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WALDEN
. BY
EEN 7. THOREAU
AutTHor or ‘*‘A WEEK ON THE Concorp,” “* THE
Maine Woops,” ‘‘Care Cop,” Etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
CLIFTON JOHNSON
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS
Copyricnt, 1910
By Tuomas Y. Crowett & Company
Published, September 1910
Aree
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S. A.
O©claAz6ss76
INTRODUCTION
ONCORD, Thoreau’s birthplace, and his
l life-long place of residence, except for a
few short periods, is an inland town
about twenty miles from Boston. The town is
in the center of a large tract which first drew
settlers to it because of its great meadows on the
Musketaquid River. Back from the stream are
sandy or rocky uplands, covered for the most
part, as they always have been, with woods of
oak, pine, chestnut and maple. The people
are chiefly farmers, but a considerable number
of mechanics, merchants and professional men
dwell in the village. As a whole the region is
one of quiet serenity, favorable to leisurely
thought and rambling, and also to that persist-
ent industry by which New England thrives.
In Thoreau’s time Concord was a somewhat
smaller place than now, and naturally was
rather more rustic. ‘The population was about
two thousand, the mode of life plain and un-
ostentatious, and the people generally thrifty,
few having wealth, but, on the other hand, few
being pinched by poverty. ‘The farm houses
were usually of the ample and substantial type
that bespoke antiquity and hospitality. These
vi INTRODUCTION
ancient homesteads always appealed to Thoreau,
and when a dwelling was abandoned and went
to ruin, his interest continued in the neglected
orchard and dooryard and other features of the
former homestead that attested human contact
and care. ‘This interest in mankind’s relation
to the soil, the waters and the woodlands is
constantly manifest in his books, and he deals
as much with human nature as with that of
forest and field.
It was in March, 1845, that he borrowed an
axe of his friend, Mr. Alcott, and went to the
woods to begin preparations for building the
hut in which he afterward lived more than two
years beside Walden Pond, about a mile south
of Concord village. He had long meditated
making such an experiment. The laborious
routine and the conventionalities of ordinary
civilized life were a burden to him. He rebelled
against the necessity of expending so much time
and energy in the mere struggle for food and
shelter — it left him too little leisure to be wise,
and too little impulse to carry on his mental
and spiritual growth. At Walden he proposed
to learn how small were the actual needs of the
body, and what the essential cost of living. He
would test the pleasures and possible draw-
backs of the plainest fare and a_ primitively
simple dwelling. He coveted, too, the oppor-
tunity that would be afforded to study Nature
INTRODUCTION vil
while living in closer contact with the out-of-
door world than he could in the village, and he
wanted to have solitude for undisturbed medi-
tation and authorship.
He was of course visited at his woodland
retreat by his old acquaintances, and among
these was Mr. Alcott, who, after returning from
spending an evening at the hermitage, made
this entry in his diary: “If I were to proffer my
earnest prayer to the gods for the greatest of all
human privileges it should be for the gift of a
severely candid friend. Most are lovers of pres-
ent reputation, and not of that exaltation of soul
which friends and discourse were given to awaken
and cherish in us. Intercourse of this kind I
have found possible with my friends Emerson
and Thoreau; and the evenings passed in their
society realize my conception of what friend-
ship owes to and takes from its objects.”
Thoreau was a squatter at Walden on the
property of Mr. Emerson, who, for the sake of
his walks and his winter fire, had bought land
on both sides of Walden Pond. Emerson was
evidently interested and attracted to a marked
degree by his friend’s woodland life; for we
find Thoreau, at the end of his first year’s
pondside residence, designing a lodge which
Emerson proposed should occupy a ledge on
the opposite shore where it would command a
wide prospect westerly over the level country
vill INTRODUCTION
toward Monadnock and Wachusett. It was to
be a retreat for study and writing, but it was
never built. Instead, a rustic summer house
was erected in Mr. Emerson’s garden. ‘The
three friends, Alcott, Emerson and Thoreau,
were intending to join in this task, and they
went to the woods together to cut the trees
needed for the purpose. Mr. Emerson, how-
ever, wielded the axe only one day. He found
his strength and skill unequal to that of his
companions, and withdrew. When the work of
actually building the summer house was begun
Thoreau also withdrew, he was so averse to the
way in which Mr. Alcott went ahead putting
up and tearing down with no settled design on
paper.
It is by his two years’ encampment in the
Walden woods that Thoreau is best known to
the world; for so unusual a proceeding on the
part of a man of his education and cultured
tastes could not help attracting much curious
interest. The book which relates how he lived
and what he saw during this period has been
the most popular of his writings, and will prob-
ably continue to be. In none of his books is
his genius displayed so characteristically and
completely. It was, however, not published un-
til seven years after his experiment as a hermit
ended. Like all his books, it contains much
-that is not in the least concerned with what is"
INTRODUCTION 1X
primarily the subject of the volume.. But it
does charmingly describe the scenes and events
of his sylvan days and nights with nature, and
it has made Walden the most romantically
attractive region of Concord. Anciently, how-
ever, that neighborhood was a district of dark
repute, the dwelling-place of ne’er-do-well and
lawless characters such as used to fringe many
a sober New England village. A large propor-
tion of the humble houses were those of negroes.
Why Thoreau should establish himself in
so forlorn a vicinity was a puzzle to most of his
fellow-townsmen. Indeed, -not a few of his
readers in the years that have passed since,
contemplating the long period he lived in that
lonely woodland shanty, have been led to de-
clare that he was a barbarian or a misanthrope.
But the environment suited his mood at the
time and gave him the chance to write and
meditate free from many of the distractions of
ordinary life. He was not, however, by any
means cut off from his accustomed world; for,
though often in his hut for days together, he
also was frequently at the family home in the
village. Such intimacy as he had with friends
and acquaintances was likewise continued, and
he was as social as he ever had been. He lived
a life of labor and study in his forest retreat, and
as soon as he exhausted the advantages of that
solitude he abandoned it.
x INTRODUCTION
The experience was never regretted, and he
seems to have found his Walden life in many
respects ideal; yet he was not inclined to insist
that others should adopt a similar life because,
as he explains, unless a person has “‘a pretty
good supply of internal sunshine he would have,
I judge, to spend too much of his time in fight-
ing with his dark humors.”
Thoreau’s hut became the property of a
Scotch gardener, who removed it a short dis-
tance to the author’s beanfield, and made it
his cottage for a few years. ‘Then a farmer
bought it, put it on wheels, and carried it
to his farm, three miles north, where it stood
for many years, a shelter for corn and _ beans,
and a favorite haunt of squirrels and blue
ays.
On the spot where the cabin stood in the
woods is now a cairn of stones, yearly visited
by hundreds, and gradually growing; for each
visitor is supposed to honor the poet-naturalist’s
memory by bringing a stone from the borders
of the near lake and adding it to the pile. ‘The
land roundabout still continues in the Emerson
family, and its pine-clad slopes are freely open
to the public. I fancy the aspect of the vicinity
has not changed essentially. The woodland
seclusion is almost as complete as it was in
Thoreau’s time. Even the railroad which
skirts one end of the pond was there when he
INTRODUCTION xl
had his hut beside the little cove that indents
the shore a quarter mile away. Few spots are
more satisfying to the literary pilgrim, and it
is no wonder that the stream of visitors should
be so constant and numerous year after year.
CLIFTON JOHNSON.
Hapiey, Mass.
XIL.
XIII.
SEY:
xv.
XVL
XVIL
XVII.
CONTENTS
PAGE
MCR A EEN tut Le fk gh) ha ad ae ee 1
Wuere I Livep, anp wHATI Livep ror... 105
ELAN ei se et eta ites melclch teat. al adh) mad) aa 130
RaPNCMEN STE cr car Sea ra slice Vie ular mall te) toe eas ers omen lie 146
0) SCHL 2 ane eae emo SP eae open Mane
PM ERR eh ie) eh lollies ugh ARR oma nas eee ah en 184
PAE ERG EVOL i Gate, mc ae ee 204
fre OM Sh Pr OR i qe ecg MR 221
Poe Om te ell s\n TEAUNIS Se oaN ey Cea a 230
RANGE ROM IAGN Gee Wea tay oe coal iat) me Uovciiens: aya tans Np 267
Be eT Ee GARI ulate SN ney al ay as Marl a ee 278
Hwee NEIGHHGRS. 5060. 6 je ele B sess 296
SIOUMER NY SEIN Se By ey, Si A me ee aya 316
ForMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTER VISITORS 339
i cnaarciy VARA Me oo a 359
TAR POND IN WETER oie) 2 5 eae ae 374
SUS ER en Be) Pe Ie er Mier OL RU Ec eee Game 395
MRR 2 ee fe Pa OLog ae. AG iat cua 422
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
WOBEDER POND) Ber Te SR et LIEN A enonenme ticces
OPPOSITE PAGE
THOREAU’s COVE, JUST BELOW HIS DWELLING... . au
NCTE VANTEC ao Caste halt Ose a UCN MT V2 TAS RN
Tue Sire or THoreEAv’s House In Marco. ... . 52
ONE OF THE Pircyu PINES BY THE SHORE OF WALDEN 64. |
Concorp’s Mosr Famous Pusuic BuiLtpine, THE UNI-
ued eee Oy 200 70): SR A SR 7A ©
Pe SLIESE, OR WALDEN \'4)"0. ho 06) 0.) a) na oak Weg
Donconn Bxrrin GROUND Ys Ne 5108) os WOES ind Ly INLD
Wuere THoreav’s CaBIn Stroop. ......... 134
Tue RarILtRoaD AT THE East END oF THE Ponpd .. 152
EMERSON’s HoME, WHERE THOREAU WAS A FREQUENT
TL At ESR TS MPU GeA TE CL U0 IN
THe CARTPATH NEAR THOREAU’S Hut ....... 176
CHILDREN IN THE Woops BY THE Pond ...... 200°
Concorp — THE BusINEss CENTRE ......... 212)
A Winter Roap NEAR THOREAU’S CABIN. ..... 224V
In THE Woops NEAR Farr-HAvEN Hint ...... 280°
‘ae oCONCORD RIVER IN WINTHH (4200.02. 0508) 28) 2360
ee Gran Stone. 2 ee OO pe
SE PIIEN yD 5c) oul h'g, cast SiNee wl pa iam namatrat rea igh eu Uae tiee <” Vn
XV1 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
OPPOSITE PAGE ,
WV ET ONES ee i ee ae aa, a a
Tue Swampy LOwLAND
Tue Baker Farm .
PAre TH Aven POND 2 Gil! 1) ta: ee an
BRISTER SPRING 0085 ca! )e Cs iiecip 09. ta ies e |)
firvien: DIA mOWS sn Sie re er Oh es eee
BRISTER’S HILL AND THE WALDEN HIGHWAY
WALDEN PoNnpD ON A WINTER MORNING... .
AMONG THE PINES BORDERING THE PoND .....
Tue RiveR NEAR NINE ACRE CORNER ......
Tue Concorp HovusrE IN wHicH THOREAU DIED
262”
268 '
272°
276
302
316°
342
352°
360
374°
380
392
418°
434
WALDEN
I
ECONOMY
' , YHEN I wrote the following pages, or
rather the bulk of them, I lived alone,
in the woods, a mile from any neighbor,
in a house which I had built myself, on the shore
of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts,
and earned my living by the labor of my hands
only. I lived there two years and two months.
At present I am a sojourner in civilized life
again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on
the notice of my readers if very particular in-
quiries 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 cir-
cumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some
have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel
lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like.
Others have been curious to learn what portion
of my income [I devoted to charitable purposes;
and some, who have large families, how many
poor children I maintained. I will therefore
ask those of my readers who feel no particular
1
2 W ALDEN
interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to
answer some of these questions in this book.
In most books, the J, or first person, 1s omitted ;
in this it will be retained; that, in respect to
egotism, is the main difference. We com-
monly 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. Un-
fortunately, I am confined to this theme by the
narrowness of my experience. _ Moreover, I,
on my side, require of every writer, first or last,
a simple and sincere account of his own life,
and not merely what he has heard of other
men’s lives; some such account as he would
send to his kindred from a distant land; for if
he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a
distant land to me.| Perhaps these pages are
more particularly addressed to poor students.
As for the rest of my readers, they will accept
such portions as apply to them: I trust that
none will stretch the seams in putting on the
coat, for it may do good service to him whom it
fits! |
I would fain say something, not so much con-
cerning 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
Thoreau’s Cove, just below his dwelling
ECONOMY 3
it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as
it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as
not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord;
and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields,
the inhabitants have appeared to me to be
doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed
to four fires and looking in the face of the sun;
or hanging suspended, with their heads down-
ward, over flames; or looking at the heavens
over their shoulders “until it becomes impos-
sible for them to resume their natural position,
while from the twist of the neck nothing but
liquids can pass into the stomach;” or dwell-
ing, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or
measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars,
the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one
leg on the tops of pillars, — even these forms
of conscious penance are hardly more incredible
and astonishing than the scenes which I daily
witness. ‘The twelve labors of Hercules were
trifling in comparison with those which my
neighbors have undertaken; for they were
only twelve, and had an end; but I could never
see that these men slew or captured any monster
or finished any labor. They have no friend
Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the
hydra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed,
two spring up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose mis-
+ WALDEN
fortune it is to have inherited farms, houses,
barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are
more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if
they had been born in the open pasture and
suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen
with clearer eyes what field they were called to
labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil?
Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man
is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why
should they begin digging their graves as soon
as they are born? ‘They have got to live a man’s
life, pushing all these things before them, and
get on as well as they can. How many a poor
immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and
smothered under its load, creeping down the
road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-
five feet by forty, its Augean stables never
cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage,
mowing, pasture, and wood-lot!, The portion-
less, who struggle with no such unnecessary
inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better
part of the man is soon 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
ECONOMY 5
said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by
throwing stones over their heads behind them : —
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta, damus qua simus origine nati.
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, —
“From thence our kind-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, not seeing where they fell.
‘\/Most men, even in this comparatively free
country, through mere ignorance and mistake,
are so occupied with the factitious cares and
superfluously coarse labors of life, that its finer
fruits cannot be plucked by them., Their fingers,
from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble
too much for that. Actually, the laboring man
has not leisure for a true integrity day by day;
he cannot afford to sustain the manliest rela-
tions to men; his labor would be depreciated
in the market. He has no time to be anything
but a machine. How can he remember well
his ignorance — which his growth requires —
who has so often to use his knowledge? We
should feed and clothe him gratuitously some-
times, and recruit him with our cordials, before
we judge of him. The finest qualities of our
nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be pre-
6 WALDEN
served 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. JI have no doubt that some of you
who read this book are unable to pay for all the
dinners which you have actually eaten, or for
the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are
already worn out, and have come to this page to
spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your
creditors of an hour. \ It is very evident what
mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for
my sight has been whetted by experience; al-
ways on the limits, trying to get into business
and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient
slough, called by the Latins @s alienum, an-
other’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 favor, to get custom,
by how many modes, only not state-prison of-
fences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting
yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or dilating
into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous gen-
erosity, that you may persuade your neighbor
to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his
coat, or his carriage, or import his grocer-
ies for him; making yourselves sick, that you
ECONOMY Yi
may lay up something against a sick day, some-
thing to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a
stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely,
in a brick bank; no matter where, no matter
how much or how little.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivo-
lous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross
but somewhat foreign form of servitude called
Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and
subtle masters that enslave both north and
south. It is hard to have a southern overseer;
it is worse to have a northern one; but worst
of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.
Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster
on the highway, wending to market by day or
night; does any divinity stir within him? His
highest duty to fodder and water his horses!
What is his destiny to him compared with the
shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire
Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is
he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely
all the day he fears, not being immortal nor
divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own
, opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds.
V 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
=
8 WALDEN
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 injur-
ing eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desper-
ation. What is called resignation is confirmed
desperation. From the desperate city you go
into the desperate country, and have to console
yourself with the bravery of minks and musk-
rats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is
concealed even under what are called the games
and amusements of mankind. There is no play
in them, for this comes after work. But it is
a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate
things.
When we consider what, to use the words of
the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what
are the true necessaries and means of life, it
appears as if men had deliberately chosen the
common mode of living because they preferred
it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is
no choice left. But alert and healthy natures
remember that the sun rose clear. It is never
too late to give up our prejudices. No way of
thinking or doing, however ancient, can be
trusted without proof. What everybody echoes
or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn
out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of
opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that
ECONOMY 9
would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.
What old people say you cannot do you try and
find that you can. Old deeds for old people,
and new deeds for new. Old people did not
know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh
fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a
little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled
round the globe with the speed of birds, in a
way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is
no better, hardly so well, qualified for an in-
structor as youth, for it has not profited so much
as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the
wisest man has learned anything of absolute
value by living. Practically, the old have no
very important advice to give the young, their
own experience has been so partial, and their
lives have been such miserable failures, for
private reasons, as they must believe; and it
may be that they have some faith left which
belies that experience, and they are only less
young than they were. I have lived some thirty
years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the
first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice
from my seniors. ‘They have told me nothing,
and probably cannot tell me anything, to the
purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great
extent untried by me; but it does not avail me
that they have tried it. If I have any experience
which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that
this my Mentors said nothing about.
10 WALDEN
One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on
vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing
to make bones with;’’ and so he religiously
devotes a part of his day to supplying his sys-
tem 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 ob-
stacle. ‘Some things are really necessaries of
life in some circles, the most helpless and dis-
eased, 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 predeces-
sors, both the heights and the valleys, and all
things to have been cared for. According to
Evelyn, “‘the wise Solomon prescribed ordi-
nances for the very distances of trees; and the
Roman pretors have decided how often you
may go into your neighbor’s land to gather the
acorns which fall on it without trespass, and
what share belongs to that neighbor.”’ Hippoc-
rates has even left directions how we should °
cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the
fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubt-
edly 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
ECONOMY 11
has been tried. Whatever have been thy fail-
ures hitherto, “‘be not afflicted, my child, for
who shall assign to thee what thou hast left
undone ?”’
We might try our lives by a thousand simple
tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which
ripens my beans illumines at once a system of
earths like ours. If I had remembered this it
would have prevented some mistakes. ‘This
was not the light in which I hoed them. The
stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles!
What distant and different beings in the various
mansions of the universe are contemplating the
same one at the same moment! Nature and
human life are as various as our several consti-
tutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers
to another? Could a greater miracle take place
than for us to look through each other’s eyes
for an instant? We should live in all the ages
of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds
of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! — I
know of no reading of another’s experience so
‘startling and informing as this would be.
The greater part of what my neighbors call
good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I
repent of anything, it is very likely to be my
good behavior. What demon possessed me that
I behaved so well? You may say the wisest
thing you can, old man, — you who have lived
seventy years, not without honor of a kind, —
12 WALDEN
I hear an irresistible voice which invites me
away from all that. One generation abandons
the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal
more than we do. We may waive just so much
care of ourselves as we honestly bestow else-
where. Nature is as well adapted to our weak-
ness 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 im-
portance 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! deter-
mined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all
the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly
say our prayers and commit ourselves to un-
certainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we
compelled to live, reverencing our life, and deny-
ing 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.
ECONOMY 13
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 civiliza-
tion, if only to learn what are the gross neces-
saries of life and what methods have been taken
to obtain them; or even to look over the old
day-books of the merchants, to see what it was
that men most commonly bought at the stores,
what they stored, that is, what are the grossest
groceries. For the improvements of ages have
had but little influence on the essential laws of
man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably,
are not to be distinguished from those of our
ancestors.
| By the words, necessary of lije, | mean what-
ever, of all that man obtains by his own exer-
tions, has been from the first, or from long use
has become, so important to human life that
few, if any, whether from savageness, or pov-
erty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without
it. To many creatures there is in this sense but
one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of
the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass,
with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter
of the forest or the mountain’s shadow. None
of the brute creation requires more than Food
and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in
14 WALDEN
this climate may, accurately enough, be dis-
tributed under the several heads of Food, Shel-
ter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have
secured these are we prepared to entertain the
true problems of life with freedom and a pros-
pect 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 inter-
nal 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 Terra 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 ob-
served, to his great surprise, “to be streaming
with perspiration at undergoing such a roast-
ing.” So, we are told, the New Hollander goes
naked with impunity, while the European shiv-
ers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine
the hardiness of these savages with the intel-
lectualness of the civilized man? According to
Liebig, man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel
which keeps up the internal combustion in the
ECONOMY 15
lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm
less. The animal heat is the result of a slow
combustion, and disease and death take place
when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or
from some defect in the draught, the fire goes
out. Of course the vital heat is not to be con-
founded 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, anvmal heat; for while
Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps
up the fire within us, — and Fuel serves only to
prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of
our bodies by addition from without, — Shelter
-and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat
_ thus generated and absorbed.
_ The grand necessity, then, for our bodies is to
; keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What
pains we accordingly take, not only with our
Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our
beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the
nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter
within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass
and leaves at the end of its burrow! ‘The poor
man is wont to complain that this is a cold world;
and to cold, no less physical than social, we re-
fer directly a great part of our ails. The sum-
mer, in some climates, makes possible to man a
sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his
Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire,
16 WALDEN
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 my
own experience, a few implements, a knife, an
axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the
studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a
few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all
be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not
wise, go to the other side of the globe, to bar-
barous and unhealthy regions, and devote them-
selves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order
that they may live, — that is, keep comfortably
warm, — and die in New England at last. ‘The
luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfort-
ably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied
before, they are cooked, of course a la mode.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-
called comforts, of life are not only not indis-
pensable, but positive hindrances to the eleva-
tion of mankind. With respect to luxuries and
comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more
simple and meagre life than the poor. The
ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian,
and Greek, were a class than which none has
been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in
inward. We know not much about them. It is
remarkable that we know so much of them as
we do. The same is true of the more modern
ECONOMY 17
reformers and benefactors of their race. None
can be an impartial or wise observer of human
life but from the vantage ground of what we
should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of lux-
ury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture,
or commerce, or literature, or art. There are
nowadays professors of philosophy, but not
philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess be-
cause 1t 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 wis-
dom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and
trust. It is to solve some of the problems of
life, not only theoretically, but practically. The
success of great scholars and thinkers is com-
monly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not
manly. ‘They make shift to live merely by con-
formity, practically as their fathers did, and are
in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of
men. But why do men degenerate ever? What
makes families run out? What is the nature of
the luxury which enervates and destroys na-
tions? Are we sure that there is none of it in
our own lives? The philosopher is in advance
of his age even in the outward form of his life.
He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like
his contemporaries. How can a man be a phil-
osopher and not maintain his vital heat by bet-
ter methods than other men?
18 WALDEN
When a man is warmed by the several modes
which I have described, what does he want
next? Surely not more warmth of the same
kind, as more and richer food, larger and more
splendid houses, finer and more abundant cloth-
ing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires,
and the like. When he has obtained those
things which are necessary to life, there is an-
other alternative than to obtain the superflu-
ities; 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,
ECONOMY 19
indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed ;
nor to those who find their encouragement and
inspiration in precisely the present condition of
things, and cherish it with the fondness and
enthusiasm of lovers, — and, to some extent, I
reckon myself in this number; I do not speak
to those who are well employed, in whatever
circumstances, and they know whether they are
well employed or not; — but mainly to the mass
of men who are discontented, and idly com-
plaining of the hardness of their lot or of the
times, when they might improve them. There
are some who complain most energetically and
inconsolably of any, because they are, as they
_ say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind
that seemingly wealthy but most terribly im-
poverished 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, 1t would prob-
ably surprise those of my readers who are some-
what acquainted with its actual history; it would
certainly astonish those who know nothing about
it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises
which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or
night, I have been anxious to improve the nick
20 WALDEN
of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand
on the meeting of two eternities, the past and
future, which is precisely the present moment;
to toe that line. You will pardon some ob-
scurities, for there are more secrets in my trade
than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept,
but inseparable from its very nature. I would
gladly tell all that I know about it, and never
paint ‘““No Admittance” on my gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a
turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many
are the travellers I have spoken concerning
them, describing their tracks and what calls they
answered to. I have met one or two who had
heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse,
and even seen the dove disappear behind a
cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover
them as if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn
merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How
many mornings, summer and winter, before yet
any neighbor was stirring about his business,
have I been about mine! No doubt, many of
my townsmen have met me returning from this
enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the
twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work.
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in
his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last im-
portance only to be present at it.
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent
ECONOMY a
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 contri-
butions, and, as is too common with writers,
I got only my labor for my pains. However, in
this case my pains were their own reward.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector
of snow storms and rain storms, and did my
duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways,
then of forest paths and all across-lot routes,
keeping them open, and ravines bridged and
passable at all seasons, where the public heel
had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town,
which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of
trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an
eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of
22 WALDEN
the farm; though I did not always know whether
Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field
to-day; that was none of my business. I have
watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry
and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black
ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which
might have withered else in dry seasons.
In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may
say it without boasting, faithfully minding my
business, till it became more and more evident
that my townsmen would not after all admit me
into the list of town officers, nor make my place
a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My
accounts, which I can swear to have kept faith-
fully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still
less accepted, still less paid and settled. How-
ever, I have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell
baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer
in my neighborhood. “‘Do you wish to buy
any baskets?” he asked. ‘“‘No, we do not want
any,’ was the reply.
‘*What!”? exclaimed the Indian, as he went
out the gate, ““do you mean to starve us?”
Having seen his industrious white neighbors so
well off, — that the lawyer had only to weave
arguments, and by some magic wealth and
standing followed, he had said to himself: I
will go into business; I will weave baskets; it
is a thing which I can do. ‘Thinking that when
ECONOMY 23
he had made the baskets he would have done
his part, and then it would be the white man’s
to buy them. He had not discovered that it was
necessary for him to make it worth the other’s —
while to buy them, or at least make him think
that it was so, or to make something else which
it would be worth his while to buy. I too had
woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but
I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy
them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think
it worth my while to weave them, and instead
of studying how to make it worth men’s while
to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid
the necessity of selling them. The life which
men praise and regard as successful is but one
kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind
at the expense of the others?
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 1
must shift for myself, | turned my face more
exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was
better known. I determined to go into busi-
ness at once, and not wait to acquire the usual
capital, using such slender means as I had
already got. My purpose in going to Walden
Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly
there, but to transact some private business
with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from
accomplishing which for want of a little common
24 WALDEN
sense, a little enterprise and business talent,
appeared not so sad as foolish.
I have always endeavored to acquire strict
business habits; they are indispensable to every
man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire,
then some small counting house on the coast,
in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.
You will export such articles as the country
affords, purely native products, much ice and
pine timber and a little granite, always in native
bottoms. These will be good ventures. To
oversee all the details yourself in person; to
be at once pilot and captain, and owner and
underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the
accounts; to read every letter received, and
write or read every letter sent; to superintend
the discharge of imports night and day; to be
upon many parts of the coast almost at the
same time; — often the richest freight will
be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be
your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the
horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound
coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of com-
modities, 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 ten-
dencies of trade and civilization, — taking ad-
vantage of the results of all exploring expeditions,
using new passages and all improvements in
ECONOMY 25
navigation ; — charts to be studied, the position
of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascer-
tained, 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 ; — univer-
sal science to be kept pace with, studying the
lives of all great discoverers and navigators,
great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno
and the Phcenicians down to our day; in fine,
account of stock to be taken from time to time,
to know how you stand. It is a labor to task
the faculties of a man, — such problems of profit
and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gaug-
ing of all kinds in it, as demand a universal
knowledge.
I have thought that Walden Pond would be
a good place for business, not solely on account
of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers ad-
vantages 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.
As this business was to be entered into without
the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjec-
26 WALDEN
ture where those means, that will still be indis-
pensable to every such undertaking, were to be
obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to
the practical part of the question, perhaps we
are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a
regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it,
than by a true utility. Let him who has work
to do recollect that the object of clothing is,
first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in
this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he
may judge how much of any necessary or impor-
tant work may be accomplished without adding
to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear
a suit but once, though made by some tailor or
dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the
comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are
no better than wooden horses to hang the clean
clothes on. Every day our garments become
more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the
impress of the wearer’s character, until we
hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay
and medical appliances and some such solemnity
even as our bodies. No man ever stood the
lower in my estimation for having a patch in
his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater
anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at
least clean and unpatched, clothes than to have
a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not
mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is
improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaint-
$49J0M pl]
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- Les A
ne ia ae
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yet
nae
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Toni
ECONOMY Q7
ances by such tests as this; — who could wear
a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee?
Most behave as if they believed that their pros-
pects for life would be ruined if they should do
it. It would be easier for them to hobble to
town with a broken leg than with a broken
pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a
gentleman’s legs, they can be mended; but if
a similar accident happens to the legs of his
pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he con-
siders, not what is truly respectable, but what
is respected. We know but few men, a great
many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow
in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who
would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Pass-
ing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and
coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the
farm. He was only a little more weather-
beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard
of a dog that barked at every stranger who
approached his master’s premises with clothes
on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief.
It is an interesting question how far men would
retain their relative rank if they were divested
of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell
surely of any company of civilized men, which
belonged to the most respected class? When
Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels
round the world, from east to west, had got so
near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she
28 WALDEN
felt the necessity of wearing other than a travel-
ling dress, when she went to meet the authori-
ties, for she “‘was now in a civilized coun-
try, 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. Besides, clothes
introduced sewing, a kind of work which you
may call endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is
never done.
A man who has at length found something to
do will not need to get a new suit to do it in;
for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in
the garret for an indeterminate period. Old
shoes will serve a hero longer than they have
served his valet, — if a hero ever has a valet, —
bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make
them do. Only they who go to soirées and
legislative halls must have new coats, coats to
change as often as the man changes in them.
But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes,
are fit to worship God in, they will do; will
they not? Who ever saw his old clothes, —
his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into
its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed
of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by
ECONOMY 29
him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer
still, or shall we say richer, who could do with
less? I say, beware of all enterprises that re-
quire new clothes, and not rather a new wearer
of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can
the new clothes be made to fit? If you have
any enterprise before you, try it in your old
clothes. All men want, not something to do
with, but something to do, or rather something
to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new
suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we
have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in
some way, that we feel like new men in the old,
and that to retain it would be like keeping new
wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like
that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.
The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it.
Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the
caterpillar its wormy coat, by an _ internal
industry and expansion; for clothes are but our
outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we
shall be found sailing under false colors, and be
inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion,
as well as that of mankind.
We don garment after garment, as if we grew
like exogenous plants by addition without. Our
outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are
our epidermis or false skin, which partakes not
of our life, and may be stripped off here and
there without fatal injury; our thicker gar-
30 WALDEN
ments, constantly worn, are our cellular integu-
ment, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or
true bark, which cannot be removed without
girdling and so destroying the man. I believe
that all races at some seasons wear something
equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a
man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands
on himself in the dark, and that he live in all
respects so compactly and preparedly that, if
an enemy take the town, he can, like the old
philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed
without anxiety. While one thick garment is,
for most purposes, as good as three thin ones,
and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices
really to suit customers; while a thick coat can
be bought for five dollars, which will last as
many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars,
cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair,
a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a
winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a
better be made at home at a nominal cost, where
is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own
earning, there will not be found wise men to do
him reverence ?
When I ask for a garment of a particular form,
my tailoress tells me gravely, “‘They do not
make them so now,” not emphasizing the
“They” at all, as if she quoted an authority as
impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult
to get made what I want, simply because she
ECONOMY © 31
cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I
am so rash. When I hear this oracular sen-
tence, Iam for a moment absorbed in thought,
emphasizing to myself each word separately
that I may come at the meaning of it, that I
may find out by what degree of consanguinity
They are related to me, and what authority they
may have in an affair which affects me so nearly ;
and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with
equal mystery, and without any more emphasis
of the “‘they,” — “It is true, they did not make
them so recently, but they do now.” Of what
use this measuring of me if she does not measure
my character, but only the breadth of my
shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on?
We worship not the Graces, nor the Parce, but
Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with
full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts
on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in
America do the same. I sometimes despair
of getting anything quite simple and _ honest
done in this world by the help of men. They
would have to be passed through a powerful
press first, to squeeze their old notions out of
them, so that they would not soon get upon
their legs again, and then there would be some
one in the company with a maggot in his head,
hatched from an egg deposited there nobody
knows when, for not even fire kills these things,
and you would have lost your labor. Never-
32 WALDEN
theless we will not forget that some Egyptian
wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.
On the whole, I think that it cannot be main-
tained 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 Can-
nibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful
or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peer-
ing from and the sincere life passed within it,
which restrain laughter and consecrate the
costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken
with a fit of 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.
The childish and savage taste of men and
women for new patterns keeps how many shak-
ing and squinting through kaleidoscopes that
they may discover the particular figure which
this generation requires to-day. ‘The manu-
facturers have learned that this taste is merely
whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only
by a few threads more or less of a particular
ECONOMY 33
color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie
on the shelf, though it frequently happens that
after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the
most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is
not the hideous custom which it is called. It
is not barbarous merely because the printing
is skin-deep and unalterable.
I cannot believe that our factory system is the
best mode by which men may get clothing. The
condition of the operatives is becoming every
day more like that of the English; and it cannot
be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or
observed, the principal object is, not that man-
kind may be well and honestly clad, but, un-
questionably, 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 some-
thing high.
As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is
now a necessary of life, though there are instances
of men having done without it for long periods
in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing
says that “The Laplander in his skin dress, and
in a skin bag which he puts over his head and
shoulders, will sleep night after night on the
snow ...in a degree of cold which would
extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any
woollen clothing.” He has seen them asleep
34 WALDEN
thus. Yet he adds, ‘*They are not hardier than
other people.”’ But, probably, man did not live
long on the earth without discovering the con-
venience which there is in a house, the domestic
comforts, which phrase may have originally
signified the satisfactions of the house more than
of the family; though these must be extremely
partial and occasional in those climates where
the house is associated in our thoughts with
winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds
of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary.
In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly
almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian
gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day’s
march, and a row of them cut or painted on the
bark of a tree signified that so many times they
had camped. Man was not made so large
limbed and robust but that he must seek to
narrow his world, and wall in a space such as
fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors;
but though this was pleasant enough in serene
and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season
and the winter, to say nothing. f the torrid sun,
would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud
if he had not made ha** .o clothe himself with
the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, accord-
ing 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.
ECONOMY 35
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy
of the human race, some enterprising mortal
crept. into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every
child begins the world again, to some extent,
and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold.
It plays house, as well as horse, having an
instinct for it. Who does not remember the
interest with which when young he looked at
shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It
was the natural yearning of that portion of our
most primitive ancestor which still survived in
us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs
of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen
woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of
boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At
last, we know not what it is to live in the open
air, and our lives are domestic in more senses
than we think. From the hearth to the field
is a great distance. It would be well perhaps
if we were to spend more of our days and nights
without any obstruction between us and the
celestial bodies,*i#f the. poet did not speak so
much from und*r'a ioof, or the saint dwell there
so long. Birds do“»et sing in caves, nor do
doves cherish théir ir “!€nce in dovecots.
However, if one desi ns to construct a dwelling
house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee
shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a
work-house, a labyrinth without a clew, a mu-
seum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid
36 WALDEN
mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight
a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen
Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents
of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly
a foot deep around them, and I thought that
they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out
the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living
honestly, with freedom left for my proper pur-
suits, was a question which vexed me even more
than it does now, for unfortunately I am become
somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by
the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which
the laborers locked up their tools at night, and
it suggested to me that every man who was hard
pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and,
having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit
the air at least, get into it when it rained and at
night, and hook down the lid, and so have free-
dom in his love, and in his soul be free. This
did not appear the worst, nor by any means a
despicable alternative. You could sit up as
late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up,
go abroad without any landlord or house-lord |
dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed
to death to pay the rent of a larger and more
luxurious box who would not have frozen to
. death in such a box as this. I am far from jest-
ing. Economy is a subject which admits of
being treated with levity, but it cannot so be
disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude
ECONOMY 37
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. Goodkin, 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 cov-
ered with mats which they make of a kind of
bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and
warm, but not so good as the former. . . . Some
I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and
thirty feet broad. . . . I have often lodged in
their wigwams, and found them as warm as the
best English houses.’’ He adds that they were
commonly carpeted and lined within with well-
wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished
with various utensils. ‘The Indians had ad-
vanced 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 apart-
ment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter
as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser
38 WALDEN
and simpler wants; but I think that I speak
within bounds when I say that, though the birds
of the air have their nests, and the foxes their
holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern
civilized society not more than one half the
families own a shelter. In the large towns and
cities, where civilization especially prevails, the
number of those who own a shelter is a very
small fraction of the whole. ‘The rest pay an
annual tax for this outside garment of all, be-
come indispensable summer and winter, which
would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now
helps to keep them poor as long as they live.
I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage
of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident
that the savage owns his shelter because it.costs
so little, while the civilized man hires his com-
monly because he cannot afford to own it; nor
can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire.
But, answers one, by merely paying this tax
the poor civilized man secures an abode which
is a palace compared with the savage’s. An
annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred
dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him
to the benefit of the improvements of centuries,
spacious apartments, clean paint and _ paper,
Rumford fire-place, back plastering, Venetian
blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodi-
ous cellar, and many other things. But how
happens it that he who is said to enjoy these
ECONOMY 39
things is so commonly a poor civilized man,
while the savage, who has them not, is rich as
a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is
a real advance in the condition of man, — and [I
think that it is, though only the wise improve
their advantages, — it must be shown that it has
produced better dwellings without making them
more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount
of what I will call life which is required to be
exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
An average house in this neighborhood costs
perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up
this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of
the laborer’s life, even if he is not encumbered
with a family; — estimating the pecuniary value
of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if
some receive more, others receive less;— so
that he must have spent more than half his life
commonly before his wigwam will be earned.
If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this
is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the
savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam
for a palace on these terms ?
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the
whole advantage of holding this superfluous
property as a fund in store against the future,
so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to
the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps
a man is not required to bury himself. Never-
theless this points to an important distinction
40 WALDEN
between the civilized man and the savage; and,
no doubt, they have designs on us for our bene-
fit, in making the life of a civilized people an
institution, in which the life of the individual
is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve
and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show
at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present
obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly
so live as to secure all the advantage without
suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean
ye by saying that the poor ye have always with
you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge?
‘“‘As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not
have occasion any more to use this proverb in
Israel.”
‘Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of
the father, so also the soul of the son is mine:
the soul that sinneth it shall die.”’
