Walden
or
Life in theWoods

by Henry David Thoreau


ECONOMY

 

WHEN I WROTE the following pages, or ratherthe bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from anyneighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of WaldenPond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor ofmy hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present Iam a sojourner in civilized life again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much onthe notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not beenmade by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would callimpertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but,considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some haveasked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was notafraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portionof my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who havelarge families, how many poor children I maintained. I will thereforeask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me topardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in thisbook. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this itwill be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the maindifference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, alwaysthe first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much aboutmyself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately,I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, asimple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what hehas heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send tohis kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, itmust have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are moreparticularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of myreaders, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trustthat none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it maydo good service to him whom it fits.

I would fain say something, not so muchconcerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read thesepages, who are said to live in New England; something about yourcondition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in thisworld, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it beas bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I havetravelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, andoffices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doingpenance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Braminssitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; orhanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or lookingat the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible forthem to resume their natural position, while from the twist of theneck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling,chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with theirbodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standingon one leg on the tops of pillars- even these forms of consciouspenance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the sceneswhich I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling incomparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for theywere only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that thesemen slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have nofriend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head,but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.

I see young men, my townsmen, whosemisfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, andfarming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by awolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field theywere called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why shouldthey eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only hispeck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon asthey are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all thesethings before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poorimmortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under itsload, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barnseventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, andone hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! Theportionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inheritedencumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a fewcubic feet of flesh.

But men labor under a mistake. The betterpart of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By aseeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as itsays in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust willcorrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, asthey will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It issaid that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones overtheir heads behind them:

 

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensquelaborum,

Et documenta damus qua simus originenati.

 

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorousway,

 

"From thence our kind hard-hearted is,enduring pain and care,

Approving that our bodies of a stony natureare."

 

So much for a blind obedience to a blunderingoracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and notseeing where they fell.

Most men, even in this comparatively freecountry, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with thefactitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that itsfiner fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessivetoil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, thelaboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; hecannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his laborwould be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything buta machine. How can he remember well his ignorance- which his growthrequires- who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed andclothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials,before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like thebloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thustenderly.

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find ithard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I haveno doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay forall the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats andshoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have cometo this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditorsof an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many ofyou live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on thelimits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, avery ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another'sbrass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, anddying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay,promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking tocurry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prisonoffences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into anutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin andvaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let youmake his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or importhis groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay upsomething against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an oldchest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, inthe brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or howlittle.

I sometimes wonder that we can be sofrivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhatforeign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so manykeen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hardto have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; butworst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of adivinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending tomarket by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? Hishighest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny tohim compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive forSquire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how hecowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not beingimmortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion ofhimself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrantcompared 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 andimagination- what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think,also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against thelast day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As ifyou could kill time without injuring eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and haveto console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. Astereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what arecalled the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them,for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom notto do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words ofthe catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the truenecessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberatelychosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to anyother. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert andhealthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never toolate to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, howeverancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or insilence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehoodtomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloudthat would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old peoplesay you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for oldpeople, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once,perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new peopleput a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globewith the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phraseis. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor asyouth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almostdoubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value byliving. Practically, the old have no very important advice to givethe young, their own experience has been so partial, and their liveshave been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they mustbelieve; and it may be that they have some faith left which beliesthat experience, and they are only less young than they were. I havelived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear thefirst syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything tothe purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried byme; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have anyexperience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this myMentors said nothing about.

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live onvegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with";and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying hissystem with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talksbehind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and hislumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things arereally necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless anddiseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others stillare entirely unknown.

The whole ground of human life seems to someto have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights andthe valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According toEvelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the verydistances of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often youmay go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall onit without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor."Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails;that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter norlonger. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to haveexhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. Butman's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge ofwhat he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whateverhave been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for whoshall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"

We might try our lives by a thousand simpletests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beansillumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had rememberedthis it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light inwhich I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderfultriangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansionsof the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions.Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greatermiracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes foran 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!- Iknow of no reading of another's experience so startling and informingas this would be.

The greater part of what my neighbors callgood I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, itis very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that Ibehaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man- youwho have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind- I hear anirresistible voice which invites me away from all that. Onegeneration abandons the enterprises of another like strandedvessels.

I think that we may safely trust a good dealmore than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as wehonestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weaknessas to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is awell-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate theimportance 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! determinednot to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on thealert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselvesto uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled tolive, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there canbe drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle tocontemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we donot know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one manhas reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to hisunderstanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their liveson that basis.

Let us consider for a moment what most of thetrouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how muchit is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would besome advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in themidst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the grossnecessaries 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 whatit was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored,that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements ofages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man'sexistence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguishedfrom those of our ancestors.

By the words, necessary of life, I meanwhatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been fromthe first, or from long use has become, so important to human lifethat few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy,ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in thissense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie itis a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless heseeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of thebrute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessariesof life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, bedistributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, andFuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertainthe true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Manhas invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; andpossibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and theconsequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessityto sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same secondnature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our owninternal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, withan external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookeryproperly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of theinhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who werewell clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm,these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to hisgreat surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing sucha roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked withimpunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossibleto combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualnessof the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's body is a stove, andfood the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. Incold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the resultof a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this istoo 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 confoundedwith fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from theabove list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymouswith the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded asthe Fuel which keeps up the fire within us- and Fuel serves only toprepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by additionfrom without- Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heatthus generated and absorbed.

The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, isto keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordinglytake, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with ourbeds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts ofbirds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has itsbed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man iswont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no lessphysical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. Thesummer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysianlife. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun ishis fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays;while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, andClothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the presentday, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a fewimplements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and forthe studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, ranknext to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yetsome, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous andunhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twentyyears, in order that they may live- that is, keep comfortably warm-and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simplykept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, theyare cooked, of course a la mode.

Most of the luxuries, and many of theso-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, butpositive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect toluxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple andmeagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo,Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer inoutward 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 istrue of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. Nonecan be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from thevantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life ofluxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, orliterature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, butnot philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was onceadmirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtlethoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as tolive 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 greatscholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, notkingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity,practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitorsof a noble race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makesfamilies run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervatesand destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our ownlives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outwardform of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like hiscontemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain hisvital heat by better methods than other men?

When a man is warmed by the several modeswhich I have described, what does he want next? Surely not morewarmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and moresplendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous,incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained thosethings which are necessary to life, there is another alternative thanto obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now,his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, itappears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward,and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why hasman rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise inthe same proportion into the heavens above?- for the nobler plantsare valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, farfrom the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents,which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till theyhave perfected their root, and often cut down at top for thispurpose, so that most would not know them in their floweringseason.

I do not mean to prescribe rules to strongand valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether inheaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend morelavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, notknowing how they live- if, indeed, there are any such, as has beendreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration inprecisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with thefondness and enthusiasm of lovers- and, to some extent, I reckonmyself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed,in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are wellemployed or not;- but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented,and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times,when they might improve them. There are some who complain mostenergetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say,doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, butmost terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross,but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forgedtheir own golden or silver fetters.

 

If I should attempt to tell how I havedesired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprisethose of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actualhistory; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it.I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I havecherished.

In any weather, at any hour of the day ornight, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch iton my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the pastand future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in mytrade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, butinseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I knowabout it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and aturtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers Ihave spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what callsthey answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, andthe tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind acloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lostthem themselves.

To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawnmerely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summerand winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business,have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met mereturning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in thetwilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I neverassisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was ofthe last importance only to be present at it.

So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spentoutside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear andcarry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost myown breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it hadconcerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it wouldhave appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At othertimes watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, totelegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops forthe sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caughtmuch, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in thesun.

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

For many years I was self-appointed inspectorof 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 thetown, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble byleaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks andcorners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas orSolomon worked in a particular field today; that was none of mybusiness. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and thenettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and theyellow violet, which might have withered else in dryseasons.

In short, I went on thus for a long time (Imay say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till itbecame more and more evident that my townsmen would not after alladmit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecurewith a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to havekept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still lessaccepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set myheart on that.

Not long since, a strolling Indian went tosell 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 whiteneighbors so well off- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments,and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed- he had said tohimself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thingwhich I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he wouldhave 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 worththe other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it wasso, or to make something else which it would be worth his while tobuy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but Ihad 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 insteadof studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, Istudied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The lifewhich men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why shouldwe exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Finding that my fellow-citizens were notlikely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy orliving anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my facemore exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. Idetermined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire theusual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. Mypurpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to livedearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewestobstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of alittle common sense, a little enterprise and business talent,appeared not so sad as foolish.

I have always endeavored to acquire strictbusiness habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your tradeis with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on thecoast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will exportsuch articles as the country affords, purely native products, muchice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms.These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself inperson; 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 ofimports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost atthe same time- often the richest freight will be discharged upon aJersey shore;- to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping thehorizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up asteady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant andexorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of themarkets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate thetendencies of trade and civilization- taking advantage of the resultsof all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvementsin navigation;- charts to be studied, the position of reefs and newlights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, thelogarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of somecalculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should havereached a friendly pier- there is the untold fate of La Perouse;-universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of allgreat discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants,from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account ofstock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is alabor to task the faculties of a man- such problems of profit andloss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it,as demand a universal knowledge.

I have thought that Walden Pond would be agood place for business, not solely on account of the railroad andthe ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policyto divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshesto be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your owndriving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and icein the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of theearth.

As this business was to be entered intowithout the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture wherethose means, that will still be indispensable to every suchundertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once tothe practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by thelove of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuringit, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect thatthe object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, andsecondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he mayjudge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplishedwithout adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit butonce, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties,cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are nobetter than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day ourgarments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impressof the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them asidewithout such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnityeven as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation forhaving a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greateranxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean andunpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if therent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence.I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this- Who couldwear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave asif they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined ifthey should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town witha broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accidenthappens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similaraccident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help forit; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what isrespected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches.Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, whowould not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the otherday, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner ofthe farm. He was only a little more weather- beaten than when I sawhim last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger whoapproached his master's premises with clothes on, but was easilyquieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far menwould retain their relative rank if they were divested of theirclothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company ofcivilized men which belonged to the most respected class? When MadamPfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east towest, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she feltthe necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she wentto meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country,where... people are judged of by their clothes." Even in ourdemocratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, andits manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for thepossessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect,numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have amissionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind ofwork which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at least, is neverdone.

A man who has at length found something to dowill 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. Oldshoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet- if ahero ever has a valet- bare feet are older than shoes, and he canmake them do. Only they who go to soirees and legislative balls musthave 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 worshipGod in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes-his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitiveelements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on somepoor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, orshall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of allenterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer ofclothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be madeto fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your oldclothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do,or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a newsuit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, soenterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in theold, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in oldbottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be acrisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it.Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormycoat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but ouroutmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailingunder false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our ownopinion, as well as that of mankind.

We don garment after garment, as if we grewlike exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thinand fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakesnot of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatalinjury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellularintegument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber, or true bark,which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. Ibelieve that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent tothe shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he canlay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in allrespects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town,he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handedwithout anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, asgood as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at pricesreally to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for fivedollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for twodollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hatfor a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a halfcents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he sopoor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not befound wise men to do him reverence?

When I ask for a garment of a particularform, my tailoress tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now,"not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority asimpersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what Iwant, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, thatI am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a momentabsorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately thatI may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degreeof consanguinity 'They' are related to me, and what authority theymay have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I aminclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any moreemphasis of the "they"- "It is true, they did not make them sorecently, but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if shedoes not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders,as it were a peg to bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, northe Parcee, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with fullauthority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, andall the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair ofgetting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by thehelp of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful pressfirst, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they wouldnot soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some onein the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an eggdeposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills thesethings, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will notforget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by amummy.

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

The childish and savage taste of men andwomen for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting throughkaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which thisgeneration requires today. The manufacturers have learned that thistaste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a fewthreads more or less of a particular color, the one will be soldreadily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happensthat after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the mostfashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom whichit is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing isskin-deep and unalterable.

I cannot believe that our factory system isthe best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of theoperatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; andit cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed,the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestlyclad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In thelong run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they shouldfail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

As for a Shelter, I will not deny that thisis now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men havingdone without it for long periods in colder countries than this.Samuel Laing says that "the Laplander in his skin dress, and in askin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep nightafter night on the snow... in a degree of cold which would extinguishthe life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seenthem asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than otherpeople." But, probably, man did not live long on the earth withoutdiscovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domesticcomforts, which phrase may have originally signified thesatisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these mustbe extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the houseis associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy seasonchiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, isunnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almostsolely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was thesymbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or painted on the barkof a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was notmade so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow hisworld and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bareand out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene andwarm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to saynothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in thebud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of ahouse. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower beforeother clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort,first of warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

We may imagine a time when, in the infancy ofthe human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in arock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent,and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, aswell as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember theinterest with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or anyapproach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion, anyportion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us.From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark andboughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boardsand shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is tolive in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses thanwe think. From the hearth the field is a great distance. It would bewell, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nightswithout any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if thepoet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwellthere so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish theirinnocence in dovecots.

 

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed anaxe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where Iintended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowywhite pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult tobegin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous coursethus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in yourenterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, saidthat it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than Ireceived it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered withpine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small openfield in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. Theice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some openspaces, and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. Therewere some slight flurries of snow during the days that I workedthere; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, onmy way home, its yellow sand-heap stretched away gleaming in the hazyatmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard thelark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another yearwith us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man'sdiscontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that hadlain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had comeoff and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with astone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order toswell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he layon the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayedthere, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had notyet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for alike reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition;but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springsarousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and moreethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings inmy path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible,waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained andmelted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was veryfoggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cacklingas if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.

So I went on for some days cutting and hewingtimber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, nothaving many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing tomyself,

 

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.

 

I hewed the main timbers six inches square,most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floortimbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that theywere just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stickwas carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowedother tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very longones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and readthe newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid thegreen pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was impartedsome of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coatof pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of thepine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become betteracquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted bythe sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which Ihad made.

By the middle of April, for I made no hastein my work, but rather made the most of it, my house was framed andready for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of JamesCollins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, forboards. James Collins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one.When I called to see it he was not at home. I walked about theoutside, at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep andhigh. It was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and notmuch else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around asif it were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though agood deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Doorsill there wasnone, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door-board. Mrs.C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The henswere driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor forthe most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and therea board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show methe inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floorextended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, asort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they were goodboards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window"- of twowhole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that waylately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant inthe house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framedlooking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to an oak sapling,all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in themeanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five centstonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling to nobodyelse meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said,to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but whollyunjust claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assuredme was the only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family onthe road. One large bundle held their all- bed, coffee-mill,looking-glass, hens- all but the cat; she took to the woods andbecame a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap setfor woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.

I took down this dwelling the same morning,drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond-side by smallcartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warpback again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two as Idrove along the woodland path. I was informed treacherously by ayoung Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals ofthe carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivablenails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I cameback to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, withspring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, ashe said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and help make thisseemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods ofTroy.

I dug my cellar in the side of a hill slopingto the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, downthrough sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain ofvegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand wherepotatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were leftshelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, thesand still keeps its place. It was but two hours' work. I tookparticular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost alllatitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature. Underthe most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellarwhere they store their roots as of old, and long after thesuperstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in theearth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of aburrow.

At length, in the beginning of May, with thehelp of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good anoccasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up theframe of my house. No man was ever more honored in the character ofhis raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at theraising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house onthe 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boardswere carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectlyimpervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of achimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill fromthe pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall,before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in themeanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: whichmode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeablethan the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, Ifixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch myloaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, whenmy hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scrapsof paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, affordedme as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as theIliad.

 

It would be worth the while to build stillmore deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, whatfoundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the natureof man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we founda better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There issome of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that thereis in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if menconstructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided foodfor themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poeticfaculty would be universally developed, as birds universally singwhen they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos,which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheerno traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall weforever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? Whatdoes architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? Inever in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple andnatural an occupation as building his house. We belong to thecommunity. 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. Whereis this division of labor to end? and what object does it finallyserve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is nottherefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of mythinking for myself.

True, there are architects so called in thiscountry, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea ofmaking architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, andhence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very wellperhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than thecommon dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he beganat the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a coreof truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, mighthave an almond or caraway seed in it- though I hold that almonds aremost wholesome without the sugar- and not how the inhabitant, theindweller, might build truly within and without, and let theornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposedthat ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely- thatthe tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fish itsmother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants ofBroadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with thestyle of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of itsshell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precisecolor of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. Hemay turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to leanover the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rudeoccupants who really knew it better than he. What of architecturalbeauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, outof the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the onlybuilder- out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, withoutever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty ofthis kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a likeunconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in thiscountry, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble loghuts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of theinhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in theirsurfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equallyinteresting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shallbe as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is aslittle straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A greatproportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and aSeptember gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, withoutinjury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who haveno olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were madeabout the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of ourbibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects ofour churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-artsand their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a fewsticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubedupon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, heslanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of thetenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin- thearchitecture 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 housethat color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up acopper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure be must have! Whydo you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your owncomplexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise toimprove the style of cottage architecture! When you have got myornaments ready, I will wear them.

Before winter I built a chimney, and shingledthe sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, withimperfect 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 plasteredhouse, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with agarret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap-doors, onedoor at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of myhouse, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but notcounting 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 whattheir houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of thevarious materials which compose them:

 

Boards................................$ 8.03 1/2, (mostly shanty
boards.)
Refuse shingles for roof and sides.... 4.00
Laths................................. 1.25
Two second-hand windows with glass.... 2.43
One thousand old brick................ 4.00
Two casks of lime..................... 2.40 (That was high.)
Hair.................................. 0.31 (More than I needed.)
Mantle-tree iron...................... 0.15
Nails................................. 3.90
Hinges and screws..................... 0.14
Latch................................. 0.10
Chalk................................. 0.01
Transportation........................ 1.40 (I carried a good part on my back.)
-----
In all................................$ 28.12 1/2

 

These are all the materials, excepting thetimber, stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I havealso a small woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which wasleft after building the house.

I intend to build me a house which willsurpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, assoon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than mypresent one.

I thus found that the student who wishes fora shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greaterthan the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast morethan is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather thanfor myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect thetruth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy- chaffwhich I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which Iam as sorry as any man- I will breathe freely and stretch myself inthis respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physicalsystem; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become thedevil'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 onlya little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though thecorporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side andunder one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of manyand noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. Icannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects,not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, morewould already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense ofgetting an education would in a great measure vanish. Thoseconveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewherecost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life asthey would with proper management on both sides. Those things forwhich the most money is demanded are never the things which thestudent most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item inthe term bill, while for the far more valuable education which hegets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries nocharge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to getup a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindlythe principles of a division of labor to its extreme- a principlewhich should never be followed but with circumspection- to call in acontractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employsIrishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, whilethe students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it;and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. I thinkthat it would be better than this, for the students, or those whodesire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves.The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement bysystematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but anignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of theexperience which alone can make leisure fruitful. "But," says one,"you do not mean that the students should go to work with their handsinstead of their heads?" I do not mean that exactly, but I meansomething which he might think a good deal like that; I mean thatthey should not play life, or study it merely, while the communitysupports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it frombeginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by atonce trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercisetheir minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to knowsomething about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would notpursue the common course, which is merely to send him into theneighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed andpractised but the art of life;- to survey the world through atelescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to studychemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and notlearn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, andnot detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is asatellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm allaround him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar.Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month- the boy whohad 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 hadattended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in themeanwhile, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Whichwould be most likely to cut his fingers?... To my astonishment I wasinformed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!- why, if Ihad taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it.Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy,while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy isnot even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is,that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs hisfather in debt irretrievably.

