours up.
When lirst J took up my abode in tho woods, that i ,
began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, hy
accident, was on Independence Day, on the Ith of July,
1M.">, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely
a defence against the ruin, without plastering or chimney,
the walls being of rough weather stained hoards, \\itli \\ ide
chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright \\hite
he\vn studs and freshly planed door and window casin-s
.RE i LIVED. 83
gavo it a cle.au and airy look, especially in the morning,
when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied
that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To
my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less
of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house
on a mountain which I had visited the year before. This
was an airy, an unplastercd cabin, fit to entertain a travel
ling 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. Tho
morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninter
rupted ; 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 mo, 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 out
lines. 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 llarivansa 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 more thrilling songsters of the
84 WALDRN.
forest which never, or rai ely, serenade a villager, tho
woodtlirush, the vcery, the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow,
the whippoorwill, 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 one
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 rain-storm in August, when, both air
and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-
afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and tho wood-
thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore.
A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time ;
and tho clear portion of the air above it being .shallow and
darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections,
becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important.
From a hill-top near by, where tho wood had been recently
cut oil , there was a pleasing vista southward across tho
pond, through a wide indentation in the, hills which form
jo
WHERE 7 LIVED. 85
thn si ion: 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 tip-toe 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 distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage
in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth
beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and
floated even by this small sheet of intervening 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,
1 did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was
pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub-oak
plutrau to which the opposite shore arose, stretched away
toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary,
affording ample room for all the roving families of men.
"There are none happy in the world but beings who en
joy freely a vast horizon," said Damodara, when his herds
required new and larger pastures.
86 WALDEN.
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 con
stellation of Cassiopeia s Chair, far from noise and disturb
ance. 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 Alde-
baran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal
remoteness from the life which 1 had left behind, dwindled
and twinkling with 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
"There was a shepherd that did HFC,
Arid held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by."
What should we think of the shepherd s life if his flocks
always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts ?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life
of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Kuture
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 bath
ing tub of king Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself
completely each day ; do it again, and again, and forevei
again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the
heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a
WHERE 1 LIVED. 87
mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through
my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with
door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that
ever sang of fame. It was Homer s requiem ; itself an
Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and
wanderings. There was something cosmical about it ; a
standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting
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 slumbers all
the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of
that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not
awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings
of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-
acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied bjf
the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells,
and a fragrance filling the air to a higher life than we fell
asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove
itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who
does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more
sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has de
spaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening
way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul
of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and
his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All
memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time
and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelli
gences 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
88 WALDEN,
sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what
the clocks say or the attitudes and labours of men. Morn
ing is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral
reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men
give so poor an account of their day if they have not been
slumbering 1 ? They are not such poor calculators. If they
had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have
performed something. The millions area wake 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 unquestion
able ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious
endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particu
lar 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 contem
plation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we
refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we
get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might
be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could
not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to
die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
WHA T I LIVED FOR. 89
what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I
wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to
live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that
was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive
jfife into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if
it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and gen
uine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world ;
or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able
to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For
most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty
about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have
somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man
here to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants ; though the fable tells us
that we were long ago changed into men ; like pygmies we
fight with cranes ; it is error upon error, and clout upon
clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous
and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by
detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more
than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his
ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity ! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and
not a hundred or a thousand ; instead of a million count
half-a-dozen, and keep your accounts on your 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 the bottom and not make his port
at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator
indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three
meals a-day, if it be necessary eat but one ; instead of a
hundred dishes, five ; and reduce other things in proportion.
90 WALDEN.
Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty
states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even
a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any
moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal
improvements, which, by the way, are all external and
superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown
establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by
its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by
want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million
households in the land ; and the only cure for it as for
them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan
simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too
fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have
commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph,
and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether
they do or not ; but whether we should live like baboons or
like men, is a little uncertain. If wo 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 1 But if we stay at
home and nnd 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 underlie the rail
road ? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man.
The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand,
and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound
sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is
laid down and run over ; so that, if some have the pleasure
of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden
upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in
his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position,
and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a
WHA T I LIVED FOR. 91
hue and cry about ifc, as if this were an exception. I am
glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every live
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 wo live with such hurry and waste of life ?
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take
a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for
ivork, we haven t any of any consequence. We have the
Saint Vitus dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads
still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish
bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is
hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, not
withstanding that press of engagements which was his
excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman,
J might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that
sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if
jv-o will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since
burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire,
or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as
handsomely ; yes, even if it were the parish church itself.
Hardly a man takes a half-hour s nap after dinner, but
when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What s
the news 1 " 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 dreauiiug the while that he
92 WALDEN.
lives in the dark unfathomecl mammoth cave of this world,
and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
For my part, I could easily do without the post office. I
think that there are very few important communications
made through it. To speak critically, I never received more
than one or two letters in my life I wrote this some
years ago that were worth the postage. The penny-post
is commonly, an institution through which you seriously
offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often
safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any
memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man
robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house
burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown-up,
or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad
dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, we
never need read of another. One is enough. If you are
acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a
myriad instances and applications it To a philosopher all
news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it
are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after
this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other
day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last
arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to
the establishment were broken by the pressure, news which
I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or
twelve years beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for
Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don
Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and
Granada, from time to time in the right proportions, they
may have changed the names a little since I saw the
papers, and serve up a bull-fight when other entertain
ments 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
WHA T I LIVED FOR. 93
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 1C 49 ;
and if you have learned the history of her crops for an
average year, you never need attend to that thing again,
unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary
character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the
newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts,
a French revolution not excepted.
What news ! how much more important to know what
that is which was never old! "Kieou-he-yu great digni
tary 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 1 } The messenger answered with re
spect : My master desires to diminish the number of his
faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The mes
senger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a
worthy messenger ! What a worthy messenger ! " The
preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on
their day of rest at the end of the week, for Sunday is the
fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and
brave beginning of a new one, with this one other draggle-
tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice,
" Pause ! Avast ! Why so seeming fast, but deadly
slow?"
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths,
while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe
realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life,
to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a
fairy talc 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
94 WALDEN.
we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and
worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,
that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow
of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime.
By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be
deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily
life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on
purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, dis
cern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who
fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by
experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo
book, that " there was a king s son, who, being expelled in
infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester,
and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself
to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One
of his father s ministers having discovered him, revealed to
him what he was, and the misconception of his character
was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So
soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, " from the circum
stances 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 JSrahme." 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? 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 is before a
true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account
of them. Men esteem tiVh remote, in the outskirts of tho
WIT A T I LIVED FOR, 95
system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the
last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and
sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are
now and here. God himself culminates in the present
moment, and will never bo more divine in the lapse of all
the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is
sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and
drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe
constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions ;
whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the
artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of
his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be
thrown oft 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 1 Lot us not bo upset and
overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a
dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this
danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down
hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigour, sail by it,
looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the
engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains.
If the bell rings, why should we run 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
96 WALDEN.
and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom
and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This
is, and no mistake ; and then begin, having a point d appui,
below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might
found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps
a gauge, not a Kilometer, but a Realometer, that future
ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appear
ances 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-fishiiig in. I drink at it;
but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how
shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity
remains. I would drink deeper ; fish in the sky, whose
bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know
not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been
regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
The intellect is a cleaver ; it discerns and rifts its way into
the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy
with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and
feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated- in it. My
instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing,
as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with
it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills.
I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts ; so
by the divining rod and thin rising vapours I judge ; and
here I will begin to mine.
READING.
FTTH a little more deliberation in the choice of
their pursuits, all men would perhaps become
essentially students and observers, for certainly
their nature and destiny are interesting to all
alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our pos
terity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring famo
even, we are mortal ; but in dealing with truth we are
immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The old
est Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the
veil from the statue of the divinity ; and still the trembling
robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he
did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is
he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled
on that robe : no time has elapsed since that divinity was
revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is
improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.
My residence was more favourable, not only to thought,
but to serious reading, than a university ; and though I was
beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had
more than ever come within the influence of those books
which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first
written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to
time on to linen paper. Says the poet, Mir Camar I ddiu
98 WALDRN.
Mnsf, " Being seated to run through the region of the
spiritual world ; I have had this advantage in books. To
be intoxicated by a single glass of wine ; I have experienced
this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric
doctrines." I kept Homer s Iliad on my table through the
summer, though I looked at his page only now and then.
Incessant labour with my hands, at first, for I had my
house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made
more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the
prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two
shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till
that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked
where it was then that / lived.
The student may read Homer or j^schylus in the Greek
without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies
that he in some measure emulates their heroes, and conse
crates morning hours to their pages. The heroic books,
even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will
always be in a language dead to degenerate times ; and we
must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line,
conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of
what wisdom, and valour, and generosity we have. The
modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations,
lias done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of
antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which
they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth
the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn
only some words of an ancient language, which are raised
out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual sug
gestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer
remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has
heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics
would at length make way for more modern and practical
READING. 00
studies; but tlic adventurous student will always study
classics, in whatever language they may be written, and
however ancient they may be. For what are the classics
but the noblest recorded thoughts of man ? They are the
only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such
answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and
Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study
Nature because she is old. To read well that is, to read
true books in. a true spirit is a noble exercise, and one
that will task the reader more than any exercise which the
customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as
the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the
whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliber
ately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough
even to be able to speak the language of that nation by
which they are written, for there is a memorable interval
between the spoken and the written language, the language
heard and the language read. The one is commonly transi
tory a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish,
and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our
mothors. The other is the maturity and experience of
that : if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue,
a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard
by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.
The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin
tongues in the middle ages were not entitled by the accident
of birth to rend the works of genius written in those lan
guages ; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin
which they knew, but in the select language of literature.
They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and
Rome, but the very materials on which they were written
were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap
contemporary literature. 1 ut when the several nations of
ioo IVALDEN.
Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages
of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising
literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were
enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of
antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could
not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a
few scholars only are still reading it.
However much we may admire the orator s occasional
bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly
as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the
firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are
the stars, and they who can may read them. The astron
omers forever comment on and observe them. Thoy are not
exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath.
What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found
to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the
inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob
before him, to those who can hear him ; but the writer,
whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would bo
distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the
orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all
in any age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on
his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the
choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate
with us and more universal than any other work of art. It
is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be trans
lated into every language, and not only be read but actually
breathed from all human lips ; not be represented on
canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of
life itself. The symbol of an ancient man s thought becomes
a modern man s speech. Two thousand summers have im
parted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her
READING. lor
warbles, only a luaturer golden and autumnal tint, for they
have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into
all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit
inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest
and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves
of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead,
but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common
sense will not refuse them. Their authors are natural and
irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings
or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the
illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enter
prise and industry his coveted leisure and independence,
and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he
turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inac
cessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only
of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and
insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good
sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children
that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels ; and
thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics
in the language in which they were written must have a
very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race ;
for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever
been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilisation
itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has
never yet been printed in English, nor ./Eschylus, nor
Virgil even, works as refined, as solidly done, and as
beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers,
say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever,
equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and
heroic literary labours of the ancients. They only talk of
ic-2 WALDEN.
forgetting them who never knew them, it will be soon
enough to forget them when we have the learning and the
genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate
them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics
which we call Classics, and the still older and more than
classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall
have still further accumulated, when the vaticans shall be
filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers
and Dantes and Shakespearea, and all the centuries to come
shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum
of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven
at last.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read
by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They
have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at
most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have
learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have
learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be
cheated in trade ; but of reading as a noble intellectual
exercise they know little or nothing ; yet this only is read
ing, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and
suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we
have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert
and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we should read the
best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our
a, b, abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth
classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives.
Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and per
chance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good
book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and
dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.
There is a work in several volumes in our circulating
READING. 103
library entitled Little Reading, which I thought referred
to a town of that name which I had not been to. There
are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all
sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and
vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others
are the machines to provide this provender, they are the
machines to read it. They read the nine thousandth tale
about Zebulon and Sephronia, and how they loved as
none had ever loved before, and neither did the course
of their true love run smooth, at any rate, how it did
run and stumble, and get up again and go on ! how some
poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple,^ who had better
never have gone up as far as the belfry ; and then, having
needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the
bell for all the world to come together and hear, dear !
how he did get down again ! For my part, I think that
they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes
of universal noveldom into man weathercocks, as they used
to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing
round there till they are rusty, and not come down at
all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time
the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the
meeting-house burn down. " The Skip of the Tip-Toc-IIop, a
Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author
of Tittle-Tol-Tan, to appear in monthly parts ; a great
rush ; don t all come together." All this they read with
saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with
unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no
sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his
two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella, without any
improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or
accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or
inserting the moral. The result is dulness of si "lit, a
104 WALDEN.
stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium
and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort
of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than
pure wheat or rye-and-Imlian in almost every oven, and
finds a surer market.
The best books are not read even by those who are called
good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to ?
There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste
for the best or for very good books even in English litera
ture, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-
bred and so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere
have really little or no acquaintance with the English
classics and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the
ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who
will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere
made to become acquainted with them. I know a wood-
chopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for
news as he says, for he is above that, but to " keep himself
in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I
ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this
world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his
English. This is about as much as the college-bred generally
do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the
purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one
of the best English books will find how many with whom
he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from
reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose
praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate ; he will
find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about
it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges,
who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has
proportionately mastered the difficulties of the wit and
poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to
READING. 105
the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures,
or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even
their titles 1 Most men do not know that any nation but
the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will
go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar;
but here are golden words, which the wisest men of
antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every
succeeding age have assured us of ; and yet we learn to
read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-
books, and when we leave school, the Little Reading,
and story books, which are for boys and beginners ; and our
reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very
low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our
Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known
here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read
his book 1 As if Plato were my townsman and I never
saw him, my next neighbour and I never heard him speak
or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually
is it 1 His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in
him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We
are under-bred and low-lived and illiterate ; and in this
respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction
between the illiterateness of my townsmen who cannot read
at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to
read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We
should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly
by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of
tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights
than the columns of the daily paper.
It is not all books that arc as dull as their readers.
There are probably words addressed to our condition
exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand,
lc6 VVALDEN.
would bo more salutary than the morning or the spring
to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of
things for us. How many a rnan has dated a new era in
his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for
us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal
new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find
somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb
and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to
all the wise men ; not one has been omitted ; and each has
answered them, according to his ability, by his words and
his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality.
The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of
Concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar
religious experience, and is driven, as he believes, into
silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it
is not true ; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled
the same road and had the same experience ; but he, being
wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbours
accordingly, and is even said to have invented and
established worship among men. Let him humbly com
mune with Zoroaster then, and, through the liberalising
influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and
let " our church " go by the board.
We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century, and
are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But
consider how little this village does for its own culture.
I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered
by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need
to be provoked, goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot.
We have a comparatively decent system of common schools,
schools for infants only ; but excepting the half-starved
Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of
a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves.
READING. 107
We spend more on almost any- article of bodily aliment or
ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we
had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our educa
tion when we begin to be men and women. It is time that
villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the
fellows of universities, with leisure if they are indeed so
well off to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford
forever ? Cannot students bo boarded here and get a liberal
education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire
some Abelard to lecture to us 1 Alas ! what with foddering
the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school
too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this
country, the village should in some respects take the place
of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of
the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the
magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough
on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is
thought Utopian to propose spending money for things
which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth.
This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-
house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not
spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that
shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-
five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter
is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the
town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why should
we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century
offers 1 Why should our life be in any respect provincial 1
If wo will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of
Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once 1
not be sucking the pap of neutral family " papers, or
browsing " Olive- Branches " here in New England. Let
io8 WALDEN.
the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and
we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave
it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our
reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds
himself with whatever conduces to his culture, genius
learning wit books paintings statuary music philo
sophical instruments, and the like ; so let the village do,
not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish
library, and three select men, because our pilgrim fore
fathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with
these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our
institutions ; and I am confident that, as our circumstances
are more flourishing, our means are greater than the
nobleman s. New England can hire all the wise men in
the world to come and teach her, and board them round
the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the
uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us
have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one
bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw
one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which
surrounds us.