When I consider my neighbors, the farmers
of Coneord, who are at least as well off as the
other classes, I find that for the most part they
have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years,
that they may become the real owners of their
farms, which commonly they have inherited
with encumbrances, or else bought with hired
money, — and we may regard one third of that
toil as the cost of their houses, — but commonly
they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the
encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value
ECONOMY Al
of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one
great encumbrance, and still a man is found to
inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he
says. On applying to the assessors, I am sur-
prised to learn that they cannot at once name
a dozen in the town who own their farms free
and clear. If you would know the history of
these homesteads, inquire at the bank where
they are mortgaged. ‘The man who has actually
paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that
every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if
there are three such men in Concord. What
has been said of the merchants, that a very large
majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are
sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With
regard to the merchants, however, one of them
says pertinently that a great part of their failures
are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely
failures to fulfil their engagements, because it
is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character
that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely
worse face on the matter, and suggests, besides,
that probably not even the other three succeed
in saving their souls, but are perchance bank-
rupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly.
Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring-
boards from which much of our civilization
vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage
stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet
the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with
AQ WALDEN
éclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricul-
tural machine were suent.
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the prob-
lem of a livelihood by a formula more compli-
cated 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
springe to catch comfort and independence, and
then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it.
This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar
reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand
savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries.
As Chapman sings : —
“The false society of men —
— for earthly greatness
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”
And when the farmer has got his house, he
may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and
it be the house that has got him. As I under-
stand it, that was a valid objection urged by
Momus against the house which Minerva made,
that she “chad not made it movable, by which
means a bad neighborhood might be avoided ;”
and it may still be urged, for our houses are
such unwieldy property that we are often
imprisoned rather than housed in them; and
the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own
scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at
least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation,
ECONOMY 43
have been wishing to sell their houses in the out-
skirts and move into the village, but have not
been able to accomplish it, and only death will
set them free.
Granted that the majority are able at last
either to own or hire the modern house with
all its improvements. While civilization has
been improving our houses, it has not equally
improved the men who are to inhabit them. It
has created palaces, but it was not so easy to
create noblemen and kings. And 2? the cwilized
man’s pursuits are no worthier than the savage’s,
if he 1s employed the greater part of his lije in
obtaining gross necessaries and comjorts merely,
why should we have a better dwelling than the
jormer?
But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps
it will be found that just in proportion as some
have been placed in outward circumstances
above the savage, others have been degraded
below him. The luxury of one class is counter-
balanced by the indigence of another. On the
one side is the palace, on the other are the alms-
house and “‘silent poor.” ‘The myriads who
built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pha-
raohs 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
4-4 WALDEN
where the usual evidences of civilization exist,
the condition of a very large body of the inhabit-
ants may not be as degraded as that of savages.
I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the
degraded rich. To know this I should not need
to look farther than to the shanties which every-
where border our railroads, that last improve-
ment in civilization; where I see in my daily
walks human beings living in sties, and all winter
with an open door, for the sake of light, without
any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, and
the forms of both old and young are perma-
nently contracted by the long habit of shrinking
from cold and misery, and the development of
all their limbs and faculties is checked. It
certainly is fair to look at that class by whose
labor the works which distinguish this genera-
tion are accomplished. Such too, to a greater
or less extent, is the condition of the operatives
of every denomination in England, which is
the great workhouse of the world. Or I could
refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of
the white or enlightened spots on the map.
Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with
that of the North American Indian, or the South
sea Islander, or any other savage race before
it was degraded by contact with the civilized
man. Yet I have no doubt that that people’s
rulers are as wise as the average of civilized
rulers. Their condition only proves what
ECONOMY AS
squalidness may consist with civilization. I
hardly need refer now to the laborers of 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 circum-
stances.
Most men appear never to have considered
what a house is, and are actually though need-
lessly poor all their lives because they think
that they must have such a one as their neigh-
bors have. As if one were to wear any sort of
coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or,
gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of
woodchuck skin, complain of hard times be-
cause he could not afford to buy him a crown!
It is possible to invent a house still more conven-
ient 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 neces-
sity of the young man’s providing a certain num-
ber of superfluous glowshoes, and umbrellas,
and empty guest chambers for empty guests,
before he dies? Why should not our furniture
be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s?
When I think of the benefactors of the race,
whom we have apotheosized as messengers from
46 WALDEN
heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not
see In my mind any retinue at their heels, any
car-load of fashionable furniture. Or what if
I were to allow — would it not be a singular
allowance ? — that our furniture should be more
complex than the Arab’s, in proportion as we
are morally and intellectually his superiors!
At present our houses are cluttered and defiled
with it, and a good housewife would sweep out
the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave
her morning’s work undone. Morning work!
By the blushes of Aurora and the music of
Memnon, what should be man’s 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 pre-
sume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he re-
signed 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,
ECONOMY 47
and it threatens without attaining these to be-
come no better than a modern drawing-room,
with its divans, and ottomans, and sunshades,
and a hundred other Oriental things, which we
are taking west with us, invented for the ladies
of the harem and the effeminate natives of the
Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be
ashamed to know the names of. I would rather
sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than
be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather
ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circula-
tion, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an
excursion train and breathe a malaria all the
way.
The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s
life in the primitive ages imply this advantage
at least, that they left him still but a sojourner
in nature. When he was refreshed with food
and sleep, he contemplated his journey again.
He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and
was either threading the valleys, or crossing the
plains, or climbing the mountain tops. But lo!
men have become the tools of their tools. The
man who independently plucked the fruits when
he was hungry is become a farmer: and he who
stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper.
We now no longer camp as for a night, but have
settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We
have adopted Christianity merely as an improved
method of agri-culture. We have built for this
48 WALDEN
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 con-
dition, 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 man-
aged and sustained, I wonder that the floor does
not give way under the visitor while he is ad-
miring 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,
due to human muscles alone, on record is that
of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have
cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. With-
out factitious support, man is sure to come to
earth again beyond that distance. The first
question which I am tempted to put to the pro-
prietor of such great impropriety is, Who bol-
ECONOMY 49
sters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who
fail, or the three who succeed ? Answer me these
questions, and then perhaps I may look at your
baubles and find them ornamental. The cart
before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.
Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful
objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives
must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping
and beautiful living be laid for a foundation:
now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated
out of doors, where there is no house and no
housekeeper.
Old Johnson, in his “‘ Wonder-Working Provi-
dence,” 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 secre-
tary of the Province of New Netherland, writ-
ing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of
those who wished to take up land there, states
more particularly, that “‘those in New Nether-
land, and especially in New England, who have
no means to build farm houses at first according
50 WALDEN
to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground,
cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and
as broad as they think proper, case the earth
inside with wood all round the wall, and line the
wood with the bark of trees or something else to
prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this
cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a
ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover
the spars with bark or green sods, so that they
can live dry and warm in these houses with their
entire families for two, three, and four years, it
being understood that partitions are run through
those cellars, which are adapted to the size of
the family. The wealthy and principal men in
New England, in the beginning of the colonies,
commenced their first dwelling houses in this
fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order not to
waste time in building, and not to want food the
next season; secondly, in order not to discourage
poor laboring people whom they brought over in
numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three
or four years, when the country became adapted
to agriculture, they built themselves handsome
houses, spending on them several thousands.”
In this course which our ancestors took there
was a show of prudence at least, as if their prin-
ciple 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,
ECONOMY 51
for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to
human culture, and we are still forced to cut our
spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers
did their wheaten. Not that all architectural
ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest
period; but let our houses first be lined with
beauty, where they come in contact with our
lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not
overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been inside
one or two of them, and know what they are
lined with.
Though we are not so degenerate but that we
might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or
wear skins 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 neighborhood as this, boards and shingles,
lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily
obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or
bark in sufhcient quantities, or even well-tem-
pered clay or flat stones. I speak understand-
ingly on this subject, for I have made myself
acquainted with it both theoretically and prac-
tically. With a little more wit we might use these
materials so as to become richer than the richest
now are, and make our civilization a blessing.
The civilized man is a more experienced and
wiser savage. But to make haste to my own
experiment.
52 WALDEN
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 diffi-
cult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it
is the most generous course thus to permit your
fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise.
The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on
it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I
returned it sharper than I received it. It was a
pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with
pine woods, through which I looked out on the
pond, and a small open field in the woods where
pines and hickories were springing up. ‘The
ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though
there were some open spaces, and it was all dark
colored and saturated with water. There were
some slight flurries of snow during the days that
I worked there; but for the most part when I
came out on to the railroad, on my way home,
its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in
the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the
spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and
other birds already come to commence another
year with us. They were pleasant spring days,
in which the winter of man’s discontent was
thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had
lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day,
when my axe had come off and I had cut a green
eau’s house in March
of Thor
1té o
The s
cae ae"
A.
. sia
Papi are
eciey \ ar
ECONOMY 53
hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and
had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in
order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake
run into the water, and he lay on the bottom,
apparently without inconvenience, as long as I
stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour;
perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out
of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a
like reason men remain in their present low and
primitive condition; but if they should feel the
influence of the spring of springs arousing them,
they would of necessity rise to a higher and more
ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes
in frosty mornings in my path with portions of
their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting’
for the sun to thaw them. On the Ist 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 hew-
ing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with
my narrow axe, not having many communicable
or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, —
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows.
54 WALDEN
I hewed the main timbers six inches square,
most of the studs on two sides only, and the
rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving
the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as
straight and much stronger than sawed ones.
Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by
its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this
time. My days in the woods were not very long
ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread
and butter, and read the newspaper in which it
was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green
pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread
was imparted some of their fragrance, for my
hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch.
“Before I had done I was more the friend than the
foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some
of them, having become better acquainted with
it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was at-
tracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted
pleasantly over the chips which I had made.
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in
my work, but rather made the most of it, my
house was framed and ready for the raising. I
had already bought the shanty of James Collins,
an Inshman who worked on the Fitchburg Rail-
road, for boards. James Collins’ shanty was
considered an uncommonly fine one. When I
called to see it he was not at home. I walked
about the outside, at first unobserved from
within, the window was so deep and high. It
ECONOMY 55
was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage
roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being
raised five feet all around as if it were a compost
heap. ‘The roof was the soundest part, though
a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun.
Door-sill there was none, but a perennial pas-
sage for the hens under the door board. Mrs.
C. came to the door and asked me to view 1t from
the inside. ‘The hens were driven in by my
approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for
the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only
here a board and there a board which would not
bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me
the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that
the board floor extended under the bed, warning
me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole
two feet deep. In her own words, they were
“‘good boards overhead, good boards all around,
and a good window,’ — of two whole squares
originally, only the cat had passed out that way
lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to
_ sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a
silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a
patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling,
all told. ‘The bargain was soon concluded, for
James had in the meanwhile returned. I to
pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night,
he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to
nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at
six. It were well, he said, to be there early, and
56 WALDEN
anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust
claims, on the score of ground rent and fuel.
This he assured me was the only encumbrance.
At six I passed him and his family on the road.
One large bundle held their all, — bed, coffee
mill, looking-glass, hens, — all but the cat, she
took to the woods and became a wild cat, and,
as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for
woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.V.
I took down this dwelling the same morning,
drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond
side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on
the grass there to bleach and warp back again in
the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or
two as I drove along the woodland path. I was
informed treacherously by a young Patrick that
neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of
the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight,
and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his
pocket, and then stood when I came back to
pass the time of day, and look freshly up, un-
concerned with spring thoughts, at the devasta-
tion; there being a dearth of work, as he said.
He was there to represent spectatordom, and
help make this seemingly insignificant event one
with the removal of the gods of Troy.
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to
the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug
his burrow, down through sumach and _ black-
berry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation,
ECONOMY 57
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 break-
ing of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig
into the earth for an equable temperature. Un-
der 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 im-
prove so good an occasion for neighborliness
than from any necessity, I set up the frame of
my house. No man was ever more honored in
the character of his raisers than I. They are
destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier
structures one day. I began to occupy my house
on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and
roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-
edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly im-
pervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the
foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing
two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond
in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing
in the fall, before a fire became necessary for
58 WALDEN
warmth, doing my cooking in the meanwhile out
of doors on the ground, early in the morning:
which mode [ still think is in some respects more
convenient and agreeable than the usual one.
When it stormed before my bread was baked, I
fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under
them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant
hours in that way. In those days, when my hands
were much employed, I read but little, but the
least scraps of paper which lay on the ground,
my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much
entertainment, in fact answered the same pur-
pose, as the Iliad.
It would be worth the while to build still more’ ~
deliberately than I did, considering, for instance,
what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a
garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance
never raising any superstructure until we found
a better reason for it than our temporal necessi-
ties even. ‘There is some of the same fitness in a
man’s building his own house that there is in a
bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if
men constructed their dwellings with their own
hands, and provided food for themselves and
families simply and honestly enough, the poetic
faculty would be universally developed, as birds
universally sing when they are so engaged?
But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos,
which lay their eggs in nests which other birds
ECONOMY 59
have built, and cheer no traveller with their
chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we for-
ever resign the pleasure of construction to the
carpenter? What does architecture amount to
in the experience of the mass of men? I never
in all my walks came across a man engaged in so
simple and natural an occupation as building his
house. We belong to the community. It is not
the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man:
it is as much the preacher, and the merchant,
and the farmer. Where is this division of labor
to end? and what object does it finally serve ?
No doubt another may also think for me; but
_ it is not therefore desirable that he should do so
~“to’the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
True, there are architects so called in this
country, and I have heard of one at least pos-
sessed with the idea of making architectural or-
naments 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 dilettant-
ism. A sentimental reformer in architecture,
he began at the cornice, not at the foundation.
It was only how to put a core of truth within the
ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might
have an almond or caraway seed in it, — though
I hold that almonds are most wholesome with-
out the sugar, — and not how the inhabitant,
the indweller, might build truly within and with-
60 WALDEN
out, and let the ornaments take care of them-
selves. What reasonable man ever supposed
that ornaments were something outward and
in the skin merely, — that the tortoise got his
spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o’-pearl
tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of
Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man
has no more to do with the style of architecture
of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell:
nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint
the precise color of his virtue on his standard.
The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale
when the trial comes. ‘This man seemed to me
to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his
half truth to the rude occupants, who really
knew it better than he. What of architectural
beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown
from within outward, out of the necessities and
character of the indweller, who is the only
builder, — out of some unconscious truthful-
ness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for
the appearance; and whatever additional beauty
of this kind is destined to be produced will be
preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life.
The most interesting dwellings in this country,
as the painter knows, are the most unpretend-
ing, humble log huts and cottages of the poor
commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose
shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their
surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque ;
ECONOMY 61
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 Septem-
ber gale would strip them off, like borrowed
plumes, without injury to the substantials.
They can do without architecture who have no
olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal
ado were made about the ornaments of style
in literature, and the architects of our Bibles
spent as much time about their cornices as the
architects of our churches do? So are made
the belles-lettres and the beauz-arts and their
professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth,
how a few sticks are slanted over him or under
him, and what colors are daubed upon his
box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any ear-
nest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but
the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is
of a piece with constructing his own coffin, —
the architecture of the grave, and “‘carpenter’”’
is but another name for ‘‘coffin-maker.”? One
man says, in his despair or indifference to life,
take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and
paint your house that color. Is he thinking of
his last and narrow house? ‘Toss up a copper
for it as well. What an abundance of leisure he
must have! Why do you take up a handful of
62 WALDEN
the dirt? Better paint your house your own
complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you.
An enterprise to improve the style of cottage
architecture! When you have got my orna-
ments ready I will wear them.
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled
the sides of my house, which were already im-
pervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy
shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose
edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane.
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered
house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-
feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large
window on each side, two trap doors, one door
at the end, and a brick 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 : —
Boas |)! CoN ie ea eerie es eens $8 034 ica! ha
Refuse shingles for roof and sides. 400
DeBUHSy ce) at ROE a 10a
Twosecond-hand windows withglass 243
One thousand old brick . . .. . 4 00
‘Two casks of lime’)! .°\. ae. 240 That was high.
INE GN eek doi Ci Lue ae 0 31 inom
needed.
ECONOMY 63
Raantie-thee iron (6.0). 6. ee oes $0 15
EO SNS a RIN RP Eat OUR PON Gt ie 3 90
Pinces and screws: 262. i. 0 14
U2 ey RARE ee eR ota EP RR 010
RR CONE Ae Rah Bold 001
{ I carried a good
part on my back.
1
2
BANE Pe AY Ale NS or usa atte $28 12
These are all the materials excepting the
timber, stones, and sand, which I claimed by
squatter’s right. I have also a small wood-shed
adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was
left after building the house.
I intend to build me a house which will sur-
pass any on the main street in Concord in grand-
eur 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 ex-
pense 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 human-
ity rather than for myself; and my short-com-
ings 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 | 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
64 WALDEN
become the devil’s attorney. I will endeavor to
speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge
College the mere rent of a student’s room, which
is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dol-
lars each year, though the corporation had the
advantage of building thirty-two side by side
and under one roof, and the occupant suffers
the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors,
and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I
cannot but think that if we had more true wis-
dom in these respects, not only less education
would be needed, because, forsooth, more would
already have been acquired, but the pecuniary
expense of getting an education would in a
great measure vanish. Those conveniences
which the student requires at Cambridge or
elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times
as great a sacrifice of life as they would with
proper management on both sides. Those
things for which the most money is demanded
are never the things which the student most
wants. ‘Tuition, for instance, is an important
item in the term bill, while for the far more
valuable education which he gets by associating
with the most cultivated of his contemporaries
no charge is made. The mode of founding a
college is, commonly, to get up a subscription
of dollars and cents, and then following blindly
the principles of a division of labor to its ex-
treme, a principle which should never be fol-
One of the pitch pines by the shore of Walden
ECONOMY 65
lowed but with circumspection, — to call in a
contractor who makes this a subject of specula-
tion, and he employs Irishmen or other opera-
tives actually to lay the foundations, while the
students that are to be are said to be fitting
themselves for it; and for these oversights suc-
cessive generations have to pay. I think that
it would be better than this, for the students, or
those who desire to be benefited by it, even to
lay the foundation themselves. ‘The student who
secures his coveted leisure and retirement by
systematically shirking any labor necessary to
man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable
leisure,. defrauding himself of the experience
which alone can make leisure fruitful. ‘“‘ But,”
says one, “‘you do not mean that the students
should go to work with their hands instead of
their heads?”’ I do not mean that exactly, but
I mean something which he might think a good
deal like that; I mean that they should not play
life, or study it merely, while the community
supports them at this expensive game, but ear-
nestly live it from beginning to end. How could
youths better learn to live than by at once trying
the experiment of living? Methinks this would
exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
If I wished a boy to know something about the
arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pur-
sue the common course, which is merely to send
him into the neighborhood of some professor,
3
66 WALDEN
where anything is professed and practised but
the art of life; — to survey the world through a
telescope or a microscope, and never with his
natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn
how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not
learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites
to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes,
or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or
to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all
around him, while contemplating the monsters
in a drop of vinegar. Which would have ad-
vanced the most at the end of a month, — the
boy who had made his own jackknife from the
ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as
much as would be necessary for this, — or the
boy who had attended the lectures on metal-
lurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had
received a Rogers’ penknife from his father?
Which would be most likely to cut his fingers ?
... To my astonishment I was informed on
leaving college that I had studied navigation !—
why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor
I should have known more about it. Even the
poor student studies and is taught only politcal
economy, while that economy of living which is
synonymous with philosophy is not even sin-
cerely professed in our colleges. ‘The conse-
quence is that while he is reading Adam Smith,
Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt
irretrievably.
ECONOMY 67
As with our colleges, so with a hundred
‘‘modern improvements”: there is an illusion
about them; there is not always a positive ad-
vance. The devil goes on exacting compound
interest to the last for his early share and nu-
merous succeeding investments in them. Our
inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which dis-
tract our attention from serious things. They
are but improved means to an unimproved end,
an end which it was already but too easy to
arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New
York. We are in great haste to construct a
magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but
Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing im-
portant to communicate. Either is in such a
predicament as the man who was earnest to be
introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but
when he was presented, and one end of her ear
trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to
say. As if the main object were to talk fast and
not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel
under the Atlantic and bring the old world some
weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the
first news that will leak through into the broad,
flapping American ear will be that the Princess
Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all,
the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute
does not carry the most important messages ; he
is not an evangelist, nor does he come round
eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if
68 WALDEN
Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to
mill.
One says to me, “I wonder that you do not
lay up money; you love to travel; you might
take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and
see the country.”” But I am wiser than that. I
have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that
goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try
who will get there first. The distance is thirty
miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a
day’s wages. I remember when wages were
sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before
night; I have travelled at that rate by the week
together. You will in the meanwhile have
earned your fare, and arrive there sometime to-
orrow, 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 rail-
road reached round the world, I think that I
should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the
country and getting experience of that kind, I
should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.
Such is the universal law, which no man can
ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad
even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To
make a railroad round the world available to
all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole
surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct
ECONOMY 69
notion that if they keep up this activity of joint
stocks and spades long enough all will at length
ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for
nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the
depot, and the conductor shouts “‘All aboard !”
when the smoke is blown away and the vapor
eondensed, it will be perceived that a few are
riding,.pbut 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 spend-
ing 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 for-
tune first, in order that he might return to Eng-
land and live the life of a poet. He should have
gone up garret at once. ‘‘What!” exclaim a
million Irishmen starting up from all the shan-
ties in the land, “‘is not this railroad which we
have built a good thing?” Yes, I answer,
comparatwely good, that is, you might have
done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of
mine, that you could have spent your time bet-
ter than digging in this dirt.
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn
ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agree-
70 WALDEN
able method, in order to meet my unusual ex-
penses, I planted about two acres and a half of
light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans,
but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas,
and turnips. ‘The whole lot contains eleven
acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories,
and was sold the preceding season for eight dol-
lars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said
that it was ‘‘good for nothing but to raise cheep-
ing 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 dis-
tinguishable through the summer by the greater
luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and
for the most part unmerchantable wood _be-
hind 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, &c., $14 723. The
seed corn was given me. ‘This never costs any-
thing to speak of, unless you plant more than
enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and
eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some peas
and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips
ECONOMY rat
were too late to come to anything. My whole
income from the farm was
$23 44
Deductane the outgees sa). ess + 14 723
FES ey FS CORON: RATER eek VARIES UN DM $8 713
besides 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 1s, considering the
importance of a man’s soul and of to-day, not-
withstanding the short time occupied by my
experiment, nay, partly even because of its tran-
sient 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 culti-
vate 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
72 WALDEN
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 inter-
ested 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. Besides being
better off than they already, if my house had
been burned or my erops had failed, I should
have been nearly as well off as before.
I am wont to think that men are not so much
the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of
men, the former are so much the freer. Men
and oxen exchange work; but if we consider
necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to
have greatly the advantage, their farm is so
much the larger. Man does some of his part
of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying,
and it is no boy’s play. Certainly no nation
that lived simply in all respects, that is, no
nation of philosophers, would commit so great
a blunder as to use the labor of animals. ‘True,
there never was and is not likely soon to be a
nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is
desirable that there should be. However, fF
should never have broken a horse or bull and
ECONOMY 73
taken him to board for any work he might do
for me, for fear I should become a horseman or
a herdsman merely; and if society seems to be
the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what
is one man’s gain is not another’s loss, and that
the stable-boy has equal cause with his master
to be satisfied? Granted that some public works
would not have been constructed without this
aid, and let man share the glory of such with
the ox and horse; does it follow that he could
not have accomplished works yet more worthy
of himself in that case? When men begin to
do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but
luxurious and idle work, with their assistance,
it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange
work with the oxen, or, in other words, become
the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only
works for the animal within him, but, for a
symbol of this, he works for the animal without
him. Though we have many substantial houses
of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer
is still measured by the degree to which the barn
overshadows the house. ‘This town is said to
have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and
horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in
its public buildings; but there are very few halls
for free worship or free speech in this county.
It should not be by their architecture, but why
not even by their power of abstract thought,
that nations should seek to commemorate them-
74 WALDEN
selves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-
Geeta than all the ruins of the East! ‘Towers
and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple
and independent mind does not toil at the bid-
ding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to
any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold,
or marble, except.to a trifling extent. To what
end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In
Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any
hammering stone. Nations are possessed with
an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory
of themselves by the amount of hammered
stone they leave. What if equal pains were
taken to smooth and polish their manners?
One piece of good sense would be more memo-
rable thah a monument as high as the moon.
I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur
of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible
is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest
man’s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that
has wandered farther from the true end of life.
The religion and civilization which are _ bar-
baric 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,
Concord’s most famous public building, the Unitarian Church
ECONOMY 75
whom it would have been wiser and manlier
to have drowned in the Nile, and then given
his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent
some excuse for them and him, but I have no
time for it. As for the religion and love of art
of the builders, it is much the same all the world
over, whether the building be an Egyptian
temple or the United States Bank. It costs
more than it comes to. ‘The mainspring is
vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread
and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young
architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius,
with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out
to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the
thirty centuries begin to look down on it, man-
kind 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 ad-
mire the hole which he made. Many are con-
cerned about the monuments of the West and
East, — to know who built them. For my part,
I should like to know who in those days did not
build them, — who were above such trifling.
But to proceed with my statistics.
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of
various other kinds in the village in the mean-
while, for I have as many trades as fingers, I
76 WALDEN
had earned $13 34. ‘The expense of food for
eight months, namely, from July 4th to March
Ist, the time when these estimates were made,
though I lived there more than two years, — not
counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some
peas, which I had raised, nor considering the
value of what was on hand at the last date, was
Bice SN a eahen $1 734
Molasses. . . . 173 Cheapest form of the saccharine.
Rye meal . . . 104¢
Indian meal . . 099% Cheaper than rye.
PORE ie ees 0 22
Costs more than Indian meal,
BORE a hae bi both money and trouble. =
ret a ae 0 80 g
LC AS Ae 0 65 3
Apples. °.'. 2)’ Ob B =
Dried apple . . 022 BES
Sweet potatoes . 010 a
One pumpkin . 006 cb
One watermelon 002 3
rot) | ao i a 0 03
Yes, I did eat $8 74, all told; but I should not
thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not
know that most of my readers were equally
guilty with myself, and that their deeds would
look no better in print. The next year I some-
times caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and
once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck
which ravaged my beanfield, — effect his trans-
migration, as a Tartar would say, — and devour
ECONOMY 17
him, partly for experiment’s sake; but though
it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, not-
withstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the
longest use would not make that a good practice,
however it might seem to have your woodchucks
ready dressed by the village butcher.
Clothing and some incidental expenses within
the same dates, though little can be inferred from
this item, amounted to
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 neces-
sarily goes out in this part of the world, — were
Ras lig) agi ag RECN pic amen NE min 8 2
Parone year 27 oP eee 14 ee
Pood eight: months |i 3642760. ks 8 74
Clothing, &c., eight months ..... 8 403
Oil 0G. CHENG, MODTAS o y \ aine ss 2 00
OSES NUS), DRA SEO Si ma ee ee $61 997
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
RE. ee eet Re a 2 $36 78
78 WALDEN
which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes
leaves a balance of $25 212 on the one side, —
this being very nearly the means with which I
started, and the measure of expenses to be
incurred, — and on the other, besides the leisure
and independence and health thus secured, a
comfortable house for me as long as I choose
to occupy it.
These statistics, however accidental and there-
fore uninstructive they may appear, as_ they
have a certain completeness, have a certain
value also. Nothing was given me of which I
have not rendered some account. It appears
from the above estimate, that my food alone
cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a
week. It was, for nearly two years after this,
rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes,
rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt,
and my drink water. It was fit that I should
live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the phil-
osophy 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 [ trust shall have opportunities
to do again, it was frequently to the detriment
of my domestic arrangements. But the dining
out, being, as I have stated, a constant element,
does not in the least affect a comparative state-
ment like this.
I learned from my two years’ experience that
ECONOMY 79
it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain
one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that
a man may use as simple a diet as the animals,
and yet retain health and strength. I have made
a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several
accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (Portu-
laca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield,
boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account
of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray
what more can a reasonable man desire, in
peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a suffi-
cient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled,
with the addition of salt? Even the little variety
which I used was a yielding to the demands of
appetite, and not of health. Yet men have
come to such a pass that they frequently starve,
not for want of necessaries, but for want of
luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks
that her son lost his life because he took to
drinking water only.
The reader will perceive that I am treating
the subject rather from an economic than a
dietetic point of view, and he will not venture
to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he
has a well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal
and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked
before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the
end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my
house; but it was wont to get smoked and to
80 WALDEN
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 indispen-
sable art of bread-making, consulting such au-
thorities as offered, going back to the primitive
days and first invention of the unleavened kind,
when from the wildness of nuts and meats men
first reached the mildness and refinement of
this diet, and travelling gradually down in my
studies through that accidental souring of the
dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening
process, and through the various fermentations
thereafter, till I came to “‘good, sweet, whole-
some bread,” the staff of life. Leaven, which
some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which
fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously pre-
served like the vestal fire, — some precious
bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the
Mayflower, did the business for America, and
its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading,
in cerealian billows over the land, — this seed
I regularly and faithfully procured from the
ECONOMY 81
village, till at length one morning I forgot the
rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident
I discovered that even this was not indispensable,
— for my discoveries were not by the synthetic
but analytic process,—and I have gladly
omitted it since, though most housewives ear-
nestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread
without yeast might not be, and elderly people
prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces.
Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient,
and after going without it for a year am still
in the land of the living; and I am glad to
escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full
in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and
discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It
is simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man
is an animal who more than any other can adapt
himself to all climates and _ circumstances.
Neither did I put any sal soda, or other acid
or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that
I made it according to the recipe which Marcus
Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before
Christ. “‘Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus
mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mor-
tarlum indito, aque paulatim addito, subigito-
que pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito,
coquitoque sub testu.”’ Which I take to mean
—‘‘Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your
hands and trough well. Put the meal into the
trough, add water gradually, and knead it
82 WALDEN
thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well,
mould it, and bake it under a cover,”’ that is,
in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven.
But I did not always use this staff of life. At
one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse,
I saw none of it for more than a month.
Every New Englander might easily raise all
his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian
corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating
markets for them. Yet so far are we from
simplicity and independence that, in Concord,
fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops,
and hominy and corn in a still coarser form
are hardly used by any. For the most part the
farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of
his own producing, and buys flour, which is at
least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at
the store. I saw that I could easily raise my
bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the
former will grow on the poorest land, and the
latter does not require the best, and grind them
in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and
pork; and if I must have some concentrated
sweet, I found by experiment that I could make
a very good molasses either of pumpkins or
beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out
a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and
while these were growing I could use various
substitutes besides those which I have named.
**For,” as the Forefathers sang, —
ECONOMY 83
“we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.”
Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to
obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to
the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether,
I should probably drink the less water. I do
not learn that the Indians ever troubled them-
selves to go after it.
Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far
as my food was concerned, and having a shelter
already, 1t 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 opera-
tive 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 pur-
chase 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 con-
sidered 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
84 WALDEN
cannot understand that, they cannot under-
stand 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 mo-
lasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor
that he need sit on a pumpkin. ‘That is shift-
lessness. ‘There is a plenty of such chairs as I
like best in the village garrets to be had for tak-
ing them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can
sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture
warehouse. What man but a philosopher would
not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a
_ cart and going up country ‘exposed to the light
of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly ac-
ECONOMY 85
count of empty boxes? That is Spaulding’s
furniture. I could never tell from inspecting
such a load whether it belonged to a so-called
rich man or a poor one; the owner always
seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more
you have of such things the poorer you are.
Each load looks as if it contained the contents
of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor,
this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what
do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture,
our exuvie; at last to go from this world to
another newly furnished, and leave this to be
burned? It is the same as if all these traps
were buckled to a man’s belt, and he could not
move over the rough country where our lines
are cast without dragging them, — dragging his
trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in
the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg
off to be free. No wonder man has lost his
elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! Wiel ie
if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a
dead set?” If you are a seer, whenever you
meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay,
and much that he pretends to disown, behind
him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the
trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and
he will appear to be harnessed to it and making
what headway he can. I think that the man
is at a dead set who has got through a knot hole
or gateway where his sledge load of furniture
86 WALDEN
cannot follow him. I cannot but feel compas-
sion when I hear some trig, compact-looking
man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak
of his “‘furniture,’’ as whether it is insured or
not. ‘‘But what shall I do with my furniture ?”’
My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider’s web
then. Even those who seem for a long while
not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly
you will find have some stored in somebody’s
barn. I look upon England to-day as an old
gentleman who is travelling with a great deal
of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated
from long housekeeping, which he has not the
courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, band-
box, and bundle. ‘Throw away the first three
at least. It would surpass the powers of a well
man nowadays to take up his bed and walk,
and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay
down his bed and run. When I have met an
immigrant tottering under a bundle which con-
tained 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 he could carry. If
I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that
it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital
part. But perchance it would be wisest never
to put one’s paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me
nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut
ECONOMY 87
out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that
they should look in. The moon will not sour
milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun
injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he
is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still
better economy to retreat behind some cur-
tain which nature has provided, than to add
a single item to the details of housekeeping.
A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had
no room to spare within the house, nor time to
spare within or without to shake it, I declined
it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before
my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of
evil.
Not long since I was present at the auction of
a deacon’s effects, for his life had not been
ineffectual : —
“The evil that men do lives after them.”’
As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which
had begun to accumulate in his father’s day.
Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And
now, after lying half a century in his garret and
other dust holes, these things were not burned;
instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of
them, there was an auction, or increasing
of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to
view them, bought them all, and carefully trans-
ported them to their garrets and dust holes, to
lie there till their estates are settled, when they
88 WALDEN
will start again. When a man dies he kicks
the dust.
The customs of some savage nations might,
perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they
at least go through the semblance of casting their
slough annually; they have the idea of the thing,
whether they have the reality or not. Would it
not be well if we were to celebrate such a “‘busk,”’
or “‘feast of first fruits,” as Bartram describes to
have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians ?
*“When a town celebrates the busk,” says he,
“having previously provided themselves with
new clothes, new pots, pans, and other house-
hold 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 con-
sume it with fire. After having taken medicine,
and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is
extinguished. During this fast they abstain from
the gratification of every appetite and passion
whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all
malefactors may return to their town... .
“On the fourth morning, the high priest, by
rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in
the public square, from whence every habitation
in the town is supplied with the new and pure
flame.”’
ECONOMY 89
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 re-
joice with their friends from neighboring towns
who have in like manner purified and prepared
themselves.”
The Mexicans also practised a similar purifi-
cation at the end of every fifty-two years, in the
belief that it was time for the world to come to
an end.
I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament,
that is, as the dictionary defines it, “‘outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,”
than this, and I have no doubt that they were
originally inspired directly from heaven to do
thus, though they have no Biblical record of the
revelation.
For more than five years I maintained myself
thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found
that by working about six weeks in a year, I
could meet all the expenses of living. The whole
of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I
had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly
tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses
were in proportion, or rather out of proportion,
to my income, for I was obliged to dress and
train, not to say think and believe, accordingly,
and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not
teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply
90 WALDEN
for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried
trade; but I found that it would take ten years
to get under way in that, and that then I should
probably be on my way to the devil. I was
actually afraid that I might by that time be
doing what is called a good business. When for-
merly I was looking about to see what I could
do for a living, some sad experience in conform-
ing 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 occu-
pation 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 ever-
greens 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 espe-
cially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard
*
ECONOMY 91
and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my
time in earning rich carpets or other fine furni-
ture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Gre-
cian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are
any to whom it is no interruption to acquire
these things, and who know how to use them
when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit.
Some are “industrious,” and appear to love
labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it
keeps them out of worse mischief; to such |
have at present nothing to say. Those who would
not know what to do with more leisure than they
now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard
as they do, — work till they pay for themselves,
and get their free papers. For myself I found
that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most
independent of any, especially as it required only
thirty or forty days in a year to support one. ‘The
laborer’s day ends with the going down of the
sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his
chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his
employer, who speculates from month to month,
has no respite from one end of the year to the
other.
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and
experience, that to maintain one’s self on this
earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will
live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the
simpler nations are still the sports of the more
artificial. It is not necessary that a man should
92 WALDEN
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, 77 he had the means. I
would not have any one adopt my mode of liv-
ing on any account; for, besides that before he
has fairly learned it I may have found out an-
other for myself, I desire that there may be as
many different persons in the world as possible;
but I would have each one be very careful to find
out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s
or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead. ‘The
youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not
be hindered from doing that which he tells me
he would like to do. It is by a mathematical
point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the
fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but
that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We
may not arrive at our port within a calculable
period, but we would preserve the true course.
Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one
is truer still for a thousand, as a large house 1s not
proportionally more expensive than a small one,
since one roof may cover, one cellar underlie,
and one wall separate several apartments. But
for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling.
Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to build
the whole yourself than to convince another of
the advantage of the common wall; and when
ECONOMY 93
you have done this, the common partition, to be
much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other
may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep
his side in repair. ‘The only cooperation which
is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and
superficial; and what little true codperation
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 cooperate, in the highest as well as the lowest
sense, means fo 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
cooperate, since one would not operate at all.
They would part at the first interesting crisis
in their adventures. Above all, as I have im-
plied, 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
94 WALDEN
enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a
sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed
this pleasure also. ‘There are those who have
used all their arts to persuade me to undertake
the support of some poor family in the town; and
if I had nothing to do, — for the devil finds em-
ployment for the idle, — I might try my hand at
some such pastime as that. However, when I
have thought to indulge myself in this respect,
and lay their Heaven under an obligation by
maintaining certain poor persons in all respects
as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have
even ventured so far as to make them the offer,
they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred
to remain poor. While my townsmen and women
are devoted in so many ways to the good of their
fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared
to other and less humane pursuits. You must
have a genius for charity as well as for anything
else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the pro-
fessions which are full. Moreover, I have tried
it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satis-
fied that it does not agree with my constitution.
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 annihilation; and I believe that a
like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere
is all that now preserves it. But I would not
stand between any man and his genius; and to
ECONOMY 95
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 some-
thing, —I will not engage that my neighbors
shall pronounce it good, —I do not hesitate to
say that I should be a capital fellow to hire;
but what that is, it 1s for my employer to find
out. What good I do, in the common sense of
that word, must be aside from my main path,
and for the most part wholly unintended. Men
say, practically, Begin where you are and such
as you are, without aiming mainly to become of
more worth, and with kindness aforethought go
about doing good. If I were to preach at all in
this strain, I should say rather, Set about being
good. As if the sun should stop when he has
kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or
a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like
a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every cot-
tage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting
meats, and making darkness visible, instead of
steadily increasing his genial heat and _ benefi-
cence till he is of such brightness that no mortal
can look him in the face, and then, and in the
meanwhile too, going about the world in his own
orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philoso-
96 WALDEN
phy has discovered, the world going about him
getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove
his heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the
sun’s chariot but one day, and drove out of the
beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses
in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the
surface of the earth, and dried up every spring,
and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length
Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a
thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief at his
death, did not shine for a year.