As with our colleges, so with a hundred"modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is notalways a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compoundinterest to the last for his early share and numerous succeedinginvestments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, whichdistract our attention from serious things. They are but improvedmeans to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easyto arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are ingreat haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas;but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important tocommunicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who wasearnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when hewas 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 notto talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bringthe Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the firstnews that will leak through into the broad, flapping American earwill 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 mostimportant messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come roundeating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers evercarried a peck of corn to mill.

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not layup money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go toFitchburg today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. Ihave learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I sayto my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distanceis 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 thisvery road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; Ihave travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in themeanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow,or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job inseason. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here thegreater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round theworld, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing thecountry and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cutyour acquaintance altogether.

Such is the universal law, which no man canever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is asbroad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world available toall mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet.Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity ofjoint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ridesomewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowdrushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when thesmoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceivedthat a few are riding, but the rest are run over- and it will becalled, and will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can rideat last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive solong, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire totravel by that time. This spending of the best part of one's lifeearning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during theleast valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went toIndia to make a fortune first, in order that he might return toEngland and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret atonce. "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all theshanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built agood thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you mighthave done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that youcould have spent your time better than digging in thisdirt.

 

Before I finished my house, wishing to earnten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in orderto meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half oflight and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a smallpart with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot containseleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was soldthe preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. Onefarmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise cheepingsquirrels on." I put no manure whatever on this land, not being theowner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so muchagain, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out several cordsof stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time,and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishablethrough the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. Thedead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, andthe driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel.I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing, though I heldthe plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season were, forimplements, seed, work, etc., $14.72 1/2. The seed corn was given me.This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant more thanenough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels ofpotatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn andturnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income from thefarm was

 

$ 23.44

Deducting the outgoes............. 14.721/2

-----

There are left....................$ 8.711/2

 

beside produce consumed and on hand at thetime this estimate was made of the value of $4.50- the amount on handmuch more than balancing a little grass which I did not raise. Allthings considered, that is, considering the importance of a man'ssoul and of today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by myexperiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, Ibelieve that that was doing better than any farmer in Concord didthat year.

The next year I did better still, for Ispaded 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 theleast awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young amongthe rest, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop whichhe raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for aninsufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, hewould need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it wouldbe cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plow it, and toselect a fresh spot from time to time than to manure the old, and hecould do all his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand atodd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, orhorse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartiallyon this point, and as one not interested in the success or failure ofthe present economical and social arrangements. I was moreindependent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to ahouse or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is avery crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than theyalready, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I shouldhave been nearly as well off as before.

I am wont to think that men are not so muchthe keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former areso much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we considernecessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly theadvantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of hispart of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is noboy's play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects,that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunderas to use the labor of animals. True, there never was and is notlikely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it isdesirable that there should be. However, I should never have broken ahorse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me,for fear I should become a horseman or a herdsman merely; and ifsociety seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that whatis one man's gain is not another's loss, and that the stable-boy hasequal cause with his master to be satisfied? Granted that some publicworks would not have been constructed without this aid, and let manshare the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that hecould not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in thatcase? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, butluxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable thata 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 theanimal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animalwithout him. Though we have many substantial houses of brick orstone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degreeto which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to havethe largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it isnot behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few hallsfor free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be bytheir architecture, but why not even by their power of abstractthought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How muchmore admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East!Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple andindependent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Geniusis not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, orgold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, isso much stone hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not seeany hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambition toperpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stonethey leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish theirmanners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than amonument 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 rodof stone wall that bounds an honest man's field than a hundred-gatedThebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life. Thereligion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish buildsplendid temples; but what you might call Christianity does not. Mostof the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buriesitself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at inthem so much as the fact that so many men could be found degradedenough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitiousbooby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned inthe Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possiblyinvent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. Asfor the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the sameall the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or theUnited States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring isvanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr.Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of hisVitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out toDobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin tolook down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your hightowers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town whoundertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as hesaid, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think thatI shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Manyare concerned about the monuments of the West and the East- to knowwho built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those daysdid not build them- who were above such trifling. But to proceed withmy statistics.

By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor ofvarious other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for I have asmany trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of food foreight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when theseestimates were made, though I lived there more than two years- notcounting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I hadraised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the lastdate- was

 

Rice......................$ 1.73 1/2
Molasses.................. 1.73 (Cheapest form of the saccharine.)
Rye meal.................. 1.04 3/4
Indian meal............... 0.99 3/4 (Cheaper than rye.)
Pork...................... 0.22
(All Experiments Which Failed)
Flour..................... 0.88 (Costs more than Indian meal, both money and trouble.)
Sugar..................... 0.80
Lard...................... 0.65
Apples.................... 0.25
Dried apple............... 0.22
Sweet potatoes............ 0.10
One pumpkin............... 0.06
One watermelon............ 0.02
Salt...................... 0.03

 

Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I shouldnot thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that mostof my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deedswould look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught amess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter awoodchuck which ravaged my bean-field- effect his transmigration, asa Tartar would say- and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; butthough it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a muskyflavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a goodpractice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressedby the village butcher.

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

 

$ 8.40 3/4

Oil and some household utensils.........2.00

 

So that all the pecuniary outgoes, exceptingfor washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of thehouse, and their bills have not yet been received- and these are alland more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out inthis part of the world- were

 

House...................................$ 28.12 1/2
Farm one year........................... 14.72 1/2
Food eight months....................... 8.74
Clothing, etc., eight months............ 8.40 3/4
Oil, etc., eight months................. 2.00
-----
In all..................................$ 61.99 3/4

 

I address myself now to those of my readerswho have a living to get. And to meet this I have for farm producesold

 

$ 23.44

Earned by day-labor.....................13.34

-----

In all..................................$36.78

 

which subtracted from the sum of the outgoesleaves a balance of $25.21 3/4 on the one side- this being verynearly the means with which I started, and the measure of expenses tobe incurred- and on the other, beside the leisure and independenceand health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as Ichoose to occupy it.

These statistics, however accidental andtherefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certaincompleteness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me ofwhich I have not rendered some account. It appears from the aboveestimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-sevencents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indianmeal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork,molasses, and salt; and my drink, water. It was fit that I shouldlive on rice, mainly, who love so well the philosophy of India. Tomeet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as wellstate, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and Itrust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to thedetriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, asI have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect acomparative statement like this.

I learned from my two years' experience thatit would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessaryfood, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet asthe animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made asatisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off adish of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in mycornfield, boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of thesavoriness of the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonableman desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficientnumber 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 ofappetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass thatthey frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want ofluxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost hislife because he took to drinking water only.

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

Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal andsalt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors ona shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building myhouse; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor, Itried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indianmeal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no littleamusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tendingand turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs. Theywere a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses afragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long aspossible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the ancientand indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities asoffered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of theunleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men firstreached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travellinggradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of thedough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, andthrough the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good,sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deemthe soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue,which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire- some preciousbottleful, I suppose, first brought over in the Mayflower, did thebusiness for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling,spreading, in cerealian billows over the land- this seed I regularlyand faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morningI forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident Idiscovered that even this was not indispensable- for my discoverieswere not by the synthetic but analytic process- and I have gladlyomitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me thatsafe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderlypeople prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find itnot to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for ayear am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape thetrivialness of carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which wouldsometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It issimpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who morethan any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.Neither did I put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into mybread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe whichMarcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. "Panemdepsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam inmortarium indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubibene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu." Which I take tomean,- "Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Putthe meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead itthoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake itunder 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 tothe emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than amonth.

Every New Englander might easily raise allhis own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and notdepend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are wefrom simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweetmeal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a stillcoarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmergives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buysflour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at thestore. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye andIndian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, and thelatter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, andso do without rice and pork; and if I must have some concentratedsweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good molasseseither of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set outa few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these weregrowing I could use various substitutes beside those which I havenamed. "For," as the Forefathers sang,

 

"we can make liquor to sweeten ourlips

Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-treechips."

 

Finally, as for salt, that grossest ofgroceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to theseashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I should probably drinkthe less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubledthemselves to go after it.

Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, sofar as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it wouldonly remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wearwere woven in a farmer's family- thank Heaven there is so much virtuestill in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operativeas great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;- and in anew country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were notpermitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same pricefor which the land I cultivated was sold- namely, eight dollars andeight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value ofthe land by squatting on it.

There is a certain class of unbelievers whosometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live onvegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter atonce- for the root is faith- I am accustomed to answer such, that Ican live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannotunderstand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to bear ofexperiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for afortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth forall mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. Thehuman race is interested in these experiments, though a few old womenwho are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, maybe 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-glassthree inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, askillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives andforks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug formolasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on apumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as Ilike best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away.Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of afurniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamedto see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed tothe light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of emptyboxes? That is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell frominspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man ora poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, themore you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks asif it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shantyis poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we moveever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviae; at last to go fromthis 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 castwithout dragging them- dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox thatleft his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off tobe free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at adead set! "Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?"If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that heowns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even tohis kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and willnot burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making whatheadway he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has gotthrough a knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniturecannot follow him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear sometrig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready,speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But whatshall I do with my furniture?"- My gay butterfly is entangled in aspider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to haveany, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored insomebody's barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who istravelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which hasaccumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage toburn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. Throw away thefirst three at least. It would surpass the powers of a well mannowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise asick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met an immigranttottering under a bundle which contained his all- looking like anenormous well which had grown out of the nape of his neck- I havepitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all thatto carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it bea light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance it wouldbe wisest never to put one's paw into it.

I would observe, by the way, that it costs menothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sunand moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon willnot sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure myfurniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm afriend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtainwhich nature has provided, than to add a single item to the detailsof housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no roomto spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without toshake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod beforemy door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Not long since I was present at the auctionof a deacon's effects, for his life had not beenineffectual:

 

"The evil that men do lives afterthem."

 

As usual, a great proportion was trumperywhich had begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest wasa dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garretand other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of abonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, orincreasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them,bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets anddust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when theywill 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 throughthe semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea ofthe thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be wellif we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first fruits," asBartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians?"When a town celebrates the busk," says he, "having previouslyprovided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and otherhousehold utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn outclothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses,squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all theremaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into onecommon heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine,and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished.During this fast they abstain from the gratification of everyappetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; allmalefactors may return to their town."

"On the fourth morning, the high priest, byrubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square,from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new andpure flame."

They then feast on the new corn and fruits,and dance and sing for three days, "and the four following days theyreceive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring townswho have in like manner purified and prepared themselves."

The Mexicans also practised a similarpurification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief thatit 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 ofan inward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt thatthey were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, thoughthey have no Biblical record of the revelation.

 

For more than five years I maintained myselfthus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by workingabout 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 freeand clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school- keeping, andfound that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out ofproportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, notto say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into thebargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simplyfor a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I foundthat it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that thenI should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraidthat I might by that time be doing what is called a good business.When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for aliving, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friendsbeing fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often andseriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and itssmall profits might suffice- for my greatest skill has been to wantbut little- so little capital it required, so little distraction frommy wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances wentunhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated thisoccupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pickthe berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly disposeof them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that Imight gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers asloved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cartloads. But I have since learned that trade curses everything ithandles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the wholecurse of trade attaches to the business.

As I preferred some things to others, andespecially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeedwell, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets orother fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecianor the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is nointerruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use themwhen acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are"industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhapsbecause it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have atpresent nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with moreleisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard asthey do- work till they pay for themselves, and get their freepapers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer wasthe most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty orforty days in a year to support one. The laborer's day ends with thegoing down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to hischosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, whospeculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of theyear to the other.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith andexperience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not ahardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as thepursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the moreartificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living bythe sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

One young man of my acquaintance, who hasinherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as Idid, if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt my mode ofliving on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learnedit I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there maybe as many different persons in the world as possible; but I wouldhave each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, andnot his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. The youthmay build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doingthat which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematicalpoint only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slavekeeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance forall our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculableperiod, but we would preserve the true course.

Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true forone is truer still for a thousand, as a large house is notproportionally more expensive than a small one, since one roof maycover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several apartments.But for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it willcommonly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convinceanother of the advantage of the common wall; and when you have donethis, 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 sidein repair. The only cooperation which is commonly possible isexceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true cooperationthere is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. Ifa man has faith, he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere; if hehas 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 wellas the lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard itproposed lately that two young men should travel together over theworld, the one without money, earning his means as he went, beforethe mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchangein his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long becompanions or cooperate, since one would not operate at all. Theywould part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Aboveall, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start today; buthe who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, andit may be a long time before they get off.

 

But all this is very selfish, I have heardsome of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hither- to indulgedvery little in philanthropic enterprises. I have made some sacrificesto a sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasurealso. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me toundertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I hadnothing to do- for the devil finds employment for the idle- I mighttry my hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I havethought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven underan obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects ascomfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as tomake them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferredto remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted in so manyways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may bespared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius forcharity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-good, that is oneof the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly,and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree withmy constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberatelyforsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands ofme, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a likebut infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that nowpreserves it. But I would not stand between any man and his genius;and to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heartand soul and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the world call itdoing evil, as it is most likely they will.

I am far from supposing that my case is apeculiar one; no doubt many of my readers would make a similardefence. At doing something- I will not engage that my neighborsshall pronounce it good- I do not hesitate to say that I should be acapital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer tofind out. What good I do, in the common sense of that word, must beaside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Mensay, practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, withoutaiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethoughtgo about doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, Ishould say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should stopwhen he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a starof the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peepingin at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats,and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing hisgenial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that nomortal 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, asa truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about him gettinggood. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth by hisbeneficence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove out of thebeaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower streetsof heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up everyspring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiterhurled 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 arisesfrom goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knewfor a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the consciousdesign of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dryand parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, whichfills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you aresuffocated, 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 wouldrather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to mebecause he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if Ishould be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fallinto one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much.Philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense.Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way,and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundredHowards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our bestestate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of aphilanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do anygood to me, or the like of me.

The Jesuits were quite balked by thoseindians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes oftorture to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, itsometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation whichthe missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be doneby fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for theirpart, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemiesafter a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them allthey did.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid theymost need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. Ifyou give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon itto them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man isnot so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It ispartly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give himmoney, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity theclumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean andragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat morefashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slippedinto the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip offthree pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down tothe skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, andthat he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offeredhim, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing heneeded. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be agreater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a wholeslop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches ofevil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he whobestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doingthe most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strivesin vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting theproceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest.Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in theirkitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybeyou should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Societyrecovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to thegenerosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to theremissness of the officers of justice?

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

I would not subtract anything from the praisethat is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who bytheir lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not valuechiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were,his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we makeherb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employedby quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrancebe wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor ourintercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act,but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which heis unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. Thephilanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance ofhis own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. Weshould impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease,and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread bycontagion. 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? Ifanything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if hehave a pain in his bowels even- for that is the seat of sympathy- heforthwith sets about reforming- the world. Being a microcosm himself,he discovers- and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to makeit- that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, infact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is dangerawful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it isripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimauand the Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and Chinesevillages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, thepowers in the meanwhile using him for their own ends, no doubt, hecures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush onone or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, andlife loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live.I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. Inever knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

I believe that what so saddens the reformeris not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he bethe holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, letthe spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he willforsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for notlecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, thatis a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though thereare things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If youshould ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not letyour left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worthknowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take yourtime, and set about some free labor.

Our manners have been corrupted bycommunication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with amelodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One would say thateven the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears thanconfirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple andirrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorablepraise of God. All health and success does me good, however far offand withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make mesad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or Iwith it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian,botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple andwell as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our ownbrows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be anoverseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies ofthe world.

I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, ofSheik Sadi of Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: Of themany celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty andumbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress,which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied: Eachhas its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during thecontinuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during theirabsence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypressexposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads,or religious independents.- Fix not thy heart on that which istransitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow throughBagdad 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 needywretch,

To claim a station in thefirmament

Because thy humble cottage, or thytub,

Nurses some lazy or pedanticvirtue

In the cheap sunshine or by shadysprings,

With roots and pot-herbs; where thy righthand,

Tearing those humane passions from themind,

Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtuesflourish,

Degradeth nature, and benumbethsense,

And, Gorgon-like, turns active men tostone.

We not require the dull society

Of your necessitated temperance,

Or that unnatural stupidity

That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor yourforc'd

Falsely exalted passive fortitude

Above the active. This low abjectbrood,

That fix their seats inmediocrity,

Become your servile minds; but weadvance

Such virtues only as admit excess,

Brave, bounteous acts, regalmagnificence,

All-seeing prudence, magnanimity

That knows no bound, and that heroicvirtue

For which antiquity hath left noname,

But patterns only, such asHercules,

Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'dcell;

And when thou seest the new enlightenedsphere,

Study to know but what those worthieswere.

 

T. CAREW


WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVEDFOR.

 

AT A CERTAIN season of our life we areaccustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. Ihave thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles ofwhere I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms insuccession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. Iwalked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples,discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at anyprice, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price onit- took everything but a deed of it- took his word for his deed, forI dearly love to talk- cultivated it, and him too to some extent, Itrust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him tocarry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort ofreal-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live,and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but asedes, a seat?- better if a country seat. I discovered many a sitefor a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might havethought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was toofar 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 theyears run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in.The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place theirhouses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoonsufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, andto decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before thedoor, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the bestadvantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man isrich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to letalone.

My imagination carried me so far that I evenhad the refusal of several farms- the refusal was all I wanted- but Inever got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that Icame to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, andhad begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which tomake a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the ownergave me a deed of it, his wife- every man has such a wife- changedher mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars torelease him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in theworld, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man whohad 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 hadcarried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farmfor just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made hima present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, andmaterials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a richman without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape,and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without awheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,

 

"I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none todispute."

 

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw,having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crustyfarmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, theowner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm inrhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairlyimpounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and leftthe farmer only the skimmed milk.

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm,to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from thevillage, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated fromthe highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which theowner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, thoughthat was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the houseand barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an intervalbetween me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered appletrees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I shouldhave; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliestvoyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a densegrove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I wasin haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out somerocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up someyoung birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, hadmade any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I wasready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders-I never heard what compensation he received for that- and do allthose things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might payfor it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all thewhile that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind Iwanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out asI have said.

All that I could say, then, with respect tofarming on a large scale- I have always cultivated a garden- was,that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve withage. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and thebad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to bedisappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long aspossible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little differencewhether 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 sheernonsense of the passage- "When you think of getting a farm turn itthus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to lookat it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The ofteneryou go there the more it will please you, if it is good." I think Ishall 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 atlast.

 

The present was my next experiment of thiskind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for convenienceputting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I donot propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily aschanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake myneighbors up.

When first I took up my abode in the woods,that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, byaccident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, myhouse was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence againstthe rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough,weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool atnight. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door andwindow casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in themorning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fanciedthat by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imaginationit retained throughout the day more or less of this auroralcharacter, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I hadvisited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit toentertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail hergarments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweepover the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, orcelestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind foreverblows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the earsthat hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the eartheverywhere.