SOUN DS.
|UT while we are confined to books, though the
most select and classic, and read only particular
written languages, which are themselves but
dialects and provincial, we are in danger of
forgetting the language which all things and events speak
without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.
Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream
through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the
shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can
supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.
What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no
matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most
admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of
looking always at what is to be seen 1 Will you be a
reader, a student merely, or a seer 1 Read your fate, see
what is before you, and walk on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer ; I hoed beans.
Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when
I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present
moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love
a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer
morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my
sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie,
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed
no IVALDEN.
solitude and stillness, while the l>irds sang around or flitted
noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at
my west window, or the noise of some traveller s waggon on
the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.
I grew in those seasons like, corn in. the night, and they
were far better than any work of the hands would have
been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but
so much over and above my usual allowance. I realised
what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the for
saking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the
hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of
mine ; it was morning, and lo ! now it is evening, and
nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing
like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good
fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the
hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed
warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were
not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen
deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the
ticking of a clock ; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of
whom it is said that " for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow
they have only one word, and they express the variety of
meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for
to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was
sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt ; but if the
birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should
not have been found wanting. A man must find his
occasions in himself; it is true. The natural day is very
calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of Kfe, over
those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to
society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my
amusement and never ceased to br novel. It was a drama
SOUNDS. ITI
of many scones and without an end. If we were always
indeed getting our living, and regulating our lives accord
ing to the last and best mode we had learned, we should
never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely
enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect
every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When
my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my
furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead
making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and
sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a
broom scrubbed it clean and white ; and by the time the
villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried
my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my
meditations were almost uninterrupted. It was pleasant
to see my whole household effects on the grass, making a
little pile like a gipsy s pack, and my three-legged table,
from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink,
standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad
to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in.
I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over
them and take my seat there. It was worth the while
to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free
wind blow on them ; so much more interesting most
familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A
bird sits on the next bough, life everlasting grows under
the fable, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine
cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn
about. It looked as if this was the way these forms
came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs,
and bedsteads, because they once stood in their midst.
My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on
(ho edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young
forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half-a-dozen rods
112 WALDEN.
from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the
hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry,
and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks
and sand-cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the
end of May, the sand-cherry (cerasus pumila), adorned
the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged
in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last,
in the fall, weighed down with good-sized and handsome
cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I
tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they
were scarcely palatable. The sumach (rhus ylabra), grew
luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the
embankment which I had made, and growing five or six
feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was
pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds,
suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks
which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by
magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in
diameter ; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heed
lessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard
a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the
ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken
off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of
berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild
bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue,
and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender
limits.
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks
are circling about my clearing j the tantivy of wild pigeons,
flying by twos and threes athwart my view, or perching
restless on the white-pine boughs behind my house, gives a
voice to the air ; a fish-hawk dimples the glassy surface of
SOUNDS. 113
tho pond and brings up a fish ; a mink steals out of the
marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore ; the
sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting
hither and thither ; and for tho last half-hour I have heard
the rattle of railroad-cars, now dying away and then reviv
ing like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from
Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of tho
world as that boy, who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer
in tho east part of the town, but ere long ran away and
came home again, quite down at the heel and home-sick.
Pie had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place ;
the folks were all gone off somewhere ; why, you couldn t
even hear the whistle ! I doubt if there is such a place in
Massachusetts now :
" In truth, our village has become a Lutt
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o er
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is Concord."
The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred
rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to tho village
along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society
by this link. Tho men on the freight trains, who go over
the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old
acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they
take mo for an employee : and so I am. I too would fain
be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods sum
mer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing
over some farmer s yard, informing me that many restless
city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town,
or adventurous country traders from the other side. As
they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to
get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through tho
circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country ;
H
IT4 WALDRN.
your rations, countrymen ! Nor is there any man. so inde
pendent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here s
your pay for them ! screams the countryman s whistle ;
timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour
against the city walls, and chairs enough to seat all the
weary and heavy-laden that dwell within them. With
such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair
to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped,
all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up
comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth ; up comes the
silk, clown goes the woollen ; up come the books, but down
goes the wit that writes them.
When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off
with planetary motion, or, rather, like a comet, for the
beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that
direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does
not look like a returning curve, with its steam-cloud like
a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths,
like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the
heavens, unfolding its masses to the light, as if this travel
ling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the
sunset sky for the livery of his train ; when I hear the iron
horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder,
shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and
smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged horse or fiery
dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don t know),
it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to
inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the
elements their servants for noble ends ! If the cloud that
hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds,
or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer s
liflds, then the elements and Nature herself would cheer
fully accompany men on their errands, and bo their escort
SOUNDS. 115
I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same
feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more
regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and
rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are
going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my
distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the
petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of
the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this
winter morning by the light of the stars arnid the mountains,
to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened
thus early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If
the enterprise were as innocent as it is early ! If the snow
lies deep, they strap on his snow-shoes, and with the giant
plough plough a furrow from the mountains to the sea-board,
in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all
the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for
seed. All day the fire-steed flics over the country, stopping
only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his
tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote
glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and
snow ; and ho will reach his stall only with the morning
star, to start once more on his travels without rest or
slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his
stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that ho
may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few-
hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and
commanding as it is protracted and unwearied !
Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns,
where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in tho darkest
night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of
their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant
station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is
gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl
ii6 WALDEN.
and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the
epochs in the village day. They go and come with such re
gularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so
far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one
well-conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have
not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the rail
road was invented ? Do they not talk and think faster in
the depot than they did in the stage-office ? There is some
thing electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I
have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought ; and
some of my neighbours, who, I should have prophesied, once
for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a convey
ance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do things " rail
road fashion" is now the by-word; and it is worth the
while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power
to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot
act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We
have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside.
(Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised
that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot
toward particular points of the compass ; yet it interferes
with no man s business, and the children go to school on tho
other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all
educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible
bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep
on your own track, then.
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and
bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.
i see these men every day go about their business with
more or less courage and content, doing more even than
they suspect, and perchance better employed than they
could have consciously devised. I am less affected by their
heroism who stood up for half-an-hour in the front line at
SOUNDS. 117
liucna Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valour of the
men who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter quarters ;
who have not merely the three o clock in the morning
courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose
courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only
when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are
frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow, perchance,
which is still raging and chilling men s blood, I hear the
muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog-bank of
their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are
coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a
New England north-east snow-storm, and I behold the
ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peer
ing above the mould-board which is turning down other
than daisies and the nests of field-mice, like boulders of
the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the
universe.
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert,
adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its
methods, withal, far more so than many fantastic enter
prises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular
success. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight
train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dis
pensing their odours all the way from Long Wharf to Lake
Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs,
and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of
the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the
sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New
England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and
cocoa-nut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and
rusty nails. This car-load of torn sails is more legible and
interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper
paid printed books. Who can write so graphically the
ii8 WALDEN.
liistory of tlie storms they have weathered as these rents
have done ? They are proof-sheets which need no correc
tion. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did
not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on
the thousand because of what did go out or was split up ;
pine, spruce, cedar, first, second, third, and fourth qualities,
so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and
moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thoraaston lime, a prime
lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked.
These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest
condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final result
of dress, of patterns which are now no longer cried up,
unless it be in Milwaukie, as those splendid articles, English,
French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins, etc.
gathered from all quarters both of fashion and poverty,
going to become paper of one colour or a few shades only,
on which, forsooth, will be written tales of real life, high and
low, and founded on fact ! This closed car smells of salt
fish, the strong New England and commercial scent,
reminding me of the Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who
has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so
that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of
the saints to the blush 1 with which you may sweep or pave
the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster
shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain
behind it, and the trader, as a Concord trader once did,
hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences
business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely
whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall
be as pure as a snow flake, and if it be put into a pot and
boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a Saturday s
dinner. Next, Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving
their twist and the angle of elevation they had when the
SOUNDS. 119
oxen that wore them wore careering over the pampas of the
Spanish main, a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how
almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices.
I confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a
man s real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for
the better or worse in this state of existence. As the
Orientals say, " A cur s tail may be warmed, and pressed,
and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years
labour bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural
form." The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as
these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe
is what is usually done with them, and then they will stay
put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of
brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont,
some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for
the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands
over his bulk-head and thinks of the last arrivals on the
coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his
customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times
before this morning, that he expects some by the next train
of prime quality. It is advertised in the Cutlinysuille
Times.
While these things go up other things come down.
Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book
and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which
has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the
Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township
within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it;
going
" to bo the mast
Of some great ammiral."
And hark ! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of
a thousand hills, shoepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the
120 WALDEN.
air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the
midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled
along like leaves blown from the mountains by the Septem
ber gales. The air is filled with the bleating of calves and
sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were
going by. When the old bell-wether at the head rattles
his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the
little hills like lambs. A car-load of drovers, too, in the
midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone,
but still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of
office. But their dogs, where are they < \ It is a stampede
to them ; they are quite thrown out ; they have lost the
scent. Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peter-
boro Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green
Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their
vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are
below par now. They will slink back to their kennels in
disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the
wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral life whirled past
and away. But the bell rings, and I must get off the
track and let the cars go by
" What s the railroad to me ?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes banks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-blowing,
And the blackberries a-growing,"
but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not
have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke,
and steam, and hissing.
Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world
SOUNDS. 121
with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their
rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the
long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted
only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the
distant highway.
Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln,
Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favour
able, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth
importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance
over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum,
as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a
harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest
possible distance produces one and the same effect, a
vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening
atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to
our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came
to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and
which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the
wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had
taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale.
The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein
is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition
of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the
voice of the wood ; the same trivial words and notes sung
by a wood-nymph.
At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon
beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at
first I would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels
by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying
over hill and dale ; but soon I was not unpleasantly dis
appointed when it was prolonged into the cheap and natural
music of the cow. I do not mean to be satirical, but to
express my appreciation of those youths singing, when I
122 WALDEN.
state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to the music
of the cow, and they were at length one articulation of
Nature.
Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer,
after the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills
chanted their vespers for half-ari-hour, sitting on a stump by
my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. They would
begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock,
within five minutes of a particular time, referred to the
setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare opportunity
to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I heard
four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by acci
dent one a bar behind another, and so near me that I
distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often
that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider s web, only
proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round
and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered
by a string, when probably I was near its eggs. They sang
at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical
as ever just before and about dawn.
When other birds are still the screech owls take up the
strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their
dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight
hags ! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the
poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty,
the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the
pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal
groves. Yet I love to hear .their wailing, their doleful
responses, trilled along the woodside ; reminding me some
times of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and
tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain
be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melan
choly forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape
SOUNDS. 123
nightly walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now
expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies
in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new
sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our
common dwelling. Oli-o-o-o-o t/tat I never had been bor-
r-r-r-n I sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with
the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the grey
oaks. Then Tliat I never had been bor-r-r-r-n I echoes
another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and
bor-r-r-r-n ! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods.
I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand
you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as
if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in
her choir the dying moans of a human being, some poor
weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls
like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark
valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodious
ness, I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try
to imitate it, expressive of a mind which has reached the
gelatinous mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy
and courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and
idiots and insane howlings. But now one answers from far
woods in a strain made really melodious by distance, Hoo
hoo hoo, hoorer hoo ; and indeed for the most part it sug
gested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or
night, summer or winter.
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic
and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably
suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illus
trates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men
have not recognised. They represent the stark twilight and
unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has
shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the
124 WALDEN.
single spruce stands Lung with usnea lichens, and small
hawks circulate above, and the chicadee lisps amid the ever
greens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath ; but
now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different
race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature
there.
Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of
waggons over bridges, a sound heard farther than almost
any other at night, the baying of dogs, and sometimes
again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant
barn-yard. In the meanwhile all the shore rang with the
trump of bull-frogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers
and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in
their Stygian lake, if the Walden nymphs will pardon the
comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there
are frogs there, who would fain keep up the hilarious rules
of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed
hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine
has lost its flavour, and become only liquor to distend their
paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the
memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterlogged-
ness and distention. The most aldermanic, with his chin
upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling
chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of
the once scorned water, and passes round a cup with the
ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk/ and straight
way comes over the water from some distant cove the same
pass-word repeated, where the next in seniority and girth
has gulped down to his mark ; and when this observance
has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the
master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk I and
each in his turn repeats the same down to the least
distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be
SOUNDS. 125
no mistake ; and then the bowl goes round again and again,
until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only the
patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing
troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply.
I am not sure that ever I heard the sound of cock-
crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might bo
worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as
a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant
is certainly the most remarkable of any bird s, and if they
could be naturalised without being domesticated, it would
soon become the most famous sound in our woods, sur
passing the clangour of the goose and the hooting of the
owl ; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the
pauses when their lords clarions rested ! No wonder that
man added this bird to his tame stock, to say nothing of
the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in
a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods,
and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and
shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning tho
feebler notes of other birds, think of it ! It would put
nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and
rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till
he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise 1
This foreign bird s note is celebrated by the poets of
all countries along with the notes of their native
songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He
is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is
ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even
the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his
voice ; but its shrill sound never roused mo from my
slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so
that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic
sounds ; neither the churn, nor the spinning-wheel, nor
126 W ALP EN.
even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn,
nor children crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man
would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this.
Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or
rather were never baited in, only squirrels on the roof
and under the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridge-pole, a blue-
jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck
under the house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a flock
of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to
bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those
mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels
to crow now nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard !
but unfenced Nature reaching up to your very sills. A
young forest growing up under your windows, and wild
sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through your
cellar ; sturdy pitch-pines rubbing and creaking against the
shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under
the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the
gale, a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots
behind your house for fuel Instead of no path to the
front yard gate in the Great Snow, no gate, no front
yard, and no path to the civilised world !
SOLITUDE.
PHIS is a delicious evening, when the whole body
is one sense, and imbibes delight through every
pore. I go and come with a strango liberty in
Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the
stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is
cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special
to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to
me. The bull-frogs trump to usher in the night, and the
note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from
over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and
poplar leaves almost takes away my breath ; yet, like the
lake, my serenity is rippled, but not ruffled. These small
waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm
as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark,
the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still
dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes.
The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not
repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and
rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They
are Nature s watchmen, links which connect the days of
animated life.
When I return to my house I find that visitors have
been there and left their cards either a bunch of flowers,
or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow
128 WALDEN.
walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods
take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play
with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or
accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into
a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if
visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended
twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of
what sex, or age, or quality they were by some slight trace
left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and
thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half-a-inile
distant, or by the lingering odour of a cigar or pipe. Nay,
I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along
the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.
There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon
is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just
at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing,
familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some
way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I
this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented
forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? My
nearest neighbour is a mile distant, and no house is visible
from any place but the hill-tops within half-a-mile of my
own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself ;
a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on
the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland
road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary
where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or
Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun,
and moon, and stars, and a little world all to myself. At
night there was never a traveller passed my house, or
knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or last
man, unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals
some came from the village to fish for pouts, they plainly
SOLITUDE. 129
fished much more in the "Walden Pond of their own na
tures, and baited their hooks with darkness, but they soon
retreated, usually with light baskets, and left " the world to
darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was
never profaned by any human neighbourhood. I believe
that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark,
though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and
candles have been introduced.
Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and
tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be
found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope
and most melancholy man. There can be no very black
melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature, and
has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm, but
it was uiEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear.
Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a
vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the sea
sons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.
The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in
the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for
me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far
more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long
as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy tho
potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass
on tho uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be
good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with
other men, it seems as if I were more favoured by the gods
than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of as if
I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows
have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do
not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I
have never felt lonesome, or in tho least oppressed by a
sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after
i
130 WALDEN.
I came to the woods, -when, for an hour, I doubted if the
near neighbourhood of man was not essential to a serene
and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.
But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity
in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the
midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was
suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in
Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every
sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccount
able friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining
me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighbour
hood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.
Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sym
pathy, and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware
of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes
which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also
that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a
person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever bo
strange to me again.