There is no odor so bad as that which arises
from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine,
carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man
was coming to my house with the conscious de-
sign of doing me good, I should run for my life,
as from that dry and parching wind of the Afri-
can deserts called the simoom, which fills the
mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till
you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some
of his good done to me, — some of its virus
mingled with my blood. No, —in this case I
would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man
is not a good man to me because he will feed me if
I should be starving, or warm me if I should be
freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should
ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfound-
land 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
ECONOMY 97
kind and worthy man in his way, and has his
reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are
a hundred Howards to us, if their philanthropy
do not help ws in our best estate, when we are
most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a
philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely
proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me.
The Jesuits were quite balked by those In-
dians 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 conso-
lation which the missionaries could offer; and
the law to do as you would be done by fell with
less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for
their part, did not care how they were done by,
who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and
came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they
most need, though it be your example which
leaves them far behind. If you give money,
spend yourself with it, and do not merely aban-
don 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 misfor-
tune. If you give him money, he will perhaps
buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the
clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond,
in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shiv-
4
98 WALDEN
ered in my more tidy and somewhat more fash-
ionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one
who had slipped into the water came to my
house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three
pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he
got down to the skin, though they were dirty and
ragged enough, it is true, and that he could af-
ford 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 Sun-
day’s liberty for the rest. Some show their kind-
ness to the poor by employing them in their
kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they em-
ployed themselves there? You boast of spend-
ing a tenth part of your income in charity;
maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and
done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part
of the property then. Is this owing to the gener-
osity of him in whose possession it 1s found, or
to the remissness of the officers of justice ?
ECONOMY 99
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which
is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay,
it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness
which overrates it. A robust poor man, one
sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-
townsman to me, because, as he said, he was
kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind
uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed
than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I
once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man
of learning and intelligence, after enumerating
her scientific, literary, and political worthies,
Skakspeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton,
and others, speak next of her Christian heroes,
whom, as if his profession required it of him, he
elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the
greatest of the great. ‘They were Penn, Howard,
and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the false-
hood and cant of this. The last were not Eng-
land’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 de-
mand 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
100 WALDEN
flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance
be wafted over from him to me, and some ripe-
ness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must
not be a partial and transitory act, but a con-
stant superfluity, which costs him nothing and
of which he is unconscious. ‘This is a charity
which hides a multitude of sins. The philan-
thropist 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 functions, if he have a
pain in his bowels even, — for that is the seat of
sympathy, — he forthwith sets about reforming
—the world. Being a microcosm himself, he
discovers, and it is a true discovery, and he is
the man to make it, — that the world has been
eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the
globe itself is a great green apple, which there is
danger awful to think of that the children of
men will nibble before it is ripe; and straight-
way his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Ks-
quimau and the Patagonian, and embraces the
ECONOMY 101
populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus,
by a few years of philanthropic activity, the
powers in the meanwhile using him for their
own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dys-
pepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one
or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to
be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once
more sweet and wholesome to live. I never
dreamed of any enormity greater than I have
committed. I never knew, and never shall
know, a worse man than myself.
I believe that what so saddens the reformer
is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress,
but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his
private ail. Let this be mghted, let the spring
come to him, the morning rise over his couch,
and he will forsake his generous companions
without apology. My excuse for not lecturing
against the use of tobacco is that I never chewed
it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco
chewers have to pay; though there are things
enough I have chewed, which I could lecture
against. If you should ever be betrayed into
any of these philanthropies, do not let your left
hand know what your right hand does, for it is
not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and
tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set
about some free labor.
Our manners have been corrupted by com-
munication with the saints. Our hymn-books
102 WALDEN
resound with a melodious cursing of God and
enduring him forever. One would say that even
the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled
the fears than confirmed the hopes of man.
There is nowhere recorded a simple and irre-
pressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any
memorable praise of God. All health and suc-
cess does me good, however far off and withdrawn
it may appear; all disease and failure helps to
make me sad and does me evil, however much
sympathy it may have with me or I with it. If,
then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly
Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let
us first be as simple and well as Nature our-
selves, dispel the clouds which hang over our
own brows, and take up a little life into our
pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor,
but endeavor to become one of the worthies of
the world.
I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of
Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that ‘They asked a wise
man, saying: Of the many celebrated trees
which the Most High God has created lofty and
umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, ex-
cepting 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 cy-
ECONOMY 103
press exposed, being always flourishing; and of
this nature are the azads, or religious independ-
ents. — Fix not thy heart on that which is tran-
sitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to
flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is
extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the
date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away,
be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.”
COMPLEMENTAL VERSES
THE PRETENSIONS OF POVERTY
“Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
To claim a station in the firmament,
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
We not require the dull society
Of your necessitated temperance,
Or that unnatural stupidity
That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your fore’d
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
For which antiquity hath left no name,
But patterns only, such as Hercules,
Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath’d cell;
And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
Study to know but what those worthies were.”
T. Carew.
II
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR
T a certain season of our life we are ac-
A customed to consider every spot as the
possible site of a house. I have thus sur-
veyed the country on every side within a dozen
miles of where I live. In imagination I have
bought all the farms in succession, for all were
to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked
over each farmer’s premises, tasted his wild
apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took
his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging
it to him in my mind; even put a higher price
on it, —took everything but a deed of it, —
took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to
talk, — cultivated it, and him too to some ex-
tent, 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 radi-
ated from me accordingly. What is a house but
a sedes, a seat? — better if a country seat. I
discovered many a site for a house not likely to
be soon improved, which some might have
106 WALDEN
thought too far from the village, but to my eyes
the village was too far from it. Well, there I
might live, I said; and there I did live, for an
hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I
could let the years run off, buffet the winter
through, and see the spring come in. ‘The future
inhabitants of this region, wherever they may
place their houses, may be sure that they have
been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay
out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture,
and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be
left to stand before the door, and whence each
blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage;
and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for a man
is rich in proportion to the number of things
which he can afford to let alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I even
had the refusal of several farms, — the refusal
was all I wanted, — but I never got my fingers
burned by actual possession. ‘The nearest that
I came to actual possession was when I bought
the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my
seeds, and collected materials with which to
make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with;
but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his
wife — every man has such a wife — changed
her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered
me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak
the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and
it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that
WHERE [I LIVED 107
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 with-
out any damage to my property. But I retained
the landscape, and I have since annually carried
off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With
respect to landscapes, —
“IT am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute.”
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, hav-
ing enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm,
while the crusty farmer supposed that he had
got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner
does not know it for many years when a poet has
put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind
of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it,
milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream,
and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to
me, were: its complete retirement, being about
two miles from the village, half a mile from the
nearest neighbor, and separated from the high-
way by a broad field; its bounding on the river,
108 WALDEN
which the owner said protected it by its fogs from
frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to
me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house
and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put
such an interval between me and the last occu-
pant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees,
gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neigh-
bors I should have; but above all, the recollec-
tion I had of it from my earliest voyages up the
river, when the house was concealed behind a
dense grove of red maples, through which I
heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to
buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out
some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees,
and grubbing up some young birches which had
sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made
any more of his improvements. ‘To enjoy these
advantages I was ready to carry it on; like At-
las, to take the world on my shoulders, — I
never heard what compensation he received for
that, — and do all those things which had no
other motive or excuse but that I might pay for
it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for
I knew all the while that it would yield the most
abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I could
only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as
I have said.
All that I could say, then, with respect to
farming on a large scale (I have always culti-
vated a garden), was that I had had my seeds
WHERE I LIVED 109
ready. Many think that seeds improve with
age. I have no doubt that time discriminates
between the good and the bad: and when at
last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be dis-
appointed. But I would say to my fellows, once
for all, As long as possible live free and uncom-
mitted. It makes but little difference whether
you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
Old Cato, whose ““De Re Rustica” is my
“cultivator,” says, and the only translation I
have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage,
‘When you think of getting a farm, turn it thus
in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare
your pains to look at it, and do not think it
enough to go round it once. The oftener you
go there the more it will please you, if it is good.”
I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round
and round it as long as I live, and be buried
in it first, that it may please me the more at
last.
The present was my next experiment of this
kind, which I purpose to describe more at
length; for convenience, putting the experience
of two years into one. As I have said, I do
not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to
brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning,
standing on his roost, if only to wake my neigh-
bors up.
When first I took up my abode in the woods,
110 WALDEN
that is, began to spend my nights as well as days
there, which, by accident, was on Independence
Day, or the fourth of July, 1845, my house was
not finished for winter, but was merely a de-
fence against the rain, without plastering or
chimney, the walls being of rough weather-
stained boards, with wide chinks, which made
it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs
and freshly planed door and window casings
gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the
morning, when its timbers were saturated with
dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet
gum would exude from them. To my imagina-
tion it retained throughout the day more or less
of this auroral character, reminding me of a cer-
tain house on a mountain which I had visited
the year before. ‘I'his was an airy and unplas-
tered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and
where a goddess might trail her garments. The
winds which passed over my dwelling were such
as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing
the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of
terrestrial music. ‘The morning wind forever
blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted ;
but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is
but the outside of the earth everywhere.
The only house I had been the owner of be-
fore, 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
WHERE I LIVED P11 .
garret; but the boat, after passing from hand
to hand, has gone down the stream of time.
With this more substantial shelter about me,
I had made some progress toward settling in the
world. ‘This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort
of crystallization around me, and reacted on the
builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a pic-
ture in outlines. I did not need to go out doors
to take the air, for the atmosphere within had
lost none of its freshness. It was not so much
within doors as behind a door where I sat, even
in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says,
**An abode without birds is like a meat without
seasoning.” Such was not my abode, for I
found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds;
not by having imprisoned one, but having caged
myself near them. I was not only nearer to
some of those which commonly frequent the
garden and the orchard, but to those wilder
and more thrilling songsters of the forest
which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, —
the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager,
the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many
others.
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
112 WALDEN
Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the
opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest,
covered with wood, was my most distant horizon.
For the first week, whenever I looked out on the
pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the
side of a mountain, its bottom far above the sur-
face of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw
it throwing off its mighty clothing of mist, and
here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its
smooth reflecting surface were revealed, while
the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdraw-
ing 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 neigh-
bor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in
August, when, both air and water being per-
fectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon
had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-
thrush sang around, and was heard from shore
to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than
at such a time; and the clear portion of the air
above it being shallow and darkened by clouds,
the water, full of ight and reflections, becomes
a lower heaven itself so much the more im-
portant. From a hill top near by, where the
wood had recently been cut off, there was a
pleasing vista southward across the pond,
Concord battle ground
WHERE I LIVED 113
through a wide indentation in the hills which
form the shore there, where their opposite sides
sloping toward each other suggested a stream
flowing out in that direction through a wooded
valley, but stream there was none. That way I
looked between and over the near green hills to
some distant and higher ones in the horizon,
tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tip-
toe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks
of the still bluer and more distant mountain
ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins
from heaven’s own mint, and also of some por-
tion of the village. But in other directions, even
from this point, I could not see over or beyond
the woods which surrounded me. It is well to
have some water in your neighborhood, to give
buoyancy to and float the earth. One value
even of the smallest well is that when you look
into it you see that the 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
114 WALDEN
contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined
in the least. ‘There was pasture enough for my
imagination. ‘The low shrub-oak plateau to
which the opposite shore arose, stretched away
toward the prairies of the West and the steppes
of Tartary, affording ample room for all the rov-
ing families of men. ‘There are none happy in
the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast
horizon,’” — said Damodara, when his herds
required new and larger pastures.
Both place and time were changed and [I
dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and
to those eras in history which had most at-
tracted me. Where I live was as far off as many
a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We
are wont to imagine rare and delectable places
in some remote and more celestial corner of the
system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s
Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I dis-
covered that my house actually had its site in
such a withdrawn, but forever new and unpro-
faned, part of the universe. If it were worth the
while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades
or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I
was really there, or at an equal remoteness from
the life which I had left behind, dwindled and
twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neigh-
bor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by
him. Such was that part of creation where I had
squatted : —
WHERE I LIVED 115
“There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by.”
What should we think of the shepherd’s life if
his flocks always wandered to higher pastures
than his thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to
make my life of equal simplicity, and I may
say innocence, with Nature herself. I have
been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the
Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond;
that was a religious exercise, and one of the
best things which I did. They say that char-
acters were engraven on the bathing tub of king
Tching-thang to this effect: “‘Renew thyself
completely each day; do it again, and again,
and forever again.” I can understand that.
Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as
much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito
making its invisible and unimaginable tour
through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I
was sitting with door and windows open, as I
could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame.
It was Homer’s requiem; itself an Iliad and
Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and
wanderings. ‘There was something cosmical
about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden,
of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world.
The morning, which is the most memorable
116 WALDEN
season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then
there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour,
at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers
all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be
expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to
which we are not awakened by our Genius, but
by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor,
are not awakened by our own newly acquired
force and aspirations from within, accompanied
by the undulations of celestial music, instead of
factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air —
to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and
thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself
to be good, no less than the light. That man
who does not believe that each day contains
an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than
he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and
is pursuing a descending and darkening way.
After a partial cessation of his sensuous life,
the soul of man, or its organs rather, are rein-
vigorated each day, and his Genius tries again
what noble life it can make. All memorable
events, I should say, transpire in morning time
and in a morning atmosphere. ‘The Vedas say,
‘All intelligences awake with the morning.”
Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memo-
rable 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
WHERE I LIVED 117
thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a
perpetual morning. It matters not what the
clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men.
Morning is when I am awake and there is a
dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw
off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an
account of their day if they have not been slum-
bering? They are not such poor calculators.
If they had not been overcome with drowsiness
they would have performed something. The
millions are awake enough for physical labor;
but only one in a million is awake enough for
effective intellectual exertion, only one in a
hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To
be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met
a man who was quite awake. How could I have
looked him in the face?
We must learn to reawaken and keep our-
selves 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 unques-
tionable ability of man to elevate his life by a
conscious endeavor. (It is something to be able
to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful ;
but it is far more glorious to carve and paint
the very atmosphere and medium through which
we look, wnich morally we can do. ‘To effect
the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
118 WALDEN
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in
its details, worthy of the contemplation of his
most elevated and critical hour. If we refused,
or rather used up, such paltry information as we
get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how
this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what
was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish
to practise resignation, unless it was quite
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out
all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and
Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not
life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to
drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its
lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why
then to get the whole and genuine meanness of
it, and publish its meanness to the world; or
if it were sublime, to know it by experience,
and be able to give a true account of it in my
next excursion. For most men, it appears to
me, are in a strange uncertainty about it,
whether it is of the devil or of God, and have
somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief
end of man here to “‘glorify God and enjoy him
forever.”
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the
WHERE I LIVED 119°
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 superflu-
ous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is
frittered away by detail. An honest man has
hardly need to count more than his ten fingers,
or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes,
and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or
three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead
of a million count half a dozen, and keep your
accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of
this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the
clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-
and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has
to live, if he would not founder and go to the
bottom and not make his port at all, by dead
reckoning, and he must be a great calculator
indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. In-
stead of three meals a day, if it be necessary
eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five;
and reduce other things in proportion. Our
life is like a German Confederacy, made up of
petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuat-
ing, 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 superfi-
cial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown estab-
120 WALDEN
lishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped
up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and
heedless expense, by want of calculation anda
worthy aim, as the million households in the
land; and the only cure for it as for them is in
a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan
simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It
lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that
the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and
talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles ~
an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or
not; but whether we should live like baboons
or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not
get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote
days and nights to the work, but go to tinker-
ing upon our lives to improve them, who will
build railroads? And if railroads are not built,
how shall we get to heaven in season? But if
we stay at home and mind our business, who
will want railroads? We do not ride on the
railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think
what those sleepers are that underlie the 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
WHERE I LIVED 121
run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a
supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position,
and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars,
and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were
an exception. I am glad to know that it takes
a gang of men for every five miles to keep the
sleepers down and level in their beds as it is,
for this is a sign that they may sometime get ie ey
again. ih
Why should we live with such hurry and lo
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 work,
we have n’t any of any consequence. We have
the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly
keep our heads still. If I should only give a
few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire,
that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly
a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord,
notwithstanding that press of engagements which
was his excuse so many times this morning, nor
a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but
would forsake all and follow that sound, not
mainly to save property from the flames, but,
if we will confess the truth, much more to see
it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known,
did not set it on fire, —or to see it put out,
and have a hand in it, if that is done as hand-
somely; yes, even if it were the parish church
122 WALDEN
itself. Hardly a man takes a half hour’s nap
after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his
head and asks, ‘‘What’s the news?” as if the
rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some
give directions to be waked every half hour,
doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to
pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed.
After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable
as the breakfast. “‘Pray tell me anything new
that has happened to a man anywhere on this
globe,” — and he reads it over his coffee and
rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out
this morning on the Wachito River; never
dreaming the while that he lives in the dark
unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and
has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
For my part, I could easily do without the
post-office. 1 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 thought 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
WHERE I LIVED 123
cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one
mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in
the winter, — we never need read of another.
One is enough. If you are acquainted with the
principle, what do you care for a myriad instances
and applications? ‘To a philosopher all news,
as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and
read it are old women over their tea. Yet not
a few are greedy after this gossip. There was
such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of
the offices to learn the foreign news by the last
arrival, that several large squares of plate glass
belonging to the establishment were broken by
the pressure, — news which I seriously think
a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve
years beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As
for Spain, for instance, if you know how to
throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don
Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to
time in the right proportions, — they may have
changed the names a little since I saw the papers,
—and serve up a bull-fight when other enter-
tainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and
give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin
of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid
reports under this head in the newspapers: and
as for England, almost the last significant scrap
of news from that quarter was the revolution
of 1649; and if you have learned the history of
her crops for an average year, you never need
124. WALDEN
attend to that thing again, unless your specula-
tions are of a merely pecuniary character. If
one may judge who rarely looks into the news-
papers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign
parts, a French revolution not excepted.
What news! how much more important to
know what that is which was never old! ‘* Kieou-
he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent
a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news.
Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated
near him, and questioned him in these terms:
What is your master doing? ‘The messenger
answered with respect: My master desires to
diminish the number of his faults, but he can-
not come to the end of them. ‘The messenger
being gone, the philosopher remarked: What
a worthy messenger! What a worthy mes-
senger!’’ ‘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 draggletail of a sermon, should
shout with thundering voice, — “‘Pause! Avast!
Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow ?”’
Shams and delusions are esteemed for sound-
est 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
WHERE I LIVED 125
a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertain-
ments. If we respected only what is inevitable
and has a right to be, music and poetry would
resound along the streets. When we are un-
hurried and wise, we perceive that only great
and worthy things have any permanent and
absolute existence, — that petty fears and petty
pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This
is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing
the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be
deceived by shows, men establish and confirm
their daily life of routine and habit everywhere,
which still is built on purely illusory foundations.
Children, who play life, discern its true law and
relations more clearly than men, who fail to
live it worthily, but who think that they are
wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have
read in a Hindoo book that “‘ There was a king’s
son, who, being expelled in infancy from his
native city, was brought up by a forester, and,
growing up to maturity in that state, imagined
himself to belong to the barbarous race with
which he lived. One of his father’s ministers
having discovered him, revealed to him what
he was, and the misconception of his character
was removed, and he knew himself to be a
prince. So soul,” continues the Hindoo phil-
osopher, “‘from the circumstances in which it
is placed, mistakes its own character, until the
truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and
126 WALDEN
then it knows itself to be Brahme.” I perceive
that we inhabitants of New England live this
mean life that we do because our vision does not
penetrate the surface of things. We think that
that 7s 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 recog-
nize the place in his description. Look at a
meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a
shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that
thing really is before a true gaze, and they would
all go to pieces in your account of them. Men
esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the sys-
tem, behind the farthest star, before Adam and
after the last man. In eternity there is indeed
something true and sublime. But all these
times and places and occasions are now and
here. God Himself culminates in the present
moment, and will never be more divine in the
lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to
apprehend at all what is sublime and noble
only by the perpetual instilling and drenching
of the reality that surrounds us. The uni-
verse 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 art-
ist never yet had so fair and noble a design
WHERE I LIVED 127
but some of his posterity at least could accom-
plish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature,
and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell
and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let
us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and
without perturbation; let company come and
let company go, let the bells ring and the children
cry, — determined to make a day of it. Why
should we knock under and go with the stream ?
Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that
terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner,
situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this
danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way
is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with
morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way,
tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine
whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its
pains. If the bell rings, why should we run?
We will consider what kind of music they are
like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and
wedge our feet downward through the mud
and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradi-
tion, and delusion and appearance, that alluvion
which covers the globe, through Paris and
London, through New York and Boston and
Concord, through church and state, through
poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come
to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we
can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake ;
128 WALDEN
and then begin, having a point dappui, below
freshet and frost and fire, a place where you
might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-
post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer,
but a Realometer, that future ages might know
how deep a freshet of shams and appearances
had gathered from time to time. If you stand
right fronting and face to face to a fact, you
will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces,
as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge
dividing you through the heart and marrow,
and so you will happily conclude your mortal
career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in
our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if
we are alive, let us go about our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I
drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy
bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin
current slides away, but eternity remains. I
would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bot-
tom 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 concen-
trated in it. My instinct tells me that my head
WHERE I LIVED 129
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 here-
abouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising
vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Il
READING
ITH 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 accumu-
lating property for ourselves or our posterity, in
founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame
even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we
are immortal, and need fear no change nor acci-
dent. ‘The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philoso-
pher raised a corner of the veil from the statue
of the divinity; and still the trembling robe re-
mains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as
he did, since it was I in him that was then so
bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the
vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no
time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.
That time which we really improve, or which is
improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.
My residence was more favorable, not only to
thought, but to serious reading, than a university ;
and though I was beyond the range of the ordi-
nary circulating library, I had more than ever
READING 131
come within the influence of those books which
circulate round the world, whose sentences were
frst written on bark, and are now merely copied
from time to time on to linen paper. Says the
poet Mir Camar Uddin Mast, “‘Being seated to
run through the region of the spiritual world; I
have had this advantage in books. ‘To be in-
toxicated by a single glass of wine; I have ex-
perienced 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. Inces-
sant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my
house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same
time, made more study impossible. Yet I sus-
tained myself by the prospect of such reading in
future. I read one or two shallow books of travel
in the intervals of my work, till that employment
made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where
it was then that I lived.
The student may read Homer or Aschylus in
the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxu-
riousness, for it implies that he in some measure
emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning
hours to their pages. ‘The heroic books, even 1f
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
132 WALDEN
and valor and generosity we have. ‘The modern
cheap and fertile press, with all its translations,
has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic
writers of antiquity. ‘They seem as solitary, and
the letter in which they are printed as rare and
curious, asever. Itis worth the expense of youth-
ful days and costly hours, if you learn only some
words of an ancient language, which are raised
out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual
suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain
that the farmer remembers and repeats the few
Latin words which he has heard. Men some-
times speak as if the study of the classics would
at length make way for more modern and prac-
tical studies; but the adventurous student will
always study classics, in whatever language they
may be written and however ancient they may
be. For what are the classics but the noblest
recorded thoughts of man? ‘They are the only
oracles which are not decayed, and there are
such answers to the most modern inquiry in them
as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might
as well omit to study Nature because she 1s 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 train-
ing such as the athletes underwent, the steady
intention almost of the whole life to this object.
Books must be read as deliberately and reserv-
READING 133
edly 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 memo-
rable interval between the spoken and the written
language, the linguage heard and the language
read. ‘I'he one 1s commonly transitory, a sound,
a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and
we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our
mothers. The other is the maturity and experi-
ence of that; if that is our mother tongue, this
is our father tongue, a reserved and select ex-
pression, too significant to be heard by the ear,
which we must be born again in order to speak.
The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek
and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not
entitled by the accident of birth to read the works
of genius written in those languages; for these
were not written in that Greek or Latin which
they knew, but in the select language of litera-
ture. 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 contem-
porary literature. But when the several nations
of Europe had acquired distinct though rude
written languages of their own, sufficient for the
purposes of their rising literatures, then first learn-
ing revived, and scholars were enabled to discern
from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity.
What the Roman and Grecian multitude could
134 WALDEN
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 fir-
mament with its stars is behind the clouds.
There are the stars, and they who can may
read them. ‘The astronomers forever comment
on and observe them. ‘They are not exhalations
like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath.
What is called eloquence in the forum is com-
monly found to be rhetoric in the study. The
orator yields to the inspiration of a transient
occasion, and speaks to the mob before him,
to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose
more equable life is his occasion, and who would
be distracted by the event and the crowd which
inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and
heart of mankind, to all in any age who can wn-
derstand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad
_ with him on his expeditions in a precious casket.
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is
something at once more intimate with us and
more universal than any other work of art. It
is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may
be translated into every language, and not only
be read but actually breathed from all human
lips ; — not be represented on canvas or in marble
+ omg:
-_sa
rr.
+
horeau’s cabin stood
Yj
Where
READING 135
only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes
a modern man’s speech. ‘Two thousand summers
have imparted to the monuments of Grecian lit-
erature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden
and autumnal tint, for they have carried their
own serene and celestial atmosphere into all
lands to protect them against the corrosion of
time. Books are the treasured wealth of the
world and the fit inheritance of generations and
nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand
naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every
cottage. ‘They have no cause of their own to
plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the
reader his common sense will not refuse them.
Their authors are a natural and irresistible
aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings
or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.
When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader
has earned by enterprise and industry his cov-
eted leisure and independence, and is admitted
to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns in-
evitably at last to those still higher but yet inac-
cessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sen-
sible 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.
136 WALDEN
Those who have not learned to read the an-
cient 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 re-
markable that no transcript of them has ever
been made into any modern tongue, unless our
civilization itself may be regarded as such a
transcript. Homer has never yet been printed
in English, nor A’schylus, nor Virgil even, —
works as refined, as solidly done, and as beauti-
ful almost as the morning itself; for later writers,
say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if
ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish
and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the
ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who
never knew them. It will be soon enough to
forget them when we have the learning and
the genius which will enable us to attend to and
appreciate them. ‘That age will be rich indeed
when those relics which we call Classics, and
the still older and more than classic but even less
known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still
further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be
filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles,
with Homers and Dantes and Shakspeares, 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
READING 137
been read by mankind, for only great poets can
read them. They have only been read as the
multitude read the stars, at most astrologically,
not astronomically. Most men have learned to
read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have
learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and
not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a
noble intellectual exercise they know little or
nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense,
not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the
nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we
have to stand on tiptoe to read and devote our
most alert and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we
should read the best that is in literature, and not
be forever repeating our a babs, and words of
one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting
on the lowest and foremost form all our lives,
Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read,
and perchance have been convicted by the wis-
dom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest
of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties
in what is called easy reading. There is a work
in several volumes in our Circulating Library en-
titled 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 os-
triches, 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
138 WALDEN
machines to provide this provender, they are the
machines to read it. ‘They read the nine thou-
sandth 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 stum-
ble, and get up again and go on! how some
poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had
better never have gone up as far as the belfry;
and then, having needlessly got him up there,
the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world
to come together and hear, O dear! how he
did get down again! For my part, I think that
they had better metamorphose all such aspiring
heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-
cocks, as they used to put heroes among the con-
stellations, and let them swing round there till
they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother
honest men with their pranks. The next time
the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though
the meeting-house burn down. “The Skip of the
Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages,
by the celebrated author of ‘’Tittle-Tol-Tan,’ to
appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don’t
all come together.”’ All this they read with saucer
eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with
unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet
need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-
old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of
Cinderella, — without any improvement, that I
READING | 139
can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or em-
phasis, or any more skill in extracting or insert-
ing the moral. ‘The result is dulness of sight, a
stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general
deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual
faculties. ‘This sort of gingerbread is baked
daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or
rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a
surer market.
The best books are not read even by those who
are called good readers. What does our Concord
culture amount to? There is in this town, with
a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or
for very good books even in English literature,
whose words all can read and spell. Even the
college-bred and so-called liberally educated men
here and elsewhere have really little or no ac-
quaintance with the English classics; and as for
the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient
classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all
who will know of them, there are the feeblest
efforts anywhere made to become acquainted
with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle
age, who takes a French paper, not for news as
he says, for he is above that, but to “keep him-
self 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, besides
this, to keep up and add to his English. This is
about as much as the college-bred generally do
140 WALDEN
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 illit-
erate; 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 the alert and heroic
reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or
Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me
even their titles? Most men do not know that
any nation but the Hebrews have had a scrip-
ture. 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 read-
ing, our conversation and thinking, are all on a
very low level, worthy only of pygmies and
manikins.
READING 14]
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than
this our Concord soil has produced, whose
names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear
the name of Plato and never read his book? As
if Plato were my townsman and I never saw
him, — my next neighbor and I never heard
him speak or attended to the wisdom of his
words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues,
which contain what was immortal in him, lie
on the next shelf, and yet I never read them.
We are under-bred and low-lived and illiterate ;
and in this respect I confess I do not make any
very broad distinction between the illiterate-
ness of my townsman who cannot read at all,
and the illiterateness of him who has learned to
read only what is for children and feeble intel-
lects. We should be as good as the worthies of
antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good
they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar
but little higher in our intellectual flights than
the columns of the daily paper.
It is not all books that are as dull as their
readers. There are probably words addressed
to our condition exactly, which, if we could really
hear and understand, would be more salutary
than the morning or the spring to our lives, and
possibly put a new aspect on the face of things
for us.. How many a man has dated a new era
in his life from the reading of a book. The book
exists for us perchance which will explain our
142 WALDEN
miracles and reveal new ones. ‘The at present
unutterable things we may find somewhere ut-
tered. These same questions that disturb and
puzzle and confound us have in their turn oc-
curred to all the wise men; not one has been
omitted; and each has answered them, accord-
ing 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 out-
skirts of Concord, who has had his second birth
and peculiar religious experience, and is driven
as he believes into silent gravity and exclusive-
ness by his faith, may think it is not true; but
Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the
same road and had the same experience; but
he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and
treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even
said to have invented and established worship
among men. Let him humbly commune with
Zoroaster then, and, through the liberalizing in-
fluence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ
Himself, and let ‘cour 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 vil-
lage 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
READING 143
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 our-
selves. We spend more on almost any article
of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental
aliment. It is time that we had uncommon
schools, that we did not leave off our education
when we begin to be men and women. It is
time that villages were universities, and their
elder inhabitants the fellows of universities,
with leisure —if they are indeed so well off —
to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one
Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded
here and get a liberal education under the skies
of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to
lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the
cattle and tending the store, we are kept from
school too long, and our education is sadly neg-
lected. 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 mag-
nanimity 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 intelli-
gent men know to be of far more worth. This
town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a
f
144. WALDEN
townhouse, thank fortune or politics, but prob-
ably 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 dol-
lars 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 advan-
tages which the nineteenth century offers? Why
should our life be in any respect provincial? If
we will read newspapers, why not skip the gos-
sip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the
world at once? — not be sucking the pap of
““neutral family” papers, or browsing “Olive
Branches”’ here in New England. Let the re-
ports 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 what-
ever conduces to his culture, — genius — learn-
ing — wit — books — paintings — statuary —
music — philosophical instruments, and the like;
so let the village do, — not stop short at a peda-
gogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and
three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers
got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock
with these. To act collectively is according to
the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident
that, as our circumstances are more flourishing,
READING 145
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 wncommon 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.
IV
SOUNDS
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 re-
membered when the shutter is wholly removed.
No method nor discipline can supersede the
necessity of being forever on the alert. What is
a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no
matter how well selected, or the best society, or
the most admirable routine of life, compared
with the discipline of looking always at what is
to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student
merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is
before you, and walk on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer; I
hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this.
There were times when I could not afford to
sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any
SOUNDS 147
work, whether of the head or hands. I love a
broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a sum-
mer morning, having taken my accustomed bath,
I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon,
rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories
and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and still-
ness, while the birds sang around or flitted noise-
less through the house, until by the sun falling
in at my west window, or the noise of some
traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those
seasons like corn in the night, and they were far
better than any work of the hands would have
been. ‘They were not time subtracted from my
life, but so much over and above my usual al-
lowance. I realized what the Orientals mean
by contemplation and the forsaking of works.
For the most part, I minded not how the hours
went. ‘The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it
is evening, and nothing memorable is accom-
plished. Instead of singing like the birds, I
silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hick-
ory before my door, so had I my chuckle or sup-
pressed warble which he might hear out of my
nest. My days were not days of the week, bear-
ing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were
they minced into hours and fretted by the tick-
ing of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians,
148 WALDEN
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
life, over those who were obliged to look abroad
for amusement, to society and the theatre, that
my life itself was become my amusement and
never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of
many scenes and without an end. If we were
always indeed getting our living, and regulating
our lives according to the last and best mode we
had learned, we should never be troubled with
ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and
it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every
hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime.
When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and,
setting all my furniture out of doors on the
grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget,
dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white
sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom
scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time
the villagers had broken their fast the morning
SOUNDS 149
sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me
to move in again, and my meditations were al-
most uninterrupted. It was pleasant to see my
whole household effects out on the grass, mak-
ing a little pile like a gypsy’s pack, and my three-
legged table, from which I did not remove the
books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines
and hickories. They seemed glad to get out
themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in.
I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning
over them and take my seat there. It was worth
the while to see the sun shine on these things)
and hear the free wind blow on them; so much
more interesting most familiar objects look out
doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next
bough, life-everlasting grows under the table,
and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine
cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are
strewn about. It looked as if this was the way
these forms came to be transferred to our fur-
niture, to tables, chairs, and bedstead, — be-
cause they once stood in their midst.
My house was on the side of a hill, immedi-
ately on the edge of the larger wood, in the
midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hick-
ories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to
which a narrow footpath led down the hall. kn
my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry,
and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod,
shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and
“150 WALDEN
ground-nut. Near the end of May, the sand-
cherry (cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the
path with its delicate flowers arranged in um-
bels 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 compli-
ment to Nature, though they were scarcely pala-
table. The sumach (rhus glabra) grew luxuri-
antly 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 [ sat at my win-
dow, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their
weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough
suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when
there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off
by its own weight. In August, the large masses
of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted
many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright
velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again
bent down and broke the tender limbs.
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon,
hawks are circling about my clearing; the tan-
tivy of wild pigeons, flying by twos and threes
SOUNDS od
athwart my view, or perching restless on the
white-pine boughs behind my house, gives a
voice to the air; a fishhawk dimples the glassy
surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a
mink steals out of the marsh before my door and
seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending
under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither
and thither; and for the last half hour I have
heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away
and then reviving like the beat of a partridge,
conveying travellers from Boston to the country.
For I did not live so out of the world as that boy
who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the
east part of the town, but erelong ran away and
came home again, quite down at the heel and
homesick. He had never seen such a dull and
out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone
off; why, you could n’t even hear the whistle!
I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts
now : —
“In truth, our village has become a butt
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o’er
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord.”
The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond
about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I
usually go to the village along its causeway, and
am, as it were, related to society by this link.
The men on the freight trains, who go over the
whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old
acquaintance, they pass me so often, and ap-
152 WALDEN
parently they take me for an employee; and so
I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer
somewhere in the orbit of the earth.
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my
woods summer and winter, sounding like the
scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer’s
yard, informing me that many restless city mer-
chants are arriving within the circle of the town,
or adventurous country traders from the other
side. As they come under one horizon, they
shout their warning to get off the track to the
other, heard sometimes through the circles of
two towns. Here come your groceries, country ;
your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any
man so independent on his farm that he can say
them nay. And here’s your pay for them!
screams the countryman’s whistle; timber like
long battering rams going twenty miles an hour
against the city’s walls, and chairs enough to
seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell
within them. With such huge and lumbering
civility the country hands a chair to the city.
All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all
the cranberry meadows are raked into the city.
Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth ;
up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up
come the books, but down goes the wit that writes
them.
When I meet the engine with its train of cars
moving off with planetary motion, — or, rather,
puodg agg fo pua sve G1 1D PVOMJIDA 3g J,
SOUNDS 153
like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with
that velocity and with that direction it will ever
revisit this system, since its orbit does not look
like a returning curve, — with its steam cloud
like a banner streaming behind in golden and
silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which
I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its
masses to the light, — as if this travelling demi-
god, this cloud-compeller, would erelong take
the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when
I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with
his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with
his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his
nostrils (what kind of winged horse or fiery
dragon they will put into the new Mythology
I don’t know), it seems as if the earth had got a
race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it
seems, and men made the elements their servants
for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over
the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds,
or as beneficent as that which floats over the
farmer’s fields, then the elements and Nature
herself would cheerfully accompany men on
their errands and be their escort.
I watch the passage of the morning cars with
the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun,
which is hardly more regular. Their train of
clouds stretching far behind and rising higher
and higher, going to heaven while the cars are
going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute
154 WALDEN
and casts my distant field into the shade, a
celestial train beside which the petty train of
cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the
spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up
early this winter morning by the light of the
stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness
his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early
to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If
the enterprise were as innocent as it is early!
If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snow-
shoes, and with the giant plough plough a fur-
row from the mountains to the seaboard, in
which the cars, like a following drill-barrow,
sprinkle all the restless men and floating mer-
chandise in the country for seed. All day the
fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only
that his master may rest, and I am awakened
by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight,
when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts
the elements incased in ice and snow; and he
will reach his stall only with the morning star,
to start once more on his travels without rest or
slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him
in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy
of the day, that he may calm his nerves and
cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron
slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and
commanding as it is protracted and unwearied !
Far through unfrequented woods on the con-
fines of towns, where once only the hunter pene-
SOUNDS 155
trated by day, in the darkest night dart these
bright saloons without the knowledge of their
inhabitants; this moment stopping at some bril-
liant station-house in town or city, where a
social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal
Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings
and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the
village day. They go and come with such regu-
larity 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 im-
proved 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 something electrifying in the
atmosphere of the former place. I have been
astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that
some of my neighbors, who, I should have
prophesied, once for all, would never get to
Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand
when the bell rings. To do things “railroad
fashion”? is now the by-word; and it is worth
the while to be warned so often and so sincerely
by any power to get off its track. There is no
stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the
heads of the mob, in this case. We have con-
structed 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
156 WALDEN
minute these bolts will be shot toward par-
ticular points of the compass; yet it interferes
with no man’s business, and the children go to
school on the other track. We live the steadier
for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of
Tell. ‘The air is full of invisible bolts. Every
path but your own is the path of fate. Keep
on your own track, then.