The only house I had been the owner ofbefore, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionallywhen making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up inmy garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gonedown the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me,I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, soslightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reactedon the builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines.I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmospherewithin had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much withindoors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. TheHarivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat withoutseasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenlyneighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having cagedmyself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those whichcommonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smallerand more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely,serenade a villager- the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager,the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others.

I was seated by the shore of a small pond,about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord and somewhathigher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that townand Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field knownto fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods thatthe opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered withwood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever Ilooked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on theside of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes,and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing ofmist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smoothreflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, werestealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at thebreaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed tohang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides ofmountains.

This small lake was of most value as aneighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in August, when,both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast,mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood thrushsang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this isnever smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the airabove it being, shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full oflight and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the moreimportant. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been recentlycut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond,through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there,where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested astream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, butstream there was none. That way I looked between and over the neargreen hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tingedwith blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse ofsome of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain rangesin the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, andalso of some portion of the village. But in other directions, evenfrom this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods whichsurrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, togive buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallestwell is, that when you look into it you see that earth is notcontinent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps buttercool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudburymeadows, which in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by amirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all theearth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated andfloated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and I wasreminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land.

Though the view from my door was still morecontracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. Therewas pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau towhich the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies ofthe West and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all theroving families of men. "There are none happy in the world but beingswho enjoy freely a vast horizon"- said Damodara, when his herdsrequired new and larger pastures.

Both place and time were changed, and I dweltnearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in historywhich had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many aregion viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare anddelectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of thesystem, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far fromnoise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had itssite in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of theuniverse. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near tothe Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was reallythere, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had leftbehind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearestneighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such wasthat part of creation where I had squatted;

 

"There was a shepherd that didlive,

And held his thoughts as high

As were the mounts whereon hisflocks

Did hourly feed him by."

 

What should we think of the shepherd's lifeif his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than histhoughts?

 

Every morning was a cheerful invitation tomake my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, withNature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as theGreeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religiousexercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say thatcharacters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang tothis effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, andagain, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings backthe heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint burn of amosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through myapartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windowsopen, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It wasHomer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing itsown wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; astanding advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor andfertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorableseason of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is leastsomnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakeswhich slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to beexpected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are notawakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of someservitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force andaspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestialmusic, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air- toa higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bearits fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. Thatman who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, moresacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired oflife, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partialcessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organsrather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again whatnoble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpirein morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, "Allintelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and thefairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such anhour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora,and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorousthought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. Itmatters 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 isthe effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor anaccount of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are notsuch poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness,they would have performed something. The millions are awake enoughfor physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough foreffective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to apoetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yetmet a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in theface?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselvesawake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of thedawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of nomore encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man toelevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be ableto paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make afew objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paintthe very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morallywe can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest ofarts. 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 bedone.

I went to the woods because I wished to livedeliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if Icould 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 notlife, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation,unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out allthe marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to putto 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 genuinemeanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it weresublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true accountof it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in astrange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God,and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of manhere to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Still we live meanly, like ants; though thefable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmieswe fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout,and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitablewretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man hashardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme caseshe may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not ahundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, andkeep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this choppingsea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksandsand 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 atall, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed whosucceeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it benecessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduceother things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy,made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, sothat even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment.The nation itself, with all its so- called internal improvements,which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such anunwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture andtripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense,by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households inthe land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigideconomy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life andelevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it isessential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talkthrough a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt,whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons orlike men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, andforge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go totinkering 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 wantrailroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did youever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Eachone is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid onthem, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly overthem. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years anew lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasureof riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, asupernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, theysuddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if thiswere an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men forevery five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds asit is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get upagain.

Why should we live with such hurry and wasteof life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Mensay that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousandstitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any ofany consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possiblykeep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parishbell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there ishardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstandingthat press of engagements which was his excuse so many times thismorning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but wouldforsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property fromthe flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see itburn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it onfire- or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done ashandsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly aman takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holdsup his head and asks, "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankindhad stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked everyhalf-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 isas indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell me anything new thathas happened to a man anywhere on this globe"- and he reads it overhis coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out thismorning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he livesin the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but therudiment of an eye himself.

For my part, I could easily do without thepost-office. I think that there are very few important communicationsmade through it. To speak critically, I never received more than oneor two letters in my life- I wrote this some years ago- that wereworth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institutionthrough which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughtswhich is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I neverread any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed,or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or onevessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on theWestern Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppersin the winter- we never need read of another. One is enough. If youare acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriadinstances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it iscalled, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women overtheir tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was sucha rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn theforeign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plateglass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure-news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month,or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain,for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta,and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the rightproportions- they may have changed the names a little since I saw thepapers- and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, itwill be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exactstate or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucidreports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almostthe last significant scrap of news from that quarter was therevolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her cropsfor an average year, you never need attend to that thing again,unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If onemay judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does everhappen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.

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

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundesttruths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observerealities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, tocompare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy taleand the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what isinevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resoundalong the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive thatonly great and worthy things have any permanent and absoluteexistence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow ofthe reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing theeyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, menestablish and confirm their daily life of routine and habiteverywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations moreclearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think thatthey are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in aHindoo book, that "there was a king's son, who, being expelled ininfancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and,growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong tothe barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministershaving discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and themisconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to bea prince. So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from thecircumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character,until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then itknows itself to be Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of NewEngland live this mean life that we do because our vision does notpenetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appearsto be. If a man should walk through this town and see only thereality, where, think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he shouldgive us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should notrecognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or acourt-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say whatthat thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go topieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in theoutskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam andafter the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true andsublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now andhere. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never bemore divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled toapprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetualinstilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. Theuniverse constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions;whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let usspend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yethad so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at leastcould accomplish it.

Let us spend one day as deliberately asNature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell andmosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast,or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come andlet company go, let the bells ring and the children cry- determinedto make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with thestream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapidand whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows.Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is downhill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, lookinganother 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 throughthe mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, anddelusion, 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 callreality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having apoint d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where youmight found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhapsa gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages mightknow how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered fromtime 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 acimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart andmarrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be itlife or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let ushear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; ifwe are alive, let us go about our business.

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

 


READING

 

WITH A LITTLE more deliberation in the choiceof their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially studentsand observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interestingto all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or ourposterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even,we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and needfear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoophilosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of thedivinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gazeupon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was thenso bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust hassettled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity wasrevealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable,is neither past, present, nor future.

My residence was more favorable, not only tothought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I wasbeyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more thanever come within the influence of those books which circulate roundthe world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are nowmerely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet MirCamar Uddin Mast, "Being seated, to run through the region of thespiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To beintoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced thispleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." Ikept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked athis page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first,for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time,made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect ofsuch reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel inthe intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed ofmyself, and I asked where it was then that I lived.

The student may read Homer or Aeschylus inthe Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for itimplies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecratemorning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed inthe character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language deadto degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of eachword and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permitsout of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheapand fertile press, with all its translations, has done little tobring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem assolitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare andcurious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costlyhours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which areraised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetualsuggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmerremembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Mensometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length makeway for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurousstudent will always study classics, in whatever language they may bewritten and however ancient they may be. For what are the classicsbut the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracleswhich are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most moderninquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as wellomit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, toread true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one thatwill task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of theday esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent,the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Booksmust be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. Itis not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation bywhich they are written, for there is a memorable interval between thespoken and the written language, the language heard and the languageread. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialectmerely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like thebrutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience ofthat; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, areserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by theear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of menwho merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages werenot entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of geniuswritten in those languages; for these were not written in that Greekor Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature.They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but thevery materials on which they were written were waste paper to them,and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when theseveral nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude writtenlanguages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their risingliteratures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabledto discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What theRoman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages afew scholars read, and a few scholars only are still readingit.

However much we may admire the orator'soccasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words arecommonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as thefirmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars,and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment onand observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquiesand vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum iscommonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to theinspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob beforehim, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equablelife is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event andthe crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect andhealth of mankind, to all in any age who can understandhim.

No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliadwith him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word isthe choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with usand more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of artnearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, andnot only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;- not berepresented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of thebreath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomesa modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to themonuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturergolden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene andcelestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against thecorrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world andthe fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest andthe best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of everycottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while theyenlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refusethem. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy inevery society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influenceon mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader hasearned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure andindependence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion,he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yetinaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only ofthe imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency ofall his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains whichbe takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whosewant he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founderof a family.

Those who have not learned to read theancient classics in the language in which they were written must havea very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for itis remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into anymodern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as sucha transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, norAeschylus, nor Virgil even- works as refined, as solidly done, and asbeautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say whatwe will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaboratebeauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of theancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. Itwill be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and thegenius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. Thatage will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, andthe still older and more than classic but even less known Scripturesof the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when theVaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, withHomers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to comeshall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of theworld. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.

The works of the great poets have never yetbeen read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They haveonly been read as the multitude read the stars, at mostastrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read toserve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in orderto keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as anoble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet thisonly is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxuryand suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we haveto stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakefulhours to.

I think that having learned our letters weshould read the best that is in literature, and not be foreverrepeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth orfifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives.Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance havebeen convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for therest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what iscalled easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in ourCirculating Library entitled "Little Reading," which I thoughtreferred to a town of that name which I had not been to. There arethose who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts ofthis, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for theysuffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to providethis provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the ninethousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved asnone had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their truelove run smooth- at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get upagain 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 bellfor all the world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did getdown again! For my part, I think that they had better metamorphoseall such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into manweather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations,and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come downat all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time thenovelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burndown. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, bythe celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthlyparts; a great rush; don't all come together." All this they readwith saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and withunwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening,just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-coverededition of Cinderella- without any improvement, that I can see, inthe pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill inextracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, astagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium andsloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort ofgingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat orrye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surermarket.

The best books are not read even by those whoare called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to?There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for thebest or for very good books even in English literature, whose wordsall can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberallyeducated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintancewith the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind,the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who willknow of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to becomeacquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takesa French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to"keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when Iask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, hesays, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is aboutas much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and theytake an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come fromreading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many withwhom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading aGreek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiareven to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speakto, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly theprofessor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficultiesof the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of thewit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to thealert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Biblesof mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most mendo not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. Aman, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silverdollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquityhave uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age haveassured 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 "LittleReading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and ourreading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level,worthy only of pygmies and manikins.

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men thanthis our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly knownhere. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? Asif Plato were my townsman and I never saw him- my next neighbor and Inever heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But howactually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal inhim, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We areunderbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confessI do not make any very broad distinction between the illiteratenessof my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of himwho has learned to read only what is for children and feebleintellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, butpartly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men,and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than thecolumns of the daily paper.

It is not all books that are as dull as theirreaders. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly,which, if we could really bear and understand, would be more salutarythan the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a newaspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a newera in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us,perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. Theat present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. Thesesame questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in theirturn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and eachhas answered them, according to his ability, by his words and hislife. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitaryhired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had hissecond birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as hebelieves into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, maythink it is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago,travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, beingwise, 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 theliberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christhimself, and let "our church" go by the board.

We boast that we belong to the NineteenthCentury and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. Butconsider how little this village does for its own culture. I do notwish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for thatwill not advance either of us. We need to be provoked- goaded likeoxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent systemof common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting thehalf-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning ofa library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spendmore on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on ourmental ailment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we didnot leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It istime that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants thefellows of universities, with leisure- if they are, indeed, so welloff- to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall theworld be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot studentsbe boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies ofConcord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! whatwith foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept fromschool too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In thiscountry, the village should in some respects take the place of thenobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It isrich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It canspend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, butit is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which moreintelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spentseventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune orpolitics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, thetrue meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundredand twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in thewinter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town.If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy theadvantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our lifebe in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why notskip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world atonce?- not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing"Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the reports of all thelearned 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 surroundshimself with whatever conduces to his culture- genius- learning- wit-books- paintings- statuary- music- philosophical instruments, and thelike; so let the village do-not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson,a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrimforefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock withthese. To act collectively is according to the spirit of ourinstitutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are moreflourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. New Englandcan hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, andboard them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is theuncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noblevillages 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 darkergulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

 


SOUNDS

 

BUT WHILE we are confined to books, thoughthe most select and classic, and read only particular writtenlanguages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we arein danger of forgetting the language which all things and eventsspeak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much ispublished, but little printed. The rays which stream through theshutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is whollyremoved. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity ofbeing forever on the alert. What is a course of history orphilosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the bestsociety, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with thediscipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be areader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what isbefore you, and walk on into futurity.

I did not read books the first summer; I hoedbeans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when Icould not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to anywork, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, Isat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery,amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitudeand stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiselessthrough the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, orthe noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I wasreminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn inthe night, and they were far better than any work of the hands wouldhave been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so muchover and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals meanby contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, Iminded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light somework of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothingmemorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, Isilently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had itstrill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle orsuppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days werenot days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, norwere they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock;for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "foryesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and theyexpress the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterdayforward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This wassheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds andflowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been foundwanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. Thenatural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove hisindolence.

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode oflife, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, tosociety and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusementand never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes andwithout an end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, andregulating our lives according to the last and best mode we hadlearned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your geniusclosely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospectevery hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor wasdirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors onthe grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water onthe floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and thenwith a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time thevillagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my housesufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations werealmost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole householdeffects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack,and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books andpen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed gladto get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I wassometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seatthere. 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 mostfamiliar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits onthe next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, andblackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, andstrawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the waythese forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables,chairs, and bedsteads- because they once stood in theirmidst.

My house was on the side of a hill,immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a youngforest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from thepond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yardgrew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort andgoldenrod, shrub oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Nearthe end of May, the sand cherry (Cerasus pumila) adorned the sides ofthe path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindricallyabout its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down withgoodsized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays onevery side. I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though theywere scarcely palatable. The sumach (Rhus glabra) grew luxuriantlyabout the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made,and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnatetropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds,suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which hadseemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into gracefulgreen and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I satat my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints,I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to theground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off byits own weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, whenin flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed theirbright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down andbroke the tender limbs.

 

As I sit at my window this summer afternoon,hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons,flying by two and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on thewhite 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; amink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by theshore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birdsflitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heardthe rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving likethe beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to thecountry. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as Ihear, 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 andhomesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; thefolks were all gone off; why, you couldn't even hear the whistle! Idoubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now:

 

"In truth, our village has become abutt

For one of those fleet railroad shafts, ando'er

Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is-Concord."

 

The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond abouta hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the villagealong its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by thislink. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length ofthe road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often,and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too wouldfain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of theearth.

The whistle of the locomotive penetrates mywoods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailingover some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless citymerchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurouscountry traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon,they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heardsometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries,country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man soindependent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here's your payfor them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like longbattering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls,and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that dwellwithin them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country handsa chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped,all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes thecotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes thewoollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writesthem.

When I meet the engine with its train of carsmoving off with planetary motion- or, rather, like a comet, for thebeholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction itwill ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like areturning curve- with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behindin golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I haveseen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light- as ifthis traveling demigod, this cloud- compeller, would ere long takethe sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the ironhorse make the bills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking theearth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils(what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the newMythology I don't know), it seems as if the earth had got a race nowworthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made theelements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs overthe engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent asthat which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements andNature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and betheir escort.

I watch the passage of the morning cars withthe same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardlymore regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and risinghigher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going toBoston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field intothe shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of carswhich bugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of theiron horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the starsamid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, wasawakened thus early to put the vital beat in him and get him off. Ifthe enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow liesdeep, they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow afurrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like afollowing drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floatingmerchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed fliesover the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I amawakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in someremote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice andsnow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, tostart once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance,at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluousenergy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver andbrain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were asheroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied!

Far through unfrequented woods on theconfines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, inthe darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge oftheir inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliantstation-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, thenext in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings andarrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They goand come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can beheard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus onewell-conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not menimproved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Dothey not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in thestage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere ofthe former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it haswrought; 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" isnow the byword; and it is worth the while to be warned so often andso sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stoppingto read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in thiscase. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside.(Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at acertain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particularpoints of the compass; yet it interferes with no man's business, andthe children go to school on the other track. We live the steadierfor it. We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is fullof invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keepon your own track, then.

What recommends commerce to me is itsenterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray toJupiter. I see these men every day go about their business with moreor less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, andperchance better employed than they could have consciously devised. Iam less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour inthe front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valorof the men who inhabit the snowplow for their winter quarters; whohave not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, whichBonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go torest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or thesinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the GreatSnow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, Ibear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank oftheir chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming,without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New Englandnortheast snow-storm, and I behold the plowmen covered with snow andrime, their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turningdown other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders ofthe Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in theuniverse.

Commerce is unexpectedly confident andserene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in itsmethods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises andsentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. I amrefreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and Ismell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way fromLong Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coralreefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of theglobe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of thepalm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the nextsummer, the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunnybags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is morelegible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paperand printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of thestorms they have weathered as these rents have done? They areproof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from theMaine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risenfour dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was splitup; pine, spruce, cedar- first, second, third, and fourth qualities,so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, andcaribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get faramong the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of allhues and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linendescend, the final result of dress- of patterns which are now nolonger cried up, unless it be in Milwaukee, as those splendidarticles, English, French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins,etc., gathered from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, goingto become paper of one color or a few shades only, on which,forsooth, will be written tales of real life, high and low, andfounded on fact! This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong NewEngland and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and thefisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for thisworld, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting, the perseverance ofthe saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave thestreets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himselfand his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind it- and the trader,as a Concord trader once did, bang it up by his door for a sign whenhe commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tellsurely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shallbe as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled,will come out an excellent dunfish for a Saturday's dinner. NextSpanish hides, with the tails still preserving their twist and theangle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore them werecareering over the pampas of the Spanish Main- a type of allobstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are allconstitutional vices. I confess, that practically speaking, when Ihave learned a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of changing itfor the better or worse in this state of existence. As the Orientalssay, "A cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound round withligatures, and after a twelve years' labor bestowed upon it, still itwill retain its natural form." The only effectual cure for suchinveteracies as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which Ibelieve is what is usually done with them, and then they will stayput and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directedto John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the GreenMountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and nowperchance stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals onthe coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling hiscustomers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before thismorning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality. Itis advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.

While these things go up other things comedown. Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book and seesome tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its wayover the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrowthrough the township within ten minutes, and scarce another eyebeholds it; going

 

"to be the mast

Of some great ammiral."

 

And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearingthe cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards inthe air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst oftheir flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along likeleaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air isfilled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling ofoxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bellwetherat the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like ramsand the little hills like lambs. A carload of drovers, too, in themidst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, butstill clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office. Buttheir dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them; they are quitethrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them barkingbehind the Peterboro' Hills, or panting up the western slope of theGreen Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their vocation,too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. Theywill slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wildand strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastorallife whirled past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get offthe 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 andsteam and hissing.

 

Now that the cars are gone by and all therestless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feeltheir rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the longafternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faintrattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway.

Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, theLincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind wasfavorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worthimporting into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over thewoods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pineneedles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. Allsound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and thesame effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as theintervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting toour eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in thiscase a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversedwith every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the soundwhich the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale tovale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein isthe magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what wasworth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; thesame trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.

At evening, the distant lowing of some cow inthe horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and atfirst I would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whomI was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hill and dale;but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolongedinto the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to besatirical, but to express my appreciation of those youths' singing,when I state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to the musicof the cow, and they were at length one articulation ofNature.