" Mourning untimely consumes the sad ;
Few are their days in the land of the living,
Beautiful daughter of Toscar."
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain
storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house
for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their
ceaseless roar and pelting ; when an early twilight ushered
in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take
root and unfold themselves. In those driving north-east
rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids
stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the
deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which
was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In
SOLITUDE. 131
ono hc avy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large
pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and
perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch
or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would
groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day,
and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that
mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and
resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight
years ago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think
you would feel lonesome down there, and want to bo nearer
to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I
am tempted to reply to such This whole earth which we
inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you,
dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the
breadth of whose disc cannot bo appreciated by our instru
ments ? Why should I feel lonely 1 is not our planet in
the Milky Way 1 This which you put seems to me not to
be the most important question. What sort of space is
that which separates a man from his fellows and makes
him solitai-y 1 I have found that no exertion of the legs
can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What
do we want most to dwell near to 1 Not to many men
surely, the dep6t, the post office, the bar-room, the meeting
house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the
Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the peren
nial source of our life, whence in all our experience we
have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the
water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will
vary with different natures, but this is the place where a
wise man will dig his cellar. ... I one evening overtook
one of my townsmen, who had accumulated what is called
"a handsome property," though I never got a fair view
of it, on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to
132 WALDEN.
market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind
to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered
that I was very sure I liked it passably well ; I was not
joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him
to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to
Brighton, or Bright-town, which place he would reach
some time in the morning.
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead
man makes indifferent all times and places. The place
where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably
pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only
outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions.
They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to
all things is that power which fashions their being. Next
to us the grandest laws are continually being executed.
Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with
whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work
we are.
" How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile
powers of Heaven and of Earth ! "
" We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them ;
we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them ; identified
with the substance of tilings, they cannot be separated from
them."
"They cause that in all the universe men purify and
sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday
garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors.
It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere,
above us, on our left, or our right ; they environ us on all
sides."
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a
little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society
of our gossips a little while under these circumstances,
SOLITUDE. 133
have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly,
" Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan ; it must
of necessity have neighbours."
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sano
sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand
aloof from actions and their consequences ; and all things,
good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly
involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the
stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be
affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I
may not be affected by an actual event which appears to
concern me much more. I only know myself as a human
entity ; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections ,
and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can
stand as remote from myself as from another. However
intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and
criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of
me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note
of it ; and that is no more I than it is you. When the
play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator
goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the
imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This double-
ness may easily make us poor neighbours and friends
sometimes.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the
time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon
wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never
found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad
among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man
thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he
will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space th.at
intervene between a man and his fellows. The really
134 WALDEN.
diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer
can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing
or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed;
but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a
room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be
where he can " see the folks," and recreate, and, as he
thinks, remunerate himself for his day s solitude ; and
hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the
house all night and most of the day without ennui and
" the blues ; " but he does not realise that the student,
though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chop
ping in 7m woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks
the same recreation and society that the latter does, though
it may be a more condensed form of it.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short
intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value
for each other. We meet at meals three time a-day, and
give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that
we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules,
called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meet
ing tolerable and that we need not come to open war.
We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and about
the fireside every night ; we live thick and are in each
other s way, and stumble over one another, and I think
that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly
less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty
communications. Consider the girls in a factory, never
alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there
were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live.
The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch
him.
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of
SOLITUDE. 135
famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneli
ness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which;
owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination sur
rounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also,
owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may
be continually cheered by a like but more normal and
natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.
I have a great deal of company in my house ; especially
in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few-
comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my
situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond
that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What
company has that lonely lake, I pray 1 And yet it has not
the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint
of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather,
when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock
sun. God is alone, but the devil, he is far from being
alone ; he sees a great deal of company ; he is legion. I
am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a
pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble
bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a
weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an
April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new
house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when
the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from
an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to
have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with
pine woods : who tells me stories of old time and of new
eternity ; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful
evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things,
even without apples or cider, a most wise and humorous
friend, whom 1 love much, who keeps himself more secret
1 36 WALDEN.
than ever did Goffe or Whalley ; and though he is thought
to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly
dame, too, dwells in my neighbourhood, invisible to most
persons, in whoso odorous herb garden I love to stroll
sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables ;
for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory
runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the
original of every fable, and on what fact every one is
founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young.
A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers
nnd seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet.
The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,
of sun, and wind, and rain, of summer and winter, such
health, such cheer, they afford forever ! and such sympathy
have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be
affected, and the sun s brightness fade, and the winds
would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the
woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer,
if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not
have intelligence with the earth ? Am I not partly leaves
and vegetable mould myself 1
What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, con
tented ? Not my or thy great-grandfather s, but our
great-grandmother Nature s universal, vegetable, botanic
medicines, by which she has kept herself young always,
outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health
with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of
one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron
and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow
black-schooner-looking waggons which we sometimes see
made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted
morning air. Morning air ! If men will not drink of this
at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even
SOLITUDE. 137
bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of
those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning
time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite
till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the
stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of
Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygeia, who was the
daughter of that old herb-doctor -ffisculapius, and who is
represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand,
and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes
drinks ; but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was
the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the
power of restoring gods and men to the vigour of youth.
She was probably the only thoroughly souiid-conditionedi
healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe,
and whenever she came it was spring.
VISITORS.
THINK that I love society as much aa most, and
am ready enough to fasten myself like a blood
sucker for the time to any full-blooded man that
comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit,
but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the
bar-room, if my business called me thither.
I had three chairs in my house ; one for solitude, two for
friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger
and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for
them all, but they generally economised the room by stand
ing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a
small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty
souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we
often parted without being aware that we had come very
near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and
private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their
huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and
other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large
for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent
that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them.
I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before
some Tremont, or Astor, or Middlesex House, to see come
creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous
VISITORS. 139
mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the
pavement.
One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a
house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from
my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big
words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sail
ing trim, and run a course or two before they make their
port. Tho bullet of your thought must have overcome its
lateral and ricochet motion, and fallen into its last and
steady course, before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it
may plough out again through the side of his head. Also,
our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their
columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must
have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a con
siderable neutral ground, between them. I have found it
a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on
the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we
could not begin to hear, we could not speak low enough
to be heard, as when you throw two stones into calm water
so near that they break each other s undulations. If we
are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford
to stand very near together, cheek-by-jowl, and feel each
other s breath ; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully,
we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and mois
ture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy
the most intimate society with that in each of us which is
without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be
silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot
possibly hear each other s voice in any case. Referred to
this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who
are hard of hearing ; but there are many fine things which
we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation
began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually
140 WALDEN.
shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wull
in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room
enough.
My " best " room, however my with drawing-room
always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely
fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in sum
mer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and
a priceless domestic swept the floor, and dusted the furniture,
and kept the things in order.
If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal
meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stir
ring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing
of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. But if
twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said
about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two,
more than if eating were a forsaken habit ; but we naturally
practised abstinence ; and this was never felt to be an
offence against hospitality, but the most proper and con
siderate course. The waste and decay of physical life,
which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded
in such a case, and the vital vigour stood its ground. I
could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty ; and if
any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house
when they found me at home, they may depend upon it
that I sympathised with them at least. So easy is it,
though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and
better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest
your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own
part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a
man s house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the
parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very
polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again.
I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be
VISITORS. 141
proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of
Spenser -which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow
walnut leaf for a card :
" Arrived there, the little house they fill,
No look for entertainment where none was ;
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will :
The noblest mind the best contentment has."
When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth
Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to
Massassoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired
and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the
king, but nothing was said about eating that day. When
the night arrived, to quote their own words " He laid us
on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end
and we at the other, it being only plank, laid a foot from
the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his
chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us ; so
that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our
journey." At one o clock the next day Massassoit " brought
two fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big as a
bream; "these being boiled, there were at least forty
looked for a share in them. The most ate of them. This
meal only we had in two nights and a day ; and had not
one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey
fasting." Fearing that they would be light-headed for
want of food and also sleep, owing to "the savages bar
barous singing (for they used to sing themselves asleep),"
and that they might get home while they had strength to
travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were
but poorly entertained, though what they found an incon
venience was no doubt intended for an honour ; but as far
as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indiana
I 4 2 WALDEN.
could have done bettor. They had nothing to eat them
selves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies
could supply the place of food to their guests ; so they drew
their belts tighter and said nothing about it. Another
time when Winslow visited them, it being a season of
plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect.
As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had
more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other
period of my life ; I mean that I had some. I met several
there under more favourable circumstances than I could
anywhere else. But fewer came to see me upon trivial
business. In this respect, my company was winnowed by
my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far
within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of
society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs
were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited
around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of
unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side.
Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true
Homeric or Paphlagonian man, he had so suitable and
poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here, a
Canadian, a wood-chopper, and post-maker, who can hole
fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a wood-
chuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of Homer,
and, "if it were not for books," would "not know what
to do rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one
wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest who
could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his
verse in the testament in his native parish far away;
and now I must translate to him, while he holds the
book, Achilles reproof to Patroclus for his sad coun
tenance. " Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young
girl?"
VISITORS. 143
" Or have you alone hoard some news from Fhthial
They say that Mencetius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, son of jEacus, among the Myrmidons,
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve."
He says, " That s good." He has a great bundle of white-
oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this
Sunday morning. " I suppose there s no harm in going
after such a thing to-day," says he. To him Homer was a
great writer, though what his writing was about he did not
know. A more simple and natural man it would be hard
to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral
hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existence
for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had
left Canada and his father s house a dozen years before to
work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at
last, perhaps in his native country. Ho was cast in the
coarsest mould ; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully
carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and
dull, sleepy blue eyes, which were_occasionally lit up with
expression. He wore a flat grey cloth cap, a dingy wool-
coloured greatcoat, and cowhide boots. He was a great
consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a
couple of miles past my house for he chopped all summer
in a tin pail ; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and
coflee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his
belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came
along early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety
or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit-
He wasn t a-going to hurt himself. He didn t care
if he only earned his board. Frequently he would leave
his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught
a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and
a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house
144 WALDEN.
where he boarded, after deliberating first for half-an-hour
whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall
loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would say,
as he went by in the morning, " How thick the pigeons
are ! If working every day were not my trade, I could get
all the meat I should want by hunting, pigeons, wood-
chucks, rabbits, partridges, by gosh ! I could get all I
should want for a week in one day."
He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes
and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level and close
to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterwards
might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the
stumps ; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his
corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake
or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last.
He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary,
and so happy withal ; a well of good humour and content
ment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without
alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods,
felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inex
pressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French,
though he spoke English as well. When I approached him
he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth
lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and,
peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it
while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of
animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and
rolled on the ground with laughter at anything which made
him think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees
he would exclaim, " By George ! I can enjoy myself well
enough here chopping; I want no better sport." Some
times, when at leisure, he amused himself all day in the
woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at
VISITORS. 145
regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire
by which at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle ; and as
he sat on a log to eat his dinner, the chicadees would some
times come round and alight on his arm and peck at the
potato in his fingers ; and he said that he " liked to have
the little fellers about him."
In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In
physical endurance and contentment ho was cousin to the
pine and the rock. I asked him once if ho was not
sometimes tired at night, after working all day ; and he
answered, with a sincere and serious look, "Gorrappit, I
never was tired in my life." But the intellectual and what
is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an
infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and
ineffectual way in which tho Catholic priests teach the
aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the
degree of consciousness, but only to tho degree of trust and
reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child.
When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and
contentment for his portion, and propped him on every side
with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his
threescore years and ten a child. He was so genuine and
unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to intro
duce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to
your neighbour. He had got to find him out as you did.
He would not play any part. Men paid him wages for
work, and so helped to feed and clothe him ; but he never
exchanged opinions with them. He was so simply and
naturally humble if he can be called humble who never
aspires that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor
could he conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to him.
If you told him that such a one was coming, he did as if he
thought that anything so grand would expect nothing of
K
I 4 6 WALDEN.
himself, but take all the responsibility on itself, and let him
be forgotten still. He never heard the sound of praise.
He particularly reverenced the writer and the preacher.
Their performances were miracles. When I told him that
I wrote considerably, he thought for a long time that it was
merely the handwriting which I meant, for he could write a
remarkably good hand himself. I sometimes found the
name of his native parish handsomely written in the snow-
by the highway, with the proper French accent, and knew
that he had passed. I asked him if he ever wished to write
his thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters
for those who could not, but he never tried to write
thoughts, no, he could not, he could not tell what to put
first, it would kill him, and then there was spelling to be
attended to at the same time !
I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer
asked him if he did not want the world to be changed ;
but he answered with a chuckle of surprise, in his Canadian
accent, not knowing that the question had ever been enter
tained before, "No, I like it well enough." It would
have suggested many things to a philosopher to have
dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know
nothing of things in general ; yet I sometimes saw in him
a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know
whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply
ignorant as a child whether to suspect him of a fine poetic
consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me that
when he met him sauntering through the village in his
small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he
reminded him of a prince in disguise.
His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in
which last he was considerably expert. The former was a
sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to contain
VISITORS. 147
an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a
considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the various
reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at
them in the most simple and practical light. He had
never heard of such things before. Could he do without
factories 1 I asked. He had worn the home-made Vermont
grey, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense with
tea and coffee ? Did this country afford any beverage
beside water 1 He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and
drank it, and thought that was better than water in warm
weather. When I asked him if he could do without money,
he showed the convenience of money in such a way as to
suggest and coincide with the most philosophical accounts
of the origin of this institution, and the very derivation of
the word pecunia. If an ox were his property, and he
wished to get needles and thread at the store, he thought
it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on
mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to that
amount. He could defend many institutions better than
any philosopher, because, in describing them as they con
cerned him, ho gave the true reason for their prevalence,
and speculation had not suggested to him any other.
At another time, hearing Plato s definition of a man, a
biped without feathers, and that one exhibited a cock
plucked and called it Plato s man, he thought it an import
ant difference that the knees bent the wrong way. He
would sometimes exclaim, " How I love to talk ! By
George, I could talk all day ! " I asked him once, when I
had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new
idea this summer. " Good Lord ! " said he, " a man that
has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has
had, he will do well. Maybe the man you hoe with is
inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there;
148 WALDEN.
you think of weeds." lie would sometimes ask me first on
such occasions, if I had made any improvement. One winter
day I asked him if he was always satisfied with himself,
wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest
without, and some higher motive for living. " Satisfied ! "
said he, " some men are satisfied with one thing, and some
with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will
be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his
belly to the table, by George ! " Yet I never, by any
manoeuvring, could get him to take the spiritual view
of things ; the highest that he appeared to conceive of
was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an
animal to appreciate ; and this, practically, is true of most
men. If I suggested any improvement in his mode of life,
he merely answered, without expressing any regret, that it
was too late. Yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and
the like virtues.
There was a certain positive originality, however slight,
to be detected in him, and I occasionally observed that he
was thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion
a phenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles
to observe it ; and it amounted to the reorigination of
many of the institutions of society. Though he hesitated,
and perhaps failed to express himself distinctly, he always
had a presentable thought behind. Yet his thinking was
so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that, though
more promising than a merely learned man s, it rarely
ripened to anything which can be reported. He suggested
that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of
life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take
their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all who
are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be,
though they may be dark and muddy.
VISITORS. 149
Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and Lho
inside of niy house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for
a glass of water. I told them that I drank at the pond,
and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. Far
off as I lived, I was not exempted from that annual visita
tion which occurs, methinks, about, the first of April, when
everybody is on the move; and I had my share of good
luck, though there were some curious specimens among my
visitors. Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere
came to see me ; but I endeavoured to make them exercise
all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me ; in
such cases making wit the theme of our conversation ; and
so was compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be
wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor and selectmen
of the town, and thought it was time that the tables were
turned. With respect to wit, I learned that there .was not
much difference between the half and the whole. One day,
in particular, an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom
with others I had often seen used as fencing stuff, standing
or sitting on a bushel in the fields to keep cattle and himself
from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish to live as I
did. He told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth,
quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called
humility, that he was " deficient in intellect." These were
his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed
the Lord cared as much for him as for another. " I have
always been so," said he " from my childhood ; I never had
much mind ; I was not like other children ; I am weak in
the head. It was the Lord s will, I suppose." And there he
was to prove the truth of his words. Ho was a metaphysi
cal puzzle to me. I have rarely met a fellow-man on such
promising ground it was so simple and sincere, and so
true, all that he said. And, true enough, in proportion as
ISO VTALDEN.
he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. I did not
know at first but it was the result of a wise policy. It
seemed that from such a basis of truth and frankness as
the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse
might go forward to something better than the intercourse
of sages.