What recommends commerce to me is its
enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its
hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men
every day go about their business with more or
less courage and content, doing more even than
they suspect, and perchance better employed
than they could have consciously devised. I
am less affected by their heroism who stood up
for half an hour in the front line at Buena
Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of
the men who inhabit the snow-plough for their
winter quarters; who have not merely the three
o’clock in. the morning courage, which Bona-
parte 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 chill-
ing 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
SOUNDS 157
of a New England northeast snow storm, and
I behold the ploughmen covered with snow and
rime, their heads peering above the mould-
board which is turning down other than daisies
and the nests of field-mice, like 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 enterprises and _ senti-
mental experiments, and hence its singular
success. I am refreshed and expanded when
the freight train rattles past me, and I smell
the stores which go dispensing their odors all
the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain,
reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs,
and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the
extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of
the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which
will cover so many flaxen New England heads
the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-
nut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron,
and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is
more legible and interesting now than if they
should be wrought into paper and printed books.
Who can write so graphically the history of the
storms they have weathered as these rents have
done? ‘They are proof-sheets which need no
correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine
158 WALDEN
woods, which did not go out to sea in the last
freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand be-
cause of what did go out or was split up: pine,
spruce, cedar, — first, second, third, and fourth
qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave
over the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next
rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will
get far among the hills before it gets slacked.
‘These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities,
the lowest condition to which cotton and linen
descend, the final result of dress, — of patterns
which are now no longer cried up, unless it be
in Milwaukie, as those splendid articles, Eng-
lish, French, or American prints, ginghams,
muslins, &c., gathered from all quarters both
of fashion and poverty, going to become paper
of one color or a few shades only, on which for-
sooth 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 per-
severance of the saints to the blush? with which
you may sweep or pave the streets, and split
your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself
and his lading against sun, wind, and rain be-
hind it, — and the trader, as a Concord trader
once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when
SOUNDS 159
he commences business, until at last his oldest
customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal,
vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure
as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and
boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a
Saturday’s dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the
tails still preserving their twist and the angle
of elevation they had when the oxen that wore
them were careering over the pampas of the
Spanish main, —a type of all obstinacy, and
evincing how almost hopeless and incurable
are all constitutional vices. | confess that,
practically speaking, when I have learned a
man’s real disposition, I have no hopes of
changing it for the better or worse in this state
of existence. As the Orientals say, “‘A cur’s
tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound
round with ligatures, and after a twelve years’ |
labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its
natural form.” The only effectual cure for such
inveteracies as these tails exhibit 1s 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 Moun-
tains, who imports for the farmers near his clear-
ing, 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
160 WALDEN
his customers this moment, as he has told them
twenty times before this morning, that he ex-
pects some by the next train of prime quality.
It is advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.
While these things go up other things come
down. Warned by the whizzing sound, I look
up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn
on far northern hills, which has winged its way
over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut,
shot like an arrow through the township within
ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it;
going
“to be the mast
Of some great ammiral.”
And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing
the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables,
and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their
sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their
flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled
along like leaves blown from the mountains by
the September gales. The air is filled with the
bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of
oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. When
the old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell,
the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the
little hills hke 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;
SOUNDS 161
they are quite thrown out; they have lost the
scent. Methinks I hear them barking behind
the Peterboro’ Hills, or panting up the western
slope of the Green Mountains. They will not
be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone.
Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now.
They will slink back to their kennels in dis-
grace, or perchance run wild and strike a league
with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral
life whirled past and away. But the bell rings,
and I must get off the track and let the cars go
by: —
What’s the railroad to me?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes banks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-blowing,
And the blackberries a-growing,
but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I
will not have my eyes put out and my ears
spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.
Now that the cars are gone by and all the
restless world with them, and the fishes in the
pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am more
alone than ever. For the rest of the long after-
noon, 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
6
162 WALDEN
Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when
the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as
it were, natural melody, worth importing into
the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over
the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory
hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were
the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound
heard at the greatest possible distance produces
one and the same effect, a vibration of the uni-
versal 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 re-
peating 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 stray-
ing over hill and dale; but soon I was not un-
pleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged
SOUNDS 163
into the cheap and natural music of the cow. I
do not mean to be satirical, but to express my
appreciation of those youths’ singing, when I
state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to
the music of the cow, and they were at length one
articulation of Nature.
Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of
the summer, after the evening train had gone
by, the whippoorwills chanted their vespers for
half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door,
or upon the ridge pole of the house. They would
begin to sing almost with as much precision as
a clock, within five minutes of a particular time,
referred to the setting of the sun, every evening.
I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted
with their habits. Sometimes I heard four or
five at once in different parts of the wood, by
accident one a bar behind another, and so near
me that I distinguished not only the cluck after
each note, but often that singular buzzing sound
like a fly in a spider’s web, only proportionally
louder. Sometimes one would circle round and
round me in the woods a few feet distant as U
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
164 WALDEN
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 delights of supernal
love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear
their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled
along the woodside; reminding me sometimes
of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark
and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs
that would fain be sung. ‘They are the spirits,
the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of
fallen souls that once in human shape night-
walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness,
now expiating their sins with their wailing
hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their
transgressions. ‘They give me a new sense of
the variety and capacity of that nature which is
our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never
had been bor-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the
pond, and circles with the restlessness of de-
spair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then —
— that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes
another on the farther side with tremulous
sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from
far in the Lincoln woods.
I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near
at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy
sound in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereo-
type and make permanent in her choir the dying
404181. Juanbasf vo som nnasoy J, a4aqm Sauoy S UOSAIU
ie
AC
ae
SOUNDS 165
moans of a human being, — some poor weak
relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and
howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on
entering the dark valley, made more awful by a
certain gurgling melodiousness,—TI find my-
self beginning with the letters gl when I try to
imitate it, — expressive of a mind which has
reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in the mor-
tification of all healthy and courageous thought.
It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane
howlings. But now one answers from far woods in
a strain made really melodious by distance, —Hoo
hoo hoo hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part
it suggested only pleasing associations, whether
heard by day or night, summer or winter.
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the
idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a
sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight
woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a
vast and undeveloped nature which men have not
recognized. ‘They represent the stark twilight
and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day
the sun has shone on the surface of some savage
swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with
usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above,
and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and
the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now
a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a
different race of creatures awakes to express the
meaning of Nature there.
166 WALDEN
Late in the evening I heard the distant rum-
bling of wagons over bridges, — a sound heard
farther than almost any other at night, — the
baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing
of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard.
In the meanwhile all the shore rang with the
trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient
wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant,
trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake, — if
the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison,
for though there are almost no weeds, there are
frogs there, — who would fain keep up the hila-
rious rules of their old festal tables, though their
voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave,
mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor,
and become only liquor to distend their paunches,
and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the
memory of the past, but mere saturation and
waterloggedness and distention. ‘The most alder-
manic, with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which
serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under
this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the
once scorned water, and passes round the cup
with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-
oonk! and straightway comes over the water
from some distant cove the same password re-
peated, where the next in seniority and girth has
gulped down to his mark; and when this ob-
servance has made the circuit of the shores, then
ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satis-
SOUNDS 167
faction, fr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn re-
peats the same down to the least distended, leak-
iest, and flabbiest-paunched, that there be no
mistake; and then the bowl goes round again
and again, until the sun disperses the morning
mist, and only the patriarch is not under the
pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to
time, and pausing for a reply.
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of
cock-crowing from my clearing, and I thought
that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel
for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note
of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the
most remarkable of any bird’s, and if they could
be naturalized without being domesticated, it
would soon become the most famous sound in
our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose
and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine
the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when
their lords’ clarions rested! No wonder that
man added this bird to his tame stock, — to say
nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in
a winter morning in a wood where these birds
abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild
eockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for
miles over the resounding earth, drowning the
feebler notes of other birds, — think of it! It
would put nations on the alert. Who would not
be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every
successive day of his life, till he became unspeak-
168 WALDEN
ably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign
bird’s note is celebrated by the poets of all coun-
tries along with the notes of their native song-
sters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer.
He is more indigenous even than the natives.
His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his
spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic
and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its
shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers.
I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so
that you would have said there was a deficiency
of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the
spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle,
nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying,
to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would
have lost his senses or died of ennui before this.
Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved
out, or rather were never baited in, — only
squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whip-
poorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay screaming
beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under
the house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a
flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond,
and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a lark
or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever
visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor
hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but un-
fenced Nature reaching up to your very sills.
A young forest growing up under your windows,
and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking
SOUNDS 169
through into your cellar; sturdy pitch-pines
rubbing and creaking against the shingles for
want of room, their roots reaching quite under
the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown
off in the gale, — a pine tree snapped off or torn
up by the roots behind your house for fuel. In-
stead of no path to the front-yard gate in the
Great Snow, — no gate — no front-yard, — and
no path to the civilized world!
V
SOLITUDE
HIS is a delicious evening, when the whole
i body is one sense, and imbibes delight
through every pore. I go and come with
a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As
I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my
shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy
and windy, and I see nothing special to attract
me, all the elements are unusually congenial to
me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night,
and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the
rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy
with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost
takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my
serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small
waves raised by the evening wind are as remote
from storm as the smooth reflecting surface.
Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and
roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some
creatures lull the rest with their notes. The re-
pose 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 watch-
SOLITUDE 171
men, — links which connect the days of animated
life.
When I return to my house I find that visitors
have been there and left their cards, either a
bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a
name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip.
They who come rarely to the woods take some
little piece of the forest into their hands to play
with by the way, which they leave, either inten-
tionally or accidentally. One has peeled a wil-
low wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it
on my table. I could always tell if visitors had
called in my absence, either by the bended twigs
or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally
of what sex or age or quality they were by some
slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch
of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far
off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the
lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was
frequently notified of the passage of a traveller
along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of
his pipe.
There is commonly sufficient space about us.
Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The
thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond,
but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and
worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some
way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what rea-
son have I this vast range and circuit, some
square miles of unfrequented forest, for my
F72 WALDEN
privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest
neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible
from any place but the hill tops within half a
mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by
woods all to myself; a distant view of the rail-
road 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 soli-
tary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much
Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it
were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a
little world all to myself. At night there was
never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at
my door, more than if I were the first or last
man; unless it were in the spring, when at long
intervals some came from the village to fish for
pouts, — they plainly fished much more in the
Walden Pond of their own natures, and baited
their hooks with darkness, — but they soon re-
treated, usually with light baskets, and left “the
world to darkness and to me,”’ and the black
kernel of the night was never profaned by any _
human neighborhood. I believe that men are
generally still a little afraid of the dark, though
the witches are all hung, and Christianity and
candles have been introduced.
Yet I experienced sometimes that the most
sweet and tender, the most innocent and encour-
aging society may be found in any natural ob-
ject, even for the poor misanthrope and most
SOLITUDE 173
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 Aolian music to a
healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly
compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sad-
ness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons
I trust that nothing can make life a burden to
me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and
keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and
melancholy, but good for me, too, Though it
prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth
than my hoeing. HI it should continue so long as
to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy
the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good
for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for
the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes,
when I compare myselt with other men, it seems
as if I were more favored by the gods than they,
beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if
I had a warrant and surety at their hands which
my fellows have not, and were especially cuided
and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be
possible they flatter me. I have never felt lone-
some, or in the least oppressed by a sense of soli-
tude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I
came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted
if the near neighborhood of man was not essen-
tial to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was
something unpleasant. But I was at the same
174 WALDEN
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 benefi-
cent society in Nature, in the very pattering of
the drops, and in every sound and sight around
my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendli-
ness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me,
as made the fancied advantages of human neigh-
borhood insignificant, and I have never thought
of them since. Every little pine needle expanded
and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.
I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of
something kindred to me, even in scenes which
we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and
also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest
was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no
place could ever be strange to me again. —
““Mourning untimely consumes the sad;
Few are their days in the land of the living,
Beautiful daughter of 'Toscar.” :
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the
long rain storms in the spring or fall, which con-
fined me to the house for the afternoon as well as
the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and
pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a
long evening in which many thoughts had time
to take root and unfold themselves. In those
driving northeast rains which tried the village
SOLITUDE LD
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 protec-
tion. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning
struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making
a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral
groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep,
and four or five inches wide, as you would groove
a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day,
and was struck with awe on looking up and be-
holding that mark, now more distinct than ever,
where a terrific and resistless bolt came down
out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men
frequently say to me, “‘I should think you would
feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer
to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights espe-
cially.” I am tempted to reply to such, — This
whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in
space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two
most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the
breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by
- our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is _
not our planet in the Milky Way? This which
you put seems to me not to be the most important
question. What sort of space is that which sepa-
rates a man from his fellows and makes him soli-
tary? I have found that no exertion of the legs
can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to
176 WALDEN
many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the
bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house,
the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points,
where men most congregate, but to the perennial
source of our life, whence in all our experience
we have found that to issue, as the willow stands
near the water and sends out its roots in that
direction. This will vary with different natures,
but this is the place where a wise man will dig
his cellar. . . . I one evening overtook one of
my townsmen, who has accumulated what is
called ‘‘a handsome property,’ — though I
never got a jair view of it, — on the Walden road,
driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired
of me how I could bring my mind to give up so
many of the comforts of life. I answered that I
was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not
joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left
him to pick his way through the darkness and
the mud to Brighton, — or Bright-town, — which
place he would reach sometime 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. Newt to us the grand-
The cartpath near Thoreau’s hut
SOLITUDE vies
est laws are continually being executed. Nezt 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 things,
they cannot be separated from them.”
“They cause that in all the universe men
purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe them-
selves 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, on our right; they environ
us on all sides.”
We are the subjects of an experiment which is
not a little interesting to me. Can we not do
without the society of our gossips a little while
under these circumstances,— have our own
thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly,
“Virtue does not remain as an abandoned
orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.”
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in
a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind
we can stand aloof from actions and their con-
sequences; 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
178 WALDEN
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 act-
ual 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 an-
other. However intense my experience, I am
conscious of the presence of 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 [ than it
is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of
life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was
a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only,
so far as he was concerned. This doubleness
may easily make us poor neighbors and friends
sometimes.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater
part of the time. To be in company, even with
the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I
love to be alone. I never found the companion
that was so companionable as solitude. We are
for the most part more lonely when we go abroad
among men than when we stay in our chambers.
A man thinking or working is always alone, let
him be where he will. Solitude is not measured
by the miles of space that intervene between a
man and his fellows. The really diligent stu-
SOLITUDE 179
dent in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.
The farmer can work alone in the field or the
woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel
lonesome, because he is employed; but when he
comes home at night he cannot sit down in a
room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but
must be where he can “‘see the folks,” and
recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, himself
for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders
how the student can sit alone in the house all
night and most of the day without ennui and
“‘the blues’; but he does not realize that the
student, though in the house, is still at work in
his field, and chopping in his woods, as the
farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recre-
ation 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 ac-
quire any new value for each other. We meet
at meals three times a day, and give each other
a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
We have to agree on a certain set of rules, called
etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent
meeting tolerable and that we need not come to
open war. We meet at the post-office, and at
the sociable, and about the fireside every night;
we live thick and are in each other’s way, and
stumble over one another, and I think that we
180 WALDEN
thus lose some respect for one another. Cer-
tainly less frequency would suffice for all im-
portant and hearty communications. Consider
the girls in a factory, — never alone, hardly in
their dreams. It would be better if there were
but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I
live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that
we should touch him.
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and
dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a
tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the gro-
tesque visions with which, owing to bodily
weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded
him, and which he believed to be real. So also,
owing to bodily and mental health and strength,
we may be continually cheered by a like but more
normal and natural society, and come to know
that we are never alone.
I have a great deal of company in my house;
especially in the morning, when nobody calls.
Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some
one may convey an idea of my situation. I am
no more lonely than the loon in the pond that
laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself.
What company has that lonely lake, I pray?
And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue
angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The
sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there
sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock
sun. God is alone, — but the devil, he is far.
SOLITUDE 181
from being alone; he sees a great deal of com-
pany; 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 origi-
nal proprietor, who is reported to have dug
Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with
pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and
of new eternity; and between us we manage to
pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and
pleasant views of things, even without apples or
cider, —a most wise and humorous friend,
whom I love much, who keeps himself more
secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and
though he is thought to be dead, none can show
where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells
in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons,
in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll
sometimes, gathering simples and listening to
her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled
fertility, and her memory runs back farther than
mythology, and she can tell me the original
of every fable, and on what fact every one is
founded, for the incidents occurred when she
182 WALDEN
was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who
delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely
to outlive all her children yet.
The indescribable innocence and beneficence
of Nature, — of sun and wind and rain, of sum-
mer and winter, — such health, such cheer, they
afford forever! and such sympathy have they
ever with our race, that all Nature would be
affected, and the sun’s brightness fade, and the
winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain
tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put
on mourning in midsummer, if any man should
ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have
intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly
leaves and vegetable mould myself ?
What is the pill which will keep us well,
serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grand-
father’s, but our great-grandmother Nature’s
universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which
she has kept herself young always, outlived so
many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health
with their decaying fatness. For my panacea,
instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture
dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which
come out of those long shallow black-schooner-
looking wagons which we sometimes see made
to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undi-
luted morning air. Morning air! If men will
not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day,
why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell
SOLITUDE 183
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 west-
ward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper
of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old
herb-doctor Esculapius, 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 re-
storing gods and men to the vigor of youth. She
was probably the only thoroughly sound-con-
ditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that
ever walked the globe, and wherever she came
it was spring.
VI
VISITORS
THINK that I love society as much as most,
and am ready enough to fasten myself like
a bloodsucker for the time to any full-
blooded man that comes in my way. I am natu-
rally 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 soli-
tude, two for friendship, three for society. When
visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers,
there was but the third chair for them all, but
they generally economized the room by stand-
ing up. Itis 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 pub-
lic 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
VISITORS 185
that the latter seem to be only vermin which in-
fest 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 ridicu-
lous 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 be-
gan to utter the big thoughts in big words. You
want room for your thoughts to get into sailing
trim and run a course or two before they make
their port. The bullet of your thought must
have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion
and fallen into its last and steady course before
it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plough
out again through the side of his head. Also,
our sentences wanted room to unfold and form
their columns in the interval. Individuals, like
nations, must have suitable broad and natural
boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground,
between them. I have found it a singular lux-
ury 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
186 WALDEN
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 com-_
monly 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 hear-
ing; but there are many fine things which we
cannot say if we have to shout. As the con-
versation began to assume a loftier and grander
tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther
apart till they touched the wall in opposite
corners, and then commonly there was not room
enough.
My “‘best” room, however, my withdrawing
room, always ready for company, on whose
carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood
behind my house. ‘Thither in summer days,
when distinguished guests came, I took them,
and a priceless domestic swept the floor and
dusted the furniture and kept the things in
order.
If one guest came he sometimes partook of
my frugal meal and it was no interruption to
conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or
VISITORS 187
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 prac-
tised abstinence; and this was never felt to be
an offence against hospitality, but the most
proper and considerate course. The waste and
decay of physical life, which so often needs re-
pair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a
case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. I
could entertain thus a thousand as well as
twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed
or hungry from my house when they found me
at home, they may depend upon it that I sym-
pathized 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 effectu-
ally 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 re-
visit those scenes. I should be proud to have for
the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser
which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow
walnut leaf for a card: —
188 WALDEN
*‘ Arrivéd there, the little house they fill,
Ne looke for entertainment where none was;
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will:
The noblest mind the best contentment has.”
When Winslow, afterward governor of the
Plymouth Colony, went with a companion on a
visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through
the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his
lodge, they were well received by the king, but
nothing was said about eating that day. When
the night arrived, to quote their own words, —
“He laid us on the bed with himself and his
wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it
being only 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 Massasoit “‘brought two fishes that
he had shot,” about thrice as big as a bream;
‘these being boiled, there were at least forty
looked for a share in them. The most ate of
them. This meal only we had in two nights and
aday; 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
VISITORS 189
for lodging, it is true they were but poorly en-
tertained, though what they found an incon-
venience was no doubt intended for an honor;
but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see
how the Indians could have done better. They
had nothing to eat themselves, and they were
wiser than to think that apologies could supply
the place of food to their guests; so they drew
their belts tighter and said nothing about it.
Another time when Winslow visited them, it
being a season of plenty with them, there was
no deficiency in this respect.
As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere.
I had more visitors while I lived in the woods
than at any other period of my life; I mean that
I had some. I met several there under more
favorable circumstances than I could anywhere
else. But fewer came to see me upon trivial
business. In this respect, my company was win-
nowed by my mere distance from town. I had
withdrawn so far within the great ocean of soli-
tude, into which the rivers of society empty, that
for the most part, so far as my needs were con-
cerned, only the finest sediment was deposited
around me. Besides, there were wafted to me
evidences of unexplored and uncultivated con-
tinents 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
190 WALDEN
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
woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has
heard of Homer, and, “‘if it were not for books,”’
would “‘not know what to do rainy days,” though
perhaps he has not read one wholly through for
many rainy seasons. Some priest who could
pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read
his verse in the testament in his native parish far
away; and now I must translate to him, while
he holds the book, Achilles’ reproof to Patroclus,
for his sad countenance. — ‘“‘Why are you in
tears, Patroclus, like a young girl ?’? —
“Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia?
They say that Mencetius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, son of AXacus, 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 be-
VISITORS 191
fore to work in the States, and earn money to
buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native
country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a
stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried,
with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair,
and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasion-
ally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray
cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and
cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of
meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a
couple of miles past my house, — for he chopped
all summer, —in a tin pail; cold meats, often
cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle
which dangled by a string from his belt; and
sometimes he offered me a drink. He came
along early, crossing my beanfield, though with-
out anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as
Yankees exhibit. He wasn’t a-going to hurt
himself. He did n’t care if he only earned his
board. Frequently he would leave his dinner
in the bushes, when his dog had caught a wood-
chuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half
to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house
where he boarded, after deliberating first for half
an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond
safely till nightfall, — loving to dwell long upon
these themes. He would say, as he went by in
the morning: ‘‘How thick the pigeons are! If
working every day were not my trade, I could
get all the meat I should want by hunting, —
192 WALDEN
pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges, — by
gosh! I could get all I should want for a week
in one day.”
He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in
some flourishes and ornaments in his art. He
cut his trees level and close to the ground, that
the sprouts which came up afterward might be
more vigorous and a sled might slide over the
stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to
support his corded wood, he would pare it away
to a slender stake or splinter which you could
break off with your hand at last.
He interested me because he was so quiet and
solitary and so happy withal: a well of good
humor and contentment which overflowed at
his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Some-
times I saw him at his work in the woods, felling
trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of in-
expressible satisfaction, and a_ salutation in
Canadian French, though he spoke English as
well. When I approached him he would sus-
pend 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
VISITORS 193
can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; I
want no better sport.’”’ Sometimes, when at
leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods
with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at
regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he
had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee
in a kettle; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner
the chickadees would sometimes come round and
alight on his arm and peck at the potato in his
fingers; and he said that he “‘liked to have the
little fellers about him.”
In him the animal man chiefly was developed.
In physical endurance and contentment he was
cousin to the pine and the rock. I asked him
once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after
working all day; and he answered with a sin-
cere and serious look, “‘Gorrappit, I never was
tired in my life.” But the intellectual and what
is called spiritual man in him were slumbering
as in an infant. He had been instructed only in
that innocent and ineffectual way in which the
Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which
the pupil is never educated to the degree of con-
sciousness, but only to the degree of trust and
reverence, and a child is not made a man, but
kept a child. When Nature made him, she gave
him a strong body and contentment for his por-
tion, and propped him on every side with rever-
ence and reliance, that he might live out his three-
score years and ten a child. He was so genuine
7
194 WALDEN
and unsophisticated that no introduction would
serve to introduce him, more than if you intro-
duced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had
got to find him out as you did. He would not
play any part. Men paid him wages for work,
and so helped to feed and clothe him; but he
never exchanged opinions with them. He was so
simply and naturally humble —if he can be
called humble who never aspires — that humility
was no distinct quality in him, nor could he con-
ceive 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 ex-
pect nothing of himself, but take all the respon-
sibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still.
He never heard the sound of praise. He par-
ticularly 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 hand-
writing which I meant, for he could write a re-
markably 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
VISITORS 195
kill him, and then there was spelling to be at-
tended to at the same time!
I heard that a distinguished wise man and re-
former asked him if he did not want the world
to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle
of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing
that the question had ever been entertained be-
fore, “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 [ had not seen
before, and I did not know whether he was as
wise as Shakspeare 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 arith-
metic, in which last he was considerably expert.
The former was a sort of cyclopeedia to him,
which he supposed to contain an abstract of
human knowledge, as indeed it does to a consid-
erable extent. I loved to sound him on the vari-
ous 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 be-
fore. Could he do without factories? I asked.
196 WALDEN
He had worn the home-made Vermont gray, he
said, and that was good. Could he dispense
with tea and coffee? Did this country afford any
beverage besides water? He had soaked hem-
lock leaves in water and drunk 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 insti-
tution, 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 impossi-
ble soon, to go on mortgaging some portion of
the creature each time to that amount. He
could defend many institutions better than any
philosopher, because, in describing them as they
concerned him, he gave the true reason for their
prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to
him any other. At another time, hearing Plato’s
definition of a man, — a biped without feathers,
—and that one exhibited a cock plucked and
called it Plato’s man, he thought it an important
difference that the knees bent the wrong way.
He would sometimes exclaim: ‘‘How I love to
talk! By George, I could talk all day!” I
asked him once, when I had not seen him for
many months, if he had got a new idea this sum-
mer. ‘‘Good Lord,”’ said he, “‘a man that has
VISITORS 197
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; you think of weeds.”
He would sometimes ask me first, on such occa-
sions, if [ 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 manceuvring, could get him
to take the spiritual view of things; the highest
that he appeared to conceive of was a simple ex-
pediency, 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 ex-
pressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet
he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like
virtues.
There was a certain positive originality, how-
ever slight, to be detected in him, and I occasion-
ally 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 reorig-
198 WALDEN
ination of many of the institutions of society.
Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to ex-
press himself distinctly, he always had a pre-
sentable 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 pre-
tend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as
Walden Pond was thought to be, though they
may be dark and muddy.
Many a traveller came out of his way to see me
and the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for
calling, asked for a glass of water. I told them
that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither,
offering to lend them a dipper. Far off as I lived,
I was not exempted from that annual visitation
which occurs, methinks, about the first of April,
when everybody is on the move; and I had my
share of good luck, though there were some
curious specimens among my visitors. Half-
witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere
came to see me; but I endeavored to make them
exercise all the wit they had, and make their con-
fessions to me; in such cases making wit the
theme of our conversation; and so was com-
VISITORS 199
pensated. 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 be-
tween the half and the whole. One day, in par-
ticular, an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper,
whom with others I had often seen used as fenc-
ing 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 any-
thing that is called humility, that he was “‘defi-
cient 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.
“IT have always been so,” said he, “‘from my
childhood; I never had much mind; I was not
like other children; I am weak in the head. It
was the Lord’s will, I suppose.”? And there he
was to prove the truth of his words. He was a
metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely met a
fellow-man on such promising ground, — it was
so simple and sincere and so true, all that he
said. And, true enough, in proportion as he ap-
peared 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
200 WALDEN
pauper had laid, our intercourse might go for-
ward 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 hospital-
ity, but to your hosprtal-ality ; who earnestly wish
to be helped, and preface their appeal with the in-
formation that they are resolved, for one thing,
never to help themselves. I require of a visitor
that he be not actually starving, though he may
have the very best appetite in the world, however
he got it. Objects of charity are not guests.
Men who did not know when their visit had
terminated, though I went about my business
again, answering them from greater and greater
remoteness. Men of almost every degree of wit
called on me in the migrating season. Some
who had more wits than they knew what to do
with; runaway. slaves with plantation manners,
who listened from time to time, like the fox in the
fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on
their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as
much as to say, —
“O Christian, will you send me back ?”
One real runaway slave among the rest, whom I
helped to forward toward the north star. Men of
one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a
Children in the woods by the pond
VISITORS 201
duckling; men of a thousand ideas, and un-
kempt 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 morn-
ing’s dew, — and become frizzled and mangy in
consequence; men of ideas instead of legs, a
sort of intellectual centipede that made you crawl
all over. One man proposed a book in which
visitors should write their names, as at the White
Mountains; but, alas ! I have too good a mem-
ory 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 occa-
sionally, it was obvious that they did not. Rest-
less 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 monop-
oly 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 con-
202 WALDEN
cluded 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 acci-
dent and death; to them life seemed full of dan-
ger, — 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 warn-
ing. To them the village was literally a com-
munity, a league for mutual defence, and you
would suppose that they would not go a-huckle-
berrying without a medicine chest. The amount
of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger
that he may die, though the danger must be al-
lowed 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.
VISITORS 203
I had more cheering visitors than the last.
Children come a-berrying, railroad men taking
a Sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fisher-
men and hunters, poets and philosophers, in
short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the
woods for freedom’s sake, and really left the vil-
lage behind, I was ready to greet with, — ‘‘ Wel-
come, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!”
for I had had communication with that race.
Vil
THE BEANFIELD
EANWHILE my beans, the length of
whose rows, added together, was seven
miles already planted, were impatient
to be hoed, for the earliest had grown consider-
ably before the latest were in the ground; in-
deed, they were not easily to be put off. What
was the meaning of this so steady and self-re-
specting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not.
I came to love my rows, my beans, though so
many more than I wanted. ‘They attached me
to the earth, and so I got strength like Anteeus.
But why should I raise them? Only Heaven
knows. ‘This was my curious labor all summer,
—to make this portion of the earth’s surface,
which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries,
johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits
and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse.
What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I
cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have
an eye to them; and this is my day’s work. It
is a fine broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are
the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and
THE BEANFIELD 205
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 johns-
wort and the rest, and break up their ancient
herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining
beans will be too tough for them, and go for-
ward to meet new foes.
When I was four years old, as I well remem-
ber, 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 in-
fant eyes. Almost the same johnswort springs
from the same perennial root in this pasture,
and even I have at length helped to clothe that
fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and
one of the results of my presence and influence
is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and
potato vines.
I planted about two acres and a half of up-
land; 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
206 WALDEN
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 an-
ciently 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 beanfield and throw dust
upon their heads. Early in the morning I
worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist
in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the
day the sun blistered my feet. There the sun
lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly back-
ward and forward over that yellow gravelly up-
land, 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 deep-
ened their tints by the time I had made another
bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil
about the bean stems, and encouraging this
weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil
express its summer thought in bean leaves and
blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper
THE BEANFIELD 207
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 hus-
bandry, I was much slower, and became much
more intimate with my beans than usual. But
labor of the hands, even when pursued to the
verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst
form of idleness. It has a constant and imper-
ishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a
classic result. A very agricola laboriosus was
I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln
and Wayland to nobody knows where; they
sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on
knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I
the home-staying laborious native of the soil.
But soon my homestead was out of their sight
and thought. It was the only open and culti-
vated field for a great distance on either side of
the road; so they made the most of it; and
sometimes the man in the field heard more of
travellers’ gossip and comment than was meant
. for his ear: “‘Beans so late! peas so late!”
for I continued to plant when others had begun
to hoe, — the ministerial husbandman had not
suspected it. “‘Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn
for fodder.’ ‘“‘Does he liwe there?” asks the
black bonnet of the gray coat; and the hard-
featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to
inquire what you are doing where he sees no
208 WALDEN
manure in the furrow, and recommends a little
chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be
ashes or plaster. But here were two acres and a
half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two
hands to draw it, — there being an aversion to
other carts and horses, — and chip dirt far away.
Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it
aloud with the fields which they had passed, so
that I came to know how I stood in the agricul-
tural world. This was one field not in Mr. Cole-
man’s report. And, by the way, who estimates
the value of the crop which Nature yields in the -
still wilder fields unimproved by man? ‘The crop
of English hay is carefully weighed, the moist-
ure 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 cul-
tivated fields; as some states are civilized, and
others half-civilized, and others savage or bar-
barous, 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
Rans des Vaches for them.
Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a
birch, sings the brown-thrasher — or red mavyis,
as some love to call him — all the morning, glad
of your society, that would find out another
THE BEANFIELD 209
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 ama-
teur Paganini performances on one string or
on twenty, have to do with your planting, and
yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was
a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had
entire faith.
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows
with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchroni-
cled nations who in primeval years lived under
these heavens, and their small implements of
war and hunting were brought to the light of
this modern day. They lay mingled with other
natural stones, some of which bore the marks
of having been burned by Indian fires, and some
by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass
brought hither by the recent cultivators of the
soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones,
that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and
was an’ accompaniment to my labor which
yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It
was no longer beans that I[ hoed, nor I that hoed
beans; and I remembered with as much pity
as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaint-
ances who had gone to the city to attend the
oratorios. The night-hawk circled overhead in
210 WALDEN
the sunny afternoons — for I sometimes made
a day of it — like a mote in the eye, or in heay-
en’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 ele-
mental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or some-
times I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling
high in the sky, alternately soaring and de-
scending, approaching and leaving one another,
as if they were the embodiment of my own
thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage of
wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a
slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier
haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe
turned up a sluggish, portentous, and outlandish
spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the
Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to
lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard
and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the in-
exhaustible entertainment which the country
offers.
THE BEANFIELD rag
On gala days the town fires its great guns,
which echo like popguns to these woods, and
some waifs of martial music occasionally pene-
trate 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 turnout of which I was
ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all
the day of some sort of itching and disease in
the horizon as if some eruption would break out
there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, un-
til at length some more favorable puff of wind,
making haste over the fields and up the Way-
land road, brought me information of the “‘train-
ers.” It seemed by the distant hum as if
somebody’s bees had swarmed, and that the
neighbors, according to Virgil’s advice, by a
faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of
their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call
them down into the hive again. And when the
sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased,
and the most favorable breezes told no tale, I
knew that they had got the last drone of them
all safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now
their minds were bent on the honey with which
it was smeared.
I felt proud to know that the liberties of Mas-
sachusetts and of our fatherland were in such
safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeing again
I was filled with an inexpressible confidence,
212 WALDEN
and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm
trust in the future.
When there were several bands of musicians,
it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows,
and all the buildings expanded and collapsed
alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a
really noble and inspiring strain that reached
these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame,
and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a
good relish, — for why should we always stand
for trifles? — and looked round for a wood-
chuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon.
These martial strains seemed as far away as
Palestine, and reminded me of a march of
crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tan-
tivy and tremulous motion of the elm-tree
tops which overhang the village. This was one
of the great days; though the sky had from
my clearing only the same everlastingly great
look that it wears daily, and I saw no differ-
ence in it.
It was a singular experience, that long ac-
quaintance 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
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THE BEANFIELD 213
other affairs. Consider the intimate and curi-
ous acquaintance one makes with various kinds
of weeds, —it will bear some iteration in the
account, for there was no little iteration in the
labor, — disturbing their delicate organizations
so ruthlessly, and making such invidious dis-
tinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks
of one species, and sedulously cultivating an-
other. That’s Roman wormwood, — that’s pig-
weed, — that’s sorrel, — that’s piper-grass, —
have at him, chop him up, turn his roots up-
ward to the sun, don’t let him have a fibre in the
shade, if you do he ’ll turn himself t’other side
up and be as green as a leek in two days. A
long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those
Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their
side. Daily the beans saw me come to their
rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of
their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy
dead. Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that
towered a whole foot above his crowding com-
rades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the
dust.
Those summer days which some of my con-
temporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston
and 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
214 WALDEN
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 expres-
sion, to serve a parable-maker one day. It was
on the whole a rare amusement, which, con-
tinued too long, might have become a dissipa-
tion. 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 letation whatsoever comparable to
this continual motion, repastination, and turn-
ing of the mould with the spade.”’ “The earth,”
he adds elsewhere, “‘especially if fresh, has a
certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the
salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives
it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir
we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings
and other sordid temperings being but the
vicars succedaneous to this improvement.”
Moreover, this being one of those “‘worn-out
and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sab-
bath,” had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby
thinks likely, attracted “‘vital spirits” from the
air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans.
But to be more particular, for it is complained
that Mr. Coleman has reported chiefly the ex-
pensive experiments of gentlemen farmers, my
outgoes were, —
THE BEANFIELD 215
Cy ia Ul bs eee! es ee $0 54
Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing. . . 750 'Too much
TES SE Se Si iaP i Ane amr Ei 3 124
EGET, Aly nna yon na aie x ates 1 33
Peas EMU Teh Daman MURRLN JRA GRID 3 0 40
PRURERINY SECO ILA NG: of) ce dade oes Dae) nade 0 06
White line for crow fence. .../.... -.. 4 0 02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours. . . 100
Huree and eart to pet crop)’. ss). 075
Ree ae at Na Ge Wace eee $14 724
My income was (patrem familias vendacem,
non emacem esse oportet), from
Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold .. . $1694
iver e . ( darge potatoes ee LE. FR Ie, oS 2 50
Nine “ Same ce e559 fey gh racy el det oh aa ld in on 2 25
RTE Aas Tanah ha CN al Bike ines aida ow. 6 nai MN Siig Rodda 100
ee Baa Meu id aN sg ote oe leks UR jon a 075
a ce) Bec Pa dN cay a RI is ae bali $23 44
Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said, of $8.714.
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,
216 WALDEN
sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all,
harvest as early as possible, if you would escape
frosts and have a fair and salable crop; you
may save much loss by this means.
This further experience also I gained. I said
to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with
so much industry another summer, but such
seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth,
simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and
see if they will not grow in this soil, even with
less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for
surely it has not been exhausted for these crops.
Alas! I said this to myself; but now another
summer is gone, and another, and another, and
I am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the -
seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the
seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had
lost their vitality and so did not come up. Com-
monly men will only be brave as their fathers
were brave, or timid. ‘This generation is very
sure to plant corn and beans each new year
precisely as the Indians did centuries ago, and
taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a
fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to my
astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for
the seventieth time at-least, and not for himself
to lie down in! But why should not the New
Englander try new adventures, and not lay so
much stress on his grain, his potato and grass
crop, and his orchards, — raise other crops
THE BEANFIELD Q17
than these? Why concern ourselves so much
about our beans for seed, and not be concerned
at all about a new generation of men? We
should really be fed and cheered if when we met
a man we were sure to see that some of the
qualities which I have named, which we all
prize more than those other productions, but
which are for the most part broadcast and float-
ing in the air, had taken root and grown in him.