Regularly at half-past seven, in one part ofthe summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-willschanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by mydoor, or upon the ridge-pole of the house. They would begin to singalmost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of aparticular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. Ihad a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits.Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of thewood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that Idistinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often thatsingular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, onlyproportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round mein the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, whenprobably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout thenight, and were again as musical as ever just before and aboutdawn.

When other birds are still, the screech owlstake up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Theirdismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight bags! It is nohonest and blunt tu-whit tu- who of the poets, but, without jesting,a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicidelovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in theinfernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their dolefulresponses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes ofmusic and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side ofmusic, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are thespirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen soulsthat once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds ofdarkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns orthrenodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a newsense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our commondwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one onthis side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despairto some new perch on the gray oaks. Then- that I never had beenbor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side with tremuloussincerity, and- bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lincolnwoods.

I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Nearat hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as ifshe meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir thedying moans of a human being- some poor weak relic of mortality whohas left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs,on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurglingmelodiousness- I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I tryto imitate it- expressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous,mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageousthought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. Butnow one answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious bydistance- Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo: and indeed for the most part itsuggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or night,summer or winter.

I rejoice that there are owls. Let them dothe idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirablysuited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates,suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have notrecognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfiedthoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface ofsome savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnealichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lispsamid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; butnow a more dismal arid fitting day dawns, and a different race ofcreatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.

Late in the evening I heard the distantrumbling of wagons over bridges- a sound heard farther than almostany other at night- the baying of dogs, and sometimes again thelowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In themeanwhile all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdyspirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant,trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake- if the Walden nymphswill pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds,there are frogs there- who would fain keep up the hilarious rules oftheir old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse andsolemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the mine has lost its flavor,and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweetintoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but meresaturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic,with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to hisdrooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught ofthe once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculationtr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r--oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes overthe water from some distant cove the same password repeated, wherethe next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and whenthis observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculatesthe master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each inhis turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, andflabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the howl goesround again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, andonly the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonkfrom time to time, and pausing for a reply.

I am not sure that I ever heard the sound ofcock-crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worththe while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird.The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the mostremarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalized withoutbeing domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in ourwoods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of theowl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauseswhen their lords' clarions rested! No wonder that man added this birdto his tame stock- to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walkin a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, theirnative woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clearand shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feeblernotes 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 everysuccessive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy,wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird's note is celebrated by thepoets of all countries along with the notes of their nativesongsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is moreindigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungsare sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlanticand Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound neverroused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, norhens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domesticsounds; neither the chum, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even thesinging of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor childrencrying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost hissenses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, forthey were starved out, or rather were never baited in- only squirrelson the roof and under the floor, a whip-poor-will on the ridge-pole,a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck underthe house, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a flock of wildgeese 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, evervisited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in theyard. No yard! but unfenced nature reaching up to your very sills. Ayoung forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs andblackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitchpines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room,their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or ablind blown off in the gale- a pine tree snapped off or torn up bythe roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to thefront-yard gate in the Great Snow- no gate- no front-yard- and nopath to the civilized world.

 


SOLITUDE

 

THIS IS A delicious evening, when the wholebody is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go andcome with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walkalong the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it iscool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special toattract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. Thebullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of thewhip-poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water.Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takesaway my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but notruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remotefrom storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark,the mind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, andsome creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is nevercomplete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now;the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods withoutfear. They are Nature's watchmen- links which connect the days ofanimated life.

When I return to my house I find thatvisitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch offlowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellowwalnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take somelittle piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way,which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One haspeeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on mytable. I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence,either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, andgenerally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slighttrace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked andthrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, orby the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequentlynotified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rodsoff 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 justat our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiarand worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimedfrom Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, somesquare miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to meby men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house isvisible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of myown. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant viewof the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of thefence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the mostpart it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as muchAsia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun andmoon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there wasnever a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more thanif I were the first or last man; unless it were in the spring, whenat long intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts- theyplainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of their own natures, andbaited their hooks with darkness- but they soon retreated, usuallywith light baskets, and left "the world to darkness and to me," andthe black kernel of the night was never profaned by any humanneighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a little afraidof the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity andcandles have been introduced.

Yet I experienced sometimes that the mostsweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may befound in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and mostmelancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him wholives in the midst of nature and has his senses still. There wasnever yet such a storm but it was Aeolian music to a healthy andinnocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to avulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trustthat nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain whichwaters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear andmelancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them,it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so longas to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoesin the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on theuplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if Iwere more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I amconscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands whichmy fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do notflatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have neverfelt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, butonce, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, foran hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essentialto a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood,and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rainwhile these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweetand beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops,and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite andunaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustainingme, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhoodinsignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every littlepine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. Iwas so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred tome, 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 aperson nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strangeto me again.

 

"Mourning untimely consumes thesad;

Few are their days in the land of theliving,

Beautiful daughter of Toscar."

 

Some of my pleasantest hours were during thelong rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to thehouse for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by theirceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a longevening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfoldthemselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the villagehouses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in frontentries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my littlehouse, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. Inone heavy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch pineacross the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regularspiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four orfive inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed itagain the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up andbeholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrificand resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight yearsago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feellonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowydays and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such- Thiswhole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart,think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, thebreadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Whyshould I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This whichyou put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sortof space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes himsolitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring twominds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell nearto? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room,the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or theFive Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial sourceof our life, whence in all our experience we have found that toissue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots inthat direction. This will vary with different natures, but this isthe place where a wise man will dig his cellar.... I one eveningovertook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called "ahandsome property"- though I never got a fair view of it- on theWalden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of mehow 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 notjoking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his waythrough the darkness and the mud to Brighton- or Bright-town- whichplace he would reach some time in the morning.

Any prospect of awakening or coming to lifeto a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place wherethat may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to allour senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transientcircumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause ofour distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashionstheir being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually beingexecuted. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whomwe love so well to talk, but the workman whose work weare.

"How vast and profound is the influence ofthe subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!"

"We seek to perceive them, and we do not seethem; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified withthe substance of things, they cannot be separated fromthem."

"They cause that in all the universe menpurify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in theirholiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to theirancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They areeverywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us onall sides."

We are the subjects of an experiment which isnot a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society ofour gossips a little while under these circumstances- have our ownthoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remainas an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity haveneighbors."

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in asane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof fromactions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go byus like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may beeither the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking downon it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the otherhand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears toconcern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; thescene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of acertain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as fromanother. However intense my experience, I am conscious of thepresence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not apart of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note ofit, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may bethe tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was akind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he wasconcerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors andfriends sometimes.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greaterpart of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soonwearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found thecompanion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the mostpart more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in ourchambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be wherehe will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space thatintervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent studentin one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as adervis in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or thewoods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because heis employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in aroom alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can"see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himselffor his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sitalone 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 thehouse, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, asthe farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and societythat the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form ofit.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet atvery short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new valuefor each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give eachother a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have hadto agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness,to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come toopen war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and aboutthe fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way,and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose somerespect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice forall important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in afactory- never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better ifthere were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. Thevalue of a man is not in his skin, that we should touchhim.

I have heard of a man lost in the woods anddying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whoseloneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing tobodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and whichhe believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental healthand strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normaland natural society, and come to know that we are neveralone.

I have a great deal of company in my house;especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a fewcomparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I amno more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or thanWalden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? Andyet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in theazure 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 isalone- but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a greatdeal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a singlemullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or ahorse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook,or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an Aprilshower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a newhouse.

I have occasional visits in the long winterevenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood,from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to havedug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; whotells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us wemanage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasantviews of things, even without apples or cider- a most wise andhumorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret thanever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, nonecan show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in myneighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb gardenI love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to herfables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memoryruns back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original ofevery fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidentsoccurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delightsin all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all herchildren yet.

The indescribable innocence and beneficenceof Nature- of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter- suchhealth, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have theyever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun'sbrightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the cloudsrain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning inmidsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall Inot have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves andvegetable mould myself?

What is the pill which will keep us well,serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but ourgreat-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines,by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many oldParrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. Formy panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dippedfrom Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallowblack-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carrybottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air!If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why,then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for thebenefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morningtime in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noondayeven in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere thatand follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper ofHygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor Esculapius, andwho is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and inthe other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks; but ratherof Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wildlettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigorof youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned,healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, andwherever she came it was spring.

 


VISITORS

 

I THINK THAT I love society as much as most,and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the timeto any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally nohermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of thebar-room, if my business called me thither.

I had three chairs in my house; one forsolitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors camein larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair forthem all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. Itis surprising how many great men and women a small house willcontain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies,at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being awarethat we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, bothpublic and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, theirhuge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and othermunitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for theirinhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem tobe only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the heraldblows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, tosee come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants aridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in thepavement.

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced inso small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distancefrom my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words.You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run acourse or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thoughtmust have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen intoits last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the bearer,else it may plow out again through the side of his head. Also, oursentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in theinterval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad andnatural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to acompanion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that wecould not begin to bear- we could not speak low enough to be heard;as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they breakeach other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loudtalkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek byjowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak reservedly andthoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat andmoisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the mostintimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above,being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so farapart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in anycase. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience ofthose who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things whichwe cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation began toassume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairsfarther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, andthen commonly there was not room enough.

My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room,always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, wasthe pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, whendistinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domesticswept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things inorder.

If one guest came he sometimes partook of myfrugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to bestirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of aloaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. But if twenty came andsat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though theremight be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsakenhabit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never feltto be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper andconsiderate course. The waste and decay of physical life, which sooften needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, andthe vital vigor stood its ground. I could entertain thus a thousandas well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungryfrom my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon itthat I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though manyhousekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in theplace of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinnersyou give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred fromfrequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as bythe parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very politeand roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shallnever revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the mottoof my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribedon a yellow walnut leaf for a card:

 

"Arrived there, the little house theyfill,

Ne looke for entertainment where nonewas;

Rest is their feast, and all things at theirwill:

The noblest mind the best contentmenthas."

 

When Winslow, afterward governor of thePlymouth Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony toMassasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry athis lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was saidabout eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote their ownwords- "He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at theone end and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot fromthe ground and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, forwant of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary ofour lodging than of our journey." At one o'clock the next dayMassasoit "brought two fishes that he had shot," about thrice as bigas a bream. "These being boiled, there were at least forty looked fora share in them; the most eat of them. This meal only we had in twonights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we hadtaken our journey fasting." Fearing that they would be light-headedfor want of food and also sleep, owing to "the savages' barbaroussinging, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,)" and that theymight get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. Asfor lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though whatthey found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor; butas far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians couldhave done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they werewiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food totheir guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing aboutit. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season ofplenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect.

As for men, they will hardly fail oneanywhere. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at anyother period in my life; I mean that I had some. I met several thereunder more favorable circumstances than I could anywhere else. Butfewer came to see me on trivial business. In this respect, my companywas winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so farwithin the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of societyempty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned,only the finest sediment was deposited around me. Beside, there werewafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated continents onthe other side.

Who should come to my lodge this morning buta true Homeric or Paphlagonian man- he had so suitable and poetic aname that I am sorry I cannot print it here- a Canadian, awoodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, whomade 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 knowwhat to do rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one whollythrough for many rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce theGreek itself taught him to read his verse in the Testament in hisnative parish far away; and now I must translate to him, while heholds the book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sadcountenance.- "Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a younggirl?"

 

"Or have you alone heard some news fromPhthia?

They say that Menoetius lives yet, son ofActor,

And Peleus lives, son of Aeacus, among theMyrmidons,

Either of whom having died, we should greatlygrieve."

 

He says, "That's good." He has a great bundleof white oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sundaymorning.- I suppose there's no harm in going after such a thingtoday," says he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what hiswriting was about he did not know. A more simple and natural man itwould be hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombremoral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existance forhim. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada and hisfather's house a dozen years before to work in the States, and earnmoney to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. Hewas cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body, yetgracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, anddull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up withexpression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-coloredgreatcoat, and cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat,usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past myhouse- for he chopped all summer- in a tin pail; cold meats, oftencold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by astring from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He camealong early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety or hasteto get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn't a-going tohurt himself. He didn't care if he only earned his board. Frequentlyhe would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught awoodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it andleave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, afterdeliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it inthe pond safely till nightfall- loving to dwell long upon thesethemes. He would say, as he went by in the morning, "How thick thepigeons are! If working every day were not my trade, I could get allthe meat I should want by hunting-pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits,partridges- by gosh! I could get all I should want for a week in oneday."

He was a skilful chopper, and indulged insome flourishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level andclose to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward mightbe more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and insteadof leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare itaway to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off withyour hand at last.

He interested me because he was so quiet andsolitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentmentwhich overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. SometimesI saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greetme with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation inCanadian French, though he spoke English as well. When I approachedhim he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth liealong the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off theinner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed andtalked. Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he sometimestumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at anything whichmade him think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees he wouldexclaim - "By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; Iwant no better sport." Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused himselfall day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himselfat regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire bywhich at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle; and as he sat on alog to eat his dinner the chickadees would sometimes come round andalight on his arm and peck at the potato in his fingers; and he saidthat 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 andthe rock. I asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night,after working all day; and he answered, with a sincere and seriouslook, "Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life." But the intellectualand what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in aninfant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectualway in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which thepupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only tothe degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, butkept a child. When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body andcontentment for his portion, and propped him on every side withreverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore yearsand ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated that nointroduction would serve to introduce him, more than if youintroduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him outas 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 opinionswith them. He was so simply and naturally humble- if he can be calledhumble who never aspires- that humility was no distinct quality inhim, nor could he conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to him. Ifyou told him that such a one was coming, he did as if he thought thatanything so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take all theresponsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still. He neverheard the sound of praise. He particularly reverenced the writer andthe preacher. Their performances were miracles. When I told him thatI wrote considerably, he thought for a long time that it was merelythe handwriting which I meant, for he could write a remarkably goodhand himself. I sometimes found the name of his native parishhandsomely written in the snow by the highway, with the proper Frenchaccent, and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he ever wished towrite his thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters forthose who could not, but he never tried to write thoughts- no, hecould not, he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him,and then there was spelling to be attended to at the sametime!

I heard that a distinguished wise man andreformer asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; but heanswered with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, notknowing that the question had ever been entertained before, "No, Ilike it well enough." It would have suggested many things to aphilosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared toknow nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a manwhom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wiseas Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspecthim of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman toldme that when he met him sauntering through the village in his smallclose-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of aprince in disguise.

His only books were an almanac and anarithmetic, in which last he was considerably expert. The former wasa sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to contain anabstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerableextent. I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, andhe never failed to look at them in the most simple and practicallight. He had never heard of such things before. Could he do withoutfactories? I asked. He had worn the home-made Vermont gray, he said,and that was good. Could he dispense with tea and coffee? Did thiscountry afford any beverage beside water? He had soaked hemlockleaves in water and drank it, and thought that was better than waterin warm weather. When I asked him if he could do without money, heshowed the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest andcoincide with the most philosophical accounts of the origin of thisinstitution, and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an oxwere his property, and he wished to get needles and thread at thestore, he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to goon 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 truereason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to himany other. At another time, hearing Plato's definition of a man- abiped without feathers- and that one exhibited a cock plucked andcalled it Plato's man, he thought it an important difference that theknees bent the wrong way. He would sometimes exclaim, "How I love totalk! By George, I could talk all day!" I asked him once, when I hadnot seen him for many months, if he had got a new idea this summer."Good Lord"- said he, "a man that has to work as I do, if he does notforget the ideas he has had, he will do well. May he the man you hoewith is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there;you think of weeds." He would sometimes ask me first on suchoccasions, if I had made any improvement. One winter day I asked himif he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest asubstitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motivefor living. "Satisfied!" said he; "some men are satisfied with onething, 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 hisbelly to the table, by George!" Yet I never, by any manoeuvring,could get him to take the spiritual view of things; the highest thathe appeared to conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you mightexpect an animal to appreciate; and this, practically, is true ofmost men. If I suggested any improvement in his mode of life, hemerely answered, without expressing any regret, that it was too late.Yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and the likevirtues.

There was a certain positive originality,however slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally observedthat he was thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, aphenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it,and it amounted to the re-origination of many of the institutions ofsociety. Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himselfdistinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. Yet histhinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that,though more promising than a merely learned man's, it rarely ripenedto anything which can be reported. He suggested that there might bemen of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanentlyhumble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do notpretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond wasthought to be, though they may be dark and muddy.

Many a traveller came out of his way to seeme and the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, askedfor a glass of water. I told them that I drank at the pond, andpointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. Far off as I lived,I was not exempted from the annual visitation which occurs, methinks,about the first of April, when everybody is on the move; and I had myshare of good luck, though there were some curious specimens among myvisitors. Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came tosee me; but I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had,and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the themeof our conversation; and so was compensated. Indeed, I found some ofthem to be wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor andselectmen of the town, and thought it was time that the tables wereturned. With respect to wit, I learned that there was not muchdifference between the half and the whole. One day, in particular, aninoffensive, simpleminded pauper, whom with others I had often seenused as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fieldsto keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and expressed awish to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost simplicity andtruth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is calledhumility, that he was "deficient in intellect." These were his words.The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much forhim as for another. "I have always been so," said he, "from mychildhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other children; I amweak in the head. It was the Lord's will, I suppose." And there hewas to prove the truth of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle tome. I have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising ground- it wasso simple and sincere and so true all that he said. And, true enough,in proportion as he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. I didnot know at first but it was the result of a wise policy. It seemedthat from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor weak-headedpauper had laid, our intercourse might go forward to something betterthan the intercourse of sages.

I had some guests from those not reckonedcommonly among the town's poor, but who should be; who are among theworld's poor, at any rate; guests who appeal, not to yourhospitality, but to your hospitality; who earnestly wish to behelped, and preface their appeal with the information that they areresolved, for one thing, never to help themselves. I require of avisitor that he be not actually starving, though he may have the verybest appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of charity arenot guests. Men who did not know when their visit had terminated,though I went about my business again, answering them from greaterand greater remoteness. Men of almost every degree of wit called onme in the migrating season. Some who had more wits than they knewwhat to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listenedfrom time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard thehounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, asmuch as to say,

 

"O Christian, will you send meback?

 

One real runaway slave, among the rest, whomI helped to forward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like ahen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a thousand ideas,and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of ahundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost inevery morning's dew- and become frizzled and mangy in consequence;men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede thatmade you crawl all over. One man proposed a book in which visitorsshould write their names, as at the White Mountains; but, alas! Ihave too good a memory to make that necessary.

I could not but notice some of thepeculiarities of my visitors. Girls and boys and young womengenerally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the pond andat the flowers, and improved their time. Men of business, evenfarmers, thought only of solitude and employment, and of the greatdistance at which I dwelt from something or other; and though theysaid that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it wasobvious that they did not. Restless committed men, whose time was antaken up in getting a living or keeping it; ministers who spoke ofGod as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who could not bearall kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers whopried into my cupboard and bed when I was out- how came Mrs.- to knowthat my sheets were not as clean as hers?- young men who had ceasedto be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow thebeaten track of the professions- all these generally said that it wasnot possible to do so much good in my position. Ay! there was therub. The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex,thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them lifeseemed full of danger- what danger is there if you don't think ofany?- and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select thesafest position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment's warning.To them the village was literally a com-munity, a league for mutualdefence, and you would suppose that they would not goa-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if aman is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though thedanger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he isdead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.Finally, there were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores ofall, who thought that I was forever singing,

 

This is the house that I built;

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

 

but they did not know that the third linewas,

 

These are the folks that worry theman

That lives in the house that Ibuilt.

 

I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I keptno chickens; but I feared the men-harriers rather.