I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly
among the town s poor, but who should be who are among
the world s poor, at any rate guests who appeal, not to your
hospitality, but to your hospitalality ; who earnestly wish
to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information
that they are resolved, for one thing, never to help them
selves. I require of a visitor that lie be not actually starv
ing, though he may have the very best appetite in the world,
however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men
who did^not know when their visit had terminated, though
I went about my business again, answering them from
greater and greater remoteness. Men of almost every
degree of wit called on me in the migrating season. Some
who had more wits than they knew what to do with
runaway slaves, with plantation manners, who listened from
time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard
the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me
beseechingly, as much as to say
" Christian, will you send me back ? "
One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I had helped
to forward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like a
hen with one chicken, and that a duckling ; men of a
thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which
are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in
pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning s
dew, and become frizzled and mangy in consequence j men
VISITORS. 151
of ideas instead of logs, a sort of intellectual centipede that
made you crawl all over. One man proposed a book in
which visitors should write their names, as at the White
Mountains ; but, alas ! I have too good a memory to make
that necessary.
I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my
visitors. Girls and boys and young women generally
seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the pond
and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of
business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and employ
ment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt from
something or other ; and though they said that they loved
a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they
did not. Restless, committed men, whose time was all taken
up in getting a living or keeping it ; ministers who spoke of
God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who
could not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers,
uneasy housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed
when I was out, how came Mrs. to know that my
sheets were not as clean as hers ? young men who had
ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to
follow the beaten track of the professions, all these
generally said that it was not possible to do so much good
in my position. Ay ! there was the rub. The old and
infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most
of sickness, and sudden accident, and death ; to them life
seemed full of danger, what danger is there if you don t
think of any ? and they thought that a prudent man would
carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B might be
on hand at a moment s warning. To them the village was
literary a com-munity, a league for mutual defence, and you
would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying
without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man is
152 WALDEN.
alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the
danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is
dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as
he runs. Finally, there were the self-styled reformers, the
greatest bores of all, who thought that I was forever
singing,
" This is the house that I built ;
This is the man that lives in the house that I built ; "
but they did not know that the third line was,
" These are the folks that worry the man
That lives in the house that I built."
I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens, but I
feared the men-harriers rather.
I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children
come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning
walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philo
sophers, in short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the
woods for freedom s sake, and really left the village behind,
I was ready to greet with, " Welcome, Englishmen ! wel
come, Englishmen ! " for I had had communication with
that race.
THE BEAN-FIELD.
ilEANWIIILE my Leans, the length of whose rows,
added together, was seven miles already planted,
were impatient to be hoed, for tho earliest had
grown considerably before the latest were in the
ground ; indeed, they were not easily to be put off. What
was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this
small Herculean labour, I knew not. I came to love my
rows, my beans,, though so many more than I wanted.
They attached me to the earth, antl so I got strength like
Antaeus. But why should I raise them 1 Only Heaven
knows. This was my curious labour all summer, to make
this portion of the earth s surface, which had yielded only
cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before,
sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this
pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me ? I
cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to
them ; and this is my day s work. It is a fine broad leaf to
look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which
water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself,
which for the most part is lean and effete. My enemies
are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last
have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what
right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up
their ancient herb garden ? Soon, however, the remaining
154 WALDEN.
Loans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet
new foes.
When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was
brought from Boston to this my native town, through these
very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the
oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And now to-night
my flute has waked the echoes over that very water, The
pines still stand here, older than I ; or, if some have fallen,
I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new
growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for
new infant eyes. Almost the same jolmswort springs from
the same perennial root in this pasture, and even I have at
length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant
dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influence
is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines.
I planted about two acres and a-half of upland ; and as
it was only about fifteen years since the land was cleared,
and I myself had got out two or three cords of stumps, I
did not give it any manure ; but in the course of the
summer it appeared by the arrow-heads which I turned up
in hoeing, that an extinct nation had anciently dwelt here
and planted corn and beans ere white men came to clear
the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for
this very crop.
Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the
road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while all the
dew was on, though the farmers warned me against it, I
would advise you to do all your work if possible while the
dew is on, I began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in
my bean-field and throw dust upon their heads. Early in
the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic
artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the day
the sun blistered my feet. There the sun lighted me to hoe
THE BEAN-FIELD. 155
beans, pacing slowly backward and forward over that
yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows,
fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse
where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry
field where the green berries deepened their tints by the
time I had made another bout. Removing the weeds,
putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and enouraging
this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express
its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than
in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth
say beans instead of grass, this was my daily work. As I
had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys,
or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower,
and became much more intimate with my beans than usual.
But labour of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of
drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It
has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar
it yields a classic result. A very ayricola laboriosus was I
to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Way-
land to nobody knows where ; they sitting at their ease in
gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in
festoons ; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil.
Cut soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought.
It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance
on either side of the road, so they made the most of it ; and
sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers gossip
and comment than was meant for his ear : " Beans so late !
peas so late ! " for I continued to plant when others had
began to hoe, the ministerial husbandman had not sus
pected it. "Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder."
" Does he live there 1 " asks the black bonnet of the grey
coat ; and the hard-featured tarmer reins up his grateful dob
bin to inquire what you are doing where he sees no manure in
156 WALDEN.
the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any littlo
waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. But here were
two acres and a-half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and
two hands to draw it, there being an aversion to other
carts and horses, and chip dirt far away. Fellow-travellers
as they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which
they had passed, so that I came to know how I stood in the
agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman s
report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the
crop which Nature yields in the still wilder fields unim
proved by man ? The crop of English hay is carefully
weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the
potash ; but in all dells and pond holes in the woods and
pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only
unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting
link between wild and cultivated fields ; as some states are
civilised, and others half-civilised, and others savage or
barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a
half -cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning
to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my
hoe played the Bans des Vaches for them.
Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings
the brown-thrasher or red mavis, as some love to call him
all the morning, glad of your society, that would find
out another farmer s field if yours were not here. While
you are planting the seed, he cries, " Drop it, drop it,
cover it up, cover it up, pull it up, pull it up, pull it up."
But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies
as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur
Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to
do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes
or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top-dressing in which
I had entire faith.
THE BEAN-FIELD. 157
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my
hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in
primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small
implements of war and hunting were brought to the light
of this modern day. They lay mingled with other natural
stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned
by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of
pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators
of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that
music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an
accompaniment to my labour which yielded an instant and
immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed
nor I that hoed beans ; and I remembered with as much
pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances
who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. Tho
night-hawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons for I
sometimes made a day of it like a mote in the eye, or
in heaven s eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and
a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very
rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained ; small
imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground
on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few
have found them ; graceful and slender like ripples caught
up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float
in the heavens ; such kindredship is in Nature. The hawk
is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and
surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to
the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes
I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky,
alternately soaring and descending, approaching and leav
ing one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own
thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage of wild
pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering
158 WALDEN.
winnowing sound and carrier haste ; or from under a rotten
stump my hoe turned up a sluggish, portentous, and out
landish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile,
yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe,
these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in
the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which
the country offers.
On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo
like pop-guns to these woods, and some waifs of martial
music occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there
in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns
sounded as if a puff-ball had burst ; and when there was a
military turn-out of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes
had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and
disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break
out there soon either scarlatina or canker-rash until at
length some more favourable puff of wind, making haste
over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me
information of the " trainers." It seemed by the distant
hum as if somebody s bees had swarmed, and that the neigh
bours, according to Virgil s advice, by a faint tintinnabulum
upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were
endeavouring to call them down into the hive again. And
when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased,
and the most favourable breezes told no tale, I knew that
they had got the last drone of them all safely into the
Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the
honey with which it was smeared.
I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts
and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping ; and as I
turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressible
confidence, and pursued my labour cheerfully, with a calm
trust in the future.
THE BEAN-FIELD. 159
When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded
as if all the village was a vast bellows, and all the buildings
expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. But some
times it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached
these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt
as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish, for why
should we always stand for trifles ? and looked round for a
woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon.
Those martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and
reminded mo of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with
a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm-tree tops
which overhang the village. This was one of the great
days ; though the sky had from my clearing only the same
everlasting great look that it wears daily.
It was a singular experience that long acquaintance
which I cultivated with beans, what with planting and
hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over,
and selling them, the last was the hardest of all, I might
add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to know
beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe from five
o clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent the
rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate
and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds
of weeds, it will bear some iteration in the account, for
there is no little iteration in the labour, disturbing their
delicate organisations so ruthlessly, and making such
invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of
one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That s
Roman wormwood, that s pigweed, that s sorrel, that s
piper-grass, have at him, chop him up, turn his roots
upward to the sun, don t let him have a fibre in the
shade ; if you do, he ll turn himself t other side up and be as
green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes,
160 WALDEN.
but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun, and rain, and
dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their
rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their
enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a
lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above
his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon.
Those summer days which some of my contemporaries
devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others to
contemplation in India, and others to trade in London or
New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New England,
devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat,
for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are
concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and
exchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must
work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression,
to serve a parable-maker one day. It was on the whole a
rare amusement, which, continued too long, might have
become a dissipation. Though I gave them no manure,
and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusually well
as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, "there
being in truth," as Evelyn says, " no compost or lactation
whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastina-
tion, and turning of the mould with the spade." "The
earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a cer
tain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power,
or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic
of all the labour and stir we keep about it, to sustain us ;
all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the
vicars succedaneous to this improvement." Moreover, this
being one of those "worn out and exhausted lay fields
which enjoy their Sabbath," had perchance, as Sir Kenelm
Digby thinks likely, attracted " vital spirits " from the air.
I harvested twelve bushels of beans.
THE BEAN-FIELD. 161
But to he more particular, for it is complained that Mr.
Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of
gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were
For a hoe . $054
Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing . 7 50, Too much.
Beans for seed 3 Vl\
Potatoes ,, 1 33
Peas ,, 0-10
Turnip seed 06
White line for crow fence . . . 02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours . 1 00
Horse and cart to get crop . ~ . . 75
In all 14 72<r
My income was (patrem farnilias vendacem, non emacem
esse oportet), from
Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold , . $1G 94
Five ,, large potatoes 2 50
Nine small 2 25
Grass 1 00
Stalks . 75
In all $23 44
Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said, of 8 71 \
This is the result of my experience in raising beans.
Plant the common small white bush bean about the first of
June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful
to select fresh, round, and unmixed seed. First look out for
worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look
out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will
nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go ;
and again, when the young tendrils make their appearance,
they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both
buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But
above all harvest as early as possible, if you would escape
frosts and have a fair and saleable crop ; you may save
much loss by this means.
L
1 62 WALDEN.
This further experience also I gained. I said to myself,
I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry
another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as
sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like,
and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less
toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been
exhausted for these crops. Alas ! I said this to myself ; but
now another summer is gone, and another, and another, and
I am obliged to say to you, reader, that the seeds which
I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues,
were worm-eaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not
come up. Commonly men will only be brave as their
fathers were brave or timid. This generation is very sure to
plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians
did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if
there were a fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to
my astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the seven
tieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down in !
But why should not the New Englander try new adventures,
and not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and
grass crop, and his orchards, raise other crops than these ?
Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed,
and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men 1
We should really be fed and cheered if when we met a man
we were sure to see that some of the qualities which I have
named, which we all prize more than those other produc
tions, but which are for the most part broadcast and
floating in the air, had taken root and grown in him.
Here comes such a subtile and ineffable quality, for
instance, as truth or justice, though the slightest amount or
new variety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors should
be instructed to send home such seeds as these, and Con
gress help to distribute then over all the land. We should
THE BEAN-FIELD. 163
never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. Wo should
never cheat and insult and banish one another by our
meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and
friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. Most
men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time ;
they are busy about their beans. We would not deal with
a man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a
staff between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially
risen out of the earth, something more than erect, like
swallows alighted and walking on the ground :
" And as he spake, his wings would now and then
Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again,"
so that we should suspect that we might be conversing
with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us, but it
always does us good ; it even takes stiffness out of our
joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew
not what ailed us, to recognise any generosity in man or
Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that
husbandry was once a sacred art ; but it is pursued witli
irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to
have large farms and large crops merely. We have no
festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our
Cattle Shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which tho
farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or
is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and
the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and
the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather.
By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from
which none of us is free, of regarding tho soil as property,
or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is
deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer
164 WALDEN.
leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a
robber. Cato says that the profits of agriculture are par
ticularly pious or just (maximeque plus qutzstus), and
according to Varro the old Romans " called the same earth
Mother and Ceres, and thought that they who cultivated it
led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of
the race of King Saturn."
We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our culti
vated fields, and on the prairies and forests without
distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and
the former make but a small part of the glorious picture
which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the
earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore we
should receive the benefit of his light and heat with a cor
responding trust and magnanimity. What though I value
the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the
year 1 This broad field which I have looked at so long
looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but away from
me to influences more genial to it, which water and make it
green. These beans have results which are not harvested
by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks partly ? The
ear of wheat (in Latin spica, obsoletely spcca, from spe t
hope) should not be the only hope of the husbandman ; its
kernel or grain (granum, from gerendo, bearing) is not all
that it bears. How, then, can our harvest fail ? Shall I
not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds
are the granary of the birds 1 It matters little compara
tively whether the fields fill the farmer s barns. The true
husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels mani
fest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this
year or not, and finish his labour with every day, relin
quishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing
in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also,
THE VILLAGE.
jFTER hoeing, or perhaps^ reading and writing, in
the forenoon, I usually Lathed again in the pond,
swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and
washed the dust of labour from my person, or
smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and
for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I
strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is
incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to
mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in
homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as
the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in
the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the
village to see the men and boys ; instead of the wind among
the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from
my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river
meadows ; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the
other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me
as if they had been prairie dogs, each sitting at the mouth
of its burrow, or running over to a neighbour s to gossip.
I went there frequently to observe their habits. The
village appeared to me a great news-room ; and on one side,
to support it, as once at Bedding & Company s on State
Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal, and
166 WALDEN,
other groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the
former commodity that is, the news and such sound
digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues
without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through
them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only
producing numbness and insensibility to pain, otherwise
it would often be painful to hear, without affecting the
consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled
through the village, to see a row of such worthies, either
sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodies
inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this
way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous
expression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands
in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They,
being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the
wind. These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is
first rudely digested or cracked up before it is emptied
into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I
observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery,
the bar-room, the post office, and the bank ; and, as a
necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big
gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places ; and the houses
were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes
and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run
the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a
lick at him. Of course, those who were stationed nearest
to the head of the line, where they could most see and be
seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices
for their place ; and the few straggling inhabitants in the
outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur, and
the traveller could get over walls or turn aside into cow-
paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window
tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him ; some
THE VILLAGE. 167
to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling
cellar ; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the
jeweller s ; and others by the hair, or the feet, or the skirts,
as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there
was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every
one of these houses, and company expected about these
times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these
dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without
deliberation to the goal, as is rec&mmended to those who
run the gauntlet, or by keeping rny thoughts on high
things, like Orpheus, who, " loudly singing the praises of
the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and
kept out of danger." Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and
nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand
much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a
fence. I was even accustomed to make an irruption into
some houses, where I was well entertained, and after learn
ing the kernels and very last sieveful of news, what had
subsided, the pr-ospccts of war and peace, and whether the
world was likely to hold together much longer, I was let out
through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again.