Here comes such a subtile and ineffable quality,
for instance, as truth or justice, though the
slightest amount or new variety of it, along the
road. Our ambassadors should be instructed to
send home such seeds as these, and Congress
help to distribute them over all the land. We
should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity.
We should never cheat and insult and banish
one another by our meanness, if there were
present the kernel of worth and friendliness.
We should not meet thus in haste. Most men
I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have
time; they are busy about their beans. We
would not deal with a man thus plodding ever,
leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff between
his work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen
out of the earth, something more than erect,
like swallows alighted and walking on the
ground : —
“And as he spake, his wings would now and then
Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again,”
218 WALDEN
so that we should suspect that we might be con-
versing with an angel. Bread may not always
nourish us; but it always does us good, it even
takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us
supple and buoyant, when we knew not what
ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or
Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at
least, that husbandry was once a sacred art;
but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heed-
lessness by us, our object being to have large
farms and large crops merely. We have no
festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not ex-
cepting our Cattle-shows and so-called Thanks-
givings, by which the farmer expresses a sense
of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded
of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the
feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to
Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal
Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and
a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free,
of regarding the soil as property, or the means
of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is
deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and
the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He
knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says that
the profits of agriculture are particularly pious
or just (maximeque prus questus), and according
to Varro, the old Romans “called the same
earth Mother and Ceres, and thought that they
THE BEANFIELD 219
who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and
that they alone were left of the race of King
Saturn.”
We are wont to forget that the sun looks on
our cultivated fields and on the prairies and
forests without distinction. They all reflect and
absorb his rays alike, and the former make but
a small part of the glorious picture which he
beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth
is all equally cultivated like a garden. ‘There-
fore we should receive the benefit of his light
and heat with a corresponding trust and mag-
nanimity. What though I value the seed of
these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the
year? This broad field which I have looked
at so long looks not to me as the principal culti-
vator, but away from me to influences more
genial to it, which water and make it green.
These beans have results which are not harvested
by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks
partly? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica,
obsoletely speca, from spe, hope) should not be
the only hope of the husbandman; its kernel
or grain (granum, from gerendo, bearing) is not
all that it bears. How, then, can our harvest
fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance
of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the
birds? It matters little comparatively whether
the fields fill the farmer’s barns. ‘The true
husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the
220 WALDEN
squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods
will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish
his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim
to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his
mind not only his first but his last fruits also.
VII.
THE VILLAGE
A FTER hoeing, or perhaps reading and
writing, in the forenoon, [ usually bathed
again in the pond, swimming across one
of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of
labor from my person, or smoothed out the last
wrinkle which study had made, and for the
afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or
two I strolled to the village to hear some of the
gossip which is incessantly going on _ there,
circulating either from mouth to mouth, or
from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken
in homceopathic doses, was really as refreshing
in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peep-
ing 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
992 WALDEN
over to a neighbor’s to gossip. I went there fre-
quently to observe their habits. ‘The village
appeared to me a great news room; and on
one side to support it, as once at Redding &
Company’s on State Street, they kept nuts and
raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries.
Some have such a vast appetite for the former
commodity, that is, the news, and such sound
digestive organs, that they can sit forever in
public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer
and whisper through them like the Etesian winds,
or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numb-
ness and insensibility to pain, — otherwise it
would be often painful to hear, — without affect-
ing 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;
THE VILLAGE 223
and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they
kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at con-
venient places; and the houses were so arranged
as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and
fronting one another, so that every traveller
had to run the gantlet, and every man, woman,
and child might get a lick at him. Of course,
those who were stationed nearest to the head
of the line, where they could most see and be
seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the
highest prices for their places; and the few
straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where
long gaps in the line began to occur, and the
traveller could get over walls or turn aside into
cow paths, and so escape, paid a very slight
ground or window tax. Signs were hung out
on all sides to allure him; some to catch him
by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling
cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods
store and the jeweller’s; and others by the hair
or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoe-
maker, 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 pro-
ceeding at once boldly and without deliberation
to the goal, as is reeommended to those who run
the gantlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high
things, ike Orpheus, who, “‘loudly singing the
224 WALDEN
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 the fence. I was even accustomed
to make an irruption into some houses, where
I was well entertained, and after learning the
kernels and very last sieve-ful of news, what
had subsided, the prospects of war and peace,
and whether the world was likely to hold to-
gether much longer, I was let out through the
rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again.
It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in
town, to launch myself into the night, especially
if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail
from some bright village parlor or lecture room,
with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my
shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods,
having made all tight without and withdrawn
under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts,
leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even
tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I
had many a genial thought by the cabin fire
“‘as I sailed.”” I was never cast away nor dis-
tressed in any weather, though I encountered
some severe storms. It is darker in the woods,
even in common nights, than most suppose.
I frequently had to look up at the opening be-
tween the trees above the path in order to learn
ee
” * OVrnes a
f :
eau’s cabin
bor
7
d near
A winter roa
Ma
Py on
Be OM
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ty Spe nh ry
ue
aa
THE VILLAGE 225°
my route, and, where there was no cart-path,
to feel with my feet the faint track which I had
worn, or steer by the known relation of partic-
ular trees which I felt with my hands, passing
between two pines for instance, not more than
eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods,
invariably in the darkest night. Sometimes,
after coming home thus late in a dark and
muggy night, when my feet felt the path which
my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-
minded all the way, until I was aroused by hav-
ing 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 with-
out 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
8
226 WALDEN
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 out-
skirts, having come to town a-shopping in their
wagons, have been obliged to put up for the
night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call
have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling
the sidewalk only with their feet, and not know-
ing when they turned. It is a surprising and
memorable, as well as valuable experience, to
be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow
storm, even by day, one will come out upon a
well-known road and yet find it impossible to
tell which way leads to the village. Though he
knows that he has travelled it a thousand times,
he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it 1s 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 con-
stantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots
by certain well-known beacons and head-lands,
and if we go beyond our usual course we still
carry in our minds the bearing of some neigh-
boring 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
THE VILLAGE 227
world to be lost, —do we appreciate the vast-
ness and strangeness of Nature. Every man
has to learn the points of compass again as often
as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstrac-
tion. Not till we are lost, in other words, not
till we have lost the world, do we begin to find
ourselves, and realize where we are and the
infinite extent of our relations.
One afternoon, near the end of the first
summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe
from the cobbler’s, I was seized and put into
jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did
not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of,
the state, which buys and sells men, women,
and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-
house. I had gone down to the woods for other
purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will
pursue and paw him with their dirty institu-
tions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong
to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true,
I might have resisted forcibly with more or less
effect, might have run ‘“‘amok’’ against society ;
but I preferred that society should run “‘amok”’
against me, it being the desperate party. How-
ever, I was released the next day, obtained my
mended shoe, and returned to the woods in
season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair-
Haven Hill. I was never molested by any
person but those who represented the state.
I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which
228 WALDEN
held my papers, not even a nail to put over my
latch or windows. I never fastened my door
night or day, though I was to be absent several
days; not even when the next fall I spent a
fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my
house was more respected than if it had been
surrounded by a file of soldiers. ‘The tired
rambler could rest and warm himself by my
fire, the literary amuse himself with the few
books on my table, or the curious, by opening
my closet door, see what was left of my dinner,
and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet,
though many people of every class came this
way to the pond, I suffered no serious incon-
venience from these sources, and I never missed
anything but one small book, a volume of Homer,
which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this
I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this
time. I am convinced that if all men were to
live as simply as I then did, thieving and rob-
bery would be unknown. ‘These take place only
in communities where some have got more than
is sufficient while others have not enough. The
Pope’s Homers would soon get properly dis-
tributed. —
“Nec bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes.”
*‘Nor wars did men molest,
When only beechen bowls were in request.”
THE VILLAGE 229
“You who govern public affairs, what need have
you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and
the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a
superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a
common man are like the grass; the grass, when
the wind passes over it, bends.”
IX
THE PONDS
OMETIMES, having had a surfeit of hu-,
S man 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 huckle-
berries and blueberries on Fair-Haven Hill, and
laid up a store for several days. The fruits do
not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of
them, nor to him who raises them for the market.
There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take
that way. If you would know the flavor of
huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge.
It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have
tasted huckleberries who never plucked them.
A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have
not been known there since they grew on her
three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of
the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off
in the market cart, and they become mere prov-
ender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one
il
i
Ves
Fair-Haven
In the woods near
THE PONDS 231
innocent huckleberry can be transported thither
from the country’s hills.
Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the
day, I joined some impatient companion who
had been fishing on the pond since morning, as
silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf,
and, after practising various kinds of philosophy,
had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived,
that he belonged to the ancient sect of Ccoeno-
bites. 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 to-
gether on the pond, he at one end of the boat,
and I at the other; but not many words passed
between us, for he had grown deaf in his later
years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm,
which harmonized well enough with my philos-
ophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one
of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to re-
member 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.
232 WALDEN
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat
playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I
seemed to have charmed, hovering around me,
and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom,
which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest.
Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously,
from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a
companion, and making a fire close to the water’s
edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we
caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a
thread; and when we had done, far in the night,
threw the burning brands high into the air like
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, we took our way to the
haunts of men again. But now I had made my
home by the shore.
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor
till the family had all retired, I have returned to
the woods, and, partly with a view to the next
day’s dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing
from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls
and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the
creaking note of some unknown bird close at
hand. These experiences were very memorable
and valuable to me, — anchored in forty feet of
water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore,
surrounded sometimes by thousands of small
perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with
THE PONDS 233
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, in-
dicative of some life prowling about its extrem-
ity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there,
and slow to make up its mind. At length you
slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned
pout squeaking and squirming to the upper
air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights,
when your thoughts had wandered to vast and
cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this
faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams
and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if I
might next cast my line upward into the air, as
well as downward into this element which was
scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes
as it were with one hook.
The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale,
and, though very beautiful, does not approach to
grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has
not long frequented it, or lived by its shore; yet
this pond is so remarkable for its depth and
purity as to merit a particular description. It
is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long
and a mile and three quarters in circumference,
and contains about sixty-one and a half acres;
a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak
234 WALDEN
woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except
by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding
hills rise abruptly from the water to the height
of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast
and east they attain to about one hundred and
one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a
quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclu-
sively woodland. All our Concord waters have
two colors at least, one when viewed at a dis-
tance, and another, more proper, close at hand.
The first depends more on the light, and follows
the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they ap-
pear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated,
and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy
weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color.
The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and
green another without any perceptible change in
the atmosphere. I have seen our river, when,
the landscape being covered with snow, both
water and ice were almost as green as grass.
Some consider blue “‘to be the color of pure
water, whether liquid or solid.”’ But, looking
directly down into our waters from a boat, they
are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is
blue at one time and green at another, even from
the same point of view. Lying between the earth
and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both.
Viewed from a hill top it reflects the color of the
sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint
next the shore where you can see the sand, then
THE PONDS 235
alight green, which gradually deepens to a uni-
form dark green in the body of the pond. In some
lights, viewed even from a hill top, it is of a
vivid green next the shore. Some have referred
this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is
equally green there against the railroad sand-
bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are ex-
panded, and it may be simply the result of the
prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand.
Such is the color of its iris. This is that portion,
also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed
by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom,
and also transmitted through the earth, melts
first and forms a narrow canal about the still
frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when
much agitated, in clear weather, so that the
surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the
right angle, or because there is more light mixed
with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker
blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being
on its surface, and looking with divided vision,
so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a
matchless and indescribable light blue, such as
watered or changeable silks and sword blades
suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alter-
nating with the original dark green on the oppo-
site 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
236 WALDEN
before sundown. Yet a single glass of its water
held up to the light is as colorless as an equal
quantity of air. It is well-known that a large
plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as
the makers say, to its ““body,”’ but a small piece
of the same will be colorless. How large a body
of Walden water would be required to reflect a
green tint I have never proved. The water of
our river is black or a very dark brown to one
looking directly down on it, and like that of most
ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it
a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such
crystalline purity that the body of the bather
appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more un-
natural, which, as the 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 be discerned at the depth of twenty-
five or thirty feet. Paddling over it, you may see
many feet beneath the surface the schools of
perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long,
yet the former easily distinguished by their
transverse bars, and you think that they must
be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there.
Once, in the winter, many years ago, when I had
been cutting holes through the ice in order to
catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my
axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius
had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly
°
1Ver in Winter
The Concord R
THE PONDS 237
into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-
five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the
ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the
axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with
its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with
the pulse of the pond; and there it might have
stood erect and swaying till in the course of time
the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it.
Making another hole directly over it with an ice
chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest
birch which I could find in the neighborhood
with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I
attached to its end, and, letting it down care-
fully, 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, except-
ing one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep
that in many places a single leap will carry you
into water over your head; and were it not for its
remarkable transparency, that would be the last
to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the oppo-
site side. Some think it is bottomless. It is no-
where muddy, and a casual observer would say
that there were no weeds at all in it; and of notice-
able 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 bul-
rush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a
238 WALDEN
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 succes-
sive 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 per-
chance have drunk 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 suif-
ficed them. Even then it had commenced to
rise and fall, and had clarified its waters, and
colored them of the hue they now wear, and ob-
THE PONDS 239
tained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden
Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews.
Who knows in how many unremembered na-
tions’ literatures this has been the Castalian
Fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in
the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first water
which Concord wears in her coronet.
Yet perchance the first who came to this well
have left some trace of their footsteps. I have
been surprised to detect encircling the pond,
even where a thick wood has just been cut down
on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep
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 occu-
pants 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, appear-
ing 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,
240 WALDEN
though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is
commonly higher in the winter and lower in the
summer, though not corresponding to the gen-
eral 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, very
deep water on one side, on which I helped boil
a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main
shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been
possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the
other hand, my friends used to listen with incre-
dulity when I told them that a few years later I
was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded
cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only
shore they knew, which place was long since
converted into a meadow. But the pond has
risen steadily for two years, and now, in the
summer of *52, is just five feet higher than when
I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years
ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow.
This makes a difference of level, at the outside,
of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by
the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount,
and this overflow must be referred to causes
which affect the deep springs. This same sum-
mer the pond has begun to fall again. It is
remarkable that this fluctuation, whether period-
ical or not, appears thus to require many years
for its accomplishment. I have observed one
THE PONDS 241
rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a
dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again
be as low as I have ever known it. Flint’s Pond,
a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance oc-
casioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller
intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden,
and recently attained their greatest height at
the same time with the latter. The same is true,
as far as my observation goes, of White Pond.
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals
serves this use at least: the water standing at
this great height for a year or more, though it
makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the
shrubs and trees which have sprung up about
its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches,
alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again,
leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many
ponds, and all waters which are subject to a
daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is
lowest. On the side of the pond next my house,
a row of pitch-pines fifteen feet high has been
killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus
a stop put to their encroachments; and their
size indicates how many years have elapsed
since the last rise to this height. By this fluctu-
ation 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
242 WALDEN
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 here, which rose as high into the heavens as
the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they
used much profanity, as the story goes, though
this vice is one of which the Indians were never
guilty, and while they were thus engaged the
hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old
squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her
the pond was named. It has been conjectured
that when the hill shook these stones rolled
down its side and became the present shore. It
is very certain, at any rate, that once there was
no pond here, and now there is one; and this
Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with
the account of that ancient settler whom I have
mentioned, who remembers so well when he
first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin
vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel
asogs huojs ag Gh
THE PONDS 243
pointed steadily downward, and he concluded
to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still
think that they are hardly to be accounted for
by the action of the waves on these hills; but I
observe that the surrounding hills are remark-
ably full of the same kind of stones, so that they
have been obliged to pile them up in walls on
both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond;
and, moreover, there are most stones where the
shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it
is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver.
If the name was not derived from that of some
English locality, — Saffron Walden, for in-
stance, — one might suppose that it was called,
originally, Walled-in Pond.
The pond was my well ready dug. For four
months in the year its water is as cold as it is
pure at all times; and I think that it is then as
good as any, if not the best, in the town. In the
winter, all water which is exposed to the air is
colder than springs and wells which are pro-
tected from it. The temperature of the pond
water which had stood in the room where I sat
from five o’clock in the afternoon till noon the
next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the ther-
mometer having been up to 65° or 70° some of
the time, owing partly to the sun on the roof,
was 42°, or one degree colder than the water of
one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn.
The temperature of the Boiling Spring the same
Q44 WALDEN
day was 45°, or the warmest of any water tried,
though it is the coldest that I know of in summer,
when, besides, 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 ac-
count 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 dur-
ing the day; though I also resorted to a spring
in the neighborhood. It was as good when a
week old as the day it was dipped, and had no
taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week
in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only
bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade
of his camp to be independent of the luxury of
ice.
There have been caught in Walden, pickerel,
one weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of
another which carried off a reel with great veloc-
ity, 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 recol-
lection of a little fish some five inches long, with
THE PONDS Q45
silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat
dace-like in its character, which I mention here
chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless,
this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel,
though not abundant, are its chief boast. I have
seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at
least three different kinds: a long and shallow
one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the
river; a bright golden kind, with greenish re-
flections and remarkably deep, which is the most
common here; and another, golden-colored,
and shaped like the last, but peppered on the
sides with small dark brown or black spots, in-
termixed with a few faint blood-red ones very
much like a trout. ‘The specific name reticu-
latus would not apply to this; it should be
guttatus rather. ‘These are all very firm fish,
and weigh more than their size promises. ‘The
shiners, pouts, and perch, also, and indeed ail
the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much
cleaner, handsomer, and firmer fleshed than
those in the river and most other ponds, as the
water is purer, and they can easily be distin-
guished from them. Probably many ichthyolo-
gists would make new varieties of some of them.
There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises,
and a few mussels in it; muskrats and minks
leave their traces about it, and occasionally a
travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when
I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed
246 WALDEN
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 some-
times disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-
pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever
profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven.
At most, it tolerates one annual loon. ‘These
are all the animals of consequence which fre-
quent it now.
You may see from a boat, in calm weather,
near the sandy eastern shore, where the water
is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other
parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a
dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, con-
sisting 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 lam-
preys here, I know not by what fish they could be
made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin.
These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom.
The shore is irregular enough not to be mo-
notonous. I have in my mind’s eye the western
THE PONDS 247
indented with deep bays, the bolder northern,
and the beautifully scalloped southern shore,
where successive capes overlap each other and
suggest unexplored coves between. ‘The forest
has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly
beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a
small lake amid hills which rise from the water’s
edge; for the water in which it is reflected not
only makes the best foreground in such a case,
but, with its winding shore, the most natural
and agreeable boundary to it. There is no raw-
ness 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 ex-
pand on the water side, and each sends forth its
most vigorous branch in that direction. ‘There
Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the
eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs
of the shore to the highest trees. ‘There are few
traces of man’s hand to be seen. ‘The water
laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and
expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking
into which the beholder measures the depth of
his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the
shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it,
and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its
overhanging brows.
Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the
east end of the pond, in a calm September after-
248 WALDEN
noon, 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 atmos-
phere from another. You would think that you
could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and
that the swallows which skim over might perch
on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below the
line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived.
As you look over the pond westward you are
obliged to employ both your hands to defend
your eyes against the reflected as well as the true
sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between
the two, you survey its surface critically, it is
literally as smooth as glass, except where the
skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over
its whole extent, by their motions in the sun pro-
duce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, per-
chance, 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 are is revealed; or here and there, per-
haps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface,
which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again.
THE PONDS 249
It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed,
and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful
like the imperfections in glass. You may often
detect a yet smoother and darker water, sep-
arated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb,
boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From
_a hill top you can see a fish leap in almost any
part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect
from this smooth surface but it manifestly dis-
turbs 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 con-
spicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines,
but the skaters glide over it without rippling it
perceptibly. When the surface is considerably
agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on
it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their
havens and adventurously glide forth from the
shore by short impulses till they completely
cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one
of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth
of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump
on such a height as this, overlooking the pond,
and study the dimpling circles which are inces-
250 WALDEN
santly inscribed on its otherwise invisible sur-
face amid the reflected skies and trees. Over
this great expanse there is no disturbance but it
is thus at once gently smoothed away and as-
suaged, 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 con-
stant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing
of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills
of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable.
How peaceful the phenomena of the lake!
Again the works of man shine as in the spring.
Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb
sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered
with dew in a spring morning. Every motion
of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light;
and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo!
In such a day in September or October, Wal-
den 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 sur-
face of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence.
Nations come and go without defiling it. It 1s
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
THE PONDS 251
which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept
and dusted by the sun’s hazy brush, — this the
light dust-cloth,— which retains no breath that
is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as
clouds high above its surface, and be reflected
in its bosom still.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in
the air. It is continually receiving new life
and motion from above. It is intermediate in
its nature between land and sky. On land only
the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is
rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze
dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light.
It is remarkable that we can look down on its
surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on
the surface of air at length, and mark where a
still subtler spirit sweeps over it.
The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear
in the latter part of October, when the severe
frosts have come; and then and in November,
usually, in a calm day, there is absolutely noth-
ing to ripple the surface. One November after-
noon, in the calm at the end of a rain storm of
several days’ duration, when the sky was still
completely overcast and the air was full of mist,
I observed that the pond was remarkably smooth,
so that it was difficult to distinguish its surface;
though it no longer reflected the bright tints of
October, but the sombre November colors of
the surrounding hills. ‘Though I passed over it
252 WALDEN
as gently as possible, the slight undulations pro-
duced 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 sur-
face, I saw here and there at a distance a faint
glimmer, as if some skater insects which had
escaped the frosts might be collected there, or,
perchance, the surface, being so smooth, be-
trayed where a spring welled up from the bot-
tom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I
was surprised to find myself surrounded by
myriads of small perch, about five inches long,
of a rich bronze color in the green water, sport-
ing there and constantly rising to the surface
and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on
it. In such transparent and seemingly bottom-
less 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, ap-
parently 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 sud-
den plash and rippling with their tails, as if one
THE PONDS 253
had struck the water with a brushy bough, and
instantly took refuge in the depths. At length
the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves
began to run, and the perch leaped much higher
than before, half out of water, a hundred black
points, three inches long, at once above the sur-
face. Even as late as the fifth of December, one
year, I saw some dimples on the surface, and
thinking it was going to rain hard immediately,
the air being full of mist, I made haste to take
my place at the oars and row homeward; al-
ready the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though
I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a
thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples
ceased, for they were produced by the perch,
which the noise of my oars had scared into the
depths, and I saw their schools dimly disap-
pearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all.
An old man who used to frequent this pond
nearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with
surrounding forests, tells me that in those days
he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and
other water fowl, and that there were many eagles
about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an
old log canoe which he found on the shore. It
was made of two white-pine logs dug out and
pinned together, and was cut off square at the
ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted a great
many years before it became water-logged and
perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know
Q54 WALDEN
whose it was; it belonged to the pond. He used
to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hick-
ory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, |
who lived by the pond before the Revolution,
told him once that there was an iron chest at
the bottom, and that he had seen it. Some-
times it would come floating up to the shore;
but when you went toward it, it would go back
into deep water and disappear. I was pleased
to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place
of an Indian one of the same material but more
graceful construction, which perchance had first
been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were,
fell into the water, to float there for a genera-
tion, the most proper vessel for the lake. I re-
member 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
THE PONDS 255
of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour,
when I was younger, floating over its surface as
the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to
the middle, and lying on my back across the
seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake,
until I was aroused by the boat touching the
sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates
had impelled me to; days when idleness was
the most attractive and productive industry.
Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring
to spend thus the most valued part of the day;
for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours
and summer days, and spent them lavishly;
nor do I regret that I did not waste more of
them in the workshop or the teacher’s desk.
But since I left those shores the 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?
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
256 WALDEN
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 the ribs of the bloated
pest.
Nevertheless, of all the characters I have
known, perhaps Walden wears best, and _ best
preserves its purity. Many men have been
likened to it, but few deserve that honor.
Though the wood-choppers have laid bare first
this shore and then that, and the Irish have
built their sties by it, and the railroad has in-
fringed 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 per-
manent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is peren-
nially young, and I may stand and see a swallow
dip apparently to pick an insect from its sur-
face 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
a MPL
‘we
ed
? =
ill < Bint Rak te aie BR BEB
5 es
THE PONDS 257
many years ago; where a forest was cut down
last winter another is springing up by its shore
as lustily as ever; the same thought is welling
up to its surface that was then; it is the same
liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker,
ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a
brave man, surely, in whom there was no guile!
He rounded this water with his hand, deepened
and clarified it in his thought, and in his will
bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face
that it is visited by the same reflection; and I
can almost say, Walden, is it you?
It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o’er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.
The cars never pause to look at it; yet I
fancy that the engineers and firemen and brake-
men, 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 be-
held 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
9
258 WALDEN
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 com-
ing from that quarter, and on the other directly
and manifestly to Concord River, which is
lower, by a similar chain of ponds through
which in some other geological period it may
have flowed, and by a little digging, which God
forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If
by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit
in the woods, so long, it has acquired such
wonderful purity, who would not regret that
the comparatively impure waters of Flint’s
Pond should be mingled with it, or itself
should ever go to waste its sweetness in the
ocean wave ?
Flint’s or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our great-
est 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 recrea-
tion. 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.
THE PONDS 259
I went a-chestnutting there in the fall, on windy
days, when the nuts were dropping into the
water and were washed to my feet; and one
day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh
spray blowing in my face, I came upon the
mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and
hardly more than the impression of its flat
bottom left amid the rushes; yet its model was
sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed
pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a
wreck as one could imagine on the sea-shore,
and had as good a moral. It is by this time
mere vegetable mould and_ undistinguishable
pond shore, through which rushes and flags
have pushed up. I used to admire the ripple
marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end
of this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of
the wader by the pressure of the water, and the
rushes which grew in Indian file, in waving
lines, corresponding to these marks, rank be-
hind rank, as if the waves had planted them.
There also I have found, in considerable quan-
tities, curious balls, composed apparently of
fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from
half an inch to four inches in diameter, and per-
fectly 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
260 WALDEN
the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the
smallest are made of equally coarse materials,
half an inch long, and they are produced only
at one season of the year. Moreover, the waves,
I suspect, do not so much construct as wear
down a material which has already acquired
consistency. ‘They preserve their form when
dry for an indefinite period.
Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our
nomenclature. What right had the unclean and
stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky
water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare,
to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who
loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar,
or a bright cent, in which he could see his own
brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks
which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers
grown into crooked and horny talons from the
long habit of grasping harpy-like;— so it is
not named for me. I go not there to see him
nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who
never bathed in it, who never loved it, who
never protected it, who never spoke a good
word for it, nor thanked God that He had
made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes
that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds
which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow
by its shores, or some wild man or child the
thread of whose history is interwoven with its
own; not from him who could show no title
THE PONDS 261
to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor
or legislature gave him,—him who thought
only of its money value; whose presence per-
chance cursed all the shore; who exhausted the
land around it, and would fain have exhausted
the waters within it; who regretted only that
it was not English hay or cranberry meadow, —
there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his
eyes, — and would have drained and sold it for
the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill,
and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I
respect not his labors, his farm where every-
thing has its price; who would carry the land-
scape, who would carry his God to market if
he could get anything for Him; who goes to
market for his god as it is; on whose farm
nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops,
whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no
fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of
his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till
they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty
that enjoys true wealth. Farmers are respect-
able and interesting to me in proportion as they
are poor,— poor farmers. A model farm!
where the house stands like a fungus in a muck-
heap, chambers for men, horses, oxen, and
swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all contiguous
to one another! Stocked with men! A great
grease-spot, redolent of manures and _ butter-
milk! Under a high state of cultivation, being
262 WALDEN
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 land-
scape are to be named after men, let them be
the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our
lakes receive as true names at least as the
Icarian Sea, where “‘still the shore” a “‘brave
attempt resounds.”’
Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way
to Flint’s; Fair-Haven, an expansion of Con-
cord River, said to contain some seventy acres,
is a mile southwest; and White Pond, of about
forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond Fair-
Haven. This is my lake country. These, with
Concord River, are my water privileges; and
night and day, year in and year out, they grind
such grist as I carry to them.
Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and
I myself have profaned Walden, perhaps the
most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all
our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond;
ean poor name from its commonness, whether
derived from the remarkable purity of its waters
or the color of its sands. In these as in other
respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden.
They are so much alike that you would say they
must be connected under ground. It has the
same stony shore, and its waters are of the same
Pd
THE PONDS 263
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 reflec-
tion from the bottom tinges them, its waters are
of a misty bluish green or glaucous color. Many
years since I used to go there to collect the sand
by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I
have continued to visit it ever since. One who
frequents it proposes to call it Virid Lake. Per-
haps it might be called Yellow-Pine Lake, from
the following circumstance. About fifteen years
ago you could see the top of a pitch-pine of the
kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it is
not a distinct species, projecting above the sur-
face in deep water, many rods from the shore.
It was even supposed by some that the pond
had sunk, and this was one of the primitive
forest that formerly stood there. I find that
even so long ago as 1792, in a “Topographical
Description of the Town of Concord,” by one
of its citizens, in the Collections of the Massa-
chusetts 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 sur-
face of the water; the top of this tree is broken
off, and at that place measures fourteen inches
in diameter.”’ In the spring of *49 I talked with
264 WALDEN
the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury,
who told me that it was he who got out this tree
ten or fifteen years before. As near as he could
remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from
the shore, where the water was thirty or forty
feet deep. It was in the winter, and he had
been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had
resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of
his neighbors, he would take out the old yellow
pine. He sawed a channel in the ice toward the
shore, and hauled it over and along and out on
to the ice with oxen; but, before he had gone
far in his work, he was surprised to find that it
was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the
branches pointing down, and the small end firmly
fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a
foot in diameter at the big end, and he had ex-
pected 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 but. 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 but-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 bot-
tom, where, owing to the undulation of the
THE PONDS 265
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 (Uris
versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, ris-
ing from the stony bottom all around the shore,
where it is visited by humming birds in June,
and the color both of its bluish blades and its
flowers, and especially their reflections, are in
singular harmony with the glaucous water.
White Pond and Walden are great crystals
on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If
they were permanently congealed, and small
enough to be clutched, they would, perchance,
be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to
adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid,
and ample, and secured to us and our succes-
sors forever, we disregard them, and run after
the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure
to have a market value; they contain no muck.
How much more beautiful than our lives, how
much more transparent than our characters,
are they! We never learned meanness of them.
How much fairer than the pool before the farm-
er’s door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the
clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human
inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds
with their plumage and their notes are in har-
266 WALDEN
mony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden
conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of
Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from
the towns where they reside. ‘Talk of heaven!
ye disgrace earth.
X
BAKER FARM
OMETIMES I rambled to pine groves,
S 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 wor-
ship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond
Flint’s Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary
blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to
stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper
covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or
to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in fes-
toons from the white-spruce trees, and _ toad-
stools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the
ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the
stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles ;
where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red
alder-berry glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork
erooves and crushes the hardest woods in its
folds, and the wild-holly berries make the be-
holder forget his home with their beauty, and he
is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild
forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. In-
268 WALDEN
stead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a
visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare
in this neighborhood, standing far away in the
middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a
wood or swamp, or on a hill top: such as the
black-birch, of which we have some handsome
specimens two feet in diameter; its cousin the
yellow-birch, with its loose golden vest, per-
fumed like the first; the beech, which has so neat
a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in
all its details, of which, excepting scattered speci-
mens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees
left in the township, supposed by some to have
been planted by the pigeons that were once
baited with beech nuts near by; it is worth the
while to see the silver grain sparkle when you
split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the
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 abut-
ment of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower
stratum of the atmosphere, tingeing the grass and
leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked
through colored crystal.’ It was a lake of rain-
bow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like
The swampy lowland
BAKER FARM 269
a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have
tinged my employments and life. As I walked
on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at
the halo of light around my shadow, and would
fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who
visited me declared that the shadows of some
Irishmen before him had no halo about them,
that it was only natives that were so distinguished.
Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that,
after a certain terrible dream or vision which he
had during his confinement in the castle of St.
Angelo, a resplendent light appeared over the
shadow of his head at morning and evening,
whether he was in Italy or France, and it was par-
ticularly conspicuous when the grass was moist
with dew. This was probably the same phenom-
enon 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
270 WALDEN
retreat of which a poet has since sung, begin-
ning, —
‘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.”
I thought of living there before I went to Walden.
I “‘hooked”’ the apples, leaped the brook, and
scared the musquash and the trout. It was one
of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long
before one, in which many events may happen, a
large portion of our natural life, though it was
already half spent when I started. By the way
there came up a shower, which compelled me
to stand half an hour under a pine, piling
boughs over my head, and wearing my hand-
kerchief 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 sud-
denly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder
began to rumble with such emphasis that I
could do no more than listen to it. The gods
must be proud, thought I, with such forked
flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So
I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which
stood half a mile from any road, but so much the
nearer to the pond, and had long been unin-
habited : —
BAKER FARM Q71
**And here a poet builded,
In the completed years,
For behold a trivial 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 wet and hunger in-
quisitively 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
Q72 WALDEN
the rain, stalked about the room like members of
the family, too humanized methought to roast
well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked
at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host
told me his story, how hard he worked “‘bog-
ging’ for a neighboring farmer, turning up a
meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of
ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with
manure for one year, and his little broad-faced
son worked cheerfully at his father’s side the
while, not knowing how poor a bargain the
latter had made. I tried to help him with my
experience, telling him that he was one of my
nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came
a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was
getting my living like himself; that I lived in a
tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost
more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his
commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he
might in a month or two build himself a palace
of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor
butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not
have to work to get them; again, as I did not
work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it
cost me but a trifle for my food: but as he began
with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and
beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and
when he had worked hard he had to eat hard
again to repair the waste of his system, — and
so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was
UAD 7 AIYDT 94 |,
©
ae
ATS ar eee
- ‘eS
a att
BAKER FARM 273
broader than it was long, for he was discon-
tented and wasted his life into the bargain; and
yet he had rated it as a gain, in coming to Amer-
ica, 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 with-
out these, and where the state does not endeavor
to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and
other superfluous expenses which directly or in-
directly result from the use of such things. For
I purposely talked to him as if he were a philoso-
pher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all
the meadows on the earth were left in a wild
state, if that were the consequence of men’s be-
ginning to redeem themselves. A man will not
need to study history to find out what is best for
his own culture. But alas! the culture of an
Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with
a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he
worked so hard at bogging, he required thick
boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon
soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and
thin clothing, which cost not half so much,
though he might think that I was dressed like a
gentleman (which, however, was not the case),
and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a
recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many
fish as I should want for two days, or earn
enough money to support me a week. If he and
Q74 WALDEN
his family would live simply, they might all go
a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amuse-
ment. 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 reck-
. oning to them, and they saw not clearly how to
make their port so; therefore I suppose they still
take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face,
giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its
massive columns with any fine entering wedge,
and rout it in detail; — thinking to deal with it
roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But
they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage, —
living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic,
and failing so.
*“Do you ever fish?” I asked. “Oh, yes, I
catch a mess now and then when I am lying by;
good perch I catch.” “‘What’s your bait?” “I
catch shiners with fish-worms, and bait the perch
with them.” ‘“‘You’d better go now, John,”
said his wife, with glistening and hopeful face;
but John demurred.
The shower was now over, and a rainbow
above the eastern woods promised a fair even-
ing; so 1 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
BAKER FARM 275
quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket
irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary
vessel was selected, water was seemingly dis-
tilled, and after consultation and long delay
passed out to the thirsty one, — not yet suffered
to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel sustains
life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and
excluding the motes by a skilfully directed under-
current, I drank to genuine hospitality the
heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish
in such cases when manners are concerned.
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 mead-
ows, 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, — far-
ther and wider, — and rest thee by many brooks
and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember
thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free
from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.
Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the
night overtake thee everywhere at home. There
are no larger fields than these, no worthier games
276 WALDEN
than may here be played. Grow wild according
to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes,
which will never become English hay. Let the
thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to
farmers’ crops? that is not its errand to thee.
Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to
carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy
trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it
not. Through want of enterprise and faith men
are where they are, buying and selling, and
spending their lives like serfs.
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 ye 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
Fair-Haven Pond
so a
sein
NE Se ee
SR renee tama eB
BAKER FARM Q77
own breath over again; their shadows morning
and evening reach farther than their daily steps.
We should come home from far, from adventures,
and perils, and discoveries every day, with new
experience and character.
Before I had reached the pond some fresh
impulse had brought out John Field, with al-
tered mind, letting go “‘bogging”’ ere this sunset.
But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins
while I was catching a fair string, and he said it
was his luck; but when he changed seats in the
boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field!
—J trust he does not read this, unless he will
improve by it, — thinking to live by some de-
rivative old country mode in this primitive new
country, —to catch perch with shiners. It is
good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon
all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor,
with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his
Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to
rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their
wading, webbed, bog-trotting feet get talaria to
their heels.
XI
HIGHER LAWS
S I came home through the woods with my
A string of fish, trailing my pole, it being
now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a
woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a
strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly
tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I
was hungry then, except for that wildness which
he represented. Once or twice, however, while
I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the
woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange
abandonment, seeking some kind of venison
which I might devour, and no morsel could have
been too savage for me. ‘The wildest scenes had
become unaccountably familiar. I found in my-
self, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or,
as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men,
and another toward a primitive rank and savage
one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild
not less than the good. ‘The wildness and ad-
venture that are in fishing still recommended it
to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life
and spend my day more as the animals do.
HIGHER LAWS 279
Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to
hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaint-
ance 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, wood-choppers, and others,
spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a
peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are
often in a more favorable mood for observing
her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than phil-
osophers 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, or account of human expe-
rience.
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
280 WALDEN
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 com-
mon. 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 some-
times to add fish to my fare for variety. I have
actually fished from the same kind of necessity
that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I
might conjure up against it was all factitious,
and concerned my philosophy more than my
feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had
long felt differently about fowling, and sold my
gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am
less humane than others, but I did not perceive
that my feelings were much affected. I did not
pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit.
As for fowling, during the last years that I car-
ried 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
HIGHER LAWS 281
only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet
notwithstanding the objection on the score of
humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally
valuable sports are ever substituted for these;
and when some of my friends have asked me
anxiously about their boys, whether they should
. let them hunt, I have answered, yes, — remem-
bering that it was one of the best parts of my
education, — make them hunters, though sports-
men only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at
last, so that they shall not find game large
enough for them in this or any vegetable wilder-
ness, — hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus
far I am of the opinion of Chaucer’s nun, who
“‘yave not of the text a pulled hen
That saith that hunters ben not holy men.”