I had more cheering visitors than the last.Children come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning walkin clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers; inshort, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom'ssake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to greet with-"Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome, Englishmen!" for I had hadcommunication with that race.

 

 


THE BEAN-FIELD

 

MEANWHILE MY beans, the length of whose rows,added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to behoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest werein the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What wasthe meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this smallHerculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, thoughso many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so Igot strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heavenknows. This was my curious labor all summer- to make this portion ofthe earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries,johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasantflowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans orbeans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eyeto them; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad leaf to lookon. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil,and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part islean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of allwoodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean.But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break uptheir ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will betoo tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.

When I was four years old, as I wellremember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, throughthese very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldestseenes stamped on my memory. And now tonight my flute has waked theechoes 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 fornew infant eyes. Almost the same johnswort springs from the sameperennial root in this pasture, and even I have at length helped toclothe that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of theresults of my presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves,corn blades, and potato vines.

I planted about two acres and a half ofupland; and as it was only about fifteen years since the land wascleared, and I myself had got out two or three cords of stumps, I didnot give it any manure; but in the course of the summer it appearedby the arrowheads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nationhad anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white mencame to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted thesoil for this very crop.

Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had runacross the road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while allthe dew was on, though the farmers warned me against it- I wouldadvise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on- Ibegan to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throwdust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked barefooted,dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, butlater in the day the sun blistered my feet. There the sun lighted meto hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellowgravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the oneend terminating in a shrub oak copse where I could rest in the shade,the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepenedtheir tints by the time I had made another bout. Removing the weeds,putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weedwhich I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thoughtin bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper andmillet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass- this wasmy daily work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hiredmen or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower,and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. But labor ofthe hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhapsnever the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishablemoral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. A very agricolalaboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln andWayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs,with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I thehome-staying, laborious native of the soil. But soon my homestead wasout of their sight and thought. It was the only open and cultivatedfield for a great distance on either side of the road, so they madethe most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more oftravellers' gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: "Beans solate! peas so late!"- for I continued to plant when others had begunto hoe- the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. "Corn, myboy, for fodder; corn for fodder." "Does he live there?" asks theblack bonnet of the gray coat; and the hard-featured farmer reins uphis grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing where he sees nomanure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or anylittle waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. But here were twoacres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands todraw it- there being an aversion to other carts and horses- and chipdirt far away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloudwith the fields which they had passed, so that I came to know how Istood in the agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr.Colman's report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the cropwhich nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? Thecrop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated,the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond-holes in thewoods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop onlyunreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link betweenwild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and othershalf-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was,though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beanscheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that Icultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches forthem.

Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of abirch, sings the brown thrasher- or red mavis, as some love to callhim- all the morning, glad of your society, that would find outanother farmer's field if yours were not here. While you are plantingthe seed, he cries- "Drop it, drop it- cover it up, cover it up- pullit up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it wassafe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, hisamateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to dowith your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. Itwas a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entirefaith.

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rowswith my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who inprimeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implementsof war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. Theylay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marksof having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and alsobits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators ofthe soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoedto the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor whichyielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans thatI hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity aspride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to thecity to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in thesunny afternoons- for I sometimes made a day of it- like a mote inthe eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoopand a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very ragsand tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fillthe air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on thetops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender likeripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind tofloat in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature. The hawk isaerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those hisperfect air- inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledgedpinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen- hawkscircling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending,approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodimentof my own thoughts, Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeonsfrom this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound andcarrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up asluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace ofEgypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on myhoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, apart of the inexhaustible entertainment which the countryoffers.

On gala days the town fires its great guns,which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martialmusic occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there in mybean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if apuffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which Iwas ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of somesort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption wouldbreak out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until atlength some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fieldsand up the Wayland road, brought me information of the "trainers." Itseemed by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and thatthe neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnabulumupon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were endeavoringto call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died quiteaway, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told notale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely intothe Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honeywith which it was smeared.

I felt proud to know that the liberties ofMassachusetts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping; and asI turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressibleconfidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in thefuture.

When there were several bands of musicians,it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows and all thebuildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. Butsometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reachedthese woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if Icould spit a Mexican with a good relish- for why should we alwaysstand for trifles?- and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk toexercise my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as far awayas Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon,with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops whichoverhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the skyhad from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that itwears daily, and I saw no difference in it.

It was a singular experience that longacquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, andhoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and sellingthem- the last was the hardest of all- I might add eating, for I didtaste. I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I usedto hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spentthe rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate andcurious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds- it willbear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iterationin the labor- disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly,and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling wholeranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That'sRoman wormwood- that's pigweed- that's sorrel- that's piper-grass-have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't lethim have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself t'otherside up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not withcranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dewson their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed witha hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trencheswith weedy dead. Many a lusty crest- waving Hector, that towered awhole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon androlled in the dust.

Those summer days which some of mycontemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and othersto 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, sofar as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, andexchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fieldsif only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve aparable-maker one day. It was on the whole a rare amusement, which,continued too long, might have become a dissipation. Though I gavethem no manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusualywell as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, "there beingin truth," as Evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoevercomparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning ofthe mould with the spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere,"especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which itattracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives itlife, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, tosustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but thevicars succedaneous to this improvement." Moreover, this being one ofthose "worn- out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,"had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vitalspirits" from the air. I harvested twelve bushels ofbeans.

But to be more particular, for it iscomplained that Mr. Colman has reported chiefly the expensiveexperiments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were,

 

For a hoe.....................................$ 0.54
Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing............. 7.50 (Too much.)
Beans for seed................................ 3.12 1/2
Potatoes for seed............................. 1.33
Peas for seed................................. 0.40
Turnip seed................................... 0.06
White line for crow fence..................... 0.02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours.......... 1.00
Horse and cart to get crop.................... 0.75
-----
In all.......................................$ 14.72 1/2

 

My income was (patremfamilias vendacem, nonemacem esse oportet), from

 

Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold..$ 16.94
Five bushels large potatoes................... 2.50
Nine bushels small potatoes................... 2.25
Grass......................................... 1.00
Stalks........................................ 0.75
-----
In all......................................$ 23.44
Leaving a pecuniary profit,
as I have elsewhere said, of..............$ 8.71 1/2

 

This is the result of my experience inraising beans: Plant the common small white bush bean about the firstof June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being carefulto select fresh round and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, andsupply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, ifit is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tenderleaves almost clean as they go; and again, when the young tendrilsmake their appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear themoff with both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. Butabove all harvest as early as possible, if you would escape frostsand have a fair and salable crop; you may save much loss by thismeans.

This further experience also I gained: I saidto myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much industryanother summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, assincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and seeif they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil andmanurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted forthese crops. Alas! I said this to myself; but now another summer isgone, and another, and another, and I am obliged to say to you,Reader, that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the seedsof those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and sodid not come up. Commonly men will only be brave as their fatherswere brave, or timid. This generation is very sure to plant corn andbeans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago andtaught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. I sawan old man the other day, to my astonishment, making the holes with ahoe for the seventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie downin! But why should not the New Englander try new adventures, and notlay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and hisorchards- raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so muchabout our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a newgeneration of men? We should really be fed and cheered if when we meta man we were sure to see that some of the qualities which I havenamed, which we all prize more than those other productions, butwhich are for the most part broadcast and floating in the air, hadtaken root and grown in him. Here comes such a subtile and ineffablequality, for instance, as truth or justice, though the slightestamount or new variety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors shouldbe instructed to send home such seeds as these, and Congress help todistribute them over all the land. We should never stand uponceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banishone another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel ofworth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. Most men Ido not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busyabout 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 amushroom, but partially risen out of the earth, something more thanerect, like swallows alighted and walking on the ground:

 

"And as he spake, his mings would now andthen

Spread, as he meant to fly, then closeagain-"

 

so that we should suspect that we might beconversing with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but italways does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, andmakes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, torecognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed andheroic joy.

Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, atleast, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued withirreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to havelarge farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, norprocession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows andso-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of thesacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It isthe premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceresand the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. Byavarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none ofus is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means ofacquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry isdegraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knowsNature but as a robber. Cato says that the profits of agriculture areparticularly pious or just (maximeque pius quaestus), and accordingto Varro the old Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, andthought that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, andthat they alone were left of the race of King Saturn."

We are wont to forget that the sun looks onour cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests withoutdistinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and theformer make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholdsin his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivatedlike a garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his lightand beat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though Ivalue the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of theyear? This broad field which I have looked at so long looks not to meas the principal cultivator, but away from me to influences moregenial to it, which water and make it green. These beans have resultswhich are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for woodchuckspartly? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica, obsoletely speca, from spe,hope) should not be the only hope of the husbandman; its kernel orgrain (granum from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. How,then, can our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundanceof the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds? It matterslittle comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer's barns. Thetrue husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest noconcern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, andfinish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to theproduce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his firstbut his last fruits also.

 


THE VILLAGE

 

AFTER HOEING, or perhaps reading and writing,in the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming acrossone of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from myperson, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, andfor the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled tothe village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going onthere, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper tonewspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really asrefreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping offrogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so Iwalked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the windamong the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from myhouse there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under thegrove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village ofbusy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, eachsitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor'sto gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits. Thevillage appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to supportit, as once at Redding & Company's on State Street, they keptnuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some havesuch a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, andsuch sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in publicavenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through themlike the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producingnumbness and insensibility to pain- otherwise it would often bepainful to bear- without affecting the consciousness. I hardly everfailed, when I rambled through the village, to see a row of suchworthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with theirbodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line thisway and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, orelse leaning against a barn with their hands in their pockets, likecaryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly out of doors,heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coarsest mills, inwhich all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it isemptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I observedthat the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, thepost-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery,they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places;and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, inlanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to runthe gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick athim. Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of theline, where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blowat him, paid the highest prices for their places; and the fewstraggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the linebegan to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn asideinto cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or windowtax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catchhim by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some bythe fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's; and others bythe hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoe-maker, orthe tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standinginvitation to call at every one of these houses, and company expectedabout these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully from thesedangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberationto the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gauntlet, or bykeeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus, who, "loudlysinging the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices ofthe Sirens, and kept out of danger." Sometimes I bolted suddenly, andnobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much aboutgracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. I was evenaccustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was wellentertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieveful ofnews- what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whetherthe world was likely to hold together much longer- I was let outthrough the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woodsagain.

It was very pleasant, when I stayed late intown, to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark andtempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lectureroom, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snugharbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawnunder hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outerman 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 wasnever cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encounteredsome severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights,than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening betweenthe trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where therewas no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I hadworn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I feltwith my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more thaneighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in thedarkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark andmuggy 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 havingto raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall asingle step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body wouldfind its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand findsits way to the mouth without assistance. Several times, when avisitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, Iwas 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 inkeeping 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 whohad been fishing in the pond. They lived about a mile off through thewoods, and were quite used to the route. A day or two after one ofthem told me that they wandered about the greater part of the night,close by their own premises, and did not get home till towardmorning, by which time, as there had been several heavy showers inthe meanwhile, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched totheir skins. I have heard of many going astray even in the villagestreets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with aknife, as the saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having cometo town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up forthe night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half amile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, andnot knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, aswell as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Oftenin a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-knownroad and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to thevillage. Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times,he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him asif it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity isinfinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly,though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-knownbeacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we stillcarry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not tillwe are completely lost, or turned round- for a man needs only to beturned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost- do weappreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has tolearn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, whether fromsleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words nottill we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, andrealize where we are and the infinite extent of ourrelations.

One afternoon, near the end of the firstsummer, 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 Statewhich buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at thedoor of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for otherpurposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him withtheir dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belongto their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might haveresisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok"against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok"against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released thenext day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods inseason to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I wasnever molested by any person but those who represented the State. Ihad no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not evena nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my doornight or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even whenthe next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet myhouse was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file ofsoldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire,the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or thecurious, 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 everyclass came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconveniencefrom these sources, and I never missed anything but one small book, avolume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this Itrust 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 androbbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities wheresome have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.The Pope's Homers would soon get properly distributed.

 

"Nec bella fuerunt,

Faginus astabat dum scyphus antedapes."

"Nor wars did men molest,

When only beechen bowls were inrequest."

 

"You who govern public affairs, what needhave you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will bevirtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; thevirtues of a common man are like the grass- I the grass, when thewind passes over it, bends."

 


THE PONDS

 

SOMETIMES, having had a surfeit of humansociety and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambledstill farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet moreunfrequented parts of the town, "to fresh woods and pastures new,"or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries andblueberries 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 toobtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor ofhuckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge. It is a vulgar errorto suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them.A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known theresince they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential partof the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the marketcart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal justicereigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither fromthe country's hills.

Occasionally, after my hoeing was done forthe day, I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing onthe pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or afloating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, hadconcluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to theancient sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an excellentfisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to lookupon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen;and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange hislines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end ofthe 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 hummeda psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. Ourintercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far morepleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. When,as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used to raisethe echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, fillingthe surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring themup as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited agrowl from every wooded vale and hillside.

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

Sometimes, after staying in a village parlortill 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 ofmidnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls andfoxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of someunknown bird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable andvaluable to me- anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirtyrods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perchand shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight,and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnalfishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimesdragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentlenight breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it,indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dulluncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. Atlength you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned poutsqueaking and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer,especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vastand cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk,which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. Itseemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as wellas downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus Icaught 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 itmuch concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by itsshore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as tomerit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well,half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, andcontains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in themidst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outletexcept by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills riseabruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, thoughon the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred and onehundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third ofa mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord waters havetwo colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, moreproper, close at hand. The first depends more on the light, andfollows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at alittle distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance allappear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a darkslate-color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and greenanother without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. I have seenour river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both waterand ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue "to be thecolor of pure water, whether liquid or solid." But, looking directlydown into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of verydifferent colors. Walden is blue at one time and green at another,even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and theheavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop itreflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowishtint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green,which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of thepond. In some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vividgreen next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection ofthe verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroadsandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and itmay be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellowof 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 thesun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through theearth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still frozenmiddle. Like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clearweather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at theright angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appearsat a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and atsuch a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision,so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless andindescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks andsword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternatingwith the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves,which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreousgreenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of the winter skyseen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a singleglass of its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equalquantity of air. It is well known that a large plate of glass willhave a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its "body," but asmall piece of the same will be colorless. How large a body of Waldenwater 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 lookingdirectly down on it, and, like that of most ponds, imparts to thebody of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is ofsuch crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of analabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs aremagnified and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, makingfit studies for a Michael Angelo.

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

The shore is composed of a belt of smoothrounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two shortsand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap willcarry you into water over your head; and were it not for itsremarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of itsbottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it isbottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say thatthere were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except inthe little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belongto it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, noreven a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves andpotamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however abather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright likethe element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into thewater, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts,where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay ofthe leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls,and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even inmidwinter.

We have one other pond just like this, WhitePond, 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 ofthis centre I do not know a third of this pure and well-likecharacter. Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, andfathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green andpellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps on that springmorning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond wasalready in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle springrain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered withmyriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, whenstill such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced torise and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of thehue they now wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the onlyWalden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knowsin how many unremembered nations' literatures this has been theCastalian Fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in the GoldenAge? It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in hercoronet.

Yet perchance the first who came to this wellhave left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised todetect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cutdown on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside,alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from thewater's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by thefeet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unmittinglytrodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularlydistinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, justafter a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating whiteline, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of amile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishableclose at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white typealto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day bebuilt here may still preserve some trace of this.

The pond rises and falls, but whetherregularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, asusual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter andlower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet anddryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and alsowhen it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. Thereis a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on oneside, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods fromthe main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possibleto do for twenty-five years; and, on the other hand, my friends usedto listen with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later Iwas accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods,fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was longsince converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily fortwo years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higherthan when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, andfishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference oflevel, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shedby the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and thisoverflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs.This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkablethat this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus torequire many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one riseand a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen yearshence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint'sPond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by itsinlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also,sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest heightat the same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as myobservation goes, of White Pond.

This rise and fall of Walden at longintervals serves this use at least; the water standing at this greatheight for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk roundit, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edgesince the last rise- pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, andothers- and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlikemany ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, itsshore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pondnext my house a row of pitch pines, fifteen feet high, has beenkilled and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to theirencroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsedsince the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pondasserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and thetrees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips ofthe lake, on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time totime. When the water is at its height, the alders, willows, andmaples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long fromall sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three orfour feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; andI have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore, whichcommonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under thesecircumstances.

Some have been puzzled to tell how the shorebecame so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition-the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth- thatanciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, whichrose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into theearth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though thisvice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while theywere thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one oldsquaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It hasbeen conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled downits side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at anyrate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; andthis Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the accountof that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so wellwhen he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vaporrising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, andhe concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still thinkthat they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waveson these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills areremarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have beenobliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cutnearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where theshore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer amystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived fromthat of some English locality- Saffron Walden, for instance- onemight suppose that it was called originally Walled-inPond.

The pond was my well ready dug. For fourmonths 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 thetown. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colderthan springs and wells which are protected from it. The temperatureof the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat from fiveo'clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March,1846, the thermometer having been up to 65' or 70' some of the time,owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42', or one degree colderthan the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn.The temperature of the Boiling Spring the same day was 45', or thewarmest of any water tried, though it is the coldest that I know ofin summer, when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is notmingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm asmost water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. Inthe warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where itbecame cool in the night, and remained so during the day; though Ialso resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when aweek 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 onlybury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to beindependent of the luxury of ice.

There have been caught in Walden pickerel,one weighing seven pounds- to say nothing of another which carriedoff a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set downat eight pounds because he did not see him- perch and pouts, some ofeach weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscuspulchellus), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one weighingfour pounds- I am thus particular because the weight of a fish iscommonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I haveheard of here;- also, I have a faint recollection of a little fishsome five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back,somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here chiefly tolink my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertilein fish. Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. Ihave seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least threedifferent kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most likethose caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenishreflections and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; andanother, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered onthe sides with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a fewfaint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The specific namereticulatus would not apply to this; it should be guttatus rather.These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their sizepromises. The shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all thefishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, andfirmer-fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as thewater is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from them.Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some ofthem. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a fewmussels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, andoccasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it.

 

Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in themorning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himselfunder the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in thespring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skimover it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along itsstony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawksitting on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is everprofaned by the wind of a gull, like Fair Haven. At most, ittolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequencewhich frequent it now.

You may see from a boat, in calm weather,near the sandy eastern, shore where the water is eight or ten feetdeep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heapshalf a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting ofsmall stones less than a hen's egg in size, where all around is baresand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them onthe ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank tothe bottom; but they are too regular and some of them plainly toofresh for that. They are similar to those found in rivers; but asthere are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what fish theycould be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend apleasing mystery to the bottom.

The shore is irregular enough not to bemonotonous. I have in my mind's eye the western, indented with deepbays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southernshore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggestunexplored coves between. The forest has never so good a setting, noris so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a smalllake amid hills which rise from the water's edge; for the water inwhich it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such acase, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeableboundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edgethere, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated fieldabuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on the water side,and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction.There Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by justgradations 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 theshore as it did a thousand years ago.