It was very pleasant, when I staid late in town, to
launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and
temptestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlour
or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my
shoulder, for my snug harbour in the woods, having made
all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a
merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at
the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain
sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire
" as I sailed." I was never cast away nor distressed in
any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It
is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most
1 68 WALDEN.
suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening
between the trees above the path in order to learn my
route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with
nay feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by
the known relation of particular trees which I felt with
nay hands, passing between two pines for instance, not
more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods,
invariably in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming
home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet
felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and
absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having
to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to
recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that
perhaps my body would find its way home if its master
should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth
without assistance. Several times, when a visitor chanced
to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was
obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the
house, and then point out to him the direction he was
to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather
by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed
thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in
the pond. They lived about a mile off through the woods,
and were quite used to the route. A day or two after one
of them told me that they wandered about the greater part
of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get
home till toward morning, by which time, as there had been
several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were
very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard
of many going astray even in the village streets, when the
darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as
the saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having conie
to town a-shopping in their waggons, have been obliged to
THE VILLAGE. 169
put up for the night ; and ladies and gentlemen making
a call, have gone half-a-milo out of their way, feeling the
side-walk only with their feet, and not knowing when
they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as
valuable experience, to be lost in the woods at any time.
Often in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out
upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell
which way leads to the village. Though he knows that
he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognise a
feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road
in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely
greater. In our most trivial walks we are constantly,
though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-
known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our
usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some
neighbouring cape ; and not till we are completely lost, or
turned round, for a man needs only to be turned round
once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, do we
appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every
man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he
awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till
we are lost in other words, not till we have lost the world
do we begin to find ourselves, and realise where we are, and
the infinite extent of our relations.
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I
went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler s, I was
seized^ and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere
related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognise the authority
of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and
children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house. I had
gone down the woods for other purposes. But, wherever
a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty
institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to
i7c WALDEN.
their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have
resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run
" amok " against society ; but I preferred that society
should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate
party. However, I was released the next day, obtained
my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to
get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair-Haven Hill. I
was never molested by any person but those who repre
sented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk
which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch
or windows. I never fastened my door night or day,
though I was to be absent several days; not even when
the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine.
And yet my house was more respected than if it had been
surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could
rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse him
self with the few books on my table, or the curious, by
opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner,
and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many
people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered
no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never
missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer,
which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a
soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am con
vinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then
did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take
place only in communities where some have got morp than
is sufficient, while others have not enough. The Pope s
Homers would soon get properly distributed
"Nee bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum scyplius ante dapes."
1 Nor wars did men molest,
When only beechen bowls were in request."
THE VILLAGE.
171
"You who govern public afl airs, what need have you to
employ punishments 1 Love virtue, and the people will
bo virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the
wind ; the virtues of a common man are like the grass ;
the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends."
THE PONDS.
ilOMETIMES, having had a surfeit of human
society and gossip, and worn out all my village
friends, I rambled still farther westward than
I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented
parts of the town, " to fresh woods and pastures new," or,
while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries
and blueberries on Fair-Haven Hill, and laid up a store for
several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavour to
the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the
market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take
that way. If you would know the flavour of huckleberries,
ask the cow-boy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to
suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never
plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston ; they
have not been known there since they grew on her three
hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost
with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market-cart, and
they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Justice
reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported
thither from the country s hills.
Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I
joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on
the poud since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck
THE PONDS. 173
or a floating leaf,- and, after practising various kinds of
philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived,
that he belonged to the ancient sect of Coenobites. There
was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all
kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house
as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen : and
I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to
arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the
pond, he at one end of the boat and I at the other ; but
not many woixls passed between us, for he had grown deaf
in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm,
which harmonised well enough with my philosophy. Our
intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony,
far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried
on by speech. When, as was commonly the case, I had
none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by
striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the
surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring
them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until
I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hill-side.
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing
the llute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to havo
charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over
the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of
the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventur
ously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a
companion, and making a fire close to the water s edge,
which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with
a bunch of worms strung on a thread, and when we had
done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into
the air like sky-rockets, which, coming down into the pond,
were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly
groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune,
174 WALDEN.
we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I
had made my home by the shore.
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlour till tho
family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and,
partly with a view to the next day s dinner, spent the
hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, sere
naded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time,
the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand.
These experiences were very memorable and valuable to
me, anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty
rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands
of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their
tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen
line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their
dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet
of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night
breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it,
indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull
uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its
mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand,
some horned pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air.
It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your
thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in
other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to inter
rupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed
as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well
as downward into this element which was scarcely moro
dense. Thus I caught two fishes, as it were, with one hook.
The scenery of Walclen is on a humble scale, and, though
very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it
much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived
by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth
THE rONDS. 175
and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear
and deep green well, half -a-milo long and a mile and three-
quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty -one and
a-half acres ; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and
oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by tho
clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise abruptly
from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though
on the south-east and cast they attain to about one hundred
and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a
quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively wood
land. All our Concord waters have two colours at least,
one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper,
close at hand. The iirst depends more on the light, and
follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear
blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a
great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they
arc sometimes of a dark slate colour. The sea, however, is
said to be blue one day and green another without any
perceptible change in the atmosphere. I have seen our
river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both
water and ico were almost as green as grass. Some
consider blue " to be tho colour of pure water, whether
liquid or solid." But, looking directly down into our
waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different
colours. Walden. is blue at one time and green at another,
even from tho same point of view. Lying between the
earth and the heavens, it partakes of tho colour of both.
Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the colour of tho sky, but
near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore whero
you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually
deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond.
In some lights, viewed even from a hill-top, it is of a vivid
next the shore. Some have referred this to the
176 WALDEN.
reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green tliore
against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before
the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of
the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand.
Such is the colour of its iris. This is that portion, also,
where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of
the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted
through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal
about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters,
when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface
of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or
because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a
little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself ; and at
such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided
vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a
matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or
changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean
than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green
on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but
muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous greenish blue, as I
remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen
through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a
single glass of its water held up to the light is as colourless
as an equal quantity of air. It is well known that a largo
plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers
say, to its " body," but a small piece of the same will bo
colourless. How large a body of Walden water would bo
required to reflect a green tint I have never proved. The
water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one
looking directly down on it, and, like that of most ponds,
imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge ;
but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of
the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more-
THE PONDS. 177
unnatural, which, as tho limbs are magnified and distorted
withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a
Michael Angelo.
The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily bo
discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet.
Paddling over it, you may see many feet beneath the
surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an
inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their
transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic
fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter,
many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the
ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed
my axe back on to tho ice, but, as if some evil genius had
directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the
holes, where tho water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of
curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through tho hole,
until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its
head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with
the pulse of the pond ; and there it might have stood erect
and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off,
if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly
over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down
the longest birch which I could find in the neighbourhood
with my knife, I made a slip noose, which I attached to its
end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob
of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so
pulled the axe out again.
The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white
stones like paving stones, excepting one or two short sand
beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap
will carry you into the water over your head ; and were it
not for its remai kable transparency, that would be the last
to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side.
I 7 8 WALDEN.
Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a
casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all
in it ; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows
recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a
closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor
even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-
leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or
two ; all which, however, a bather might not perceive ; and
these plants are clean and bright like the element they
grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water,
and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest
parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably
from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to
it so many successive falls; and a bright green weed is
brought up on anchors even in midwinter.
We have one other pond just like this White Pond in
Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly ;
but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within
a dozen miles of this centre, I do not know a third of this
pure and well-like character. Successive nations perchance
have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away,
and still its water is green and pellucid as ever. Not an
intermitting spring ! Perhaps on that spring morning
when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, Walden
Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up
in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a
southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and
geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure
lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to Hso
and fall, and had clarified its waters and coloured them of
the hue they now wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to
be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of
celestial dews. Who knows in how many unremembered
THE PONDS. 179
nations literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain 1
or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age ? It is
a gem of the first water, which Concord wears in her
coronet.
Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left
some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to
detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has
just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf -like path
in the steep hill-side, alternately rising and falling, approach
ing and receding from the water s edge, as old probably
as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal
hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden
by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly
distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in
winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a
clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and
twigs, and very obvious a quarter-of-a-mile off in many
places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at
hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type
alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which
will one day be built here may still preserve some trace
of this.
The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not,
and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual,
many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the
winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding
to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it
was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five
feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow
sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side,
on which I helped to boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods
from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not
been possible to do for twenty-five years ] and on the other
i8o WALDEN.
hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I
told them, that a few years later I wa k accustomed to fish
from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods
from the only shore they knew, which place was long since
converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for
two years, and now, in the summer of 52, is just five feet
higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty
years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow.
This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six
or seven feet ; and yet the water shed by the surround
ing hills is insignificant in amount, and this over
flow must be referred to causes which affect the deep
springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall
again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether
periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its
accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of
two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years
hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known
it. Flints Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturb
ance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller
intermediate ponds also, sympathise with Walden, and
recently attained their greatest height at the same time
with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation
goes, of White Pond.
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves
this use at least : the water standing at this great height for
a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round
it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about
its edge since the last rise pitch-pines, birches, alders,
aspens, and others and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed
shore ; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are
subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water
is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house a row
THE PONDS. 181
of pitch-pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped
over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroach
ments ; and their size indicates how many years have
elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctua
tion the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore
is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession.
These are the lips of the lake on which no beard grows. It
licks its chaps from time to time. When the water is at
its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass
of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their
stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet
from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves ; and
I have known the high-blueberry bushes about the shore,
which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop
under these circumstances.
Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so
regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the
tradition the oldest people tell me that they heard it in
their youth that anciently the Indians were holding a pow
wow upon a hill there, which rose as high into the heavens
as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used
much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of
which the Indians were never guilty, and while they wero
thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only
one old squaw, named Waldcn, escaped, and from her the
pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the
hill shook, these stones rolled down its side and became the
present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once
there was no pond here, and now there is one ; and this
Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the
account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned,
who remembers so well when he first came here with his
divining rod, saw a thin vapour rising from the sward, and
1 82 WALDEN.
the hazel pointed steadily downward, he concluded to dig a
well here. As for the stones, many still think that they
are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves
on these hills ; but I observe that the surrounding hills are
remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they
have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of
the railroad cut nearest the pond ; and, moreover, there are
most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that,
unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the
paver. If the name was not derived from that of some
English locality, Saffron "VValdcn, for instance, one might
suppose that it was called, originally, Walhd-in Pond.
The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in
the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times ;
and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the best in
the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the
air is colder than springs and wells which are protected
from it. The temperature of the pond water which had
stood in the room where I sat from five o clock in the after
noon till noon the next day, the 6th of March 1846, the
thermometer having been up to 65 or 70 some of the
time, owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42, or ono
degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in
the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling
Spring the same day was 45, or the warmest of any water
tried, though it is the coldest that I know of in summer,
when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is not
mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never
becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the
sun, on account of its depth. In the warmest weather I
usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool
in the night, and remained so during the day ; though I
also resorted to a spring in the neighbourhood. It was as
THE PONDS. 183
good when a v.-cck old as tho day it was dipped, and had no
tasto of tho pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer
by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a
few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent
of the luxury of ice.
There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one weigh
ing seven pounds, to say nothing of another which carried
off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set
down at eight pounds because he did not see him, perch and
pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners,
chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus,) a very few breams,
and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds, I am thus
particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only
title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of
here ; also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some
five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back,
somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here
chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond
is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not abun
dant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one time lying on
the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds ; a long and
shallow one, steel-coloured, most like those caught in the
river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and
remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and
another golden-coloured, and shaped like the last, but
peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots,
intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like
a trout. The specific name reliculatus would not apply to
this ; it would be yuttatus rather. These are all very firm
fish, and weigh more than their size promises. The shiners,
pouts, and perch also, and indeed all tho fishes which
inhabit this pond, arc much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer
fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the
1 84 WALDEN.
water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from
them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new
varieties of some of them. There are also a clean race of
frogs and tortoises, and a few mussels in it ; niusk-rats and
minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a travel
ling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed off
my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle
which had secreted himself under the boat in the night.
Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the
white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and
the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teter" along its stony
shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish-hawk
sitting on a white-pine over the water ; but I doubt if it is
ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven.
At most it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the
animals of consequence which frequent it now.
You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the
sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet
deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circu
lar heaps half-a-dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height,
consisting of small stones less than a hen s egg in size,
where all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the
Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose,
and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom ; but
they are too regular, and some of them plainly too fresh, for
that. They are similar to those found in rivers; but as
there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by
what iish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests
of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery to the
bottom.
The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I
have in my mind s eye the western indented with deep
bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully-scolloped
THE PONDS. 185
southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other,
and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has
never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as
when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which
rise from the water s edge ; for the water in which it is
reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case,
but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable
boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in
its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a
cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to
expand on the water-side, and each sends forth its most
vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has
woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just grada
tions from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees.
There are few traces of man s hand to bo seen. The water
laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.
A lake is the landscape s most beautiful and expressive
feature. It is earth s eye, looking into which the beholder
measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile
trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe
it, and the wooded hills and clilTs around are its overhanging
brows.
Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of
the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight
haze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, I have seen
whence came the expression, " the glassy surface of a lake."
When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest
gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against
the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the
atmosphere from another. You would think that you
could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the
swallows which skiui over might perch on it. Indeed, they
sometimes dive below the line, as it were by mistake, and
1 86 WALDEN.
are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward you
are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes
against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are
equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its
surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except
where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over
its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the
finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck
plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as
to touch it. It may be that in the distance a fish describes
an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one
bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes
the water ; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed ;
or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its
surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again.
It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the
few motes in it are pure and beautiful, like the imperfec
tions in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother and
darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible
cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a
hill-top you can see a fish leap in almost any part ; for not
a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth sur
face but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole
lake. It is wonderful with what elaborateness this simple
fact is advertised, this piscine murder will out, and
from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations
when they are half-a-dozen rods in diameter. You can
even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing
over the smooth surface a quarter-of-a-mile off; for they
furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple
bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over
it without rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is
considerably agitated there aro no skaters nor water-bugs
THE PONDS. 187
tn it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens
and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short
impulses till they completely cover it. It is a soothing
employment, on one of those fine days in the fall, when all
the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a
stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and
study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed
on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies
and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance
but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged,
as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles
seek the shore, and all is smooth again. Not a fish can
leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in
circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant
welling-up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the
heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain
are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of
the lake ! Again the works of man shine as in the spring
aye, every leaf, and twig, and stone, and cobweb sparkles
now at mid-afternoon, as when covered with dew in a
spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect
produces a flash of light ; and if an oar falls, how sweet
the echo !
In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a
perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to
my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and
at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the
surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence.
Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror
which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never
wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs ; no
storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh ; a mirror
in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and
1 88 WALDEN.
dusted by the sun s hazy brush this the light dust-cloth
which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends
its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be
reflected on its bosom still.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It
is continually receiving new life and motion from above.
It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On
land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is
rippled by the wind. T see where the breeze dashes across
it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that
we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look
down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where
a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.
The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latte
part of October, when the severe frosts have come; and
then and in November, usually, in a calm day, there is
absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One November
afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain-storm of several
days duration, when the sky was still completely overcast
and the air was full of mist, I observed that the pond was
remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish
its surface ; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of
October, but the sombre November colours of the surround
ing hills. Though I passed over it as gently as possible,
the slight undulations produced by my boat extended almost
as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the
reflections. But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw
here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some
skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be col
lected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth,
betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom.
Paddling gently to one of these places, I was surprised to
find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about
THE PONDS. 189
five inches long, of a rich bronze colour in tho green water,
sporting there and constantly rising to the surface and
dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such
transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the
clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a
balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a kind of
flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds
passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their
fins, like sails, set all around them. There were many such
schools in the pond, apparently improving the short season
before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad
skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as
if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there.
When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they
made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one
had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly
took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the
mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch
leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a
hundred black points, three inches long, at once above tho
surface. Even as late as the 5th of December, one year, I
saw some dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going
to rain hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made
haste to take my place at the oars and row homewards ;
already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none
on my check, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But
suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the
perch, which the noise of my oars had scared into the
depths, and I saw their schools dimly disappearing ; so I
spent a dry afternoon after all.