There is a period in the history of the individual,
as of the race, when the hunters are the “‘best
men,” as the Algonquins called them. We can-
not but pity the boy who has never fired a gun;
he is no more humane, while his education has
been sadly neglected. This was my answer with
respect to those youths who were bent on this
pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow
-it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age
of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature
which holds its life by the same tenure that he
does. The hare in its extremity cries like a
child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies
282 WALDEN
do not always make the usual philanthropic
distinctions.
Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction
to the forest, and the most original part of him-
self. 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 shep-
herd’s dog, but is far from being the Good Shep-
herd. 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 see-
ing 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
HIGHER LAWS 283
were boys; but now they are too old and dig-
nified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no
more forever. Yet even they expect to go to
heaven at last. If the legislature regards it,
it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to
be used there; but they know nothing about
the hook of hooks with which to angle for the
pond itself, empaling the legislature for a bait.
Thus, even in civilized communities, the em-
bryo 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 in-
stinct 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 be-
longs to the lower orders of creation; yet with
every year I am less a fisherman, though with-
out more humanity or even wisdom; at present
Iam no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were
to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted
to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Be-
sides, there is something essentially unclean
about this diet, and all flesh, and I began to see
where housework commences, and whence the
284 WALDEN
endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy
and respectable appearance, each day, to keep
the house sweet and free from all ill odors and
sights. Having been my own butcher and scul-
lion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom
the dishes were served up, I can speak from an
unusually complete experience. The practical
objection to animal food in my case was its un-
cleanness; and, besides, when I had caught
and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they
seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was
insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more
than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes
would have done as well, with less trouble and
filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had
rarely for many years used animal food, or tea,
or coffee, &c.; not so much because of any ill
effects which I had traced to them, as because
they were not agreeable to my imagination. The
repugnance to animal food is not the effect of
experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more
beautiful to live low and fare hard in many re-
spects; 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 ab-
stain from animal food, and from much food of
any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by en-
tomologists, I find it in Kirby and Spence, that
HIGHER LAWS 285
‘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 larvee. The voracious cater-
pillar 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 abdo-
men under the wings of the butterfly still repre-
sents the larva. This is the tidbit 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 condi-
ment into your dish, and it will poison you. It
is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.
Most men would feel shame if caught preparing
with their own hands precisely such a dinner,
whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every
day prepared for them by others. Yet till this
286 WALDEN
is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentle-
men 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 imagina-
tion 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 prey-
ing on other animals; but this is a miserable
way, — as any one who will go to snaring rab-
bits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn, — and
he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race
who shall teach man to confine himself to a
more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever
my own practice may be, I have no doubt that
it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in
its gradual improvement, to leave off eating ani-
mals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off
eating each other when they came in contact
with the more civilized.
If one listens to the faintest but constant sug-
gestions 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 argu-
ments and customs of mankind. No man ever
followed his genius till it misled him. ‘Though
the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no
HIGHER LAWS 287
one can say that the consequences were to be re-
gretted, for these were a life in conformity to
higher principles. If the day and the night are
such that you greet them with joy, and life emits
a fragrance like flowers and_ sweet-scented
herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more im-
mortal, — that is your success. All nature is
your congratulation, and you have cause mo-
mentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains
and values are farthest from being appreciated.
We easily come to doubt if they exist. We
soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most
real are never communicated by man to man.
The true harvest of my daily life is some-
what 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 eat a fried rat
with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am
glad to have drunk water so long, for the same
reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-
eater’s heaven. I would fain keep sober always;
and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.
I believe that water is the only drink for a wise
man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think
of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup
of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of
288 WALDEN
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 in-
toxicated by the air he breathes? I have found
it to be the most serious objection to coarse
labors long continued, that they compelled me
to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell the
truth, I find myself at present somewhat less
particular in these respects. I carry less religion
to the table, ask no blessing; not because I am
wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess,
because, however much it is to be regretted,
with years I have grown more coarse and in-
different. Perhaps these questions are enter-
tained only in youth, as most believe of poetry.
My practice is “‘nowhere,” my opinion is here.
Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as
one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved
refers when it says that “‘he who has true faith
in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all
that exists,” that is, is not bound to inquire what
is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their
case it 1s to be observed, as a Hindoo commen-
tator has remarked, that the Vedant limits this
privilege to “‘the time of distress.”
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpress-
ible satisfaction from his food in which appetite
had no share? I have been thrilled to think
HIGHER LAWS 289
that I owed a mental perception to the com-
monly gross sense of taste, that I have been in-
spired through the palate, that some berries
which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my
genius. “The soul not being mistress of her-
self,” says Thseng-tseu, “‘one looks, and one
does not see; one listens, and one does not hear;
one eats, and one does not know the savor of
food.” He who distinguishes the true savor of
his food can never be a glutton; he who does not
cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his
brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as
ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food
which entereth into the mouth defileth a man,
but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is
neither the quality nor the quantity, but the de-
votion to sensual savors; when that which is
eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or in-
spire our spiritual life, but food for the worms
that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for
mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage
tidbits, 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 instant’s truce between virtue and
vice. Goodness is the only investment that never
10
290 WALDEN
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, recom-
mending its laws, and our little goodness is all
the assessment that we pay. Though the youth
at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe
are not indifferent, but are forever on the side
of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr
for some reproof, for it is surely there, and
he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We
cannot touch a string or move a stop but the
charming moral transfixes us. Many an irk-
some 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 bod-
ies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but
never change its nature. I fear that it may en-
joy a certain health of its own; that we may be
well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up
the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound
teeth and tusks, which suggested that there
was an animal health and vigor distinct from
the spiritual. ‘This creature succeeded by other
means than temperance and purity. ‘That in
HIGHER LAWS 291
which men differ from brute beasts,” says Men-
clus, “is a thing very inconsiderable; the com-
mon herd lose it very soon; superior men
preserve it carefully.””> Who knows what sort of
life would result if we had attained to purity?
If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity
I would go to seek him forthwith. ‘‘A command
over our passions, and over the external senses
of the body, and good acts, are declared by the
Ved to be indispensable in the mind’s approxi-
mation to God.” Yet the spirit can for the time
pervade and control every member and function
of the body, and transmute what in form is the
grossest sensuality into purity and devotion.
The generative energy, which, when we are loose,
dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are
continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity
is the flowering of man; and what are called
Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are
but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows
at once to God when the channel of purity is
open. By turns our purity inspires and our im-
purity casts us down. He is blessed who is as-
sured that the animal is dying out in him day
by day, and the divine being established. Per-
haps 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
292 WALDEN
that, to some extent, our very life is our dis-
grace. —
*‘How happy’s he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and disaforested his mind!
Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev’ry beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
But he’s those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse.”
All sensuality is one, though it takes many
forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether
a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensu-
ally. They are but one appetite, and we only
need to see a person do any one of these things
to know how great a sensualist he is. The
impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of
his burrow, he shows himself at another. If
you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
What is chastity ? How shall a man know if he
is chaste? He shall not know it. We have
heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.
We speak conformably to the rumor which we
have heard. From exertion come wisdom and
purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of
mind. An unclean person is universally a sloth-
ful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun
shines on prostrate, who reposes without being
HIGHER LAWS 293
fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness and
all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at clean-
ing a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome,
but she must be overcome. What avails it that
you are Christian, if you are not purer than the
heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you
are not more religious? I know of many systems
of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts
fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to
new endeavors, though it be to the performance
of rites merely.
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not
because of the subject, — I care not how obscene
my words are,— but because I cannot speak
of them without betraying my impurity. We
discourse freely without shame of one form of
sensuality, and are silent about another. We
are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of
the necessary functions of human nature. In
earlier ages, in some countries, every function
was reverently spoken of and regulated by law.
Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo law-
giver, 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 him-
self by calling these things trifles.
Every man is the builder of a temple, called
his body, to the god he worships, after a style
purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering
294 WALDEN
marble instead. We are all sculptors and paint-
ers, 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 sensu-
ality to imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at his door one September
evening, after a hard day’s work, his mind still
running on his labor more or less. Having
bathed he sat down to recreate his intellectual
man. It was a rather cool evening, and some
of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He
had not attended to the train of his thoughts
long when he heard some one playing on a flute,
and that sound harmonized with his mood.
Still he thought of his work; but the burden of
his thought was that though this kept running
in his head, and he found himself planning and
contriving it against his will, yet it concerned
him very little. It was no more than the scurf
of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off.
But the notes of the flute came home to his ears
out of a different sphere from that he worked in,
and suggested work for certain faculties which
slumbered in him. They gently did away with
the street, and the village, and the state in which
he lived. <A voice said to him, — Why do you
stay here and live this mean moiling life, when
a glorious existence is possible for you? ‘Those
same stars twinkle over other fields than
these. — But how to come out of this condi-
HIGHER LAWS 295
tion and actually migrate thither? All that he
could think of was to practise some new auster-
ity, to let his mind descend into his body and
redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing
respect.
XIT
BRUTE NEIGHBORS
OMETIMES I had a companion in my
~ fishing, who came through the village to
my house from the other side of the town,
and the catching of the dinner was as much a
social exercise as the eating of it.
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 flutter
from them. Was that a farmer’s noon horn
which sounded from beyond the woods just now ?
The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and
cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry
themselves so? He that does not eat need not
work. I wonder how much they have reaped.
Who would live there where a body can never
think for the barking of Bose? And oh, the
housekeeping! to keep bright the devil’s door-
knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day!
Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow
tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-
parties! Only a wood-pecker tapping. Oh,
they swarm; the sun is too warm there: they
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 297
are born too far into life for me. I have water
from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on
the shelf. — Hark! I hear a rustling of the
leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding
to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig
which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks
I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my
sumachs and sweet-briers tremble. — Eh, Mr.
Poet, is it you? How do you like the world to-
day?
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 we 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. Come,
let’s along.
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread
will soon be gone. I will go with you gladly soon,
but I am just concluding a serious meditation.
I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me
alone, then, for a while. But that we may not
be delayed, you shall be digging the bait mean-
while. 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
298 WALDEN
of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not
too keen; and this you may have all to yourself
to-day. I would advise you to set in the spade
down yonder among the ground-nuts, where
you see the johnswort waving. I think that I
may warrant you one worm to every three sods
you turn up, if you look well in among the roots
of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if
you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise,
for I have found the increase of fair bait to be
very nearly as the squares of the distances.
Hermit alone. Let me see, where was I?
Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind;
the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to
heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bring
this meditation to an end, would another so
sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near
being resolved into the essence of things as ever I
was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come
back to me. If it would do any good, I would
whistle for them. When they make us an offer,
is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts
have left no track, and I cannot find the path
again. What was it that I was thinking of?
It was a very hazy day. I will just try these
three sentences of Con-fut-see; they may fetch
that state about again. I know not whether it
was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem.
There never is but one opportunity of a kind.
Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 299
have got just thirteen whole ones, besides 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 we
to the Concord? ‘There’s good sport there if
the water be not too high.
Why do precisely these objects which we be-
hold make a world? Why has man just these
species of animals for his neighbors; as if noth-
ing 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 underneath the house, and before I had
laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings,
would come out regularly at lunch time and pick
up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had
never seen a man before; and it soon became
quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and
300 WALDEN
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 nib-
bled 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 the partridge (Tetrao umbellus),
which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my
windows, from the woods in the rear to the front
of my house, clucking and calling to them like
a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself
the hen of the woods. The young suddenly
disperse on your approach, at a signal from the
mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away,
and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves
and twigs that many a traveller has placed his
foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir
of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious
calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings
to attract his attention, without suspecting their
neighborhood. ‘The parent will sometimes roll
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 301
and spin round before you in such a dishabille,
that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what
kind of creature it is. The young squat still
and flat, often running their heads under a leaf,
and mind only their mother’s directions given
from a distance, nor will your approach make
them run again and betray themselves. You
may even tread on them, or have your eyes on
them for a minute, without discovering them. |
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 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 inno-
302 WALDEN
cents 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 di-
rectly 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 free though secret in the woods, and
still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of
towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired
the otter manages to live here! He grows to
be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps
without any human being getting a glimpse of
him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods
behind where my house is built, and prob-
ably still heard their whinnering at night. Com-
monly I rested an hour or two in the shade at
noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and
read a little by a spring which was the source of
a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under
Brister’s Hill, half a mile from my field. ‘The
approach to this was through a succession of
descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-
pines, into a larger wood about the swamp.
There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under
a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean
firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring
and made a well of clear gray water, where I.
Brister’s Spring
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 303
could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and
thither I went for this purpose almost every
day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest.
Thither too the wood-cock led her brood, to
probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above
them down the bank, while they ran in a troop
beneath; but at last, spying me, she would
leave her young and circle round and round me,
nearer and nearer till within four or five feet,
pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my
attention, and get off her young, who would
already have taken up their march, with faint
wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she
directed. Or I heard the peep ‘of the young
when I could not see the parent bird. ‘There
too the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or
fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white-
pines over my head; or the red squirrel, cours-
ing 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 less peaceful
character. One day when I went out to my
wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I ob-
served two large ants, the one red, the other
much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black,
fiercely contending with one another. Having
once got hold they never let go, but struggled
304 WALDEN
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 duellum, but a bellum, 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 cov-
ered 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 noonday 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 in-
stant 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
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 305
pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested
the least disposition to retreat. It was evident
that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the
meanwhile there came along a single red ant on
the hill side of this valley, evidently full of ex-
citement, who either had despatched his foe,
or had not yet taken part in the battle; prob-
ably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs;
whose mother had charged him to return with
his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was
some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath
apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue
his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat
from afar, —for the blacks were nearly twice
the size of the red, — he drew near with rapid
pace till he stood on his guard within half an
inch of the combatants; then, watching his op-
portunity, he sprang upon the black warrior,
and commenced his operations near the root
of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select
among his own members; and so there were
three united for life, as if a new kind of 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
306 WALDEN
think of it, the less the difference. And cer-
tainly there is not the fight recorded in Con-
cord 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 But-
trick, — “‘Fire! for God’s sake fire!’’ — and
thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.
There was not one hireling there. I have no
doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as
much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-
penny tax on their tea; and the results of this
battle will be as important and memorable to
those whom it concerns as those of the battle of
Bunker Hill, at least.
I took up the chip on which the three I have
particularly described were struggling, carried
it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler
on my window-sill, in order to see the issue.
Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned
red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously
enawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, hav-
ing severed his remaining feeler, his own breast
was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had
there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose
breastplate was apparently too thick for him to
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 307
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 endeavor-
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 com-
bat, 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 hu-
man battle before my door.
Karby 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. ‘“*A‘neas Sylvius,” say they,
308 WALDEN
“‘after giving a very circumstantial account of
one contested with great obstinacy by a great
and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,”’
adds that “‘ ‘’This action was fought in the pontifi-
cate 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 be-
tween great and small ants is recorded by Olaus
Magnus, in which the small ones, being victori-
ous, are said to have buried the bodies of their
own soldiers, but left those of their giant ene-
mies a prey to the birds. This event happened
previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern
the Second from Sweden.” The battle which [
witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk,
five years before the passage of Webster’s Fugi-
tive-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 per-
chance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded
the wood, and might still inspire a natural ter-
ror 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
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 309
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 be-
havior, proves herself more native there than
the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying,
I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods,
quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had
their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me.
A few years before I lived in the woods there
was what was called a “‘winged cat’ in one of
the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond,
Mr. Gilian Baker’s. When I called to see her in
June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods,
as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was a
male or female, and so use the more common
pronoun), but her mistress told me that she came
into the neighborhood a little more than a year
before, in April, and was finally taken into their
house; that she was of a dark brownish gray
color, with a white spot on her throat, and white
feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that
in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out
along her sides, forming strips 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
310 WALDEN
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, ac-
cording to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been
produced by the union of the marten and do-
mestic 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, mak-
ing the woods ring with his wild laughter be-
fore I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the
Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and
on foot, two by two and three by three, with
patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses.
They come rustling through the woods like au-
tumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some
station themselves on this side of the pond,
some on that, for the poor bird cannot be om-
nipresent; if he dive here he must come up
there. But now the kind October wind rises,
rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of
the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen,
though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses,
and make the woods resound with their dis-
charges. ‘The waves generously rise and dash
angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 311
sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop
and unfinished jobs. But they were too often
successful. When I went to get a pail of water
early in the morning I frequently saw _ this
stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few
rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat,
in order to see how he would manceuvre, he
would dive and be completely lost, so that I did
not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter
part of the day. But I was more than a match
for him on the surface. He commonly went off
in a rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one
very calm October afternoon, for such days es-
pecially 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 he dived, but when
he came up I was nearer than before. He dived
again, but I miscalculated the direction he
would take, and we were fifty rods apart when
he came to the surface this time, for I had helped
to widen the interval; and again he laughed
long and loud, and with more reason than be-
fore. He manceuvred 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
312 WALDEN
water and the land, and apparently chose his
course so that he might come up where there was
the widest expanse of water and at the greatest
distance from the boat. It was surprising how
quickly he made up his mind and put his re-
solve into execution. He led me at once to the
widest part of the pond, and could not be driven
from it. While he was thinking one thing in
his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his
thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played
on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against
a loon. Suddenly your adversary’s checker dis-
appears beneath the board, and the problem is
to place yours nearest to where his will appear
again. Sometimes he would come up unex-
pectedly 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 immedi-
ately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no
wit could divine where in the deep pond, be-
neath the smooth surface, he might be speed-
ing 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 sur-
face, with hooks set for trout, — though Walden
is deeper than that. How surprised must the
fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from an-
other sphere speeding his way amid their schools!
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 313
Yet he appeared to know his course as surely
under water as on the surface, and swam much
faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where
he approached the surface, just put his head out
to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I
found that it was as well for me to rest on my
, oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to
calculate where he would rise; for again and
again, when I was straining my eyes over the
surface one way, I would suddenly be startled
by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why,
after displaying so much cunning, did he in-
variably betray himself the moment he came up
by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast
enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon,
I thought. I could commonly hear the plash of
the water when he came up, and so also de-
tected him. But after an hour he seemed as
fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet
farther than at first. It was surprising to see
how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast
when he came to the surface, doing all the
work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual
note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat
like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally,
when he had balked me most successfully and
come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn
unearthly howl, probably more like that of a
wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his
muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls.
314 WALDEN
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 re-
sources. Though the sky was by this time over-
cast, 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 im-
mediately 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 sur-
face.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks
cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of
the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which
they will have less need to practice 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
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 315
of a mile on to a distant part which was left
free; but what besides safety they got by sail-
ing in the middle of Walden I do not know,
unless they love its water for the same reason
that I do.
XAT
HOUSE-WARMING
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 the prairie grass, regardless of the torn
and drooping plant. The barberry’s brilliant
fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; but
I collected a small store of wild apples for cod-
dling, which the proprietors and travellers had
overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe I laid
up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting
at that season to roam the then boundless chest-
nut woods of Lincoln, — they now sleep their
long sleep under the railroad, — with a bag on
SMopoIu AIDS
HOUSE-WARMING 317
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 re-
proofs of the red-squirrels and the jays, whose
half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the
burrs which they had selected were sure to con-
tain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and
shook the trees. They grew also behind my
house, and one large tree which almost over-
shadowed it was, when in flower, a bouquet
which scented the whole neighborhood, but the
squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the
last coming in flocks early in the morning and
picking the nuts out of the burrs before they fell.
I relinquished these trees to them and visited
the more distant woods composed wholly of
chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were
a good substitute for bread. Many other sub-
stitutes 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 vel-
vety blossom supported by the stems of other
plants without knowing it to be the same. Cul-
tivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has
a sweetish taste, much like that of a frostbitten
potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted.
318 WALDEN
This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature
to rear her own children and feed them simply
here at some future period. In these days of
fatted cattle and waving grain-fields, this hum-
ble root, which was once the 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 probably disappear before a myriad
of foes, and without the care of man the crow
may carry back even the last seed of corn to the
great cornfield of the Indian’s God in the south-
west, whence he is said to have brought it; but
the now almost exterminated ground-nut will
perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and
wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume
its ancient importance and dignity as the diet
of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Mi-
nerva 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 repre-
sented on our works of art.
Already, by the first of September, I had seen
two or three small maples turned scarlet across
the pond, beneath where the white stems of
three aspens diverged, at the point of a prom-
ontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their
color told! And gradually from week to week
the character of each tree came out, and it ad-
mired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of
HOUSE-WARMING 319
the lake. Each morning the manager of this
gallery substituted some new picture, distin-
guished by more brilliant or harmonious color-
ing, 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 com-
plimented by their regarding my house as a
desirable shelter. They never molested me seri-
ously, 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 northeast 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 wholesomer to be
warmed by the sun while you can be, than by
an artificial fire. JI thus warmed myself by the
still glowing embers which the summer, like a
departed hunter, had left.
When I came to build my chimney I studied
masonry. My bricks being second-hand ones
320 WALDEN
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 ad-
here more firmly with age, and it would take
many blows with a trowel to clean an old wise-
acre of them. Many of the villages of Mesopo-
tamia are built of second-hand bricks of a very
good quality, obtained from the ruins of Baby-
lon, and the cement on them is older and prob-
ably 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 Neb-
uchadnezzar on them, I picked out as many
fireplace bricks as I could find, to save work and
waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks
about the fireplace with stones from the pond
shore, and also made my mortar with the white
sand from the same place. I lingered most
about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the
house. Indeed, I worked so deliberately, that
though I commenced at the ground in the morn-
ing, 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
HOUSE-WARMING 321
stiff neck is of older date. I took a poet to
board for a fortnight about those times, which
caused me to be put to it for room. He brought
his own knife, though I had two, and we used to
scour them by thrusting them into the earth.
He shared with me the labors of cooking. I was
pleased to see my work rising so square and
solid by degrees, and reflected that, if it pro-
ceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a
long time. The chimney is to some extent an
independent structure, standing on the ground
and rising through the house to the heavens;
even after the house is burned it still stands
sometimes, and its importance and independ-
ence 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 plas-
tered 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, sur-
rounded by the rough brown boards full of
knots, and rafters with the bark on high over-
head. My house never pleased my eye so much
after it was plastered, though I was obliged to
confess that it was more comfortable. Should
11
322 WALDEN
not every apartment in which man dwells be
lofty enough to create some obscurity over-
head, where flickering shadows may play at
evening about the rafters? These forms are
more agreeable to the fancy and imagination
than fresco paintings or other the most expen-
sive 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 satis-
faction than usual. My dwelling was small,
and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but
it seemed larger for being a single apartment
and remote from neighbors. All the attractions
of a house were concentrated in one room; it
was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-
room; and whatever satisfaction parent or
child, master or servant, derive from living in a
house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master
of a family (patremjamilias) must have in his
rustic villa ‘“‘cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia
multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rel,
et virtuti, et glorie 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 advan-
tage, and virtue, and glory.”” I had in my cellar
a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas
HOUSE-WARMING 323
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 popu-
lous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring
materials, and without gingerbread-work, which
shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude,
substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or
plastering, with bare rafters and purlins sup-
porting a sort of lower heaven over one’s head,
— useful to keep off rain and snow; where the
king and queen posts stand out to receive your
homage, when you have done reverence to the
prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping
over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you
must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the
roof; where some may live in the fireplace,
some in the recess of a window, and some on
settles, some at one end of the hall, some at
another, and some aloft on rafters with the
spiders, if they choose; a house which you have
got into when you have opened the outside
door, and the ceremony is over; where the
weary traveller may wash, and eat, and con-
verse, and sleep, without further journey; such
a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a
tempestuous night, containing all the essentials
of a house, and nothing for house-keeping, where
you can see all the treasures of the house at
one view, and everything hangs upon its peg
324 WALDEN
that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry,
parlor, chamber, store-house, and garret; where
you can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a
ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard,
and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to
the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven
that bakes your bread, and the necessary furni-
ture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where
the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the
mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes re-
quested to move from off the trap-door, when
the cook would descend into the cellar, and so
learn whether the ground is solid or hollow
beneath you without stamping. A house whose
inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest,
and you cannot go in at the front door and out
at the back without seeing some of its inhabit-
ants; where to be a guest is to be presented with
the freedom of the house, and not to be care-
fully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up
in a particular cell, and told to make yourself
at home there, — in solitary confinement. Now-
adays the host does not admit you to his hearth,
but has got the mason to build one for yourself
somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the
art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There
is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had
a design to poison you. I am aware that I have
been on many a man’s premises, and might
have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware
HOUSE-WARMING 325
that I have been in many men’s houses. I
might visit in my old clothes a king and queen
who lived simply in such a house as | have
described, if I were going their way; but back-
ing out of a modern palace will be all that I
shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.
It would seem as if the very language of our
parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate
into parlaver wholly, our lives pass at such
remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors
and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through
slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other
words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and
workshop. The dinner even is only the parable
of a dinner, commonly. As if only the savage
dwelt near enough to Nature and Truth to
borrow a trope from them. How can the
scholar, who dwells away in the North West
Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parlia-
mentary 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 ap-
proaching 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
326 WALDEN
pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance 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 work-
men. Venturing one day to substitute deeds for
words, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plaster-
er’s board, and having loaded his trowel with-
out mishap, with a complacent look toward the
lathing overhead, made a bold gesture thither-
ward; and straightway, to his complete dis-
comfiture, received the whole contents in his
ruffled bosom. I admired anew the economy
and convenience of plastering, which so effectu-
ally shuts out the cold and takes a handsome
finish, and I learned the various casualties to
which the plasterer is hable. I was surprised
to see how thirsty the bricks were, which drank
up all the moisture in my plaster before I had
smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water
it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the
previous winter made a small quantity of lime
by burning the shells of the Unio fluviatilis,
which our river affords, for the sake of the ex-
HOUSE-WARMING 327
periment; so that I knew where my materials
eame 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 _ per-
fect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and
affords the best opportunity that ever offers for
examining the bottom where it is shallow; for
you can lie at your length on ice only an inch
thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the
water, and study the bottom at your leisure,
only two or three inches distant, like a picture
behind a glass, and the water is necessarily
always smooth then. There are many furrows
in the sand where some creature has travelled
about and doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks,
it is strewn with the cases of caddis worms made
of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps these
have creased it, for you find some of their cases
in the furrows, though they are deep and broad
for them to make. But the ice itself is the object
of most interest, though you must improve the
earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine
it closely the morning after it freezes, you find
that the greater part of the bubbles, which at
first appeared to be within it, are against its
under surface, and that more are continually
328 WALDEN
rising from the bottom; while the ice is as yet
comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see
the water through it. These bubbles are from
an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter,
very clear and beautiful, and you see your face
reflected in them through the ice. There may
be thirty or forty of them to a square inch.
There are also already within the ice narrow
oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an
inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward;
or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spheri-
cal 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 be-
neath. 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, show-
ing the dark green color of the water, and the
bottom, but opaque and whitish or gray, and
though twice as thick was hardly stronger than
before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded
under this heat and run together, and lost their
HOUSE-WARMING 329
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 con-
taining a middling-sized one, and turned it bot-
tom upward. ‘The new ice had formed around
and under the bubble, so that it was included
between the two ices. It was wholly in the
lower ice, but close against the upper, and was
flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a
rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four
inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find
that directly under the bubble the ice was
melted with great regularity in the form of a
saucer reversed, to the height of five-eighths of
an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition
there between the water and the bubble, hardly
an eighth of an inch thick; and in many places
the small bubbles in this partition had burst
out downward, and probably there was no ice
at all under the largest bubbles, which were a
foot in diameter. I inferred that the infinite
number of minute bubbles which I had first
seen against the under surface of the ice were
now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its
degree, had operated like a burning-glass on
330 WALDEN
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 clangor and a whistling of wings, even
after the ground was covered with snow, some
to alight in Walden, and some flying low over
the weods toward Fair-Haven, bound for Mex-
ico. Several times, when returning from the
village at ten or eleven o’clock at night, I heard
the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on
the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole
behind my dwelling, where they had come up
to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their
leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden
froze entirely over for the first time on the night
of the 22d of December, Flint’s and other
shallower ponds and the river having been frozen
ten days or more; in ’46, the 16th; in *49, about
the 31st; and in ’50, about the 27th of Decem-
ber; in 752, the 5th of January; in ’53, the
3lst 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,
HOUSE-WARMING 331
and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within
my house and within my breast. My employ-
ment out of doors now was to collect the dead
wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on
my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine
tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest
fence which had seen its best days was a great
haul for me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was
past serving the god Terminus. How much
more interesting an event is that man’s supper
who has just been forth in the snow to hunt,
nay, you may say, steal, the fuel to cook it with!
His bread and meat are sweet. ‘There are
enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in
the forests of most of our towns to support many
fires, but which at present warm none, and,
some think, hinder the growth of the young
wood. ‘There was also the drift-wood of the
pond. In the course of the summer I had dis-
covered a raft of pitch-pine logs with the bark
on, pinned together by the Irish when the rail-
road 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 piece-meal 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
332 WALDEN
then, with a longer birch or alder which had a
hook at the end, dragged them across. Though
completely waterlogged and almost as heavy
as lead, they not only burned long, but made
a very hot fire; nay, I thought that they burned
better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being
confined by the water, burned longer as in a
lamp.
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 pur-
prestures, as tending ad terrorem jerarum — ad
nocumentum foreste, &c.,” to the frightening of
the game and the detriment of the forest. But
I was interested in the preservation of the veni-
son 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 grief that lasted longer and
was more inconsolable than that of the proprie-
tors; 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 conse-
crated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would
HOUSE-WARMING 333
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, &c.
It is remarkable what a value is still put upon
wood even in this age and in this new country,
a value more permanent and universal than that
of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions
no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as pre-
cious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman
ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we
make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than
thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for
fuel in New York and Philadelphia “nearly
equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best
wood in Paris, though this immense capital an-
nually requires more than three hundred thou-
sand 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
334 WALDEN
Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer
and Robinhood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill,
in most parts of the world the prince and the
peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally
require still a few sticks from the forest to warm
them and cook their food. Neither could I do
without them.
Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind
of affection. 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
beanfield. _As my driver prophesied when I was
ploughing, théy.wariti@d 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 is still concealed in the bowels of
the earth. In previous years I had often gone
*“prospecting’’ over some bare hill side, where
a pitch-pine wood had formerly stood, and got
out the fat pine roots. ‘They are almost inde-
HOUSE-WARMING 335
structible. 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 dis-
tant 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 kind-
lings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once
in a while I got a little of this. When the vil-
lagers were lighting their fires beyond the hori-
zon, I too gave notice to the various wild inhabi-
tants of Walden 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.
Hard green wood just cut, though I used but
little of that, answered my purpose better than
336 WALDEN
any other. I sometimes left a good fire when I
went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and
when I returned, three or four hours afterward,
it would be still alive and glowing. My house
was not empty though I was gone. It was as if
I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It
was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly
my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One day,
however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that
I would just look in at the window and see if the
house was not on fire; it was the only time I re-
member 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 al-
most 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 com-
fort and warmth as well as man, and they sur-
vive 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
HOUSE-WARMING 337
up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms
that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his
bed, in which he can move about divested of
more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of
summer in the midst of winter, and by means of
windows even admit the light, and with a lamp
lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or
two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for
the fine arts. Though, when I had been ex-
posed to the rudest blasts a long time, my whole
body began to grow torpid, when I reached the
genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered
my faculties and prolonged my life. But the
most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in
this respect, nor need we trouble ourselves to
speculate how the human race may be at last
destroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads
any time with a little sharper blast from the
north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and
Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or
greater snow, would put a period to man’s ex-
istence on the globe.
The next winter I used a small cooking-stove
for economy, since [ 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
338 WALDEN
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 la-
borer, 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 perti-
nent words of a poet recurred to me with new
force. —
“Never, bright flame, may be 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 are so dull?
Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold
With our congenial souls? secrets too bold ?
Well, we are 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 walked,
And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked.”
XIV
FORMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTER VISITORS
WEATHERED some merry snow-storms,
I and spent some cheerful winter evenings by
my fire-side, while the snow whirled wildly
without, and even the hooting of the owl was
hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my
walks but those who came occasionally to cut
wood and sled it to the village. The elements,
however, abetted me in making a path through
the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had
once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves
into my tracks, where they lodged, and by ab-
sorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow,
and so not only made a dry bed for my feet, but
in the night their dark line was my guide. For
human society I was obliged to conjure up the
former occupants of these woods. Within the
memory of many of my townsmen the road near
which my house stands resounded with the
laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods
which border it were notched and dotted here
and there with their little gardens and dwellings,
though it was then much more shut in by the
forest than now. In some places, within my
340 WALDEN
own remembrance, the pines would scrape
both sides of a chaise at once, and women and
children who were compelled to go this way to
Lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, and
often ran a good part of the distance. ‘Though
mainly but a humble route to neighboring vil-
lages, or for the woodman’s team, it once
amused the traveller more than now by its vari-
ety, 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 high-
way, from the Stratten, now the Alms House,
Farm, to Brister’s Hill.
Kast of my beanfield, across the road, lived
Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham,
Esquire, gentleman of Concord village; who
built his slave a house, and gave him permission
to live in Walden Woods;— Cato, not Uticen-
sis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a
Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember
his little patch among the walnuts, which he let
grow up till he should be old and need them;
but a younger and whiter speculator got them
at last. He too, however, occupies an equally
narrow house at present. Cato’s half-obliter-
ated 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
FORMER INHABITANTS 341
sumach (fhus glabra), and one of the earliest
species of goldenrod (Solidago stricta) grows
there luxuriantly.
Here, by the very corner of my field, still
nearer to town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had
her little house, where she spun linen for the
townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with
her shrill singing, for she had a loud and nota-
ble voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her
dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers,
prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her
cat and dog and hens were all burned up to-
gether. She led a hard life, and somewhat in-
humane. One old frequenter of these woods
remembers that as he passed her house one noon
he heard her muttering to herself over her gur-
gling pot, — “*Ye are all bones, bones!” I have
seen bricks amid the oak copse there.
Down the road, on the right hand, on Bris-
ter’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, ‘“‘a handy
Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once, —
there where grow still the apple trees which
Brister planted and tended; large old trees now,
but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste.
Not long since I read his epitaph in the old
Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side,
near the unmarked graves of some British gren-
adiers who fell in the retreat from Concord, —
where he is styled “‘Sippio Brister,’’ — Scipio
4
Africanus he had some title to be called, — “‘a
342 WALDEN
man of color,’ as if he were discolored. It also
told me, with staring emphasis, when he died;
which was but an indirect way of informing me
that he ever lived. With him dwelt Fenda,
his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet
pleasantly, — large, round, and black, blacker
than any of the children of night, such a
dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or
since.
Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old
road in the woods, are marks of some home-
stead of the Stratten family; whose orchard
once covered all the slope of Brister’s Hull,
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 loca-
tion, 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 mythol-
ogy, who has acted a prominent and astounding
part in our New England life, and deserves, as
much as any mythological character, to have
his biography written one day; who first comes
in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then
robs and murders the whole family, — New
England Rum. But history must not yet tell
the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in
some measure to assuage and lend an azure
kong aig uapyy yy 244 Pur [PET s494s14g
FORMER INHABITANTS 343
tint to them. Here the most indistinct and du-
bious tradition says that once a tavern stood;
the well the same, which tempered the traveller’s
beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then
men saluted one another, and heard and told the
news, and went their ways again.
Breed’s hut was standing only a dozen years
ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It
was about the size of mine. It was set on fire
by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I
do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the vil-
lage then, and had just lost myself over Dave-
nant’s Gondibert, that winter that I labored
with a lethargy, — which, by the way, I never
knew whether to regard as a family complaint,
having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving him-
self, 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 Nervi.
I had just sunk my head on this when the bells
rang 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 Cod-
man Place,” affirmed another. And then fresh
344 WALDEN
sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof
fell in, and we all shouted ‘‘Concord to the
rescue !”” Wagons shot past with furious speed
and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among
the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company,
who was bound to go however far; and ever
and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more
slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was
afterward whispered, came they who set the
fire and gave the alarm. ‘Thus we kept on like
true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our
senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the
crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire
from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we
were there. The very nearness of the fire but
cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw
a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it
burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. So
we stood round our engine, jostled one another,
expressed our sentiments through speaking trum-
pets, or in lower tone referred to the great
conflagrations which the world has witnessed,
including Bascom’s shop, and, between our-
selves, we thought that, were we there in season
with our “‘tub” and a full frog-pond by, we could
turn that threatened last and universal one into
another flood. We finally retreated without
doing any mischief, — returned to sleep and
Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would ex-
cept that passage in the preface about wit being
FORMER INHABITANTS 345
the soul’s powder, — “‘but most of mankind
are strangers to wit, as Indians are to pow-
der.”’
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 sur-
vivor of the family that I know, the heir of both
its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested
in this burning, lying on his stomach and look-
ing over the cellar wall at the still smouldering
cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his —
wont. He had been working far off in the river
meadow all day, and had improved the first
moments that he could call his own to visit the
home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed
into the cellar from all sides and points of view
by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was
some treasure, which he remembered, con-
cealed between the stones, where there was ab-
solutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes.
The house being gone, he looked at what there
was left. He was soothed by the sympathy
which my mere presence implied, and showed
me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the
well was covered up; which, thank Heaven,
could never be burned; and he groped long
about the wall to find the well-sweep which his
father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron
hook or staple by which a burden had been
346 WALDEN
fastened to the heavy end, — all that he could
now cling to, — to convince me that it was no
common ‘“‘rider.’’ I felt it, and still remark it
almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the
history of a family.
Once more, on the left, where are seen the
well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now
open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But
to return toward Lincoln.
Farther in the woods than any of these, where
the road approaches nearest to the pond, Wy-
man the potter squatted, and furnished his
townsmen with earthen ware, and left descend-
ants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in
worldly goods, holding the land by sufferance
while they lived; and there often the sheriff
came 1n vain to collect the taxes, and “‘attached
a chip,” for form’s sake, as I have read in his
accounts, there being nothing else that he could
lay his hands on. One day in midsummer,
when I was hoeing, a man who was carrying a
load of pottery to market stopped his horse
against my field and inquired concerning Wy-
man the younger. He had long ago bought a
potter’s wheel of him, and wished to know what
had become of him. I had read of the potter’s
clay and wheel in Scripture, but it had never
occurred to me that the pots we use were not
such as had come down unbroken from those
days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere,
FORMER INHABITANTS 347
and I was pleased to hear that so fictile an art
was ever practised in my neighborhood.