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful andexpressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which thebeholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile treesnext the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and thewooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at theeast end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slighthaze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, I have seen whencecame the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invertyour head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched acrossthe valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separatingone stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think that youcould walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallowswhich skim over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive belowthis line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you lookover the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands todefend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, forthey are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey itssurface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except wherethe skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its wholeextent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginablesparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I havesaid, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. It may be that in thedistance 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 itstrikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; orhere and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface,which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like moltenglass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure andbeautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yetsmoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by aninvisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From ahilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not apickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but itmanifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It iswonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised-this piscine murder will out- and from my distant perch I distinguishthe circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in diameter.You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressingover the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow thewater slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverginglines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly.When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters norwater-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave theirhavens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulsestill they completely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one ofthose fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fullyappreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlookingthe pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantlyinscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skiesand trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it isthus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase ofwater is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all issmooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond butit is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as itwere the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing ofits life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrillsof pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of thelake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leafand twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as whencovered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or aninsect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet theecho!

In such a day, in September or October,Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as preciousto my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at thesame time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of theearth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go withoutdefiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whosequicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continuallyrepairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;- amirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dustedby the sun's hazy brush- this the light dust-cloth- which retains nobreath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as cloudshigh above its surface, and he reflected in its bosomstill.

A field of water betrays the spirit that isin the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion fromabove. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On landonly the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by thewind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks orflakes of light. It is remarkable that we can look down on itssurface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air atlength, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps overit.

The skaters and water-bugs finally disappearin the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come; andthen and in November, usually, in a calm day, there is absolutelynothing to ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the calm atthe end of a rain-storm of several days' duration, when the sky wasstill completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observedthat the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult todistinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected the brighttints of October, but the sombre November colors of the surroundinghills. Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the slightundulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as I couldsee, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as I waslooking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faintglimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts mightbe collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth,betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently toone of these places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded bymyriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronzecolor in the green water, sporting there, and constantly rising tothe surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In suchtransparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, Iseemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and theirswimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if theywere a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level on theright or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. Therewere many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the shortseason before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broadskylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if aslight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When Iapproached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash andrippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with abrushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length thewind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and theperch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundredblack points, three inches long, at once above the surface. Even aslate as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples on thesurface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the airbeing fun of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and rowhomeward; already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I feltnone on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenlythe dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which thenoise of my oars had seared into the depths, and I saw their schoolsdimly disappearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all.

An old man who used to frequent this pondnearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests,tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducksand other water-fowl, and that there were many eagles about it. Hecame here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on theshore. It was made of two white pine logs dug out and pinnedtogether, and was cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, butlasted a great many years before it became water-logged and perhapssank to the bottom. He did not know whose it was; it belonged to thepond. He used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hickorybark tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived by the pondbefore the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest atthe bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floatingup to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back intodeep 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 moregraceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on thebank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for ageneration, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that whenI first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to beseen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blownover formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood wascheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared.

When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it wascompletely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and insome of its coves grape-vines had run over the trees next the waterand formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which formits 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 ofan amphitheatre for some land of sylvan spectacle. I have spent manyan hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyrwilled, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my backacross the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I wasaroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shoremy fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the mostattractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolenaway, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for Iwas rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spentthem lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them inthe workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I left those shores thewoodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many ayear there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood,with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse maybe excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birdsto sing when their groves are cut down?

Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, andthe old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and thevillagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to thepond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which shouldbe as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, towash their dishes with!- to earn their Walden by the turning of acock or drawing of a plug! That devilish Iron Horse, whoseear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied theBoiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off allthe woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men inhis belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country'schampion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut andthrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloatedpest?

Nevertheless, of all the characters I haveknown, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Manymen have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though thewoodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and theIrish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed onits border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itselfunchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all thechange is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after allits ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and see aswallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of yore.It struck me again tonight, as if I had not seen it almost daily formore than twenty years- Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lakethat I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down lastwinter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; thesame thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is thesame liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it maybe to me. It is the work of a brave man surely, in whom there was noguile! He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified itin his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see byits face that it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almostsay, Walden, is it you?

 

It is no dream of mine,

To ornament a line;

I cannot come nearer to God andHeaven

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 Ifancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and thosepassengers who have a season ticket and see it often, are better menfor the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his naturedoes not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity onceat least during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash outState Street and the engine's soot. One proposes that it be called"God's Drop."

I have said that Walden has no visible inletnor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectlyrelated to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of smallponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly andmanifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain ofponds through which in some other geological period it may haveflowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made toflow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like ahermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity,who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint'sPond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste itssweetness in the ocean wave?

 

Flint's, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, ourgreatest lake and inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It ismuch larger, being said to contain one hundred and ninety-sevenacres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is comparatively shallow,and not remarkably pure. A walk through the woods thither was oftenmy recreation. It was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blowon your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remember the life ofmariners. I went a- chestnutting there in the fall, on windy days,when the nuts were dropping into the water and were washed to myfeet; and one day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh sprayblowing in my face, I came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, thesides gone, and hardly more than the impression of its flat bottomleft amid the rushes; yet its model was sharply defined, as if itwere a large decayed pad, with its veins. It was as impressive awreck as one could imagine on the seashore, and had as good a moral.It is by this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pondshore, through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used toadmire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of thispond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure ofthe water, and the rushes which grew in Indian file, in waving lines,corresponding to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves hadplanted them. There also I have found, in considerable quantities,curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or roots, ofpipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, andperfectly spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow water on asandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are eithersolid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first you wouldsay that they were formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble;yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, half an inchlong, and they are produced only at one season of the year. Moreover,the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear down amaterial which has already acquired consistency. They preserve theirform when dry for an indefinite period.

Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of ournomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whosefarm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laidbare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better thereflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he couldsee his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks whichsettled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and bonytalons from the lodge habit of grasping harpy-like;- so it is notnamed for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who neversaw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who neverprotected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked Godthat He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swimin it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wildflowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child thethread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him whocould show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighboror legislature gave him- him who thought only of its money value;whose presence perchance cursed all the shores; who exhausted theland 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 havedrained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn hismill, and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not hislabors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry thelandscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could getanything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whosefarm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows noflowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beautyof his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turnedto dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers arerespectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor-poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands like a fungus in amuckheap, chambers for men horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed anduncleansed, all contiguous to one another! Stocked with men! A greatgrease- spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk! Under a high stateof cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of men! Asif you were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard! Such is a modelfarm.

No, no; if the fairest features of thelandscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest andworthiest men alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at least asthe Icarian Sea, where "still the shore" a "brave attemptresounds."

 

Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way toFlint's; Fair Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to containsome seventy acres, is a mile southwest; and White Pond, of aboutforty acres, is a mile and a half beyond Fair Haven. This is my lakecountry. These, with Concord River, are my water privileges; andnight and day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry tothem.

Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, andI myself have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if notthe most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is WhitePond;- a poor name from its commonness, whether derived from theremarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In theseas in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. Theyare so much alike that you would say they must be connected underground. It has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the samehue. As at Walden, in sultry dogday weather, looking down through thewoods on some of its bays which are not so deep but that thereflection from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a mistybluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used to go thereto collect the sand by cartloads, to make sandpaper with, and I havecontinued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes tocall it Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow Pine Lake, fromthe following circumstance. About fifteen years ago you could see thetop of a pitch pine, of the kind called yellow pine hereabouts,though it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface indeep water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by somethat the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest thatformerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792, in a"Topographical Description of the Town of Concord," by one of itscitizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society,the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds, "In themiddle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very low, a treewhich appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands,although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the water; thetop of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteeninches in diameter." In the spring of '49 I talked with the man wholives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was he who gotout this tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as he couldremember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where thewater was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the winter, and he hadbeen getting out ice in the forenoon, and had resolved that in theafternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take out the oldyellow pine. He sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, andhauled it over and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, beforehe had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it waswrong end upward, with the stumps of the branches pointing down, andthe small end firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about afoot in diameter at the big end, and he had expected to get a goodsaw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if forthat. He had some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an axeand of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might have been adead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over into the pond, andafter the top had become water-logged, while the butt-end was stilldry and light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father,eighty years old, could not remember when it was not there. Severalpretty large logs may still be seen lying on the bottom, where, owingto the undulation of the surface, they look like huge water snakes inmotion.

This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat,for there is little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the whitelily, which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue flag(Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, rising from thestony bottom all around the shore, where it is visited byhummingbirds in June; and the color both of its bluish blades and itsflowers and especially their reflections, is in singular harmony withthe glaucous water.

White Pond and Walden are great crystals onthe surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanentlycongealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, becarried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads ofemperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and oursuccessors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond ofKohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain nomuck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much moretransparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meannessof them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, inwhich his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has nohuman inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumageand their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth ormaiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? Sheflourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk ofheaven! ye disgrace earth.

 


BAKER FARM

 

SOMETIMES I rambled to pine groves, standinglike temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs,and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druidswould have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedarwood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blueberries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla,and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full offruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from thewhite spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods,cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, likebutterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink anddogwood grow, the red alder berry glows like eyes of imps, thewaxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and thewild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with theirbeauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wildforbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling onsome scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds whichare rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle ofsome pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop;such as the black birch, of which we have some handsome specimens twofeet in diameter; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its loose goldenvest, perfumed like the first; the beech, which has so neat a holeand beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in all its details, of which,excepting scattered specimens, I know but one small grove of sizabletrees left in the township, supposed by some to have been planted bythe pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by; it is worththe while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood;the bass; the hornbeam; the Celtis occidentalis, or false elm, ofwhich we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, ashingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like apagoda 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 veryabutment of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of theatmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me asif I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light,in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it had lastedlonger it might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked onthe railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light aroundmy shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One whovisited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him hadno halo about them, that it was only natives that were sodistinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, aftera certain terrible dream or vision which he had during hisconfinement in the castle of St. Angelo a resplendent light appearedover the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was inItaly or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the grasswas moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to which Ihave referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but alsoat other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it isnot commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imaginationlike Cellini's, it would be basis enough for superstition. Beside, hetells us that he showed it to very few. But are they not indeeddistinguished who are conscious that they are regarded atall?

 

I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing toFair Haven, through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare ofvegetables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of theBaker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung,beginning,

 

"Thy entry is a pleasant field,

Which some mossy fruit trees yield

Partly to a ruddy brook,

By gliding musquash undertook,

And mercurial trout,

Darting about."

 

I thought of living there before I went toWalden. I "hooked" the apples, leaped the brook, and scared themusquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons which seemindefinitely long before one, in which many events may happen, alarge portion of our natural life, though it was already half spentwhen I started. By the way there came up a shower, which compelled meto stand half an hour under a pine, piling boughs over my head, andwearing my handkerchief for a shed; and when at length I had made onecast over the pickerelweed, standing up to my middle in water, Ifound myself suddenly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder beganto rumble with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen toit. The gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked flashes torout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for shelter to thenearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but so much thenearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited:

 

"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 severalchildren, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at hiswork, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape therain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat uponits father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out fromits home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon thestranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was thelast of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world, insteadof John Field's poor starveling brat. There we sat together underthat part of the roof which leaked the least, while it showered andthundered without. I had sat there many times of old before the shipwas built that floated his family to America. An honest,hard-working, but shiftless man plainly was John Field; and his wife,she too was brave to cook so many successive dinners in the recessesof that lofty stove; with round greasy face and bare breast, stillthinking to improve her condition one day; with the never absent mopin one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens,which had also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about theroom like members of the family, to humanized, methought, to roastwell. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoesignificantly. Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard heworked "bogging" for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with aspade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and the use ofthe land with manure for one year, and his little broad-faced sonworked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not knowing howpoor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with myexperience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, andthat I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, wasgetting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, andclean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such aruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in amonth or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not usetea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did nothave to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did nothave to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as hebegan with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had towork hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eathard again to repair the waste of his system- and so it was as broadas it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he wasdiscontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he hadrated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea,and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is thatcountry where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as mayenable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavorto compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluousexpenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of suchthings. For I purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, ordesired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows on the earthwere left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men'sbeginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need to study historyto find out what is best for his own culture. But alas! the cultureof an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moralbog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, herequired thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiledand worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which costnot half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like agentleman (which, however, was not the case), and in an hour or two,without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch asmany fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money tosupport me a week. If he and his family would live simply, they mightall go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. Johnheaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, andboth appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to beginsuch a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It wassailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how tomake their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely,after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, nothaving skill to split its massive columns with any fine enteringwedge, and rout it in detail;- thinking to deal with it roughly, asone should handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelmingdisadvantage- living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, andfailing so.

"Do you ever fish?" I asked. "Oh yes, I catcha mess now and then when I am lying by; good perch I catch.- "What'syour bait?" "I catch shiners with fishworms, and bait the perch withthem." "You'd better go now, John," said his wife, with glisteningand hopeful face; but John demurred.

The shower was now over, and a rainbow abovethe eastern woods promised a fair evening; so I took my departure.When I had got without I asked for a drink, hoping to get a sight ofthe well bottom, to complete my survey of the premises; but there,alas! are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucketirrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected,water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delaypassed out to the thirsty one- not yet suffered to cool, not yet tosettle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting myeyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, Idrank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am notsqueamish in such cases when manners are concerned.

As I was leaving the Irishman's roof afterthe rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catchpickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, inforlorn and savage places, appeared for an instant trivial to me whohad been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hilltoward the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, andsome faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air,from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius seemed to say- Go fishand hunt far and wide day by day- farther and wider- and rest thee bymany brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creatorin the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, andseek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the nightovertake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields thanthese, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild accordingto thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never becomeEnglish bay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin tofarmers' crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter underthe cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get aliving be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not.Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buyingand selling, and spending their lives like serfs.

O Baker Farm!

 

"Landscape where the richestelement

Is a little sunshine innocent."...

 

"No one runs to revel

On thy rail-fenced lea."...

 

"Debate with no man hast thou,

With questions art neverperplexed,

As tame at the first sight as now,

In thy plain russet gabardinedressed."

 

"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 thetrees!"

 

Men come tamely home at night only from thenext field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and theirlife pines because it breathes its own breath over again; theirshadows, morning and evening, reach farther than their daily steps.We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, anddiscoveries every day, with new experience and character.

Before I had reached the pond some freshimpulse had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go"bogging" ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a coupleof fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was hisluck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too.Poor John Field!- I trust he does not read this, unless he willimprove by it- thinking to live by some derivative old-country modein this primitive new country- to catch perch with shiners. It isgood bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he apoor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poorlife, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in thisworld, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trottingfeet get talaria to their heels.

 


HIGHER LAWS

 

AS I CAME home through the woods with mystring of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught aglimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strangethrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize anddevour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildnesswhich he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at thepond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound,with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which Imight devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. Thewildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself,and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named,spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rankand savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not lessthan the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing stillrecommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life andspend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to thisemployment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintancewith Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery withwhich otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives inthe fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Naturethemselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, inthe intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, whoapproach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herselfto them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on thehead waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Fallsof St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things atsecond-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are mostinterested when science reports what those men already knowpractically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, oraccount of human experience.

They mistake who assert that the Yankee hasfew amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and menand boys do not play so many games as they do in England, for herethe more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, andthe like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every NewEngland boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piecebetween the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishinggrounds were not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman,but were more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then,that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already achange is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but toan increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatestfriend of the animals hunted, not excepting the HumaneSociety.

Moreover, when at the pond, I wishedsometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fishedfrom the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. Whateverhumanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious, andconcerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishingonly now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold mygun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane thanothers, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. Idid not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As forfowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse wasthat 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 finerway of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closerattention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only,I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding theobjection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt ifequally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when someof my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether theyshould let them hunt, I have answered, yes- remembering that it wasone of the best parts of my education- make them hunters, thoughsportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so thatthey shall not find game large enough for them in this or anyvegetable wilderness- hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far Iam of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who

 

"yave not of the text a pulled hen

That saith that hunters ben not holymen."

 

There is a period in the history of theindividual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men,- asthe Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has neverfired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadlyneglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who werebent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. Nohumane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonlymurder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that hedoes. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you,mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usualphilanthropic distinctions.

Such is oftenest the young man's introductionto the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thitherat first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seedsof a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as apoet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-polebehind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a onemight make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the GoodShepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the only obviousemployment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business,which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a wholehalf-day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children ofthe town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did notthink that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless theygot a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeingthe pond all the while. They might go there a thousand times beforethe sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave theirpurpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be goingon all the while. The Governor and his Council faintly remember thepond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now theyare too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it nomore forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If thelegislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of booksto be used there; but they know nothing about the book of hooks withwhich to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for abait. Thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man passesthrough the hunter stage of development.

I have found repeatedly, of late years, thatI cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have triedit again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows,a certain instinct for it, which revives from time to time, butalways when I have done I feel that it would have been better if Ihad not fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a faintintimation, yet so are the first streaks of morning. There isunquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower ordersof creation; yet with every year I am less a fisherman, thoughwithout more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am no fisherman atall. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should againbe tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there issomething essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and Ibegan to see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor,which costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance eachday, to keep the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights.Having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as thegentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from anunusually complete experience. The practical objection to animal foodin my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught andcleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed meessentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more thanit 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 hadrarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; notso much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, asbecause they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance toanimal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. Itappeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects;and though I never did so, I went far enough to please myimagination. I believe that every man who has ever been earnest topreserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition hasbeen particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from muchfood of any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists-I find it in Kirby and Spence- that "some insects in their perfectstate, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them";and they lay it down as "a general rule, that almost all insects inthis state eat much less than in that of larvae. The voraciouscaterpillar when transformed into a butterfly... and the gluttonousmaggot when become a fly" content themselves with a drop or two ofhoney or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of thebutterfly stir represents the larva. This is the tidbit which temptshis insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state;and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancyor imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.

It is hard to provide and cook so simple andclean 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 thesame table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eatentemperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interruptthe worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish,and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by richcookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their ownhands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food,as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this isotherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are nottrue men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to bemade. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not bereconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it nota reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and doeslive, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is amiserable way- as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, orslaughtering lambs, may learn- and he will be regarded as abenefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to amore innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, Ihave no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, inits gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely asthe savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came incontact with the more civilized.

If one listens to the faintest but constantsuggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not towhat extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way,as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintestassured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevailover the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed hisgenius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness,yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to beregretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles.If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, andlife emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is moreelastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All natureis your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to blessyourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from beingappreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forgetthem. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astoundingand most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvestof my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as thetints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, asegment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Yet, for my part, I was never unusuallysqueamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, ifit were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for thesame reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven.I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees ofdrunkenness. 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 amorning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish oftea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may beintoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece andRome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, whodoes not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I havefound it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors longcontinued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. Butto tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particularin these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask noblessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged toconfess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years Ihave grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions areentertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is"nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regardingmyself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when itsays, that "he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Beingmay eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to inquire what ishis food, or who prepares it; and even in their case it is to beobserved, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that the Vedantlimits this privilege to "the time of distress."

Who has not sometimes derived aninexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had noshare? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perceptionto the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspiredthrough the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hillsidehad fed my genius. "The soul not being mistress of herself," saysThseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one listens, and onedoes not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor of food." Hewho distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton;he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to hisbrown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman tohis turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth aman, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither thequality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; whenthat which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspireour spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If thehunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savagetidbits, the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf'sfoot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goesto the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they,how you and I, can live this slimy, beastly life, eating anddrinking.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There isnever an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is theonly investment that never fails. In the music of the harp whichtrembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrillsus. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe's InsuranceCompany, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all theassessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent,the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on theside 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 moraltransfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard asmusic, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.