An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty
years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells
me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with
i go WALDEN.
ducks and other water-fowl, and that there were many
eagles about it. lie came here a-fishing, and used an old
log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of
two white-pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was
cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted
a great many years before it became water-logged and
perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose it
was ; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable
for his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An
old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolu
tion, told him once that there was an iron chest at the
bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come
floating up to the shore ; but when you went towards it, it
would go back into deep water and disappear. I was
pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place
of an Indian one of the same material but more graceful
construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the
bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there
for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I
remember that when I first looked into these depths there
were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on
the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or
left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper \
but now they have mostly disappeared.
When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely
surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in
some of its coves grape vines had run over the trees next
the water and formed bowers under which a boat could
pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the
woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down
from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre
for some kind of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an
hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the
THE PONDS. 191
zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and
lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon,
dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching
the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had
impelled me to days when idleness was the most attractive
and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen
away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the
day ; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and
summer days, and spent them lavishly ; nor do I regret
that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the
teacher s desk. But since I left those shores the wood-
choppers have still further laid them waste, and now for
many a year there will be no more rambling through the
aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which
you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is
silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing
when their groves are cut down 1
Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log
canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the
villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to
the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water,
which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the
village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with ! to earn their
Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a plug !
That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard
throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with
his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on
Walden shore ; that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in
his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks ! Where is the
country s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him
at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between tho
ribs of the bloated pest 1
Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps
I 9 2 WALDEN.
Waldcn wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many
men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honour.
Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and
then that, and the Irish have built their styes by it, and
the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men
have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water
which my youthful eyes fell on ; all the change is in me.
It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its
ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and see
a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface
as of yore. It struck me again to-night, as if I had not
seen it almost daily for more than twenty years, Why,
here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered
so many years ago ; where a forest was cut down last
winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever :
the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then ;
it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its
Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a brave
man surely, in whom there was no guile ! He rounded this
water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his
thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see
by its face that it is visited by the same reflection ; and I
can almost say, Walden, is it you 1
" It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a lino ;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o er ;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought."
The cars never pause to look at it ; yet I fancy that the
THE PONDS. 193
engineers and firemen and brakesmen, and those passengers
who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men
for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his
nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity
and purity once at least during the day. Though seen but
once, it helps to wash out State Street and the engine s
soot. One proposes that it be called " God s Drop."
I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet,
but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to
Flint s Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small
ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly
and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a
similar chain of ponds through which in some other geolo
gical period it may have flowed, and by a little digging,
which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If
by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the
woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who
would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of
Flint s Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever
go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave 1
Flint s, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake and
inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is much
larger, being said to contain one hundred and ninety-seven
acres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is comparatively
shallow, and not remarkably pure. A walk through the
woods thither was often my recreation. It was worth the
while, if only to feel the wind blow on your cheek freely
and see the waves run, and remember the life of mariners.
I went a-chestnutting there in the fall, on windy days,
when the nuts were dropping into the water and were
washed to my feet ; and one day, as I crept along its sedgy
shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I came upon the
N
194 WALDEN.
mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly
more than the impression of its flat bottom left amid tho
rushes ; yet its model was sharply defined, as if it were a
large decayed pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a
wreck as one could imagine on the sea-shore, and had as
good a moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould and
undistinguishable pond-shore, through which rushes and flags
have pushed up. I used to admire the ripple marks on the
sandy bottom, at the north end of this pond, made firm and
hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the water,
and the rushes which grew in Indian file, in waving lines,
corresponding to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the
waves had planted them. There also I have found, in con
siderable quantities, curious balls, composed apparently of
fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half-an-inch to
four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. These
wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom,
and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either solid
grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first you
would say that they were formed by the action of the waves,
like a pebble ; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse
materials, half-an-inch long, and they are produced only at
one season of the year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do
not so much construct as wear down a material which has
already acquired consistency. They preserve their form
when dry for an indefinite period.
Flints Pond ! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature.
What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm
abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly
laid bare, to give his name to it ? Some skin-flint, who
loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright
cent, in which he could see his own brazen face ; who
regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as
THE PONDS. 195
trespassers ; his fingers grown into crooked and horny talons
from the long habit of grasping harpy-like \ so it is not
named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of
him ; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never
loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good
word of it, nor thanked God that ho had made it. Rather
let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild
fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers
which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the
thread of whose history is interwoven with its own;
not from him who could show no title to it but the deed
which a like-minded neighbour or legislature gave him,
him who thought only of its money value ; whose presence
perchance cursed all the shore ; who exhausted the land
around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within
it ; who regretted only that it was not English hay or
cranberry meadow, there was nothing to redeem it, for
sooth, in his eyes, and would have drained and sold it
for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill,
and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not
his labours, his farm where everything has its price, who
would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to
market, if he could get anything for him ; who goes to
market for his god as it is ; on whose farm nothing grows
free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers,
whose trees no fruits but dollars ; who loves not the beauty
of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they aro
turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true
wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in
proportion as they are poor, poor farmers. A model
farm ! where the house stands like a fungus in a muck-
hoap, chambers for men, horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed
and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another ! Stocked
196 WALDEN.
with men ! A great grease-spot, redolent of manures and
buttermilk Under a high state of cultivation, being
manured with the hearts and brains of men ! As if you
were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard ! Such is a
model farm.
No, no ; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be
named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men
alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at least as the
Tcarian Sea, where "still the shore" a "brave attempt
resounds."
Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint s ;
Fair-Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to
contain some seventy acres, is a mile south-west ; and
White Pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a-half
beyond Fair-Haven. This is my lake country. These,
with Concord River, are my water privileges ; and night
and day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry
to them.
Since the woodcutters, and the railroad, and I myself have
profaned "VValden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the
most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is
White Pond ; a poor name from its commonness, whether
derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or tho
colour of its sands. In these as in. other respects, however,
it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that
you would say they must be connected underground. It
has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same
hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog-day weather, looking
down through the woods on some of its bays which are not
so deep but that the reflection from the bottom tinges
them, its waters are of a misty bluish-green or glaucous
colour. Many years since I used to go there to collect tho
THE PONDS. 197
KIU id by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I have
continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it
proposes to call it -Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be
called Yellow-Pine Lake, from the following circumstance.
About fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch-
pine, of the kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it ia
not a distinct species, projecting above the surface in deep
water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed
by some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of tho
primitive forest that formerly stood there. I find that even
so long ago- as 1792, in a Topographical Description of
tlic, Town of Concord, by one of its citizens, in the
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the
author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds :
" In the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water
is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place
where it now stands, although the roots are fifty feet below
the surface of the water ; the top of this tree is broken o(F,
and at that place measures fourteen inches in diameter."
In the spring of 49 I talked with a man who lived nearest
the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out
this tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as he could
remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore,
where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the
winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon,
and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his
neighbours, he would take out the old yellow-pine. He
sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it
over and along and out on to the ice with oxen ; but,
before he had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find
that it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of tho
branches pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened
in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at
198 IVALDEN.
the big end, and lie had expected to get a good saw -log, but it
was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. He had
some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an axe
and of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might
have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown
over into the pond, and after the top had become water
logged, while the butt-end was still dry and light, had drifted
out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty years old,
could not remember when it was not there. Several pretty
large logs may still be seen lying on the bottom, where,
owing to the undulation of the surface, they look like huge
water snakes in motion.
This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is
little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily,
which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue
flag (Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, rising
from the stony bottom all around the shore, where it is
visited by humming-birds in June, and the colour both
of its bluish blades and its flowers, and especially their
reflections, are in singular harmony with the glaucous
water.
White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the
surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were per
manently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they
would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious
stones, to adorn the heads of emperors ; but being liquid,
and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we
disregard them, and run after the diamond of Koh-i-noor.
They are too pure to have a market value ; they contain no
muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much
more transparent than our characters, arc they ! We never
learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the
pool before the farmer s door, in which his ducks swim !
THE PONDS.
199
] I ithcr the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human
inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their
plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers,
but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant
beauty of Nature 1 She flourishes most alone, far from the
towns where they reside. Talk of heaven ! ye disgrace
earth.
BAKER FARM.
SOMETIMES I rambled to pine groves, standing
like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged,
with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so
soft, and green, and shady, that the Druids
would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them ; or to
the cedar wood beyond Flint s Pond, where the trees,
covered with hoary blueberries, spiring higher and higher,
are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper
covers the ground with wreathes full of fruit ; or to swamps
where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white-
spruce trees, and toad-stools, round tables of the swamp
gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the
stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles ; where
the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alderberry
glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes
the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild-holly berries
makes the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and
he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden
fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on
some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of
kinds which are rare in this neighbourhood, standing far
away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a
wood or swamp, or on a hill-top ; such as the black-birch, of
BAKER FARM. 20 1
which we have some handsome specimens two feet in
diameter ; its cousin, the yellow-birch, with its loose golden
vest, perfumed like the first ; the beech, which has so neat
a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in all its
details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, I know
but one small grove of sizeable trees left in the township,
supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that
were once baited with beech nuts near by ; it is worth the-
while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this
wood ; the bass ; the hornbeam ; the celtis occidentalis, or
false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some
taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect
hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of
the woods ; and many others I could mention. These were
the shrines I visited both summer and winter.
Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a
rainbow s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmos
phere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me
as if I looked through coloured crystal. It was a lake of
rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like
a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my
employments and life. As I walked on the railroad cause
way, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my
shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. OK 3
who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen
before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives
that were so distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in
his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision
which he had during his confinement in the castle of St.
Angelo, a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of
his head at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy
or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the
grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same
202 WALDEN.
phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially
observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even
by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not commonly
noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like
Cellini s, it would be basis enough for superstition. Besides,
he tells us that he showed it to very few. But are they
not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are
regarded at all?
I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair-Haven,
through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables.
My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the
Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung,
beginning,
" Thy entry is a pleasant field,
Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook,
By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout,
Darting about."
1 thought of living there before I went to Walden. I
"hooked" the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the
musquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons
which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many
events may happen, a large portion of our natural life,
though it was already half spent when I started. By the
way there came up a shower, which compelled mo to
stand half-an-hour under a pine, piling boughs over my
head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed ; and when
at length I had made one cast over the pickerel-weed,
standing up to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly
in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble
with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen to
BAKER FARM. 203
it. The gods must bo proud, thought I, with such forked
Hashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste
for shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half-a-mile from
any road, but so much the nearer to the pond, and had long
been uninhabited :
"And here a poet builded,
In the completed years,
For behold a trival cabin
That to destruction steers."
So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now
John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children,
from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his
work, and now came running by his side from the bog to
escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed
infant that sat upon its father s knee as in the palaces of
nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of web
and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the
privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the last
of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world,
instead of John Field s poor starveling brat. There we sat
together under that part of the roof which leaked the least,
while it showered and thundered without. I had sat there
many times of old before the ship was built that floated
this family to America. An honest, hard-working, but
shiftless man plainly was John Field ; and his wife she
too was brave to cook so many successive dinners in the
recesses of that lofty stove ; with round greasy face and
bare breast, still thinking to improve her condition one
day ; with the never-absent mop in one hand, and yet no
effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens, which had
also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the
room like members of the family, too humanised methought
to roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked
204 WALDEN.
at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host told me his
story, how hard he worked " bogging " for a neighbouring
farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at
the rate of ten dollars an acre, and the use of the land with
manure for one year, and his little broad-faced son worked
cheerfully at his father s side the while, not knowing how
poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him
with my experience, telling him that he was one of my
nearest neighbours, and that I, too, who came a-fishing
here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like
himself ; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house,
which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin
as his commonly amounts to ; and how, if he chose, he
might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own ;
that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor
fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them ; again,
as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it
cost me but a trifle for my food ; but as he began with tea,
and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work
hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he
had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system ;
and so it was as broad as it was long indeed it was
broader than it was long for he was discontented, and
wasted his life into the bargain ; and yet he had rated it as
a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and
coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is
that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a
mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and
where the state does not endeavour to compel you to sus
tain the slavery, and war, and other superfluous expenses
which directly or indirectly result from the use of such
things. For I purposely talked to him as if he were a
philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all
BAKER FARM.
205
the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that
were the consequence of men s beginning to redeem them
selves. A man will not need to study history to find out
what is best for his own culture. But alas ! the culture of
an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of
moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at
bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which
yet were soon soiled and worn out ; but I wore light shoes
and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he
might think that I was dressed like a gentleman (which,
however, was not the case), and in an hour or two, without
labour, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as
many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough
money to support me a week. If he and his family would
live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the sum
mer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and
his wife stared with arms akimbo, and both appeared to be
wondering if they had capital enough to begin such a course
with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was
sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly
how to make their port so ; therefore, I suppose they still
take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it
tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns
with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail think
ing to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle.
But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage, living,
John Field, alas ! without arithmetic, and failing so.
"Do you ever fish?" I asked. "0 yes, I catch a mess
now and then when I am lying by ; good perch I catch."
" What s your bait 1 " "I catch shiners with fish-worms,
and bait the perch with them." " You d better go now,
John," said his wife with glistening and hopeful face ; but
John demurred.
206 WALDEN.
The shower was now over, and a rainbow above tho
eastern woods promised a fair evening ; so I took my
departure. When I had got without I asked for a dish,
hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my
survey of the premises ; but there, alas ! are shallows and
quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket irrecover
able. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected,
water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and
long delay passed out to the thirsty one, not yet suffered
to cool, nor yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I
thought ; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes
by a skilfully directed under-current, I drank to genuine
hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not
squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman s roof after the rain,
bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch
pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog-
holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an instant
trivial to me who had been sent to school and college ; but
as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with the
rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds
borne to my ear through the cleansed air, from I know not
what quarter, my Good Genius seemed to say, Go fish and
hunt far and wide day by day, farther and wider, and
rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without mis
giving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.
Rise free from care beyond the dawn, and seek adventures.
Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night over
take thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields
than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and
brakes, which will never become English hay. Let the
thunder rumble ; what if it threaten ruin to farmers crops 1
BAKER FARM. 207
that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the
cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a
living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but
own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are
where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives
like serfs.
O Baker Farm !
" Landscape where the richest element
Is a little sunshine innocent." . .
" No one runs to revel
On thy rail-fenced lea." . .
"Debate with no man hast thou,
With questions art never perplexed,
As tame at the first sight as now,
In thy plain russet gabardine dressed." . .
" Come ye who love,
And yo who hate,
Children of the Holy Dove,
And Guy Faux of the state,
And hang conspiracies
From the tough rafters of the trees ! "
Men come tamely home at night only from the next field
or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life
pines because it breathes its own breath over again ; their
shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily
steps. Wo should come home from far, from adventures,
and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience
and character.
Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had
brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go
"bogging" ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed
only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and
208
WALDEN.
he said it was his luck ; but when we changed seats in the
boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field ! I trust
he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,
thinking to live by some derivative old country mode in
this primitive new country, to catch perch with shiners.
It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all
his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his
inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam s grandmother
and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his pos
terity, till their wading, webbed, bog-trotting feet get talaria
to their heels.
HIGHER LAWS.
|S I came home through the woods with my string
of fish, trailing my pole, it being quite dark, I
caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across
my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage
delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him
raw ; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness
which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I
lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like
a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking
some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel
could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had
become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and
still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named,
spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primi
tive 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 recommend it to me.
I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my
clay more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this
employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest
acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to
and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age,
we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters,
o
2io WALDEN.
wood-clioppers, 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 expectation. She is not
afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the
prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of
the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls
of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller
learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor
authority. We are most interested when science reports
what those men already know practically or instinctively,
for that alone is a true humanity, on 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 amuse
ments of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given
place to the former. Almost every New England boy
among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece
between the ages of ten and fourteen ; and his hunting and
fishing grounds were not limited like the preserves of an
English nobleman, but were more boundless even than
those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not
oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change
is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to
an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is
the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the
Humane Society.
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
HIGHER LAWS. 211
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 tho woods.
Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not
perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not
pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for
fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my
excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought
only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now
inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying
ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention
to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only,
I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding
the objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to
doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for
these ; and when some of my friends have asked mo
anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them
hunt, I have answered, yes, remembering that it was one
of the best parts of my education, make them hunters,
though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters
at last, so that they shall not find game largo 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
" yavo 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
212 WALDEN.
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 philanthropic distinctions.