The last inhabitant of these woods before me
was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt
his name with coil enough), who occupied Wy-
man’s tenement, — Col. Quoil, he was called.
Rumor said that he had been a soldier at Water-
loo. If he had lived I should have made him
fight his battles over again. His trade here was
that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena;
Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of
him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like
one who had seen the world, and was capable
of more civil speech than you could well attend
to. He wore a great coat in midsummer, being
affected with the trembling delirium, and his
face was the color of carmine. He died in the
road at the foot of Brister’s Hill shortly after I
came to the woods, so that I have not remem-
bered him as a neighbor. Before his house was
pulled down, when his comrades avoided it as
‘“‘an unlucky castle,” I visited it. There lay his
old clothes curled up by use, as if they were
himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe
lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl
broken at the fountain. The last could never
have been the symbol of his death, for he con-
fessed to me that, though he had heard of Bris-
ter’s Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled
cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts,
348 WALDEN
were scattered over the floor. One black chicken
which the administrator could not catch, black
as night and as silent, not even croaking, await-
ing Reynard, still went to roost in the next apart-
ment. In the rear there was the dim outline of a
a garden, which had been planted but had never
received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible
shaking fits, though it was now harvest time.
It was overrun with Roman wormwood and
beggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for
all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly
stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy
of his last Waterloo; but no warm cap or mit-
tens would he want more.
Now only a dent in the earth marks the site
of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and
strawberries, raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel
bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward
there; some pitch-pine or gnarled oak occupies
what was the chimney nook, and a sweet-scented
black-birch, perhaps, waves where the door-
stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible,
where once a spring oozed; now dry and tear-
less grass; or it was covered deep, — not to be
discovered till some late day, — with a flat stone
under the sod, when the last of the race departed.
What a sorrowful act must that be, — the cov-
ering up of wells! coincident with the opening
of wells of tears. ‘These cellar dents, like de-
serted fox burrows, old holes, are all that is left
FORMER INHABITANTS 349
where once were the stir and bustle of human
life, and “‘fate, free-will, foreknowledge abso-
lute,” in some form and dialect or other were by
turns discussed. But all I can learn of their con-
clusions amounts to just this, that “Cato and
Brister pulled wool;” which is about as edify-
ing as the history of more famous schools of
philosophy.
Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation
after the door and lintel and the sill are gone,
unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring,
to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted
and tended once by children’s hands, in front-
yard plots, — now standing by wall-sides in re-
tired pastures, and giving place to new-rising
forests ; — the last of that stirp, sole survivor of
that family. Little did the dusky children think
that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which
they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the
house and daily watered, would root itself so,
and outlive them, and house itself in the rear
that shaded it, and grow man’s garden and
orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone
wanderer a half century after they had grown
up and died, — blossoming as fair, and smelling
as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still
tender, civil, cheerful, lilac colors.
But this small village, germ of something more,
why did it fail while Concord keeps its ground ?
Were there no natural advantages, — no water
350 WALDEN
privileges, forsooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond
and cool Brister’s Spring, — privilege to drink
long and healthy draughts at these, all unim-
proved by these men but to dilute their glass.
They were universally a thirsty race. Might
not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-
parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business
have thrived here, making the wilderness to
blossom like the rose, and a numerous posterity
have inherited the land of their fathers? The
sterile soil would at least have been proof against
a low-land degeneracy. Alas! how little does
the memory of these human inhabitants enhance
the beauty of the landscape! Again, perhaps,
Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and
my house raised last spring to be the oldest in
the hamlet.
I am not aware that any man has ever built on
the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a
city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose
materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries.
The soil is blanched and accursed there, and
before that becomes necessary. the earth itself
will be destroyed. With such reminiscences I
repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.
At this season I seldom had a visitor. When
the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near
my house for a week or a fortnight at a time, but
there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as
FORMER INHABITANTS ~—_ 351
cattle and poultry which are said to have sur-
vived for a long time buried in drifts, even without
food; or like that early settler’s family in the
town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage was
completely covered by the great snow of 1717
when he was absent, and an Indian found it only
by the hole which the chimney’s breath made in
the drift, and so relieved the family. But no
friendly Indian concerned himself about me; nor
needed he, for the master of the house was at
home. The Great Snow! How cheerful it is
to hear of! When the farmers could not get to
the woods and swamps with their teams, and
were obliged to cut down the shade trees before
their houses, and when the crust was harder cut
off the trees in the swamps ten feet from the
ground, as it appeared the next spring.
In the deepest snows, the path which I used
from the highway to my house, about half a
mile long, might have been represented by a
meandering dotted line, with wide intervals be-
tween the dots. For a week of even weather I
took exactly the same number of steps, and of
the same length, coming and going, stepping de-
liberately and with the precision of a pair of
dividers in my own deep tracks, — to such rou-
tine the winter reduces us, — yet often they
were filled with heaven’s own blue. But no
weather interfered fatally with my walks, or
rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped
Sad WALDEN
eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to
keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a
yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the
pines; when the ice and snow, causing their
limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops,
had changed the pines into fir trees; wading to
the tops of the highest hills when the snow was
nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking
down another snow-storm on my head at every
step; or sometimes creeping and floundering
thither on my hands and knees, when the hunt-
ers had gone into winter quarters. One after-
noon I amused myself by watching a barred owl
(Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead
limbs of a white-pine, close to the trunk, in broad
daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He
could hear me when I moved and cronched the
snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me.
When I made most noise he would stretch out his
neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his
eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he
began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence
after watching him half an hour, as he sat
thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged
brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit
between their lids, by which he preserved a
peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut
eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and
endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote
that interrupted his visions. At length, on some
icy trees
The
oy
ar vitae
ae \ a ;
ut -
Ls ,
a
Fie aes
FORMER INHABITANTS 353
louder noise or my nearer approach, he would
grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his
perch, as if impatient at having his dreams dis-
turbed; and when he launched himself off and
flapped through the pines, spreading his wings
to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the
slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid
the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their
neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight
way as it were with his sensitive pinions, he found
a new perch, where he might in peace await the
dawning of his day.
As I walked over the long causeway made for
the railroad through the meadows, I encountered
many a blustering and nipping wind, for no-
where has it freer play; and when the frost had
smitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I
turned to it the other also. Nor was it much bet-
ter by the carriage road from Brister’s Hill.
For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian,
when the contents of the broad open fields were
all piled up between the walls of the Walden
road, and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the
tracks of the last traveller. And when I returned
new drifts would have formed through which I
floundered, where the busy northwest wind had
been depositing the powdery snow round a
sharp angle in the road, and not a rabbit’s track,
nor even the fine print, the small type, of a
meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely
12
354 WALDEN
failed to find, even in mid-winter, some warm
and springy swamp where the grass and the
skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial ver-
dure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited
the return of spring.
Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I
returned from my walk at evening I crossed the
deep tracks of a woodchopper leading from my
door, and found his pile of whittlings on the
hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his
pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to
be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow
made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who
from far through the woods sought my house, to
have a social ‘‘crack’’; one of the few of his vo-
cation who are “‘men on their farms’; who
donned a frock instead of a professor’s gown, and
is as ready to extract the moral out of church or
state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-
yard. We talked of rude and simple times, when
men sat about large fires in cold bracing weather,
with clear heads; and when other dessert
failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which
wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for
those which have the thickest shells are com-
monly empty.
The one who came from farthest to my lodge,
through deepest snows and most dismal tem-
pests, was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a soldier,
a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted;
FORMER INHABITANTS 355
but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by
pure love. Who can predict his comings and
goings? His business calls him out at all hours,
even when doctors sleep. We made that small
house ring with boisterous mirth and resound
with the murmur of much sober talk, making
amends then to Walden vale for the long silences.
Broadway was still and deserted in comparison.
At suitable intervals there were regular salutes
of laughter, which might have been referred in-
differently to the last-uttered or the forthcoming
jest. We made many a “bran new” theory of
life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined
the advantages of conviviality with the clear-
headedness which philosophy requires.
I should not forget that during my last winter
at the pond there was another welcome visitor,
who at one time came through the village, through
snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp
through the trees, and shared with me some long
winter evenings. One of the last of the philoso-
phers, — Connecticut gave him to the world, —
he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he de-
clares, his brains. ‘These he peddles still, prompt-
ing God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit
his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that
he must be the man of the most faith of any alive.
His words and attitude always suppose a better
state of things than other men are acquainted
with, and he will be the last man to be disap-
356 WALDEN
pointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture
in the present. But though comparatively dis-
regarded now, when his day comes, laws unsus-
pected by most will take effect, and masters of
families and rulers will come to him for advice. —
1°?
‘How blind that cannot see serenity
A true friend of man; almost the only friend of
human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather
an Immortality, with unwearied patience and
faith making plain the image engraven in men’s
bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced
and leaning monuments. With his hospitable
intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane,
and scholars, and entertains the thought of all,
adding to it commonly some breadth and ele-
gance. I think that he should keep a caravansary
on the world’s highway, where philosophers of all
nations might put up, and on his sign should be
printed: ‘“‘Entertainment for man, but not for
his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet
mind, who earnestly seek the right road.”” He
is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest
crotchets of any I chance to know; the same
yesterday and to-morrow. Of yore we had saun-
tered and talked, and effectually put the world
behind us; for he was pledged to no institution
in it, freeborn, ingenwus. Whichever way we
turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth
had met together, since he enhanced the beauty
FORMER INHABITANTS 357
of the landscape. A’ blue-robed man, whose
fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects
his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die;
Nature cannot spare him.
Having each some shingles of thought well
dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives,
and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the
pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and rever-
ently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the
fishes of thought were not scared from the stream,
nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and
went grandly, like the clouds which float through
the western sky, and the mother-o’-pearl flocks
which sometimes form and dissolve there. There
we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable
here and there, and building castles in the air
for which earth offered no worthy foundation.
Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse
with whom was a New England Night’s Enter-
tainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit
and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken
of, — we three, —it expanded and racked my
little house; I should not dare to say how many
pounds’ weight there was above the atmospheric
pressure on every circular inch; it opened its
seams so that they had to be calked with much
dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak;
—but I had enough of that kind of oakum
already picked.
There was one other with whom I had “‘solid
358 WALDEN >
seasons,” long to be remembered, at his house
in the village, and who looked in upon me from
time to time; but I had no more for society
there.
There too, as everywhere, I sometimes ex-
pected the Visitor who never comes. The
Vishnu Purana says, “The house-holder is to
remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it
takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to
await the arrival of a guest.”’ I often performed
this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to
milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the
man approaching from the town. j
XV
WINTER ANIMALS
WV att the ponds were firmly frozen, they
afforded not only new and shorter routes
to many points, but new views from their
surfaces of the familiar landscape around them.
When I crossed Flint’s Pond, after it was covered
with snow, though I had often paddled about and
skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so
strange that I could think of nothing but Baf-
fin’s Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me
at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did
not remember to have stood before; and the
fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over
the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish
dogs, passed for sealers or Esquimaux, or in
misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures,
and I did not know whether they were giants or
pygmies. I took this course when I went to lec-
ture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no
road and passing no house between my own hut
and the lecture room. In Goose Pond, which
lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and
raised their cabins high above the ice, though
none could be seen abroad when I crossed it.
360 WALDEN
Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow,
or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it,
was my yard, where I could walk freely when the
snow was nearly two feet deep on a level else-
where and the villagers were confined to their
streets. There, far from the village street, and,
except at very long intervals, from the jingle of
sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-
yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and
solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling
with icicles.
For sounds in winter nights, and often im
winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious
note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a
sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck
with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua ver-
nacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar
to me at last, though I never saw the bird while
it was making it. I seldom opened my door in
a winter evening without hearing it; Hoo hoo
hoo, hoorer hoo, sounded sonorously, and the
first three syllables accented somewhat like how
der do; or sometimes hoo hoo only. One night
in the beginning of winter, before the pond
froze over, about nine o’clock, I was startled by
the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to
the door, heard the sound of their wings like
a tempest in the woods as they flew low over
my house. ‘They passed over the pond toward
Fair-Haven, seemingly deterred from settling
AdJUINL Ut Purd ISO0F)
WINTER ANIMALS 361
by my light, their commodore honking all the
while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmis-
takable cat-owl from very near me, with the
most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard
from any inhabitant of the woods, responded
at regular intervals to the goose, as if deter-
mined to expose and disgrace this intruder from
Hudson’s Bay by exhibiting a greater compass
and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him
out of Concord horizon. What do you mean
by alarming the citadel at this time of night con-
secrated tome? Do you think I am ever caught
napping at such an hour, and that I have not
got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself ?
Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the
most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet,
if you had a discriminating ear, there were in it
the elements of a concord such as these plains
never saw nor heard.
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the
pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Con-
cord, as if it were restless in its bed and would
fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency
and bad dreams; or I was waked by the crack-
ing of the ground by the frost, as if some one
had driven a team against my door, and in the
morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter
of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged
over the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in
362 WALDEN
search of a partridge or other game, barking
raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as
if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking ex-
pression, struggling for light and to be dogs
outright and run freely in the streets; for if
we take the ages into our account, may there
not be a civilization going on among brutes as
well as men? ‘They seemed to me to be rudi-
mental, burrowing men, still standing on their
defence, awaiting their transformation. Some-
times one came near to my window, attracted
by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and
then retreated.
Usually the red squirrel (Scowrus Hudsonius)
waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof
and up and down the sides of the house, as if
sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the
course of the winter I threw out half a bushel
of ears of sweet-corn, which had not got ripe,
on to the snow crust by my door, and was
amused by watching the motions of the various
animals which were baited by it. In the twilight
and the night the rabbits came regularly and
made a hearty meal. All day long the red
squirrels came and went, and afforded me much
entertainment by their manceuvres. One would
approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks,
running over the snow crust by fits and starts
like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces
this way, with wonderful speed and waste of
WINTER ANIMALS 363
energy, making inconceivable haste with his
“‘trotters,” as if it were for a wager, and now as
many paces that way, but never getting on more
than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly
pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gra-
tuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe
were fixed on him, —for all the motions of a
squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of
the forest, imply spectators as much as those of
a dancing girl,— wasting more time in delay
and circumspection than would have sufficed
to walk the whole distance, —I never saw one
walk, — and then suddenly, before you could
say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top
of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and
chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing
and talking to all the universe at the same time,
—for no reason that I could ever detect, or he
himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he
would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable
ear, brisk about in the same uncertain trigo-
nometrical way to the topmost stick of my
wood-pile, before my window, where he looked
me in the face, and there sit for hours, supply-
ing himself with a new ear from time to time,
nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the
half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew
more dainty still and played with his food,
tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the
ear, which was held balanced over the stick by
364 WALDEN
one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell
to the ground, when he would look over at it
with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as
if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not
made up whether to get it again, or a new one,
or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening
to hear what was in the wind. So the little
impudent fellow would waste many an ear in
a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer
and plumper one, considerably bigger than
himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set
out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buf-
falo, by the same zigzag course and frequent
pauses, scratching along with it as if 1t were too
heavy for him and falling all the while, making
its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and
horizontal, being determined to put it through
at any rate; — a singularly frivolous and whim-
sical fellow;— and so he would get off with it
to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top
of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I
would afterwards find the cobs strewed about
the woods in various directions.
At length the jays arrive, whose discordant
screams were heard long before, as they were
warily making their approach an eighth of a
mile off; and in a stealthy and sneaking manner
they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and
pick up the kernels which the squirrels have
dropped. ‘Then, sitting on a pitch-pine bough,
WINTER ANIMALS 365
they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel
which is too big for their throats and chokes
them; and after great labor they disgorge it,
and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it
by repeated blows with their bills. They were
manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect
for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy,
went to work as if they were taking what was
their own.
Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks,
which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels
had dropped, flew to the nearest twig, and,
placing them under their claws, hammered away
at them with their little bills, as if it were an
insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently re-
duced for their slender throats. A little flock
of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out
of my wood-pile, or the crumbs at my door,
with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling
of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day
day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a
wiry summery phe-be from the wood-side. ‘They
were so familiar that at length one alighted on
an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and
pecked at the sticks without fear. 1 once had
a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a mo-
ment while I was hoeing in a village garden,
and I felt that I was more distinguished by that
circumstance than I should have been by any
epaulet I could have worn. ‘The squirrels also
366 WALDEN
grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasion-
ally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the
nearest way.
When the ground was not yet quite covered,
and again near the end of winter, when the snow
was melted on my south hill side and about my
wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods
morning and evening to feed there. Which-
ever side you walk in the woods the partridge
bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow
from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which
comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden
dust; for this brave bird is not to be scared by
winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts,
and, it is said, “‘sometimes plunges from on
wing into the soft snow, where it remains con-
cealed for a day or two.” I used to start them
in the open land also, where they had come out
of the woods at sunset to “‘bud” the wild apple
trees. ‘They will come regularly every evening
to particular trees, where the cunning sports-
man lies in wait for them, and the distant or-
chards next the woods suffer thus not a little.
I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any
rate. It is Nature’s own bird which lives on
buds and diet drink.
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter
afternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds
threading all the woods with hounding cry and
yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase,
WINTER. ANIMALS 367
and the note of the hunting horn at intervals,
proving that man was in the rear. The woods
ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the
open level of the pond, nor following pack
pursuing their Actzeon. And perhaps at evening
I see the hunters returning with a single brush
trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking
their inn. They tell me that if the fox would
remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would
be safe, or if he would run in a straight line
away no fox-hound could overtake him; but,
having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to
rest and listen till they come up, and when he
runs he circles round to his old haunts, where
the hunters await him. Sometimes, however,
he will run upon a wall many rods, and then
leap off far to one side, and he appears to know
that water will not retain his scent. A hunter
told me that he once saw a fox pursued by
hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice
was covered with shallow puddles, run part way
across, and then return to the same shore. Ere-
long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the
scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by them-
selves would pass my door, and circle round my
house, and yelp and hound without regarding
me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so
that nothing could divert them from the pursuit.
Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent
trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake every-
368 WALDEN
thing else for this. One day a man came to my
hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound
that made a large track, and had been hunting
for a week by himself. But I fear that he was
not the wiser for all I told him, for every time
I attempted to answer his questions he inter-
rupted me by asking, “‘What do you do here?”
He had lost a dog, but found a man.
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who
used to come to bathe in Walden once every
year when the water was warmest, and at such
times looked in upon me, told me that many
years ago he took his gun one afternoon and
went out for a cruise 1n Walden Wood, and as
he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry
of hounds approaching, and erelong a fox
leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as
thought leaped the other wall out of the road,
and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some
way behind came an old hound and her three
pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own ac-
count, and disappeared again in the woods.
Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the
thick woods south of Walden, he heard the
voice of the hounds far over toward Fair-Haven
still pursuing the fox; and on they came, their
hounding cry which made all the woods ring
sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well-
Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a
long time he stood still and listened to their
WINTER ANIMALS 369
music, so sweet to a hunter’s ear, when sud-
denly the fox appeared, threading the solemn
aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound
was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the
leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground, leav-
ing his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon
a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listen-
ing, with his back to the hunter. For a moment
compassion restrained the latter’s arm; but
that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as
thought can follow thought his piece was lev-
elled, and whang ! — the fox rolling over the rock
lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept
his place and listened to the hounds. Still on
they came, and now the near woods resounded
through all their aisles with their demoniac
cry. At length the old hound burst into view
with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the
air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock;
but spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased
her hounding, as if struck dumb with amaze-
ment, and walked round and round him in
silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and,
like their mother, were sobered into silence by
the mystery. ‘Then the hunter came forward
and stood in their midst, and the mystery was
solved. ‘They waited in silence while he skinned
the fox, then followed the brush awhile, and at
length turned off into the woods again. That
evening a Weston Squire came to the Concord
370 WALDEN
hunter’s cottage to inquire for his hounds, and
told how for a week they had been hunting on
their own account from Weston woods. ‘The
Concord hunter told him what he knew and
offered him the skin; but the other declined it
and departed. He did not find his hounds that
night, but the next day learned that they had
crossed the river and put up at a farm-house
for the night, whence, having been well fed,
they took their departure early in the morning.
The hunter who told me this could remember
one Sam Nutting, who used to hunt bears on
Fair-Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins
for rum in Concord village; who told him, even,
that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had a
famous fox-hound named Burgoyne, — he pro-
nounced it Bugine, — which my informant used
to borrow. In the “Wast Book” of an old
trader of this town, who was also a captain,
town-clerk, and representative, I find the fol-
lowing entry: Jan. 18th, 1742-3, “‘ John Melven
Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0—2—3;” they are not
found here; and in his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743,
Hezekiah Stratton has credit “by 4 a Catt skin
0—1—44;”’ of course a wild-cat, for Strat-
ton was a sergeant in the old French war, and
would not have got credit for hunting less
noble game. Credit is given for deerskins also,
and they were daily sold. One man still pre-
serves the horns of the last deer that was killed
WINTER ANIMALS 371
in this vicinity, and another has told me the
particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was
engaged. The hunters were formerly a numer-
ous and merry crew here. I remember well
one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf
by the road-side and play a strain on it wilder
and more melodious, if my memory serves me,
than any hunting horn.
At midnight, when there was a moon, I some-
times met with hounds in my path prowling
about the woods, which would skulk out of my
way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the
bushes till I had passed.
Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my
store of nuts. ‘There were scores of pitch-pines
around my house, from one to four inches in
diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the
previous winter,—a Norwegian winter for
them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they
were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine
bark with their other diet. These trees were
alive and apparently flourishing at mid-summer,
and many of them had grown a foot, though com-
pletely girdled; but after another winter such
were without exception dead. It is remark-
able that a single mouse should thus be allowed
a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round
instead of up and down it; but perhaps it is
necessary in order to thin these trees, which
are wont to grow up densely.
372 WALDEN
The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very
familiar. One had her. form under my house
all winter, separated from me only by the floor-
ing, and she startled me each morning by her
hasty departure when I began to stir, — thump,
thump, thump, striking her head against the
floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come
round my door at dusk to nibble the potato
parings which I had thrown out, and were so
nearly the color of the ground that they could
hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes
in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered
sight of one sitting motionless under my window.
When I opened my door in the evening, off they
would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at
hand they only excited my pity. One evening
one sat by my door two paces from me, at first
trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a
poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged
ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws.
It looked as if Nature no longer contained the
breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last
toes. Its large eyes appeared young and un-
healthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and
lo, away it scudded with an elastic spring over
the snow crust, straightening its body and its
limbs into graceful length, and soon put the
forest between me and itself, —the wild free
venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of
Nature. Not without reason was its slender-
WINTER ANIMALS 373
ness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus, levipes,
lightfoot, some think.)
What is a country without rabbits and par-
tridges? ‘They are among the most simple and
indigenous animal products; ancient and ven-
erable families known to antiquity as to mod-
ern times; of the very hue and substance of
Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the
eround,—and to one another; it is either
winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had
seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge
bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be
expected as rustling leaves. The partridge and
the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives
of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the
forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which
spring up afford them concealment, and they
become more numerous than ever. ‘That must
be a poor country indeed that does not support
a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and
around every swamp may be seen the partridge
or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and
horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.
XVI
THE POND IN WINTER
FTER a still winter night I awoke with
A the impression that some question had
been put to me, which I had been en-
deavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as
what — how — when — where? But there was
dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live,
looking in at my broad windows with serene and
satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I
awoke to an answered question, to Nature and
daylight. ‘The snow lying deep on the earth
dotted with young pines, and the very slope of
the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to
say, Forward! Nature puts no question and
answers none which we mortals ask. She has
long ago taken her resolution. “‘O Prince, our
eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit
to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle
of this universe. The night veils without doubt
a part of this glorious creation; but day comes
to reveal to us this great work, which extends
from earth even into the plains of the ether.”’
Then to my morning work. First I take an
axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be
Puog punogast aq]
4 5 ‘ ° y Pe x
i b * Fo is Y= at. © ise Tee er . ‘ i o be U
Ge, Wi rag hk F ee apt Se im ae cae
¢ Sakae
THE POND IN WINTER 375
not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it
needed a divining rod to find it. Every winter
the liquid and trembling surface of the pond,
which was so sensitive to every breath, and re-
flected every light and shadow, becomes solid
to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that
it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance
the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is
not to be distinguished from any level field.
Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it
closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three
months or more. Standing on the snow-covered
plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my
way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot
of ice, and open a window under my feet, where,
kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet
parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light
as through a window of ground glass, with its
bright sanded floor the same as in summer;
there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in
the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the
cool and even temperament of the inhabitants.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our
heads.
Early in the morning, while all things are crisp
with frost, men come with fishing reels and
slender lunch, and let down their fine lines
through the snowy field to take pickerel and
perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other
fashions and trust other authorities than their
376 WALDEN
townsmen, and by their goings and comings
stitch towns together in parts where else they
would be ripped. They sit and eat their lunch-
eon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves
on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citi-
zen is in artificial. They never consulted with
books, and know and can tell much less than
they have done. The things which they prac-
tise are said not yet to be known. Here is one
fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait.
You look into his pail with wonder as into a
summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up
at home, or knew where she had retreated.
How, pray, did he get these in mid-winter? Oh,
he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground
froze, and so he caught them. His life itself
passes deeper in Nature than the studies of the
naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the
naturalist. ‘The latter raises the moss and bark
gently with his knife in search of insects; the
former lays open logs to their core with his axe,
and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets
his living by barking trees. Such a man has
some right to fish, and I love to see Nature car-
ried out in him. The perch swallows the grub-
worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the
fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the
chinks in the scale of being are filled.
When [I strolled around the pond in misty
weather I was sometimes amused by the primi-
THE POND IN WINTER 377
tive mode which some ruder fisherman had
adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder
branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which
were four or five rods apart and an equal dis-
tance from the shore, and having fastened the
end of the line to a stick to prevent its being
pulled through, have passed the slack line over
a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice,
and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled
down, would show when he had a bite. These
alders loomed through the mist at regular in-
tervals as you walked halfway round the pond.
Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them
lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisher-
man cuts in the ice, making a little hole to ad-
mit the water, I am always surprised by their
rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they
are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods,
foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. ‘They
possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty
which separates them by a wide interval from
the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is
trumpeted in our streets. They are not green
like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue
like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if pos-
sible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious
stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized
nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They,
of course, are Walden all over and all through;
are themselves small Waldens in the animal
378 WALDEN
kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they
are caught here, — that in this deep and capa-
cious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and
chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Wal-
den road, this great gold and emerald fish swims.
I never chanced to see its kind in any market;
it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Eas-
ily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up
their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated be-
fore his time to the thin air of heaven.
As I was desirous to recover the long-lost
bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully,
before the ice broke up, early in *46, with com-
pass and chain and sounding line. ‘There have
been many stories told about the bottom, or
rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly
had no foundation for themselves. It is re-
markable how long men will believe in the
bottomlessness of a pond without taking the
trouble to sound it. I have visited two such
Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighbor-
hood. Many have believed that Walden reached
quite through to the other side of the globe.
Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long
time, looking down through the illusive medium,
perchance with watery eyes into the bargain,
and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of
catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast
holes “into which a load of hay might be driven,”
THE POND IN WINTER 379
if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted
source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal
Regions from these parts. Others have gone
down from the village with a “‘fifty-six’”’ and a
wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed
to find any bottom; for while the “‘fifty-six”’
was resting by the way, they were paying out
the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their
truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness.
But I can assure my readers that Walden has
a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable,
though at an unusual, depth. I fathomed §it
easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing
about a pound and a half, and could tell accu-
rately when the stone left the bottom, by having
to pull so much harder before the water got
underneath to help me. ‘The greatest depth
was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which
may be added the five feet which it has risen
since, making one hundred and seven. ‘This is
a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet
not an inch of it can be spared by the imagina-
tion. What if all ponds were shallow? Would
it not react on the minds of men? I am thank-.
ful that this pond was made deep and pure for
a symbol. While men believe in the infinite
some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
A factory owner, hearing what depth I had
found, thought that it could not be true, for,
judging from his acquaintance with dams, sand
380 WALDEN
would not lie at so steep an angle. But the
deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to
their area as most suppose, and, if drained,
would not leave very remarkable valleys. ‘They
are not like cups between the hills; for this one,
which is so unusually deep for its area, appears
in a vertical section through its centre not
deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emp-
tied, would leave a meadow no more hollow
than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who
is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes,
and usually so correct, standing at the head of
Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as
‘“‘a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms
deep, four miles in breadth,” aud about fifty
miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes,
“If we could have seen it immediately after the
diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature
occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what
a horrid chasm it must have appeared !
‘So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad, and deep,
Capacious bed of waters —”
But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch
Fyne, we apply these proportions to Walden,
which, as we have seen, appears already in a
vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will
appear four times as shallow. So much for the
ancreased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne
when emptied. No doubt many a smiling
Walden Pond on a winter morning
THE POND IN WINTER 381
valley with its stretching cornfields occupies
exactly such a “horrid chasm,” from which the
waters have receded, though it requires the in-
sight and the far sight of the geologist to con-
vince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact.
Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores
of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and
no subsequent elevation of the plain have been
necessary to conceal their history. But it is
easiest, as they who work on the highways
know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a
shower. ‘The amount of it is, the imagination,
give it the least license, dives deeper and soars
higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the
depth of the ocean will be found to be very in-
considerable compared with its breadth.
As I sounded through the ice I could deter-
mine the shape of the bottom with greater ac-
curacy than is possible in surveying harbors
which do not freeze over, and I was surprised
at its general regularity. In the deepest part
there are several acres more level than almost
any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and
plough. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily
chosen, the depth did not vary more than one
foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the
middle, I could calculate the variation for each
one hundred feet in any direction beforehand
within three or four inches. Some are accus-
tomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes
382 WALDEN
even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect
of water under these circumstances is to level
all inequalities. ‘The regularity of the bottom
and its conformity to the shores and the range
of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a
distant promontory betrayed itself in the sound-
ings quite across the pond, and its direction
could be determined by observing the opposite
shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and
valley and gorge deep water and channel.
When I had mapped the pond by the scale of
ten rods to an inch, and put down the soundings,
more than a hundred in all, I observed this re-
markable coincidence. Having noticed that the
number indicating the greatest depth was ap-
parently in the centre of the map, I laid a rule
on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise,
and found, to my surprise, that the line of great-
est length intersected the line of greatest breadth
exactly at the point of greatest depth, notwith-
standing that the middle is so nearly level, the
outline of the pond far from regular, and the
extreme length and breadth were got by measur-
ing into the coves; and I said to myself, Who
knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest
part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle?
Is not this the rule also for the height of moun-
tains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We
know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest
part.
THE POND IN WINTER 383
Of five coves, three, or all which had been
sounded, were observed to have a bar quite
across their mouths and deeper water within, so
that the bay tended to be an expansion of water
within the land not only horizontally but ver-
tically, and to form a basin or independent
pond, the direction of the two capes showing
the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-
coast, also, has its bar at its entrance. In pro-
portion as the mouth of the cove was wider com-
pared with its length, the water over the bar
was deeper compared with that in the basin.
Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove,
and the character of the surrounding shore,
and you have almost elements enough to make
out a formula for all cases.
In order to see how nearly I could guess, with
this experience, at the deepest point in a pond,
by observing the outlines of its surface and the
character of its shores alone, I made a plan of
White Pond, which contains about forty-one
acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor any
visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of greatest
breadth fell very near the line of least breadth,
where two opposite capes approached each
other and two opposite bays receded, I ventured
to mark a point a short distance from the latter
line, but still on the line of greatest length, as
the deepest. The deepest part was found to be
within one hundred feet of this, still farther in
384 WALDEN
the direction to which I had inclined, and was
only one foot deeper, namely sixty feet. Of
course, a stream running through, or an island
in the pond, would make the problem much
more complicated.
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should
need only one fact, or the description of one
actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular
results at that point. Now we know only a few
laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course,
by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but
by our ignorance of essential elements in the
calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are
commonly confined to those instances which we
detect; but the harmony which results from a
far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but
really concurring, laws, which we have not de-
tected, is still more wonderful. ‘The particular
laws are as our points of view, as, to the travel-
ler, a mountain outline varies with every step,
and it has an infinite number of profiles, though
absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or
bored through it is not comprehended in its
entireness.
What I have observed of the pond is no less
true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a
rule of the two diameters not only guides us
toward the sun in the system and the heart in
man; but draw lines through the length and
breadth of the aggregate of a man’s particular
THE POND IN WINTER 385
daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves
and inlets, and where they intersect will be the
height or depth of his character. Perhaps we
need only to know how his shores trend and his
adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his
depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded
by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean
shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected
in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding
depth in him. But alow and smooth shore proves
him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold
projecting brow falls off to and indicates a cor-
responding depth of thought. Also there is a bar
across the entrance of our every cove, or partic-
ular inclination; each is our harbor for a season,
in which we are detained and partially land-
locked. These inclinations are not whimsical
usually, but their form, size, and direction are
determined by the promontories of the shore,
the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is
gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents,
or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it
reaches to the surface, that which was at first
but an inclination in the shore in which a thought
was harbored becomes an individual lake, cut
off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures
its own conditions, changes, perhaps, from salt
to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a
marsh. At the advent of each individual into
this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has
13
386 WALDEN
risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we
are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for
the most part, stand off and on upon a harbor-
less coast, are conversant only with the bights of
the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of
entry, and go into the dry docks of science,
where they merely refit for this world, and no
natural currents concur to individualize them.
As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not
discovered any but rain and snow and evapora-
tion, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a
line, such places may be found, for where the
water flows into the pond it will be probably be
coldest in summer and warmest in winter.
When the ice-men were at work here in ’46—7,
the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected
by those who were stacking them up there, not
being thick enough to lie side by side with the
rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the
ice over a small space was two or three inches
thinner than elsewhere, which made them think
that there was an inlet there. They also showed
me in another place what they thought was a
“leach hole,” through which the pond leaked out
under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing
me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small
cavity under ten feet of water; but I think that
I can warrant the pond not to need soldering till
they find a worse leak than that. One has sug-
gested that if such a “leach hole” should be
THE POND IN WINTER 387
found, its connection with the meadow, if any
existed, might be proved by conveying some
colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the
hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring
in the meadow, which would catch some of the
particles carried through by the current.
While I was surveying, the ice, which was six-
teen inches thick, undulated under a slight wind
like water. It is well known that a level cannot
be used on ice. At one rod from the shore its
greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of
a level on land directed toward a graduated staff
on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though
the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore.
It was probably greater in the middle. Who
knows but if our instruments were delicate enough
we might detect an undulation in the crust of the
earth? When two legs of my level were on the
shore and the third on the ice, and the sights
were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of
the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made
a difference of several feet on a tree across the
pond. When I began to cut holes for sounding,
there were three or four inches of water on the
ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus
far; but the water began immediately to run
into these holes, and continued to run for two
days in deep streams, which wore away the ice
on every side, and contributed essentially, if not
mainly, to dry the surface of the pond; for, as
388 WALDEN
the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice.
This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the
bottom of a ship to let the water out. When such
holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a
new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all,
it is beautifully mottled internally by dark fig-
ures, shaped somewhat like a spider’s web,
what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the
channels worn by the water flowing from all
sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, when the
ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a
double shadow of myself, one standing on the
head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the
trees or hill side.
While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice
are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes
from the village to get ice to cool his summer
drink; impressively, even pathetically wise, to
foresee the heat and thirst of July now in Janu-
ary, — wearing a thick coat and mittens! when
so many things are not provided for. It may be
that he lays up no treasures in this world which
will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts
and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of
fishes, and carts off their very element and air,
held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood,
through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars,
to underlie the summer there. It looks like solid-
ified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through the
THE POND IN WINTER 389
streets. ‘These ice-cutters are a merry race, full
of jest and sport, and when I went among them
they were wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion
with them, I standing underneath.
In the winter of ’46—7 there came a hundred
men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on
to our pond one morning, with many car-loads of
ungainly-looking farming tools, sleds, ploughs,
drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes,
and each man was armed with a double-pointed
pike-staff, such as is not described in the New
England Farmer or the Cultwator. I did not
know whether they had come to sow a crop of
winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently
introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure,
I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I
had done, thinking the soil was deep and had
lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentle-
man farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted
to double his money, which, as I understood,
amounted to half a million already; but, in order
to cover each one of his dollars with another, he
took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of
Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter.
They went to work at once, ploughing, harrow-
ing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as
if they were bent on making this a model farm;
but when I was looking sharp to see what kind of
seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of
fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the
390 WALDEN >
virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean
down to the sand, or rather the water, — for it
was a very springy soil, — indeed, all the terra
firma there was, — and haul it away on sleds,
and then I guessed that they must be cutting
peat in a bog. So they came and went every day,
with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from
and to some point of the polar regions, as it
seemed to me, like a flock of arctic snow-birds.
But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge,
and a hired man, walking behind his team,
slipped through a crack in the ground down
toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before
suddenly became but the ninth part of a man,
almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to
take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that
there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes
the frozen soil took a piece of steel out of a plough-
share, or a plough got set in the furrow and had
to be cut out.
To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with
Yankee overseers, came from Cambridge every
day to get out the ice. ‘They divided it into
cakes by methods too well known to require
description, and these, being sledded to the
shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice plat-
form, and raised by grappling irons and block
and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as
surely as so many barrels of flour, and there
placed evenly side by side, and row upon row;
THE POND IN WINTER 391
as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk
designed to pierce the clouds. They told me
that in a good day they could get out a thousand
tons, which was the yield of about one acre.
Deep ruts and “‘cradle holes”? were worn in the
ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds
over the same track, and the horses invariably
ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out
like buckets. ‘They stacked up the cakes thus
in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on
one side and six or seven rods square, putting
hay between the outside layers to exclude the
air; for when the wind, though never so cold,
finds a passage through, it will wear large cavi-
ties, leaving slight supports or studs only here
and there, and finally topple it down. At first it
looked like a vast blue fort or Valhalla; but
when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay
into the crevices, and this became covered with
rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-
grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted
marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we
see in the almanac, — his shanty, as if he had
a design to estivate with us. They calculated
that not twenty-five per cent of this would reach
its destination, and that two or three per cent
would be wasted in the cars. However, a still
oreater part of this heap had a different destiny
from what intended; for, either because the ice
was found not to keep so well as was expected,
392 WALDEN
containing more air than usual, or for some
other reason, it never got to market. This heap,
made in the winter of °46—7 and estimated to
contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered
with hay and boards; and though it was unrooted _
the following July, and a part of it carried off, the
rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over
that summer and the next winter, and was not
quite melted till September, 1848. Thus the
pond recovered the greater part.
Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at
hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beau-
tifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the
white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice
of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes
one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man’s
sled into the village street, and lies there for a
week like a great emerald, an object of interest
to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of
Walden which in the state of water was green
will often, when frozen, appear from the same
point of view blue. So the hollows about this
pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled
with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but
the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the
blue color of water and ice is due to the light and
air they contain, and the most transparent is the
bluest. Ice is an interesting subject for con-
templation. ‘They told me that they had some
in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old
8. rerametee ee + m a a Pin
Vawarnas= .< i , af
Among the pines bordering the pond
THE POND IN WINTER 393
which was as good as ever. Why is it that a
bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen
remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that
this is the difference between the affections and
the intellect.
Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window
a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen,
with teams and horses and apparently all the im-
plements of farming, such a picture as we see on
the first page of the almanac; and as often as I
looked out I was reminded of the fable of the
lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower,
and the like; and now they are all gone, and in
thirty days more, probably, I shall look from
the same window on the pure sea-green Walden
water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees,
and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and
no traces will appear that a man has ever stood
there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh
as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a
lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, be-
holding his form reflected in the waves, where
lately a hundred men securely labored.
Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabi-
tants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Ma-
dras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my
well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the
stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the
Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years
of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with
394 WALDEN
which our modern world and its literature seem
puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy
is not to be referred to a previous state of ex-
istence, so remote is its sublimity from our con-
ceptions. I lay down the book and go to my
well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant
of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and
Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges
reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree
with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant
come to draw water for his master, and our
buckets as it were grate together in the same
well. The pure Walden water is mingled with
the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring
winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous
islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes
the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by ‘Ternate
and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf,
melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and 1s
landed in ports of which Alexander only heard
the names.
XVII
SPRING
HE opening of large tracts by the ice-
cutters commonly causes a pond to break
up earlier; for the water, agitated by the
wind, even in cold weather, wears away the sur-
rounding ice. But such was not the effect on
Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick
new garment to take the place of the old. This
pond never breaks up so soon as the others in
this neighborhood, on account both of its greater
depth and its having no stream passing through
it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it
to open in the course of a winter, not excepting
that of *52-3, which gave the ponds so severe a
trial. It commonly opens about the first of April,
a week or ten days later than Flint’s Pond and
Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side
and in the shallower parts where it began to
freeze. It indicates better than any water here-
abouts the absolute progress of the season, being
least affected by transient changes of tempera-
ture. A severe cold of a few days’ duration in
March may very much retard the opening of the
former ponds, while the temperature of Walden
396 WALDEN
increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermome-
ter thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th
of March, 1847, stood at 32°, or freezing point;
near the shore at 33°; in the middle of Flint’s
Pond, the same day, at 324°; at a dozen rods
from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot
thick, at 36°. This difference of three and a half
degrees between the temperature of the deep
water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the
fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively
shallow, show why it should break up so much
sooner than Walden. ‘The ice in the shallowest
part was at this time several inches thinner than —
in the middle. In mid-winter the middle had
been the warmest and the ice thinnest there.
So, also, every one who has waded about the
shores of a pond in summer must have perceived
how much warmer the water is close to the shore,
where only three or four inches deep, than a little
distance out, and on the surface where it is deep,
than near the bottom. In spring the sun not
only exerts an influence through the increased
temperature of the air and earth, but its heat
passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is
reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and
so also warms the water and melts the under
side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting
it more directly above, making it uneven, and
causing the air bubbles which it contains to ex-
tend themselves upward and downward until it
SPRING 397
is completely honeycombed, and at last disap-
pears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its
grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to
rot or “‘“comb,”’ that is, assume the appearance of
honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air
cells are at right angles with what was the water
surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising
near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner,
and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected
heat; and I have been told that in the experiment
at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden
pond, though the cold air circulated underneath,
and so had access to both sides, the reflection of
the sun from the bottom more than counter-
balanced this advantage. When a warm rain
in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-
ice from Walden, and leaves a hard, dark, or
transparent ice on the middle, there will be a
strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or
more wide, about the shores, created by this re-
flected heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles
themselves within the ice operate as burning-
glasses to melt the ice beneath.
The phenomena of the year take place every
day in a pond on a small scale. Every morn-
ing, generally speaking, the shallow water is
being warmed more rapidly than the deep,
though it may not be made so warm after all,
and every evening it is being cooled more
rapidly until the morning. ‘The day is an
398 WALDEN
epitome of the year. ‘The night is the winter,
the morning and evening are the spring and fall,
and the noon is the summer. The cracking
and booming of the ice indicate a change of
temperature. One pleasant morning after a
cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone
to Flint’s Pond to spend the day, I noticed with
surprise that when I struck the ice with the
head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for
many rods around, or as if I had struck on a
tight drumhead. ‘The pond began to boom
about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the
influence of the sun’s rays slanted upon it from.
over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned
like a waking man with a gradually increasing
tumult, which was kept up three or four hours.
It look a short siesta at noon, and boomed once
more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing
his influence. In the right stage of the weather
a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity.
But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks,
and the air also being less elastic, it had com-
pletely lost its resonance, and probably fishes
and muskrats could not then have been stunned
by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the
‘thundering of the pond” scares the fishes and
prevents their biting. The pond does not
thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely
when to expect its thundering; but though I
may perceive no difference in the weather, it
SPRING 399
does. Who would have suspected so large and
cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensi-
tive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders
obedience when it should as surely as the buds
expand in the spring. The earth is all alive
and covered with papille. ‘The largest pond is
as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule
of mercury in its tube.
One attraction in coming to the woods to live
was that I should have leisure and opportunity
to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond
at length begins to be honeycombed, and I can
set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and
warmer suns are gradually melting the snow;
the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see
how I shall get through the winter without add-
ing to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer
necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs
of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriv-
ing bird, or the striped squirrel’s chirp, for his
stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the
woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.
On the 13th of March, after I had: heard the
bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice
was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather
grew warmer, it was not sensibly worn away by
the water, nor broken up and floated off as in
rivers, but, though it was completely melted
for half a rod in width about the shore, the
400 WALDEN
middle was merely honeycombed and saturated
with water, so that you could put your foot
through it when six inches thick; but by the
next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain
followed by fog, it would have wholly disap-
peared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away.
One year I went across the middle only five
days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845
Walden was first completely open on the Ist of
April; in °46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the
8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52,
the 18th of April; in 53, the 23rd of March;
in ’54, about the 7th of April.
Every incident connected with the breaking
up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of
the weather is particularly interesting to us who
live in a climate of so great extremes. When
the warmer. days come, they who dwell near
the river hear the ice crack at night with a
startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy —
fetters were rent from end to end, and within |
a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alli-
gator comes out of the mud with quakings of
the earth. -One old man, who has been a close
observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly
wise in regard to all her operations as if she
had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy,
and he had helped to lay her keel, — who has
come to his growth, and can hardly acquire
more of natural lore if he should live to the age
SPRING 401
of Methuselah, — told me, and I was surprised
to hear him express wonder at any of Nature’s
operations, for I thought that there were no
secrets between them, that one spring day he
took his gun and boat, and thought that he
would have a little sport with the ducks. There
was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone
out of the river, and he dropped down without
obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to
Fair-Haven Pond, which he found, unexpect-
edly, covered for the most part with a firm field
of ice. It was a warm day, and he was sur-
prised to see so great a body of ice remaining.
Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the
north or back side of an island in the pond, and
then concealed himself in the bushes on the
south side, to await them. ‘The ice was melted
for three or four rods from the shore, and there
was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a
muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within,
-and he thought it likely that some would be
along pretty soon. After he had lain still there
about an hour he heard a low and seemingly
very distant sound, but singularly grand and
impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard,
gradually swelling and increasing as if it would
have a universal and memorable ending, a
sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all
at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl
coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun,
402 WALDEN
he started up in haste and excited; but he found,
to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice
had started while he lay there, and drifted in
to the shore, and the sound he had heard was
made by its edge grating on the shore, — at
first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at
length heaving up and scattering its wrecks
along the island to a considerable height before
it came to a standstill.
At length the sun’s rays have attained the
right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and
rain and melt the snow-banks, and the sun dis-
persing the mist smiles on a checkered land-
scape of russet and white smoking with incense,
through which the traveller picks his way from
islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand
tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled
with the blood of winter which they are bearing
off.
Few phenomena gave me more delight than
to observe the forms which thawing sand and
clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep
cut on the railroad through which I passed on
my way to the village, a phenomenon not very
common on so large a scale, though the number
of freshly exposed banks of the right material
must have been greatly multiplied since rail-
roads were invented. ‘The material was sand
of every degree of fineness and of various rich
colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When
SPRING 403
the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a
thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to
flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes burst-
ing out through the snow and overflowing it
where no sand was to be seen before. Innum-
erable little streams overlap and interlace one
with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid prod-
uct, which obeys halfway the law of currents,
and halfway that of vegetation. As it flows
it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, mak-
ing heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in
depth, and resembling, as you look down on
them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated
thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded
of coral, of leopards’ paws or birds’ feet, of
brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all
kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose
forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a
sort of architectural foliage more ancient and
typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or
any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under
some circumstances, to become a puzzle to
future geologists. ‘The whole cut impressed me
as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open
to the light. The various shades of the sand are
singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the
different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish,
and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches
the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out
flatter into strands, the separate streams losing
404 WALDEN
their semi-cylindrical form and gradually be-
coming more flat and broad, running together
as they are more moist, till they form an almost
flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded,
but in which you can trace the original forms
of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself,
they are converted into banks, like those formed
off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vege-
tation are lost in the ripple marks on the bottom.
The whole bank, which is from twenty to
forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass
of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a
quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the prod-
uce of one spring day. What makes this sand
foliage remarkable is its springing into existence
thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the
inert bank, — for the sun acts on one side first,
—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the
creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a
peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the
Artist who made the world and me — had come
to where he was still at work, sporting on this
bank, and with excess of energy strewing his
fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer
to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy over-
flow is something such a foliaceous mass as the
vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the
very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf.
No wonder that the earth expresses itself out-
wardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea in-
SPRING 405
wardly. ‘The atoms have already learned this
law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging
leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether
in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick
lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver
and lungs and the leaves of fat (Ae(Bw, labor,
lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing;
hoBés, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and
many other words), externally a dry thin leaf,
even as the 7 and v are a pressed and dried b.
The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of
the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed), with a
liquid / behind it pressing it forward. In globe,
glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capac-
ity of the throat. The feathers and wings of
birds are still drier and thinner leaves. ‘Thus,
also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the
earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The
very globe continually transcends and _ trans-
lates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit.
Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as
if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds
of water plants have impressed on the watery
mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf,
and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is
intervening earth, and towns and cities are the
ova of insects in their axils.
When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to
flow, but in the morning the streams will start
once more and branch and branch again into
406 WALDEN
a myriad of others. You here see perchance
how blood vessels are formed. If you look closely
you observe that first there pushes forward from
the thawing mass a stream of softened sand,
with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger,
feeling its way slowly and blindly downward,
until at last with more heat and moisture, as
the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in
its effort to obey the law to which the most
inert also yields, separates from the latter and
forms for itself a meandering channel or artery
within that, in which is seen a little silvery
stream glancing like lightning from one stage
of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever
and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is won-
derful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes
itself as it flows, using the best material its mass
affords to form the sharp edges of its channel.
Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious
matter which the water deposits is perhaps the
bony system, and in the still finer soil and or-
ganic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue.
What is man but a mass of thawing clay? ‘The
ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed.
The fingers and toes flow to their extent from
the thawing mass of the body. Who knows
what the human body would expand and flow
out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the
hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and
veins? ‘The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as
SPRING 407
a lichen, wmbilicaria, on the side of the head,
with its lobe or drop. The lip — labvum, from
labor (?) — laps or lapses from the sides of the
cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest con-
gealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still
larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face.
The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the
valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the
cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vege-
table leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop,
larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the
leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many
directions it tends to flow, and more heat or
other genial influences would have caused it
to flow yet farther.
Thus it seemed that this one hill side illus-
trated the principle of all the operations of
Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented
a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this
hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a
new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more
exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fer-
tility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excre-
mentitious in its character, and there is no end
to the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if
the globe were turned wrong side outward; but
this suggests at least that Nature has some
bowels, and there again is mother of humanity.
This is the frost coming out of the ground; this
is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery
408 WALDEN
spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry.
I know of nothing more purgative of winter
fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that
Earth is ‘still in her swaddling clothes, and
stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh
curls spring from the baldest brow. ‘There is
nothing inorganic. ‘These foliaceous heaps lie
along the bank like the slag of a furnace, show-
ing that Nature is “in full blast” within. The
earth is not a mere fragment of dead history,
stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book,
to be studied by geologists and antiquaries
chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree,
which precede flowers and fruit, — not a fossil
earth, but a living earth; compared with whose
great central life all animal and vegetable life
is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our
exuvie from their graves. You may melt your
metals and cast them into the most. beautiful
moulds you can; they will never excite me like
the forms which this molten earth flows out
into. And not only it, but the institutions
upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of the
potter.
Ere long, not only on these banks, but on
every hill and plain and in every hollow, the
frost comes out of the ground like a dormant
quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea
with music, or migrates to other climes in
clouds. ‘Thaw with his gentle persuasion is
SPRING 409
more powerful than Thor with his hammer.
The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.
When the ground was partially bare of snow,
and a few warm days had dried its surface some-
what, it was pleasant to compare the first tender
signs of the infant year just peeping forth with
the ‘stately beauty of the withered vegetation
which had withstood the winter, — life-ever-
lasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild
grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently
than in summer even, as if their beauty was not
ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cattails, mul-
leins, Johnswort, hardhack, meadow-sweet, and
other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted
granaries which entertain the earliest birds, —
decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature
wears. I am particularly attracted by the arch-
ing and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it
brings back the summer to our winter memories,
and is among the forms which art loves to copy,
and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the
same relation to types already in the mind of
man that astronomy has. It is an antique style
older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the
phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an in-
expressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We
are accustomed to hear this king described
as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the
gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of
Summer.
410 WALDEN
At the approach of spring the red squirrels
got under my house, two at a time, directly
under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and
kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping
and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that
ever were heard; and when I stamped they only
chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and re-
spect in their mad pranks, defying humanity
to stop them. No you don’t — chickaree —
chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my argu-
ments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell
into a strain of invective that was irresistible.
The first sparrow of spring! ‘The year be-
ginning with younger hope than ever! The
faint silvery warblings heard over the partially
bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song-
sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes
of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a
time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and
all written revelations? The brooks sing carols
and glees to the spring. ‘The marsh-hawk sail-
ing low over the meadow is already seeking the
first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of
melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dis-
solves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up
on the hill sides like a spring fire, — “‘et primi-
tus orbitur herba imbribus primoribus evocata,”’
—as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to
ereet the returning sun; not yellow but green is
the color of its flame; — the symbol of perpetual
SPRING All
youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon,
streams from the sod into the summer, checked
indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again,
lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh
life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes
out of the ground. It is almost identical with
that, for in the growing days of June, when the
rills are dry, the grass-blades are their channels,
and from year to year the herds drink at this
perennial green stream, and the mower draws
from it betimes their winter supply. 5o our
human life but dies down to its root, and still
puts forth its green blade to eternity.
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal
two rods wide along the northerly and westerly
sides, and wider still at the east end. A great
field of ice has cracked off from the main body.
I hear a song-sparrow singing from the bushes
on the shore, — olut, olit, olat, — chip, chip, chip,
che, char, — che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is
helping to crack it. How handsome the great
sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answer-
ing somewhat to those of the shore, but more
regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the
recent severe but transient cold, and all watered
or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides
eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it
reaches the living surface beyond. It is glori-
ous to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in
the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee
412 WALDEN
and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes
within it, and of the sands on its shore, —a
silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as
it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast
between winter and spring. Walden was dead
and is alive again. But this spring it broke up
more steadily, as I have said.
The change from storm and winter to serene
and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours
to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis
which all things proclaim. It is seemingly in-
stantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light
filled my house, though the evening was at hand,
and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and
the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I
looked out the window, and lo! where yesterday
was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond
already calm and full of hope as in a summer eve-
ning, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom,
though none was visible overhead, as if it had
intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard
a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for
many a thousand years, methought, whose note
I shall not forget for many a thousand more, —
the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O
the evening robin, at the end of a New England
summer day! If I could ever find the twig he
sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig. This
at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The
pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my house,
SPRING 419 ©
which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed
their several characters, looked brighter, greener,
and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed
and restored by the rain. I knew that it would
not rain any more. You may tell by looking at
any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-
pile, whether its winter is past or not. As it
grew darker, I was startled by the honking of
geese flying low over the woods, like weary
travellers getting in late from southern lakes,
and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint
and mutual consolation. Standing at my door,
I could hear the rush of their wings; when,
driving toward my house, they suddenly spied
my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and
settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the
door, and passed my first spring night in the
woods.
In the morning I watched the geese from the
door through the mist, sailing in the middle of
the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous
that Walden appeared like an artificial pond
for their amusement. But when I stood on the
shore they at once rose up with a great flapping
of wings at the signal of their commander, and
when they had got into rank, circled about over
my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered
straight to Canada, with a regular honk from
the leader at intervals, trusting to break their
fast in muddier pools. A “plump” of ducks
414 WALDEN
rose at the same time and took the route to the
north in the wake of their noisier cousins.
For a week I heard the circling groping clangor
of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings,
seeking its companion, and still peopling the
woods with the sound of a larger life than they
could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen
again flying express in small flocks, and in due
time I heard the martins twittering over my
clearing, though it had not seemed that the
township contained so many that it could afford
me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly
of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere
white men came. In almost all climes the tor-
toise and the frog are among the precursors and
heralds of this season, and birds fly with song
and glancing plumage, and plants spring and
bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight
oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilib-
rium of Nature.
As every season seems best to us in its turn,
so the coming in of spring is like the creation of
Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the
Golden Age. —
‘*‘Eurus ad Auroram, Nabathacaque regna recessit,
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis.”
“The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathzan
kingdom,
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays.
SPRING 415
Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things,
The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;
‘Or the earth being recent and lately sundered from the high
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven.”
A single gentle rain makes the grass many
shades greener. So our prospects brighten on
the influx of better thoughts. We should be
blessed if we lived in the present always, and
took advantage of every accident that befell us,
like the grass which confesses the influence of
the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not
spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past
opportunities, which we call doing our duty.
We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In
a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are for-
given. Such a day isa truce to vice. While such
a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may
return. Through our own recovered innocence
we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You
may have known your neighbor yesterday for
a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely
pitied or despised him, and despaired of the
world; but the sun shines bright and warm
this first spring morning, recreating the world,
and you meet him at some serene work, and see
how his exhausted and debauched veins ex-
pand with still joy and bless the new day, feel
the spring influence with the innocence of in-
fancy, and all his faults are forgotten. ‘There is
not only an atmosphere of good will about him,
416 WALDEN
but even a savor of holiness groping for expres-
sion, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a
new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south
hill side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some
innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his
gnarled rind and try another year’s life, tender
and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has
entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer
does not leave open his prison doors, — why
the judge does not dismiss his case, — why the
preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It
is because they do not obey the hint which God
gives them, nor accept the pardon which he
freely offers to all.
‘A return to goodness produced each day in
the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morn-
ing, causes that in respect to the love of virtue
and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little
the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts
of the forest which has been felled. In like man-
ner the evil which one does in the interval of
a day prevents the germs of virtues which began
to spring up again from developing themselves
and destroys them.
‘After the germs of virtue have thus been pre-
vented many times from developing themselves,
then the beneficent breath of evening does not
suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath
of evening does not suffice longer to preserve
them, then the nature of man does not differ
SPRING 417
much from that of the brute. Men seeing the
nature of this man like that of the brute, think
that he has never possessed the innate faculty
of reason. Are those the true and natural senti-
ments of man?”
“The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read
On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,
And mortals knew no shores but their own.
There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm
Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed.”
On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from
the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner
bridge, standing on the quaking grass and wil-
low roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a
singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of
the sticks which boys play with their fingers,
when, looking up, I observed a very slight and
graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately
soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two
over and over, showing the underside of its
wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the
sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This
sight reminded me of falconry and what noble-
ness and poetry are associated with that sport.
The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called:
14
-418 WALDEN
but I care not for its name. It was the most
ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not
simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the
larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance
in the fields of air; mounting again and again
with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and
beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite,
and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as
if it had never set its foot on terra firma. It ap-
peared to have no companion in the universe,
— sporting there alone, — and to need none but
the morning and the ether with which it played.
It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely
beneath it. Where was the parent which
hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the
heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed re-
lated to the earth but by an egg hatched some-
time in the crevice of a crag; — or was its native
nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the
rainbow’s trimmings and the sunset sky, and
lined with some soft midsummer haze caught
up from earth? Its eyry now some cliffy cloud.
Besides this I got a rare mess of golden and
silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked
like a string of jewels. Ah! I have penetrated
to those meadows on the morning of many a
first spring day, jumping from hummock to
hummock, from willow root to willow root, when
the wild river valley and the woods were bathed
in so pure and bright a light as would have
AIUAOT) IAI PT JUIN ADIU ADDI Id I,
SPRING 419
waked the dead, if they had been slumbering
in their graves, as some suppose. There needs
no stronger proof of immortality. All things
must live in such a light. O Death, where was
thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory,
then ?
Our village life would stagnate if it were not
for the unexplored forests and meadows which
surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, —
to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern
and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming
of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where
only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds
her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly
close to the ground. At the same time that we
are earnest to explore and learn all things, we
require that all things be mysterious and unex-
plorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because un-
fathomable. We can never have enough of
Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of
inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features,
the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness
with its living and its decaying trees, the thun-
der-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks
and produces freshets. We need to witness our
own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing
freely where we never wan‘>r. We are cheered
when we observe the vulture feeding on the car-
rion which disgusts and disheartens us, and de-
420 WALDEN
riving health and strength from the repast.
There was a dead horse in the hollow by the
path to my house, which compelled me some-
times to go out of my way, especially in the
night when the air was heavy, but the assurance
it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable
health of Nature was my compensation for this.
I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that
myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and
suffered to prey on one another; that tender
organizations can be so serenely squashed out
of existence like pulp, — tadpoles which herons
gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in
the road; and that sometimes it has rained
flesh and blood! With the liability to accident,
we must see how little account is to be made of
it. The impression made on a wise man is that
of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous
after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compas-
sion is a very untenable ground. It must be
expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be
stereotyped.
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples,
and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine
woods around the pond, imparted a brightness
like sunshine to the landscape, especially in
cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through
mists and shining faintly on the hill sides here
and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw
a loon in the pond, and during the first week of
SPRING 421 -
the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown
thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, chewink,
and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush
long before. ‘The phoebe had already come
once more and looked in at my door and win-
dow, to see if my house was cavern-like enough
for her, sustaining herself on humming wings
with clinched talons, as if she held by the air,
while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-
like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the
pond and the stones and rotten wood along the
shore, so that you could have collected a barrel-
ful. This is the “‘sulphur showers” we hear of.
Even in Calidasa’s drama of Sacontala, we read
of “‘rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the
lotus.”’ And so the seasons went rolling on into
summer, as one rambles into higher and higher
orass.
Thus was my first year’s life in the woods
completed; and the second year was similar to
it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.
XVIII
CONCLUSION
O the sick the doctors wisely recommend
di ih a change of air and scenery. ‘Thank
Heaven, here is not all the world. The
buckeye does not grow in New England, and
the mocking-bird is rarely heard here. ‘The
wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we;
he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon
in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night
in a southern bayou. Even the bison to some
extent keeps pace with the seasons, cropping
the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener
and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellow-
stone. Yet we think that if rail-fences are
pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our
farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives
and our fates decided. If you are chosen town
clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Terra del
Fuego this summer: but you may go to the
land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe
is wider than our views of it.
Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel
of our craft, like curious passengers, and not
make the voyage like stupid sailors picking
CONCLUSION , 423
oakum. ‘The other side of the globe is but the
home of our correspondent. Our voyage is only
great circle-sailing, and the doctors prescribe
for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens
to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but
surely that is not the game he would be after.
How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he
could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford
rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game
to shoot one’s self. —
‘Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. ‘Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography.”’
What does Africa, — what does the West
stand for? Is not our own interior white on the
chart? black though it may prove, like the
coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the
Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-
west Passage around this continent, that we
would find? Are these the problems which most
concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man
who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest
to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where
he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the
Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own
streams and oceans; explore your own higher
latitudes, — with shiploads of preserved meats
to support you, if they be necessary; and pile
the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were pre-
424 WALDEN
served meats invented to preserve meat merely ?
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents
and worlds within you, opening new channels,
not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the
lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire
of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left
by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who
have no selj-respect, and sacrifice the greater to
the less. They love the soil which makes their
graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit
which may still animate their clay. Patriotism
is a maggot in their heads. What was the mean-
ing of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition,
with all its parade and expense, but an indirect
recognition of the fact that there are continents
and seas in the moral world, to which every
man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by
him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand
miles through cold and storm and cannibals,
in a government ship, with five hundred men
and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the
private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of
one’s being alone. —
**Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hic vite, plus habet ie vie.”
**Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.
I have more of God, they more of the road.”
It is not worth the while to go round the world to
count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even
CONCLUSION 425
till you can do better, and you may perhaps find
some “‘Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the
inside at last. England and France, Spain and
Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front
on this private sea; but no bark from them has
ventured out of sight of land, though it is without
doubt the direct way to India. If you would
learn to speak all tongues and conform to the
customs of all nations, if you would travel
farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all
climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head
against a stone, even obey the precept of the
old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein
are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the
defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards
that run away and enlist. Start now on that
farthest western way, which does not pause
at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct
toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads
on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and
winter, day and night, sun down, moon down,
and at last earth down too.
It is said that Mirabeau took to highway rob-
bery “‘to ascertain what degree of resolution was
necessary in order to place one’s self in formal
opposition to the most sacred laws of society.”
He declared that “‘a soldier who fights in the
ranks does not require half so much courage as
a foot-pad,” — “that honor and religion have
never stood in the way of a well-considered and
426 WALDEN
a firm resolve.”” ‘This was manly, as the world
goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A
saner man would have found himself often
enough “in formal opposition’? to what are
deemed ‘“‘the most sacred laws of society,”
through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and
so have tested his resolution without going out
of his way. It is not for a man to put himself
in such an attitude to society, but to maintain
himself in whatever attitude he find himself
through obedience to the laws of his being,
which will never be one of opposition to a just
government, if he should chance to meet with
such.
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went
there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had
several more lives to live, and could not spare
any more time for that one. It is remarkable
how easily and insensibly we fall into a particu-
lar route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.
I had not lived there a week before my feet wore
a path from my door to the pond-side; and
though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is
still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others
may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep
it open. The surface of the earth is soft and
impressible by the feet of men; and so with
the paths which the mind travels. How worn
and dusty, then, must be the highways of the
world, how deep the ruts of tradition and con-
CONCLUSION 427
formity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
but rather to go before the mast and on the deck
of the world, for there I could best see the moon-
light amid the mountains. I do not wish to go
below now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment:
that if one advances confidently in the direction
of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life
which he has imagined, he will meet with a
success unexpected in common hours. . He will
put some things behind, will pass an invisible
boundary; new, universal, and more liberal
laws will begin to establish themselves around
and within him; or the old laws be expanded,
and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal
sense, and he will live with the license of a higher
order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies
his life, the laws of the universe will appear less
complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor
poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If
you have built castles in the air, your work need
not be lost; that is where they should be. Now
put the foundations under them.
It is a ridiculous demand which England and
America make, that you shall speak so that they
can understand you. Neither men nor toad-
stools grow so. As if that were important, and
there were not enough to understand you with-
out them. As if Nature could support but one
order of understandings, could not sustain birds
428 WALDEN
as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping
things, and hush and who, which Bright can
understand, were the best English. As if there
were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly
lest my expression may not be extra-vagant
enough, may not wander far enough beyond the
narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to
be adequate to the truth of which I have been
convinced. LExtravagance! it depends on how
you are yarded. The migrating buffalo which
seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not
extravagant like the cow which kicks over the
pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after
her calf, in milking-time. I desire to speak
somewhere without bounds; like a man in a
waking moment, to men in their waking mo-
ments; for I am convinced that I cannot exag-
gerate enough even to lay the foundation of
a true expression. Who that has heard a strain
of music feared then lest he should speak ex-
travagantly any more forever? In view of the
future or possible, we should live quite laxly
and undefined in front, our outlines dim and
misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an
insensible perspiration toward the sun. ‘The
volatile truth of our words should continually
betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
Their truth is instantly translated; its literal
monument alone remains. ‘The words which
express our faith and piety are not definite; yet
CONCLUSION 429
they are significant and fragrant like frankin-
cense to superior natures.
Why level downward to our dullest perception
always, and praise that as common sense? The
commonest sense is the sense of men asleep,
which they express by snoring. Sometimes we
are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-
half-witted with the half-witted, because we
appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some
would find fault with the morning-red, if they
ever got up early enough. “They pretend,”
as I hear, “‘that the verses of Kabir have four
different senses: illusion, spirit, intellect, and
the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas;’’ but in this
part of the world it is considered a ground for
complaint if a man’s writings admit of more
than one interpretation. While England en-
deavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any en-
deavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so
much more widely and fatally ?
I do not suppose that I have attained to ob-
scurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal
fault were found with my pages on this score
than was found with the Walden ice. Southern
customers objected to its blue color, which is
the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy,
and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white,
but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is
like the: mists which envelop the earth, and not
like the azure ether beyond.
430 WALDEN
Some are dinning in our ears that we Ameri-
cans, and moderns generally, are intellectual
dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the
Elizabethan men. But what is that to the pur-
pose? A living dog is better than a dead lion.
Shall a man go and hang himself because he
belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the
biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind
his own business, and endeavor to be what he
was made.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to
succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If
a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drum-
mer. Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away. It is not im-
portant that he should mature as soon as an
apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring
into summer? If the condition of things which
we were made for is not yet, what were any
reality which we can substitute? We will not
be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with
pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves,
though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze
still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if
the former were not?
There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who
was disposed to strive after perfection. One day
it came into his mind to make a staff. Having
considered that in an imperfect work time is
CONCLUSION 431
an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does
not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect
in all respects, though I should do nothing else
in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest
for wood, being resolved that it should not be
made of unsuitable material; and as he searched
for and rejected stick after stick, his friends
gradually deserted him, for they grew old in
their works and died, but he grew not older by
a moment. His singleness of purpose and reso-
lution, and his elevated piety, endowed him,
without his knowledge, with perennial youth.
As he made no compromise with Time, Time
kept out of his way, and only sighed at a dis-
tance because he could not overcome him. Be-
fore he had found a stock in all respects suitable
the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he
sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Be-
fore he had given it the proper shape the dynasty
of the Candahars was at an end, and with the
point of the stick he wrote the name of the last
of that race in the sand, and then resumed his
work. By the time he had smoothed and polished
the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star;
and ere he had put on the ferule and the head
adorned with precious stones, Brahma had
awoke and slumbered many times. But why
do I stay to mention these things? When the
finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly
expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist
432 WALDEN ~
into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. |
He had made a new system in making a staff,
a world with full and fair proportions; in which,
though the old cities and dynasties had passed
away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken
their places. And now he saw by the heap of
shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and
his work, the former lapse of time had been an
illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than
is required for a single scintillation from the
brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the
tinder of a mortal brain. The material was
pure, and his art was pure; how could the
result be other than wonderful ?
No face which we can give to a matter will
stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone
wears well. For the most part, we are not where
we are, but in a false position. Through an
infirmity of our natures, we suppose a Case,
and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two
cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult
to get out. In sane moments we regard only
the facts, the case that is. Say what you have
to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better
than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker,
standing on the gallows, was asked if he had
anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” said he,
‘‘to remember to make a knot in their thread
before they take the first stitch.’ His com-
panion’s prayer is forgotten. |
CONCLUSION 433
However mean your life is, meet it and live
it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It
is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when
you are richest. The faulifinder will find faults
even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it Is.
You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling,
glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting
sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-
house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode;
the snow melts before its door as early in the
spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live
as contentedly there, and have as cheering
thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor
seem to me often to live the most independent
lives of any. Maybe they are simply great
enough to receive without misgiving. Most
think that they are above being supported by
the town; but it oftener happens that they are
not above supporting themselves by dishonest
means, which should be more disreputable.
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things,
whether clothes or friends. Turn the old;
return to them. ‘Things do not change; we ©
change. Sell your clothes and keep your
thoughts. God will see that you do not want
society. If I were confined to a corner of a
garret all my days, like a spider, the world
would be just as large to me while I had my
thoughts about me. ‘The philosopher said:
434 WALDEN
“From an army of three divisions one can
take away its general, and put it in disorder;
from the man the most abject and vulgar one
cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek
so anxiously to be developed, to subject your-
self to many influences to be played on; it is
all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals
the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty
and meanness gather around us, “and lo!
creation widens to our view.” We are often
reminded that if there were bestowed on us the
wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the
same, and our means essentially the same.
Moreover, if you are restricted in your range
by poverty, if you cannot buy books and news-
papers, for instance, you are but confined to
the most significant and vital experiences; you
are compelled to deal with the material which
yields the most sugar and the most starch. It
is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You
are defended from being a trifler. No man
loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on
a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy super-
fluities only. Money is not required to buy
one necessary of the soul.
I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose
composition -was poured a little alloy of bell
metal. Often, in the repose of my midday, there
reaches my ears a confused tintennabulum from
without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.
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CONCLUSION 435
My neighbors tell me of their adventures with
famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities
they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more
interested in such things than in the contents of
the Daily Times. ‘The interest and the conver-
sation are about costume and manners chiefly;
but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.
They tell me of California and Texas, of England
and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. of Georgia
or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting
phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their
court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight
to come to my bearings, — not walk in proces-
sion with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous
place, but to walk even with the Builder of the
Universe, if I may, — not to live in this restless,
nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century,
but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.
What are men celebrating? They are all on a
committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a
speech from somebody. God is only the presi-
dent of the day, and Webster is His orator. I
love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that
which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;
—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to
weigh less, — not suppose a case, but take the
case that is; to travel the only path I can, and
that on which no power can resist me. It af-
fords me no satisfaction to commence to spring
an arch before I have got a solid foundation.
436 WALDEN
Let us not play at kittlybenders. ‘There is a
solid bottom everywhere. We read that the
traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him
had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had.
But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up
to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I
thought you said that this bog had a hard bot-
tom.” “So it has,’’ answered the latter, “‘but
you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is
with the bogs and quicksands of society; but
he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is —
thought, said, or done at a certain rare coinci-
dence is good. I would not be one of those who
will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and
plastering; such a deed would keep me awake
nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for
the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive
a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you
can wake up in the night and think of your work
with satisfaction, — a work at which you would
not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help
you God, and so only. Every nail driven should
be as another rivet in the machine of the uni-
verse, you carrying on the work.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give
me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food
and wine in abundance, and obsequious attend-
ance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I
went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I
CONCLUSION 437
thought that there was no need of ice to freeze
them. They talked to me of the age of the wine
and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of
an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more
glorious vintage, which they had not got, and
could not buy. The style, the house and grounds
and “‘entertainment,” pass for nothing with me.
I called on the king, but he made me wait in his
hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for
hospitality. ‘There was a man in my neighbor-
hood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners
were truly regal. I should have done better had
I called on him.
How long shall we sit in our porticos practising
idle and musty virtues, which any work would
make impertinent? As if one were to begin the
day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe
his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to
practise Christian meekness and charity with
goodness aforethought! Consider the China
pride and stagnant self-complacency of man-
kind. This generation reclines a little to con-
oratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious
line; and in Boston and London and Paris and
Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of
its progress in art and science and literature with
satisfaction. There are the Records of the Phil-
osophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of
Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplating
his own virtue. ‘“‘Yes, we have done great
438 WALDEN
deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never
die,’ — that is, as long as we can remember them.
The learned societies and great men of Assyria,
— where are they? What youthful philosophers
and experimentalists we are! ‘There is not one
of my readers who has yet lived a whole human
life. ‘These may. be but the spring months in
the life of the race. If we have had the seven-
years’ itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year
locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a
mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most
have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor
leaped as many above it. We know not where
we are. Besides, we are sound asleep nearly
half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise,
and have an established order on the surface.
Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious
spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid
the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeav-
oring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask
myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts
and hide its head from me who might, perhaps,
be its benefactor and impart to its race some
cheering information, I am reminded of the
greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands
over me, the human insect.
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the
world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I
need only suggest what kind of sermons are still
listened to in the most enlightened countries.
CONCLUSION 439
There are such words as joy and sorrow, but
they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a
nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary
and mean. We think that we can change our
clothes only. It is said that the British Empire
is very large and respectable, and that the United
States are a first-rate power. We do not believe
that a tide rises and falls behind every man which
can float the British Empire like a chip, if he
should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows
what sort of seventeen-year locust will next
come out of the ground? ‘The government of
the world I live in was not framed, like that of
Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the
wine.
The life in us is like the water in the river. It
may rise this year higher than man has ever
known it, and flood the parched uplands; even
this may be the eventful year, which will drown
out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land
where we dwell. I see far inland the banks
which the stream anciently washed, before
science began to record its freshets. Every one
has heard the story which has gone the rounds of
New England, of a strong and beautiful bug
which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of
apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s
kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and
afterward in Massachusetts, —from an egg de-
posited in the living tree many years earlier
say WALDEN
still, as appeared by counting the annual layers
beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for
several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of
an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resur-
rection and immortality strengthened by hearing
of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged
life, whose egg has been buried for ages under
many concentric layers of woodenness in the
dead dry life of society, deposited at the first in
the alburnum of the green and living tree, which
has been gradually converted into the semblance
of its well-seasoned tomb, — heard perchance
gnawing out now for years by the astonished
family of man, as they sat round the festive
board, — may unexpectedly come forth from
amidst society’s most trivial and handselled
furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at
last !
I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize
all this; but such is the character of that mor-
row which mere lapse of time can never make to
dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is
darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which
we are awake. ‘There is more day to dawn.
The sun is but a morning star.
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