We are conscious of an animal in us, whichawakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptileand sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the wormswhich, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we maywithdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it mayenjoy 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 andsound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animalhealth and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeededby other means than temperance and purity. "That in which men differfrom brute beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable;the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve itcarefully." Who knows what sort of life would result if we hadattained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purityI would go to seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, andover the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared bythe Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yetthe spirit can for the time pervade and control every member andfunction of the body, and transmute what ill form is the grossestsensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which,when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we arecontinent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering ofman; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, arebut various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God whenthe channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and ourimpurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animalis dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established.Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of theinferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we aresuch gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied tobeasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our verylife is our disgrace.

 

"How happy's he who hath due placeassigned

To his beasts and disafforested hismind!

 

Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'rybeast,

And is not ass himself to all therest!

Else man not only is the herd ofswine,

But he's those devils too which didincline

Them to a headlong rage, and made themworse."

 

 

All sensuality is one, though it takes manyforms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink,or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and weonly need to see a person do any one of these things to know howgreat a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit withpurity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, heshows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must betemperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? Heshall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not whatit is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. Fromexertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An uncleanperson is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whomthe sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. Ifyou would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, thoughit be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but shemust be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you arenot purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you arenot more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemedheathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke himto new endeavors, though it be to the performance of ritesmerely.

I hesitate to say these things, but it is notbecause of the subject- I care not how obscene my words are- butbecause I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. Wediscourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and aresilent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simplyof the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in somecountries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated bylaw. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, howeveroffensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink,cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what ismean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these thingstrifles.

Every man is the builder of a temple, calledhis body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, norcan he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors andpainters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Anynobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness orsensuality to imbrute them.

John Farmer sat at his door one Septemberevening, after a hard day's work, his mind still running on his labormore or less. Having bathed, he sat down to re-create hisintellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of hisneighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the trainof his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, andthat sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work;but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running inhis head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against hiswill, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the scurfof his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of theflute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that heworked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumberedin him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, andthe state in which he lived. A voice said to him- Why do you stayhere and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence ispossible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields thanthese.- But how to come out of this condition and actually migratethither? All that he could think of was to practise some newausterity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, andtreat himself with ever increasing respect.

 


BRUTE NEIGHBORS

 

SOMETIMES I had a companion in my fishing,who came through the village to my house from the other side of thetown, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise asthe 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 threehours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts- no flutter fromthem. Was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond thewoods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and ciderand Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does noteat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would livethere where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? And oh,the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs, and scourhis tubs this bright day! Better not keep a house. Say, some hollowtree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! Only awoodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; theyare born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, anda loaf of brown bread on the shelf.- Hark! I hear a rustling of theleaves. Is it some ill-fed village bound yielding to the instinct ofthe chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whosetracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs andsweetbriers tremble.- Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like theworld today?

Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That'sthe greatest thing I have seen today. There's nothing like it in oldpaintings, nothing like it in foreign lands- unless when we were offthe coast of Spain. That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as Ihave my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might goa-fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade Ihave learned. Come, let's along.

Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread willsoon be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am justconcluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the end ofit. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we may not bedelayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. Angleworms arerarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was neverfattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport ofdigging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, whenone's appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to yourselftoday. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among thegroundnuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think that I maywarrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you lookwell in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, ifyou choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found theincrease of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of thedistances.

Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I?Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about atthis angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bringthis meditation to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likelyto offer? I was as near being resolved into the essence of things asever 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 usan offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts haveleft no track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that Iwas thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these threesentences of Confut- see; they may fetch that state about again. Iknow not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. Therenever is but one opportunity of a kind.

Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I havegot just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect orundersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not coverup the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large; ashiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer.

Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we tothe Concord? There's good sport there if the water be not toohigh.

 

Why do precisely these objects which webehold make a world? Why has man just these species of animals forhis neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled thiscrevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to theirbest use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made tocarry some portion of our thoughts.

The mice which haunted my house were not thecommon 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 adistinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I wasbuilding, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and beforeI had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would comeout regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. Itprobably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quitefamiliar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It couldreadily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like asquirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leanedwith my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and alongmy sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, whileI kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; andwhen at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb andfinger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterwardcleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.

A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robinfor protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June thepartridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her broodpast 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 behaviorproving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse onyour approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind hadswept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves andtwigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of abrood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and heranxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her mings to attract hisattention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent willsometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, thatyou cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is.The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under aleaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance,nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. Youmay even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute,without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such atime, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and theirinstinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect isthis 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 inexactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callowlike the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed andprecocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocentexpression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. Allintelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely thepurity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eyewas not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky itreflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. The travellerdoes not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or recklesssportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves theseinnocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or graduallymingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It issaid that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on somealarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call whichgathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wildand free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves inthe neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired theotter manages to live here! He grows to be four feet long, as big asa small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse ofhim. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house isbuilt, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly Irested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and atemy lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of aswamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a milefrom my field. The approach to this was through a succession ofdescending grassy hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a largerwood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot,under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward tosit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water,where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I wentfor this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond waswarmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mudfor worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ranin a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her youngand circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four orfive 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 shedirected. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not see theparent bird. There too the turtle doves sat over the spring, orfluttered from bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head;or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, wasparticularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still longenough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitantsmay exhibit themselves to you by turns.

I was witness to events of a less peacefulcharacter. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pileof stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other muchlarger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending withone another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggledand wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, Iwas surprised to find that the chips were covered with suchcombatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war betweentwo races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, andfrequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidonscovered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground wasalready strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It wasthe only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field Iever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the redrepublicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other.On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without anynoise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought soresolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other'sembraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noondayprepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. Thesmaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to hisadversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field neverfor an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root,having already caused the other to go by the board; while thestronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw onlooking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members.They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifestedthe least disposition to retreat. It was evident that theirbattle-cry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along asingle red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full ofexcitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet takenpart in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of hislimbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or uponit. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrathapart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He sawthis unequal combat from afar- for the blacks were nearly twice thesize of the red- he drew near with rapid pace till be stood on hisguard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching hisopportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced hisoperations near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe toselect among his own members; and so there were three united forlife, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put allother locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by thistime to find that they had their respective musical bands stationedon some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, toexcite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excitedsomewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, theless the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded inConcord history, at least, if in the history of America, that willbear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engagedin it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers andfor carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Twokilled on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why hereevery ant was a Buttrick- "Fire! for God's sake fire!"- and thousandsshared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hirelingthere. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, asmuch as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on theirtea; and the results of this battle will be as important andmemorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of BunkerHill, at least.

I took up the chip oil which the three I haveparticularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, andplaced it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see theissue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I sawthat, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of hisenemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was alltorn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the blackwarrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him topierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone withferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hourlonger under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldierhad severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the stillliving heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophiesat his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, andhe was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers andwith 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 thewindow-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived thatcombat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel desInvalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would notbe 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 Ihad had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle,the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before mydoor.

Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles ofants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, thoughthey say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to havewitnessed them. "Aeneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a verycircumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by agreat and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that"'this action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth,in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, whorelated the whole, history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.'A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded byOlaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said tohave buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of theirgiant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous tothe expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." Thebattle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, fiveyears before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.

Many a village Bose, fit only to course amud-turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in thewoods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelledat old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by someslight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire anatural terror in its denizens;- now far behind his guide, barkinglike a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itselffor scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with hisweight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of thejerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along thestony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. Thesurprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which haslain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and,by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native therethan the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a catwith young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like theirmother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A fewyears before I lived in the woods there was what was called a "wingedcat" 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 gonea-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it wasa male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but hermistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little morethan 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 herthroat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; thatin the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides,forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, andunder her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under mattedlike felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gaveme a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There is no appearanceof a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying squirrel orsome other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according tonaturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of themarten and domestic cat. This would have been the right kind of catfor me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet's cat bewinged as well as his horse?

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

As I was paddling along the north shore onevery calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle onto the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over thepond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward themiddle a few rods in front of me, set up his mild laugh and betrayedhimself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up Iwas nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated thedirection he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came tothe surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; andagain he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. Hemanoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rodsof him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head thisway and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, andapparently chose his course so that he might come up where there wasthe widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from theboat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put hisresolve into execution. He led me at once to the widest part of thepond, and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking onething 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 managainst a loon. Suddenly your adversary's checker disappears beneaththe board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where hiswill appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on theopposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under theboat. So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swumfarthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then nowit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface,he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and abilityto visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said thatloons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath thesurface, with hooks set for trout- though Walden is deeper than that.How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor fromanother sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appearedto know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swammuch faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approachedthe surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantlydived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oarsand wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he wouldrise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over thesurface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laughbehind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did heinvariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh?Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a sillyloon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water whenhe came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed asfresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than atfirst. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off withunruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work withhis webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter,yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he hadbalked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered along-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than anybird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberatelyhowls. This was his looning- perhaps the wildest sound that is everheard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that helaughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources.Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth thatI could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. Hiswhite breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of thewater 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 ofloons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east andrippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and Iwas impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and hisgod was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on thetumultuous surface.

For hours, in fall days, I watched the duckscunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from thesportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise inLouisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circleround and round and over the pond at a considerable height, fromwhich they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like blackmotes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither longsince, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of amile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safetythey got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unlessthey love its water for the same reason that I do.

 


HOUSE-WARMING

 

IN OCTOBER I went a-graping to the rivermeadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for theirbeauty and fragrance than for food. There, too, I admired, though Idid not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of themeadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an uglyrake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring themby the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meadsto Boston and New York; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastesof lovers of Nature there. So butchers rake the tongues of bison outof the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. Thebarberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; butI collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which theproprietor and travellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe Ilaid up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that seasonto roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln- they now sleeptheir long sleep under the railroad- with a bag on my shoulder, and astick to open burs with in my hand, for I did not always wait for thefrost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the redsquirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole,for the burs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones.Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees. They grew also behind myhouse, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when inflower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but thesquirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming inflocks early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the bursbefore they fell, I relinquished these trees to them and visited themore distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. These nuts, as far asthey went, were a good substitute for bread. Many other substitutesmight, perhaps, be found. Digging one day for fishworms, I discoveredthe groundnut (Apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of theaborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if Ihad ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had notdreamed it. I had often since seen its crumpled red velvety blossomsupported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be thesame. Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetishtaste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and I found it betterboiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Natureto rear her own children and feed them simply here at some futureperiod. In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields thishumble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quiteforgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Naturereign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grainswill probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the careof man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to thegreat cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he issaid to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nutwill perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness,prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance anddignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minervamust have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign ofpoetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may berepresented on our works of art.

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

The wasps came by thousands to my lodge inOctober, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within andon the walls overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering.Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of themout, but I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them; I evenfelt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter.They never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me; andthey gradually disappeared, into what crevices I do not know,avoiding winter and unspeakable cold.

Like the wasps, before I finally went intowinter quarters in November, I used to resort to the northeast sideof Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and thestony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanterand wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by anartificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing emberswhich the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.

 

When I came to build my chimney I studiedmasonry. My bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleanedwith a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities ofbricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, and wassaid to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayingswhich men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayingsthemselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it wouldtake many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. Manyof the villages of Mesopotamia are built of secondhand bricks of avery good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cementon them is older and probably harder still. However that may be, Iwas struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so manyviolent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had been in achimney before, though I did not read the name of Nebuchadnezzar onthem, I picked out its many fireplace bricks as I could find, to savework and waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks about thefireplace with stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortarwith the white sand from the same place. I lingered most about thefireplace, as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, I worked sodeliberately, that though I commenced at the ground in the morning, acourse of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for mypillow at night; yet I did not get a stiff neck for it that Iremember; my stiff neck is of older date. I took a poet to board fora fortnight about those times, which caused me to be put to it forroom. He brought his own knife, though I had two, and we used toscour them by thrusting them into the earth. He shared with me thelabors of cooking. I was pleased to see my work rising so square andsolid by degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it wascalculated to endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent anindependent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through thehouse to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still standssometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent. This wastoward the end of summer. It was now November.

 

The north wind had already begun to cool thepond, 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 Iplastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well,because of the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I passed somecheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded by therough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on highoverhead. My house never pleased my eye so much after it wasplastered, though I was obliged to confess that it was morecomfortable. Should not every apartment in which man dwells be loftyenough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadowsmay play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeableto the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the mostexpensive furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I maysay, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had gota couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and itdid me good to see the soot form on the back of the chimney which Ihad built, and I poked the fire with more right and more satisfactionthan usual. My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain anecho in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment andremote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house wereconcentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, andkeeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master orservant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says,the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa"cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatemexpectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil andwine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hardtimes; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had inmy cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with theweevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, andof rye and Indian meal a peck each.

I sometimes dream of a larger and morepopulous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, andwithout gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room,a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling orplastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lowerheaven over one's head-useful to keep off rain and snow, where theking and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you havedone reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty onstepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach upa torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in thefireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, someat one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafterswith the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got intowhen you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over;where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep,without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reachin a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, andnothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of thehouse at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a manshould use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, andgarret; where you can see so necessary a thin, as a barrel or aladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil,and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and theoven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensilsare the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor thefire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested tomove from off the trapdoor, when the cook would descend into thecellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneathyou without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest asa bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at theback without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest isto be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to becarefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particularcell, and told to make yourself at home therein solitary confinement.Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got themason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, andhospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. Thereis as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poisonyou. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and mighthave been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been inmany men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queenwho lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were goingtheir way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that Ishall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.

It would seem as if the very language of ourparlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly,our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphorsand tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides anddumbwaiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far fromthe kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of adinner, commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near enough to Natureand Truth to borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar, whodwells away in the North West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell whatis parliamentary in the kitchen?

However, only one or two of my guests wereever bold enough to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but whenthey saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, asif it would shake the house to its foundations. Nevertheless, itstood through a great many hasty-puddings.

I did not plaster till it was freezingweather. I brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purposefrom the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyancewhich would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary. My househad 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 asingle blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer theplaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I rememberedthe story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont tolounge about the village once, giving advice to workmen. Venturingone day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seizeda plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel without mishap,with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a boldgesture thitherward; and straightway, to his complete discomfiture,received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired anew theeconomy and convenience of plastering, which so effectually shuts outthe cold and takes a handsome finish, and I learned the variouscasualties to which the plasterer is liable. I was surprised to seehow thirsty the bricks were which drank up all the moisture in myplaster before I had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water ittakes to christen a new hearth. I had the previous winter made asmall quantity of lime by burning the shells of the Unio fluviatilis,which our river affords, for the sake of the experiment; so that Iknew where my materials came from. I might have got good limestonewithin a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared to doso.

 

The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over inthe shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before thegeneral freezing. The first ice is especially interesting andperfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the bestopportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it isshallow; 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 thebottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like apicture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooththen. There are many furrows in the sand where some creature hastravelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks, it isstrewn with the cases of caddis-worms made of minute grains of whitequartz. Perhaps these have creased it, for you find some of theircases in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them tomake. But the ice itself is the object of most interest, though youmust improve the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine itclosely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater partof the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are againstits under surface, and that more are continually rising from thebottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark, thatis, you see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightiethto an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, andyou see your face reflected in them through the ice. There may bethirty or forty of them to a square inch. There are also alreadywithin the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inchlong, sharp cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice isquite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another,like a string of beads. But these within the ice are not so numerousnor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on stones totry the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried inair with them, which formed very large and conspicuous white bubblesbeneath. One day when I came to the same place forty-eight hoursafterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect,though an inch more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly bythe seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had beenvery warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent,showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but opaqueand whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly strongerthan before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heatand run together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer onedirectly over another, but often like silvery coins poured from abag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if occupyingslight cleavages. The beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too lateto study the bottom. Being curious to know what position my greatbubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cakecontaining a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The newice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was includedbetween the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, but closeagainst the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular,with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches indiameter; and I was surprised to find that directly under the bubblethe ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a saucerreversed, 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 smallbubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and probably therewas no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot indiameter. I inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles whichI had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now frozenin likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like aburning-glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. These are thelittle air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack andwhoop.

 

At length the winter set in good earnest,just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl aroundthe house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. Nightafter night the geese came lumbering in the dark with a clangor and awhistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, someto alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward FairHaven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from thevillage at ten or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of aflock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by apond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and thefaint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22dof December, Flint's and other shallower ponds and the river havingbeen frozen ten days or more; in '46, the 16th; in '49, about the31st; and in '50, about the 27th of December; in '52, the 5th ofJanuary; in '53, the 31st of December. The snow had already coveredthe ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenlywith the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, andendeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within mybreast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead woodin the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, orsometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An oldforest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. Isacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Terminus.How much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has justbeen forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuelto cook it with! His bread and meat are sweet. There are enoughfagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of ourtowns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and,some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also thedriftwood of the pond. In the course of the summer I had discovered araft of pitch pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by theIrish when the railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on theshore. After soaking two years and then lying high six months it wasperfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. I amused myself onewinter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half amile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on myshoulder, and the other on the ice; or I tied several logs togetherwith a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which hada book at the end, dragged them across. Though completely waterloggedand almost as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made avery hot fire; nay, I thought that they burned better for thesoaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer,as in a lamp.

Gilpin, in his account of the forestborderers 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 wereseverely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending adterrorem ferarum- ad nocumentum forestae, etc.," to the frighteningof the game and the detriment of the forest. But I was interested inthe preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters orwoodchoppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Wardenhimself; and if any part was burned, though I burned it myself byaccident, I grieved with a grief that lasted longer and was moreinconsolable than that of the proprietors; nay, I grieved when it wascut down by the proprietors themselves. I would that our farmers whenthey cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans didwhen they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove(lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to somegod. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever godor goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious tome, my family, and children, etc.

It is remarkable what a value is still putupon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value morepermanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveriesand inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious tous as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made theirbows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirtyyears ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York andPhiladelphia "nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the bestwood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires morethan three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distanceof three hundred miles by cultivated plains." In this town the priceof wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how muchhigher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics andtradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, aresure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for theprivilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. It is now many yearsthat men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials ofthe arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian andthe Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; inmost parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar andthe savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest towarm them and cook their food. Neither could I do withoutthem.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kindof affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the morechips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axewhich nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on thesunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had gotout of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing,they warmed me twice- once while I was splitting them, and again whenthey were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. Asfor the axe, I was advised to get the village blacksmith to "jump"it; but I jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woodsinto it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hungtrue.

A few pieces of fat pine were a greattreasure. It is interesting to remember how much of this food forfire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous yearsI had often gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitchpine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. Theyare almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, atleast, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has allbecome vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick barkforming a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant fromthe heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow themarrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on avein of gold, deep into the earth. But commonly I kindled my firewith the dry leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shedbefore the snow came. Green hickory finely split makes thewoodchopper's kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once in awhile I got a little of this. When the villagers were lighting theirfires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various wildinhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, thatI was awake.

 

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,

Melting thy pinions in thy upwardflight,

Lark without song, and messenger ofdawn,

Circling above the hamlets as thynest;

Or else, departing dream, and shadowyform

Of midnight vision, gathering up thyskirts;

By night star-veiling, and by day

Darkening the light and blotting out thesun;

Go thou my incense upward from thishearth,

And ask the gods to pardon this clearflame.

 

Hard green wood just cut, though I used butlittle of that, answered my purpose better than any other. Isometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winterafternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, itwould be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I wasgone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was Iand Fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper provedtrustworthy. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thoughtthat I would just look in at the window and see if the house was noton fire; it was the only time I remember to have been particularlyanxious on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught mybed, and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place asbig as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered aposition, and its roof was so low, that I could afford to let thefire go out in the middle of almost any winter day.