Such is oftenest the young man s introduction to tlit
forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes
thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has
the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper
objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun
and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always
young in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson
is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good
shepherd s dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.
I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious
employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like
business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden
Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens,
whether fathers or children of the town, with just one
exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that
they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got
a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of
seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a
thousand times before the sediment of fishing would sink to
the bottom and leave their purpose pure ; but no doubt
such a clarifying process would be going on all the while.
The governor and his council faintly remember the pond,
for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but
now they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so
they know it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go
to heaven at last. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly
HIGHhR LA WS.
213
to regulate the number of hooks to be used there ; but they
know nothing about the hook of hooks Avith 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 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 fisher
man at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness
I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in
earnest. Beside, there is something essentially unclean
about this diet and all flesh, and I began to see where
housework commences, and whence the 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 com
plete experience. The practical objection to animal food in
my case was its uncleaniiess ; 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
214 WALDEN.
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 agreeable to
my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the
effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more
beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects ; and
though I never did so, I went far enough to please my
imagination. I believe that every man who has ever been
earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best
condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from
animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a
significant fact, stated by entomologists, I find it in
Kirby and Spencc, 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 larvae. 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 body ; they should both sit down
at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The
fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our
appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an
extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It
is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men
ITTG HER LA WS. 215
would fed 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 rcice who shall teach man to
confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet.
Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it
is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual
improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the
savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came
in contact with the more civilised.
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of
his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what
extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him ; and yet that
way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.
The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels
will at length prevail over the arguments and customs
of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it mis
led him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet
perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to bo
regretted, for these were a life of conformity to higher
principles. If the day and the night are such that you
greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers
and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more
immortal, that is your success. All nature is your
2i6 WALDEN.
congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless
yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from
being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist.
We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Per
haps the facts most astounding and most real are never
communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my
daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as
the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust
caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish ; I
could sometimes cat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were
necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the
same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-
eater s heaven. I would fain keep sober always ; and
there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that
water is the only drink for a wise man ; wine is not so
noble a liquor ; and think of dashing the hopes of a morn
ing with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish
of tea ! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them !
Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight
causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy
England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not
prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes ? I have
found it to be the most serious objection to coarse 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 ques
tions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of
poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here.
HIGHER LAWS. 217
Ni \( rlheless I am far from regarding myself as one of
those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says,
that " he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme
Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to
inquire what is his food, or who prepares it ; and even in
their case it is to bo observed, as a Hindoo commentator
lias remarked, that the Vcdant limits this privilege to " the
time of distress."
AVho has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satis
faction from his food in which appetite had no share ? I
have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception
to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been
inspired through the palate, that some berries which I had
eaten on a hill-side had fed my genius. "The soul not
being mistress of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks,
and one does not see ; one listens, and one does not hear ; one
eats, and one does not know the 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 There is never an
218 WALDEN.
instaait s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the
only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp
which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this
which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for
the Universe s Insurance Company, recommending its laws,
jind our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay.
Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the
universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of
the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some
reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who
does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop
but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome
noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud sweet
satire on the meanness of our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in
proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and
sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled ; like the
worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies.
Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its
nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its
own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I
picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound
teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal
health and vigour distinct from the spiritual. This crea
ture succeeded by other means than temperance and purity.
" That in which men differ from brute beasts," says Mencius,
" is a thing very inconsiderable ; the common herd lose it
very soon; superior men preserve it carefully." Who
knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to
purity ? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity
I would go to seek him forthwith. " A command over our
passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good
acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the
HIGHER LAWS. 219
mind s approximation to God." Yet the spirit can for the
time pi-nude and control every member and function of
the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest
sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy,
which, when wo are loose, dissipates and makes us un
clean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us.
Chastity is the flowering of man ; and what are called
Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various
fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when
the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires
and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is
assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day,
and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none
but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and
brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are
such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine
allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some
extent, our very life is our disgrace
" Ilow happy a 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 purity. When the reptile is
attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at
220 WALDEN.
another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
What is chastity ? How shall a man know if he is chaste?
He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but
we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the
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 without
being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all
the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.
Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome.
What avails it that you are a 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 coun
tries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated
by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver,
however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches
how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and
the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely
excuse himself by calling these things trifles.
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
HIGHER LAWS. 221
got off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors
and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood
and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man s
features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening,
ufU r a hard day s work, his mind still running on his labour
more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to recreate his
intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and somo
of his neighbours were apprehending a frost. He had not
attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard
some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonised
with his mood. Still he thought of his work \ but the bur
den of his thought was, that though this kept running in
his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it
against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was
no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly
shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to hia
ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and
suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in
him. They gently did away with the street, and the village,
and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him -
Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when
a glorious existence is possible for you ? Those same stars
twinkle over other fields than these. But how to come out
of this condition and actually migrate thither ? All that he
could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his
mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever-increasing respect.
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS.
)METIMES I had a companion in my fishing, who
came through the village to my house from tho
other side of the town, and the catching of the
dinner was as much a social exercise as tho
eating of it.
Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I
have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern
these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their
roosts, no nutter from them. Was that a farmer s noon-
horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now ?
The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef, and cider, and
Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so ? He
that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they
have reaped. Who would live there where a body can
never think for the barking of Bose 1 And 0, the house
keeping ! to keep bright the devil s door-knobs, and scour
his tubs this bright day ! Better not keep a house. Say,
some hollow tree ; and then for morning-calls and dinner
parties ! Only a woodpecker tapping. 0, they swarm ;
the sun is too warm there ; they are born too far into life
for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown
bread on the shelf. Hark ! I hear a rustling of the leaves.
Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of
NEIGHBOURS. 223
the cliaso 1 or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods,
whose tracks I saw after the ruin 1 It comes on apace ;
my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble. Eh, Mr. Poet, is it
you ? How do you like the world to-day 1
Poet. See those clouds ; how they hang ! That s the
greatest thing I have seen to-day. There s nothing like it in
old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands, unless when
wo were off the coast of Spain. That s a true Mediter
ranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and
have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That s
the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have
learned. Gome, let s along.
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon bo
gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just
concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near
the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But
that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait
meanwhile. Angle-worms are rarely to be met with in
these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure;
the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait
is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one s
appetite is not too keen j and this you may have all to
yourself to-day. I would advise you to set in the spade
down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the
johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one
worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in
among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or,
if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have
found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the
squares of the distances.
Hermit alone. Let me see ; where was 1 1 Methinks I
was nearly in this frame of mind ; the world lay about at
this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing 1 If I should
224 WALDEN.
bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet
occasion be likely to offer 1 I was as near being resolved
into the essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear
rny thoughts will not come back to me. If it would do any
good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an
offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it ? My thoughts
have left no track, and I cannot find the path again.
What was it that I was thinking of 1 It was a very hazy
day. I will just try these three sentences of Con-fut-sce ;
they may fetch that state about again. I know not
whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem.
There never is but one opportunity of a kind.
Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got
just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect
or undersized ; but they will do for the smaller fry ; they
do not cover up the hook so much. Those village worms
are quite too large ; a shiner may make a meal off one
without finding the skewer.
Hermit. Well, then, let s be off. Shall wo to the
Concord 1 There s good sport there if the water bo not too
high.
Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a
world? Why has man just these species of animals for his
neighbours ; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled
this crevice ? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals
to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a
sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the common
ones, which are said to have been introduced into the
country, but a wild native kind not found in the village.
I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested
him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS. 225
underneath the house, and before I had laid the second
floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly
at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It pro
bably had never seen a man before ; and it soon became
quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my
clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by
short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its
motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the
bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve,
and round and round the paper which held my dinner,
while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bo-
peep with it ; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese
between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it,
sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and
paws, like a fly, and walked away.
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection
in a pine which grew against the house. In June tho
partridge (Tetrao umbcllus), which is so shy a bird, led her
brood past my windows, from tho woods in the rear to the
front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen,
and in all her behaviour proving herself the hen of tho
woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at
a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them
away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and
twigs that many a traveller has placed his foot in the midst
of a brood, and heard the whirr of the old bird as she flew
off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her
wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their
neighbourhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin
round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for
a few moments, detect what kind of a creature it is. Tho
young squat still and flat, often running their heads under
a leaf, and mind only their mother s directions given from a
p
226 WALDEN.
distance, nor will your approach make them run again and
betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have
your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them.
I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still
their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct,
was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect
is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the
leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was
found with the rest in exactly the same position ten
minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of
most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious
even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent
expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable.
All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not
merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by
experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was,
but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not
yield another such a gem. The traveller does not often
look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless
sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and
leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling
beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves
which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched
by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so
are lost, for they never hear the mother s call which gathers
them again. These were my hens and chickens.
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and froo
though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in
the neighbourhood of towns, suspected by hunters only.
How retired the otto manages to live here I He grows to
be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any
human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw tlio
raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and
71RUTE NEIGHBOURS. 227
probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly
I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting,
and ate my lunch, and read a littlo by a spring which was
the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under
Brister s Hill, half-a-mile from my field. The approach to
this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows,
full of young pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the
swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot,
under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean firm
sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring, and mado a well
of clear grey water, where I could dip up a pailful without
roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every
day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither
too the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for
worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while
they ran in a troop beneath ; but at last, spying me, she
would leave her young and circle round and round me,
nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending
broken wings and logs, to attract my attention, and get off
her young, who would already have taken up their march,
with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she
directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could
not see the parent bird. There too the turtle doves sat over
the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft
white-pines over my head ; or the red squirrel, coursing
down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and
inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some
attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may
exhibit themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a loss peaceful character.
Onn clay when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my
pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the
other much larger, nearly half-an-inch long, and blade,
228 WALDEN.
fiercely contending with one another. Having once got
hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and
rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was
surprised to find that the chips were covered with such
combatants, that it was not a dueUum, but a belhim, a war
between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the
black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The
legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales
in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with
the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only
battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I
ever trod while the battle was raging ; internecine war ;
the red republicans on the one hand, and the black
imperialists on the other. On every side they were
engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I
could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.
I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other s
embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at
noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life
went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself
like a vice to his adversary s front, and through all the
tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw
at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused
the other to go by the board ; while the stronger black one
dashed him from side to side, and as I saw on looking
nearer, had already divested him of several of his members.
They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither
manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident
that their battle cry was Conquer or die. In the mean
while there came along a single red ant on the hill-side of
this valley, evidently full of excitement, who cither had
despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle ;
probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs ;
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS. 229
whoso mother had charged him to return with his shield or
upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had
nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or
rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from
afar for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red
he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard
within half-an inch of the combatants ; then, watching his
opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and com
menced his operations near the root of his right fore-leg,
leaving the foe to select among his own members ; and so
there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attrac
tion had been invented which put all other locks and
cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this
time to find that they had their respective musical bands
stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national
airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying
combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if
they had been men. The more you think of it, the less
the difference. And certainly there is not a fight recorded
in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America,
that will bear a moment s comparison with this, whether
for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and
heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an
Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight ! Two killed on
the patriots side, and Luther Blanchard wounded ! Why
here every ant was a Buttrick, "Fire! for God s sake,
fire ! " and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.
There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that
it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors,
and not to avoid a threepenny tax on their tea ; and the
results of this battle will be as important and memorable to
those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker
Hill, at least.
230 WALDEN.
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly
described were struggling, carried it into my house, and
placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see
the issue. Holding a microscope to the firskmentioned red
ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the
near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining
feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what
vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose
breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce ; and
the dark carbuncles of the sufferer s eyes shone with ferocity
such as war only could excite. They struggled half-an-hour
longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the
black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their
bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either
side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still
apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavour
ing with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with
only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other
wounds, to divest himself of them ; which at length, after
half-an-hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and
he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state.
Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the
remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do
not know ; but I thought that his industry would not be
worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was
victorious, nor the cause of the war : but I felt for the
rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and
harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and
carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have
long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though
they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears
to have witnessed them. " jSEneas Sylvius," say they,
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS. 231
"after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested
with threat obstinacy by a great and small species on the
trunk of a pear tree," adds that, " This action was fought
in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence
of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related
the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.
A similar engagement between great and small ants is
recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being
victorious, arc said to have buried the bodies of their own
soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the
birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of
the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The
battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of
Polk, five years before the passage of Webster s Fugitive-
Slave Bill.
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a
victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods,
without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually
smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks holes ; led
perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the
wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its
denizens ; now far behind his guide, barking like a canine
bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for
scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his
weight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray
member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see
a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they
rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual.
Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on
a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods,
and, by her sly and stealthy behaviour, proves herself more
native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when
berrying, T met with ;i cat with young kittens in the woods,
232 WALDEN.
quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs
up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I
lived in the woods there was what was called a " winged
cat " in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond,
Mr. Gilian Baker s. When I called to see her in June
1842 she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her
wont (I am not sure whether it was a male or a female, and
go use the more common pronoun), but her mistress told
me that she came into the neighbourhood a little more
than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into
their house ; that she was of a dark brownish-grey colour,
with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a
large bushy tail like a fox ; that in the winter the fur grew
thick and flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten
or twelve inches long by two-and-a-half wide, and under
her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under
matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped
off. They gave me a pair of her " wings," which I keep
still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them.
Some thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other wild
animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists,
prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the
marten and domestic cat. This would have been the right
kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any ; for why
should not a poet s cat be winged as well as his horse ?
In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual,
to moult and bathe in the pond, mciking the woods ring
with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumour of his
arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs
and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent
rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling
through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to
one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS. 233
pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omni
present ; if he dive here he must come up there. But now
the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling
the surface of the water, so that 110 loon can be heard or
seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and
make the woods resound with their discharges. The
wnves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides
with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a re
treat to town, and shop, and unfinished jobs. But they
were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of
water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately
bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I
endeavoured to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how
lie would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely lost,
so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till
the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match
for him on the surface. Ho commonly went off in a
rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm
October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to
the lakes, like the milk-weed down, having looked in vain
over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the
shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up
his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a
paddle and ho dived, but when he came up I was nearer
than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the
direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when
he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen
the interval ; and again he laughed long and loud, and with
more reason than before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that
I could not get within half-a-dozen rods of him. Each time,
when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and
that, he coolly surveyed the water and the lund, and
234 IVALDEN.
apparently chose his course so that he might come up where
there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest
distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he
made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He
led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could
not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in
his brain, I was endeavouring to divine his thought in
mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface
of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your
adversary s checker disappears beneath the board, and
the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will
appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly
on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed
directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so
unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would
immediately plunge again, nevertheless ; and then no wit
could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth sur
face, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time
and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest
part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New
York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set
for trout, though Walden is deeper than that. How sur
prised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from
another sphere speeding his way amid their schools ! Yet
he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on
the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I
saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his
head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found
that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his
reappearing as to endeavour to calculate where he would
rise ; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes
over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by
his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying
BRUTE NEIGHBOURS. 235
so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the
moment he came up by that loud laugh 1 Did not his white
breast enough betray him 1 He was indeed a silly loon, I
thought. I could commonly hear the plash of the water
when he came up, and so also detected him. Bu.t after an
hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and
swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see
how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he
came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed
feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter,
yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl ; but occasionally,
when he had balked me most successfully and come up a
long way ofl , he muttered a long-drawn unearthly howl,
probably more like that of a wolf than any bird ; as when
a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately
howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest sound
that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and
wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts,
confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this
time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see
where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His
white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of
the water were all against him. At length, having come
up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as
if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately
there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and
filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as
if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was
angry with me, and so I left him disappearing far away on
the tumultuous surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly
tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the
portsman tricks which they will have less need to practise
236 WALDEN.
in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would
sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a
considerable height, from which they could easily see to
other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and,
when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they
would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter-of-a-mile
on to a distant part which was left free ; but what beside
safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not
know, unless they love its water for the same reason that
I do.
HOUSE-WARMING.
j|N 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 tho
prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant.
The barberry s brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes
merely ; but I collected a small store of wild apples for
coddling, which the proprietor and travellers had over
looked. When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half-a-bushel
for winter. It was very exciting at that season to roam
the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln, they now
sleep their long sleep under the railroad, with a bag on
my shoulder, and a stick to open burrs with in my hand,
for I did not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of
leaves and the loud reproofs of tho red-squirrels and the
jays, whoso half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for tho
238 WALDEN.
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 fish-worms I discovered the ground-nut
(Apios tuberosa) 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 liko
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 hero
at some future period. In these days of fatted cattle and
waving grain-fields, this humble root, which was once tho
totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only
by its flowering vine ; but let wild Nature reign here once
more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will pro
bably 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 the frosts and wildness, prove itself
110 USE- WA RATING. 239
indigenous, and resume its importance and dignity as tlio
diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva
must have been the inventor and bestower of it ; and when
the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of
nuts may be represented on our works of art.
Already, by the 1st 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,
distinguished 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 them out, but I did not trouble myself
much to get rid of them ; I even felt complimented by
their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They
never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me ;
and they gradually disappeared, into what crevices I do not
know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold.
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 fireside of the pond ; it is so
much pleasanter and wholcsomer 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.
240 WALDEN.
When I came to build ray chimney [ studied masonry.
My bricks being second-hand ones required to be cleaned
with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the
qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was
fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder ;
but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat
whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves
grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would
take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of
them. Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of
second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from
the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and
probably harder still. However that may be, I was struck
by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so many
violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had
been in a chimney before, though I did not read the name
of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out as many fire-place
bricks as I could find, to save work and waste, and I filled
the spaces between the bricks about the fire-place with
stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortar with
the white sand from the same place. I lingered most about
the fire-place, 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
HO USE- WARMING. 241
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 pond,
though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish
it, it is so deep. When I began to have a fire at evening,
before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke
particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between
the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful evenings in that
cool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough brown
boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high
overhead. My house never pleased my eye so much after
it was plastered, though I was obliged to confess that it
was more comfortable. Should not every apartment in
which man dwells bo 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
Q
242 WALDEN,
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 (patremfamilias) Tnust have in his
rustic villa " cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti
lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae 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 uf potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil
in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses,
and of rye and Indian meal a peck each.
I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house,
standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and with
out ginger-bread work, which shall still consist of only one
room, a vast, rude, substantial primitive hall, without ceil
ing or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting
a sort of lower heaven over one s head, useful to keep off
rain and snow ; where the king and queen posts stand out
to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to
the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over
the sill ; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a
torch upon a pole to see the roof ; where some may live in
the fire-place, some in the recess of a window, and some on
settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and
some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose ; a
house which you have got into when you have opened the
outside door, and the ceremony is over ; where the weary
traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, with
out further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to
reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials
of a house, and nothing for house-keeping ; where you can
see all the treasures of the house at one view, and every
thing hangs upon its peg that a man should use ; at once
HOUSE-WARMING. 243
kitchen, pantry, parlour, i-hambor, storo-houso, ami arn-t ;
where you can seo 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 neces
sary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments ; where
the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress,
and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from olF
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 whoso 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.
Now-a-days 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 Iceeping you at the
greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the
cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am awaro
that I have been on many a man s premises, and might
have been legally ordered off, but I am not awaro 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 houso
as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing
out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desiro to
learn, if ever I am caught in one.
It would seem as if the very language of our parlours
would, lose all its nerve and degenerate into parlaver
wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbol - 1 ,
and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so fa
244 WALDEN.
through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were ; in other
words, the parlour is so far from the kitchen and workshop.
The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
As if only the savage dwelt near enough to Nature and
Truth to borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar,
who dwells away in the North-West Territory or the Isle
of Man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen ?
However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold
enough to stay and eat a hasty -pudding with me; but
when they saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty
retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its
foundations. Nevertheless, it stood through a great many
hasty-puddings.
I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought
over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from
the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of convey
ance which would have tempted me to go much farther if
necessary. My house had in the meanwhile been shingled
down to the ground on every side. In lathing I was
pleased to be able to send home each nail with a single
blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer
the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly.
I remembered the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine
clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, giving
advice to workmen. Venturing one day to substitute
deeds for words, he tumed up his cuffs, seized the
plasterer s board, and having loaded his trowel without
mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing over
head, made a bold gesture thitherward ; and straightway,
to his complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in
his ruffled bosom. I admired anew the economy and con
venience of plastering, which so effectually shuts out the
cold and takes a handsome finish, and I learned the various
HOUSE-WARMING. 245
casualties lo which the plasterer is liable. I was surprised
to see how thirsty the bricks were which drank up all the
moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it, and how
many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth.
1 had the previous winter made a small quantity of lime by
burning the shells of the Unio jluviatilis, which our river
allure] s, for the sake of the experiment; so that I knew where
my materials came from. I might have got good limestone
within a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared
to do so.
The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the
shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks
before the general freezing. The first ice is especially
interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent,
and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examin
ing the bottom where it is shallow ; for you can lie at your
length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the
surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure,
only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a
glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then.
There are many furrows in the sand where some creature
has travelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for
wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of cadis worms made of
minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps these have creased
it, for you find some of their cases in the furrows, though
they are deep and broad for them to make. But the ice
itself is the object of most interest, though you must im
prove the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine
it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the
greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be
within it, are against its under surface, and that more are
continually rising from the bottom ; while the i<;e is as yet
246 WALDEN.
comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see the water
through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to an
eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and
you see your face reflected in them through the ice. There
may be thirty or forty of them to a square inch. There are
also already within the ice narrow, oblong, perpendicular
bubbles about half-an-inch long, sharp cones with the apex
upward ; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute
spherical bubbles, one directly above another, like a string
of beads. But these within the ice are not so numerous
nor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on
stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke
through carried in air with them, which formed very large
and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. One day when I
came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found
that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch
more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the
seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had
been very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not
now transparent, showing the dark green colour of the
water, and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or grey,
and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before,
for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat
and run together, and lost their regularity ; they were no
longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins
poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin
flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice
was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. Being
curious to know what position my great bubbles occupied
with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake containing
a middling-sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The
new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that
it was included between the two ices. It was wholly in
HOUSE-WARMING. 247
the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish,
or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a
quarter-of-an-inch deep by four inches in diameter ; and
T was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the
ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a saucer
reversed, to the height of live-eighths of an inch in the
middle, leaving a thin partition there between the water
and the bubble, hardly an eighth-of-an-inch thick ; and in
many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst
out downward, and probably there was no ice at all under
the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. I in
ferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which I
had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now
frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated
like a burning glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it.
These are the little air-guns which contribute to make the
ice crack and whoop.
At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had
finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the
house as if it had not had permission to do so till then.
Night after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark
with a clangour and a whistling of wings, even after the
ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden,
and some flying low over the woods toward Fair-Haven,
bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from the
village at ten or eleven o clock at night, I heard the tread
of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the
woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had
come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their
leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze entirely
over for the first time on the night of the 22nd of Decem
ber, Flints and other shallower ponds and the river having
248 WALDEN.
been frozen ten days or more; in 46, the 16th; in 49,
about the 31st ; and in 50, about the 27th of December ;
in 52, the 5th of January ; in 53, the 31st of December.
The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of
November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery
of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and en
deavoured to keep a bright fire both within my house and
within my breast. My employment out of doors now was
to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my
hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead
pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence
which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I
sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Ter
minus. How much more interesting an event is that man s
supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay,
you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with ! His bread
and meat are sweet. There are enough faggots and waste
wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to sup
port many fires, but which at present warm none, and,
some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There
was also the drift-wood of the pond. In the course of the
summer I had discovered a raft of pitch-pine logs with the
bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the railroad
was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. After
soaking two years and then lying high six months it was
perfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. I amused
myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the
pond, nearly half -a-mile, skating behind with one end of a
log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the
ice ; or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and
then, with a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the
end, dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged
and almost as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but
HOUSE-WARMING. 249
made a very hot firo ; nay, I thought that they burned
better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the
water, burned longer as in a lamp.
Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England,
says that " the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses
and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," were
"considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and
were severely punished under the name of purpreslures,
as tending ad Icrrorem ferarum ad nocumentum forested"
etc., to the frightening of the game and the detriment of
the forest. But I was interested in the preservation of the
venison and the vert more than the hunters or wood-
choppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord
Warden himself ; and if any part was burned, though I
burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a griff that
lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the
proprietors ; nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the
proprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when
they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old
Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to,
a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would
believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an
expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess
thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me,
my family, and children, etc.
It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even
in this age and in this new country a value more per
manent and universal than that of gold. After all our
discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood.
It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman
ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our
gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago,
says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and
250 WALDEN.
Philadelphia " nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that
of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital
annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords,
and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles
by cultivated plains." In this town the price of wood rises
almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher
it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics and
tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other
errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay
a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the wood-
chopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to
the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts ; the New
Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the
Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry
Gill, in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant,
the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks
from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither
could I do without them.
Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affec-
tion. I loved to have mine before my window, and the
more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work.
I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by
spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I
played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-
field. As my driver prophesied when I was ploughing,
they warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them,
and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could
give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get
the village blacksmith to "jump" it; but I jumped him,
and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made
it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true.
A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is
interesting to remember how much of this food for fire
HOUSE- WARMING. 25 1
is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous
y< ;u I had often gone "prospecting" over some bare hill
side, where a pitch-pine wood had formerly stood, and got
out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible.
Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound
at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable
mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming
a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from
the heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and
follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you
had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth. But
commonly I kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the
forest, which I had stored up in my shed before the snow
came. Green hickory finely split makes the wood-chopper s
kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once in a
while I got a little of this. When the villagers were
lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to
the various wild inhabitants of Waldcn vale, by a smoky
streamer from my chimney, that I was awake
" Light- winged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest ;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts ;
By night star- veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun ;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame."
1 1 ;ml green wood just cut, though I used but little of
that, answered my purpose better than any other. 1 some
times left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a
252 WALDEN.
winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four
hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My
house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I
had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire
that lived there ; and commonly my housekeeper proved
trustworthy. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I
thought that I would just look in at the window and see if
the house was not on fire ; it was the only time I remem
ber to have been particularly anxious on this score ; so I
looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and I
went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place
as big as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and
sheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that I could
afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost any
winter day.
The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third
potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left
after plastering and of brown paper ; for even the wildest
animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they
survive the winter only because they are so careful to
secure them. Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming
to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal
merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a
sheltered place ; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up
some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that,
instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he
can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing,
maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and
by means of windows even admit the light, and with a
lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two
beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.
Though, when I have been exposed to the rudest blasts
a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when
HOUSE-WARMING. 253
I reached the genial atmosphere of my house I soon
recovered my faculties and prolonged my life. But the
most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in this respect,
nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the human
race may be at last destroyed. It would be easy to cut
their threads any time with a little sharper blast from tho
north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great
Snows ; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow, would
put a period to man s existence on the globe.
The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for
economy, since I did not own the forest ; but it did not
keep fire so well as the open fire-place. Cooking was then,
for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic
process. It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves,
that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian
fashion. The stove not only took up room and scented the
house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had lost a
companion. You can always see a face in the fire, The
labourer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of
the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated
during the day. But I could no longer sit and look into
the fire and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to
me with new force :
"Never, bright flame, may bo denied to me
Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy.
What but my hopes shot upward e er so bright ?
What but my fortunes sunk so low in night ?
Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,
Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all ?
Was thy existence then too fanciful
For our life s common light, who art so dull ?
Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold
With our congenial souls ? secrets too bold 1
254
WALDEN.
Well, we arc safe and strong, for now we sit
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands nor does to more aspire ;
By whose compact utilitarian heap
The present may sit down and go to sleep,
Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walkc<l,
And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire
talked."
FORMER INHABITANTS; AND
WINTER VISITORS.
WEATHERED some merry snow-storms, and
spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fire
side, while the snow whirled wildly without, and
even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For
many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who camo
occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village. Tho
elements, however, abetted me in making a path through
the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had once gono
through the wind blew the oak loaves into my tracks,
where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun
melted the snow, and so not only made a dry bed for my
feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide. For
human society I was obliged to conjure up the former
occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many of
my townsmen the road near which my house stands
resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the
woods which border it were notched and dotted with their
little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more
shut in by the forest than now. In some places, within
my own remembrance, the pines would scrape both sides of
a chaise at once, and women and children who were com
pelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it
256 WALDEN.
with fear, and often ran a good part of tho distance.
Though mainly but a humble route to neighbouring villages,
or for the woodman s team, it once amused the traveller
more than now by its variety, and lingered longer in his
memory. Where now firm open fields stretch from the
village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp
on a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless,
still underlie the present dusty highway, from the Stratten,
now the Alms House, Farm, to Brister s Hill.
East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingra-
ham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman of
Concord village ; who built his slave a house, and gave him
permission to live in Walden Woods ; Cato, not Uticensis,
but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro.
There are a few who remember his little patch among tho
walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and
need them ; but a younger and whiter speculator got them
at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house
at present. Cato s half-obliterated cellar hole still remains,
though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by
a fringe of pines. It is now filled with the smooth sumach
(Rhus glabra,) and one of the earliest species of golden-rod
(Solidago stricta) grows there luxuriantly.
Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town,
Zilpha, a coloured woman, had her little house, where she
spun linen for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods
ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable
voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was sc-t
on fire by English soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she
was away, and her cat, and dog, and hens were all burned
up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane.
One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he
passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to
FORMER INHABITANTS. 257
herself over her gurgling pot, " Ye are all bones, bones ! "
I have seen bricks amid the oak copse there.
Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister s Hill,
lived Brister Freeman, " a handy Negro," slave of Squire
Cuinmings once, there where grow still the apple-trees
which Brister planted and tended ; large old trees now, but
their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long
since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground,
a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some
British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,
where he is styled " Sippio Brister," Scipio Africanus ho
had some title to be called, " a man of colour," as if he
were discoloured. It also told me, with staring emphasis,
when he died ; which was but an indirect way of informing
me that he ever lived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospi
table wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly, large, round,
and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a
dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since.
Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the
woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratten family;
whose orchard once covered all the slope of Brister s Hill,
but was long since killed out by pitch-pines, excepting a few
stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many
a thrifty village tree.
Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed s location, on the
other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood ; ground
famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly named in
old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding
part in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any
mythological character, to have his biography written one
day ; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man,
and then robs and murders the whole family, New
England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies
258 WALDEN.
enacted hero ; let time intervene in some measure to
assuage and lend an azure tint to them. Here the most
indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern
stood ; the well the same, which tempered the traveller s
beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then men saluted
one another, and heard and told tho news, and went their
ways again.
Breed s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though
it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine.
It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one election night,
if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of tho village then,
and had just lost myself over Davenant s Gondibert, that
winter that I laboured with a lethargy, which, by the way,
I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint,
having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is
obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to
keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of
my attempt to read Chalmers collection of English poetry
without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had
just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in
hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling
troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had
leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the
woods, we who had run to fires before, barn, shop, or
dwelling-house, or all together. " It s Baker s barn," cried
one. " It is the Codman Place," affirmed another. And
then fresh sparks went up above tho wood, as if the roof
fell in, and we all shouted " Concord to the rescue ! "
Waggons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads,
bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insur
ance Company, who was bound to go however far ; and ever
and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure,
and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came
FORMER INHABITANTS. 259
they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept
on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses,
until at a turn in the road wo heard the crackling and
actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and
realised, alas ! that we were there. The very nearness of
the fire but cooled our ardour. At first we thought to
throw a frog-pond on to it ; but concluded to let it burn, it
was so far gone and so worthless. So we stood round our
engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments
through speaking trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the
great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, includ
ing Bascom s shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that,
were wo there in season with our " tub," and a full frog-
pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal
one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing
any mischief, returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as
for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface
about wit being the soul s powder, " but most of mankind
are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder."
It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the
following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low
moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered
the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir o 