The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling everythird potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair leftafter plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animalslove comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winteronly because they are so careful to secure them. Some of my friendsspoke 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 asheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some airin a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself,makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of morecumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter,and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamplengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, andsaves a little time for the fine arts. Though, when I had beenexposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my whole body began to growtorpid, when I reached the genial atmosphere of my house I soonrecovered my faculties and prolonged my life. But the mostluxuriously housed has little to boast of in this respect, nor needwe trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may be at lastdestroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads any time with alittle sharper blast from the north. We go on dating from ColdFridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snowwould put a period to man's existence on the globe.

The next winter I used a small cooking-stovefor economy, since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fireso well as the open fireplace. Cooking was then, for the most part,no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process. It will soon beforgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes inthe ashes, after the Indian fashion. The stove not only took up roomand scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if Ihad lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. Thelaborer, looking into it at evening, pulifies his thoughts of thedross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. ButI could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent wordsof a poet recurred to me with new force.

 

"Never, bright flame, may be denied tome

Thy dear, life imaging, closesympathy.

What but my hopes shot upward e'er sobright?

What but my fortunes sunk so low innight?

Why art thou banished from our hearth andhall,

Thou who art welcomed and beloved byall?

Was thy existence then toofanciful

For our life's common light, who are sodull?

Did thy bright gleam mysterious conversehold

With our congenial souls? secrets toobold?

Well, we are safe and strong, for now wesit

Beside a hearth where no dim shadowsflit,

Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but afire

Warms feet and hands- nor does to moreaspire;

By whose compact utilitarian heap

The present may sit down and go tosleep,

Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim pastwalked,

And with us by the unequal light of the oldwood fire talked."

 


FORMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTERVISITORS

 

I WEATHERED some merry snow-storms, and spentsome cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirledwildly without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For manyweeks I met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cutwood and sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted me inmaking a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I hadonce gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, wherethey lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow,and so not only made a my bed for my feet, but in the night theirdark line was my guide. For human society I was obliged to conjure upthe former occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many of mytownsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laughand gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notchedand dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings,though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. In someplaces, within my own remembrance, the pines would scrape both sidesof a chaise at once, and women and children who were compelled to gothis way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, and often rana good part of the distance. Though mainly but a humble route toneighboring villages, or for the woodman's team, it once amused thetraveller more than now by its variety, and lingered longer in hismemory. Where now firm open fields stretch from the village to thewoods, it then ran through a maple swamp on a foundation of logs, theremnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present dustyhighway, from the Stratton, now the Alms-House, Farm, to Brister'sHill.

East of my bean-field, across the road, livedCato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, ofConcord village, who built his slave a house, and gave him permissionto live in Walden Woods;- Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis.Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember hislittle patch among the walnuts, which he let row up till he should beold and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them atlast. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present.Cato's half-obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known tofew, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It isnow filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus glabra), and one of theearliest species of goldenrod (Solidago stricta) grows thereluxuriantly.

Here, by the very corner of my field, stillnearer to town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, whereshe spun linen for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring withher shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At length,in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers,prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and henswere all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhatinhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as hepassed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over hergurgling pot- "Ye are all bones, bones!" I have seen bricks amid theoak copse there.

Down the road, on the right hand, onBrister's Hill, lived Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave ofSquire Cummings once-there where grow still the apple trees whichBrister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruitstill wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read hisepitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, nearthe unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in theretreat from Concord- where he is styled "Sippio Brister"- ScipioAfricanus he had some title to be called- "a man of color," as if hewere discolored. It also told me, with staring emphasis, when hedied; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he everlived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes,yet pleasantly-large, round, and black, blacker than any of thechildren of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord beforeor since.

Farther down the hill, on the left, on theold road in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the Strattonfamily; whose orchard once covered all the slope of Brister's Hill,but was long since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps,whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thriftyvillage tree.

Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed'slocation, 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 oldmythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our NewEngland life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, tohave his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of afriend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family-New-England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies enactedhere; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azuretint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition saysthat once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered thetraveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then men salutedone another, and heard and told the news, and went their waysagain.

Breed's hut was standing only a dozen yearsago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size ofmine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, ifI do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and hadjust lost myself over Davenant's "Gondibert," that winter that Ilabored with a lethargy- which, by the way, I never knew whether toregard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleepshaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellarSundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as theconsequence of my attempt to read Chalmers' collection of Englishpoetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had justsunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste theengines 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 itwas 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," criedone. "It is the Codman place," affirmed another. And then freshsparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we allshouted "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons shot past with furious speedand crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent ofthe Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever andanon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmostof all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire andgave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting theevidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard thecrackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall,and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the firebut cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on toit; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and soworthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another,expressed our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tonereferred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed,including Bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that,were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frog-pond by, wecould turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood.We finally retreated without doing any mischief- returned to sleepand "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert," I would except that passagein the preface about wit being the soul's powder- "but most ofmankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder."

It chanced that I walked that way across thefields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a lowmoaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered theonly survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtuesand its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on hisstomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smoulderingcinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had beenworking far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved thefirst moments that he could call his own to visit the home of hisfathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides andpoints of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there wassome treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones,where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes.The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He wassoothed by the sympathy which my mere presence, implied, and showedme, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up;which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long aboutthe 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 beenfastened to the heavy end- all that he could now cling to- toconvince me that it was no common "rider." I felt it, and stillremark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of afamily.

Once more, on the left, where are seen thewell and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, livedNutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln.

Farther in the woods than any of these, wherethe road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted,and furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left descendants tosucceed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding theland by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff camein 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 hecould lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, aman who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horseagainst my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He hadlong ago bought a potter's wheel of him, and wished to know what hadbecome of him. I had read of the potter's clay and wheel inScripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use werenot such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on treeslike gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so fictile anart was ever practiced in my neighborhood.

The last inhabitant of these woods before mewas an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with coilenough), who occupied Wyman's tenement- Col. Quoil, he was called.Rumor said that he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived Ishould have made him fight his battles over again. His trade here wasthat of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to WaldenWoods. All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like onewho had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than youcould well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, beingaffected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color ofcarmine. He died in the road at the foot of Brister's Hill shortlyafter I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as aneighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades avoidedit as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There lay his old clothescurled 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 thefountain. The last could never have been the symbol of his death, forhe confessed to me that, though he had heard of Brister's Spring, hehad never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, andhearts, were scattered over the floor. One black chicken which theadministrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not evencroaking, awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the nextapartment. In the rear there was the dim outline of a garden, whichhad been planted but had never received its first hoeing, owing tothose terrible shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. It wasoverrun with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last stuck to myclothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretchedupon the back of the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo; but nowarm cap or mittens would he want more.

Now only a dent in the earth marks the siteof these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries,raspberries, thimbleberries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in thesunny sward there; some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what wasthe chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waveswhere the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, whereonce a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covereddeep- not to be discovered till some late day- with a flat stoneunder the sod, when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowfulact must that be- the covering up of wells! coincident with theopening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted foxburrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir andbustle of human life, and "fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,"in some form and dialect or other were by turns discussed. But all Ican learn of their conclusions amounts to just this, that "Cato andBrister pulled wool"; which is about as edifying as the history ofmore famous schools of philosophy.

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generationafter the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding itssweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musingtraveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, hi front-yardplots- now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and givingplace to new- rising forests;- the last of that stirp, sole survivorof that family. Little did the dusky children think that the punyslip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in theshadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, andoutlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grownman's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lonewanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died- blossomingas fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark itsstill tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors.

But this small village, germ of somethingmore, why did it fail while Concord keeps its ground? Were there nonatural advantages- no water privileges, forsooth? Ay, the deepWalden Pond and cool Brister's Spring- privilege to drink long andhealthy draughts at these, all unimproved by these men but to dilutetheir glass. They were universally a thirsty race. Might not thebasket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, andpottery business have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossomlike the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the land oftheir fathers? The sterile soil would at least have been proofagainst a lowland degeneracy. Alas! how little does the memory ofthese human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! Again,perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my houseraised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet.

I am not aware that any man has ever built onthe spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site ofa more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardenscemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before thatbecomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. With suchreminiscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myselfasleep.

 

At this season I seldom had a visitor. Whenthe snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week orfortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, oras cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long timeburied in drifts, even without food; or like that early settler'sfamily in the town of Sutton, in this State, whose cottage wascompletely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, andan Indian found it only by the hole which the chimney's breath madein the drift, and so relieved the family. But no friendly Indianconcerned himself about me; nor needed he, for the master of thehouse 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 theirteams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before theirhouses, and, when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in theswamps, ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the nextspring.

In the deepest snows, the path which I usedfrom the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have beenrepresented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals betweenthe dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly the same numberof steps, and of the same length, coming and going, steppingdeliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my owndeep tracks- to such routine the winter reduces us- yet often theywere filled with heaven's own blue. But no weather interfered fatallywith my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently trampedeight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointmentwith a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance amongthe pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and sosharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir trees; wadingto the tops of the highest bills when the show was nearly two feetdeep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head atevery step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my handsand knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. Oneafternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa)sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to thetrunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He couldhear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but couldnot plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out hisneck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but theirlids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberousinfluence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with hiseyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was onlya narrow slit left between their lids, by which be preserved apennisular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking outfrom the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague objector mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noiseor my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn abouton his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; andwhen he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreadinghis wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest soundfrom them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicatesense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way,as it were, with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, wherehe might in peace await the dawning of his day.

As I walked over the long causeway made forthe railroad through the meadows, I encountered many a blustering andnipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost hadsmitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to it the otheralso. Nor was it much better by the carriage road from Brister'sHill. For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian, when thecontents of the broad open fields were all piled up between the wallsof the Walden road, and half an hour sufficed to obliterate thetracks of the last traveller. And when I returned new drifts wouldhave formed, through which I floundered, where the busy northwestwind had been depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in theroad, and not a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print, the smalltype, of a meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find,even in midwinter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass andthe skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and somehardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring.

Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when Ireturned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of awoodchopper leading from my door, and found his pile of whittlings onthe hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on aSunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronchingof the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from farthrough the woods sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one ofthe few of his vocation who are "men on their farms"; who donned afrock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract themoral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from hisbarn-yard. We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat aboutlarge fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and whenother dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wisesquirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have thethickest shells are commonly empty.

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

I should not forget that during my lastwinter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one timecame through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till hesaw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winterevenings. One of the last of the philosophers- Connecticut gave himto the world- he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares,his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man,bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I thinkthat he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words andattitude always suppose a better state of things than other men areacquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed asthe ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But thoughcomparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspectedby most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers willcome to him for advice.

 

"How blind that cannot seeserenity!"

 

A true friend of man; almost the only friendof human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, withunwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men'sbodies, 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 itcommonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep acaravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers of all nationsmight put up, and on his sign should be printed, "Entertainment forman, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quietmind, who earnestly seek the right road." He is perhaps the sanestman and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the sameyesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, andeffectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to noinstitution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, itseemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since heenhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittestroof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not seehow he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him.

Having each some shingles of thought welldried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring theclear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently andreverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes ofthought were not seared from the stream, nor feared any angler on thebank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float throughthe western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes formand dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding afable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earthoffered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! toconverse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. Ah! suchdiscourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I havespoken of- we three- it expanded and racked my little house; I shouldnot dare to say how many pounds' weight there was above theatmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams sothat they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop theconsequent leak;- but I had enough of that kind of oakum alreadypicked.

There was one other with whom I had "solidseasons," long to be remembered, at his house in the village, and wholooked in upon me from time to time; but I had no more for societythere.

There too, as everywhere, I sometimesexpected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "Thehouse-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as ittakes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival ofa guest." I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited longenough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the manapproaching from the town.

 


WINTER ANIMALS

 

WHEN THE ponds were firmly frozen, theyafforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but newviews from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. WhenI crossed Flint's Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I hadoften paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wideand so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin's Bay. TheLincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, inwhich I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, atan indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about withtheir wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in mistyweather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whetherthey were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went tolecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passingno house between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond,which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised theircabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when Icrossed it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or withonly shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I couldwalk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a levelelsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There,far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, fromthe jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vastmoose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bentdown with snow or bristling with icicles.

For sounds in winter nights, and often inwinter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owlindefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield ifstruck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of WaldenWood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the birdwhile it was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter eveningwithout hearing it; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, andthe first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do; orsometimes hoo, hoo only. One night in the beginning of winter, beforethe pond froze over, about nine o'clock, I was startled by the loudhonking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound oftheir wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low over myhouse. They passed over the pond toward Fair Haven, seeminglydeterred from settling by my light, their commodore honking all thewhile with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat owl from verynear me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard fromany inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to thegoose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder fromHudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in anative, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. What do you mean byalarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do youthink I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have notgot 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. Andyet, if you had a discriminating ear, there were in it the elementsof a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard.

I also heard the whooping of the ice in thepond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it wererestless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled withflatulency and had dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of theground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against mydoor, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter ofa mile long and a third of an inch wide.

Sometimes I heard the foxes as they rangedover the snow-crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge orother game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as iflaboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling forlight and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for ifwe take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilizationgoing on among brutes as well as men? They seemed to me to berudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaitingtheir transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attractedby my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and thenretreated.

Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius)waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down thesides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. Inthe course of the winter I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweetcorn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow-crust by my door, andwas amused by watching the motions of the various animals which werebaited by it. In the twilight and the night the rabbits cameregularly and made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels cameand went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. Onewould approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running overthe snow-crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, nowa few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy,making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for awager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more thanhalf a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrousexpression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in theuniverse were eyed on him- for all the motions of a squirrel, even inthe most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much asthose of a dancing girl- wasting more time in delay andcircumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance- Inever saw one walk- and then suddenly, before you could say JackRobinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding uphis clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing andtalking to all the universe at the same time- for no reason that Icould ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At lengthhe would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about inthe same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of mywood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, andthere sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time totime, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobsabout; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with hisfood, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which washeld balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his carelessgrasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with aludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it hadlife, 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 inthe wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in aforenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one,considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, hewould set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, bythe same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with itas if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making itsfall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, beingdetermined to put it through at any rate;- a singularly frivolous andwhimsical 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 rodsdistant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woodsin various directions.

At length the jays arrive, whose discordantscreams were heard long before, as they were warily making theirapproach an eighth of a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneakingmanner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick upthe kernels which the squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on apitch pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernelwhich is too big for their throats and chokes them; and after greatlabor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack itby repeated blows with their bills. They were manifestly thieves, andI had not much respect for them; but the squirrels, though at firstshy, went to work as if they were taking what was theirown.

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks,which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to thenearest twig and, placing them under their claws, hammered away atthem with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark,till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. Alittle flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of mywoodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lispingnotes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else withsprightly day day day, or more rarely, in springlike days, a wirysummery phebe from the woodside. They were so familiar that at lengthone alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and peckedat the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon myshoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and Ifelt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I shouldhave been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grewat last to be quite familiar, and occasionally 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 mysouth hillside and about my wood-pile, the partridges came out of thewoods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk inthe woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring thesnow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting downin the sunbeams like golden dust, for this brave bird is not to bescared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it issaid, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where itremains concealed for a day or two." I used to start them in the openland also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud"the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every evening toparticular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them,and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. Iam glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature's ownbird which lives on buds and diet-drink.

In dark winter mornings, or in short winterafternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all thewoods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct ofthe chase, and the note of the hunting-horn at intervals, provingthat man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox burstsforth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuingtheir Actaeon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returningwith a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seekingtheir inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom ofthe frozen earth he would be safe, or if be would run in a straightline away no foxhound could overtake him; but, having left hispursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up,and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where thehunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall manyrods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know thatwater will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw afox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was coveredwith shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to thesame shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost thescent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, andcircle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as ifafflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert themfrom the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon the recenttrail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything else forthis. One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire afterhis hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for a week byhimself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, forevery time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me byasking, "What do you do here?" He had lost a dog, but found aman.

One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who usedto come to bathe in Walden once every year when the water waswarmest, and at such times looked in upon me, told me that many yearsago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in WaldenWood; and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of houndsapproaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and asquick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swiftbullet had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and herthree pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, anddisappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he wasresting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of thehounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on theycame, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring soundingnearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. Fora long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to ahunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemnaisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by asympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the round,leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid thewoods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For amoment compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was ashort-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought hispiece was levelled, and whang!- the fox, rolling over the rock, laydead on the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened tothe hounds. Still on they came, and now the near woods resoundedthrough all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the oldhound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the airas if possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but, spying the deadfox, she suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb withamazement, and walked round and round him in silence; and one by oneher pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silenceby the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and stood in theirmidst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in silence while heskinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at lengthturned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston squire came tothe Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told howfor a week they had been hunting on their own account from Westonwoods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him theskin; but the other declined it and departed. He did not find hishounds that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed theriver and put up at a farmhouse for the night, whence, having beenwell fed, they took their departure early in the morning.

The hunter who told me this could rememberone Sam Nutting, who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, andexchange their skins for rum in Concord village; who told him, even,that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had a famous foxhound namedBurgoyne- he pronounced it Bugine- which my informant used to borrow.In the "Wast Book" of an old trader of this town, who was also acaptain, town-clerk, and representative, I find the following entry.Jan. 18th, 1742-3, "John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0-2-3"; they arenot now found here; and in his ledger, Feb, 7th, 1743, HezekiahStratton has credit "by 1/2 a Catt skin 0-1-4 1/2"; of course, awild-cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war, andwould not have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit isgiven for deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One man stillpreserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in thisvicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt inwhich his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous andmerry crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch upa leaf by the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and moremelodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting-horn.

At midnight, when there was a moon, Isometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, whichwould skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid thebushes till I had passed.

Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my storeof nuts. There were scores of pitch pines around my house, from oneto four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice theprevious winter- a Norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay longand deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of pinebark with their other diet. These trees were alive and apparentlyflourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, thoughcompletely girdled; but after another winter such were withoutexception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus beallowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of upand down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin thesetrees, which are wont to grow up densely.

The hares (Lepus Americanus) were veryfamiliar. One had her form under my house all winter, separated fromme only by the flooring, and she startled me each morning by herhasty departure when I began to stir- thump, thump, thump, strikingher head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used to comeround my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had thrownout, and were so nearly the color of the round that they could hardlybe distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight I alternatelylost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window.When I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a squeakand a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening onesat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yetunwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged earsand sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Natureno longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her lasttoes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical.I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over thesnow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs into gracefullength, and soon put the forest between me and itself- the wild freevenison, assenting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not withoutreason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus,levipes, light-foot, some think.)

What is a country without rabbits andpartridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animalproducts; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as tomodern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest alliedto leaves and to the ground- and to one another; it is either wingedor it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature whena rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much tobe expected as rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit arestill sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whateverrevolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and busheswhich spring up afford them concealment, and they become morenumerous than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does notsupport a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swampmay be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fencesand horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.

 


THE POND INWINTER

 

AFTER A still winter night I awoke with theimpression that some question had been put to me, which I had beenendeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what- how- when- where?But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking inat my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no questionon her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight.The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and thevery slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say,Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortalsask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyescontemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderfuland varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubta part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us thisgreat work, which extends from earth even into the plains of theether."

Then to my morning work. First I take an axeand pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After acold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Everywinter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was sosensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow,becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that itwill support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it toan equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any levelfield. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes itseyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on thesnow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my wayfirst through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open awindow under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into thequiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through awindow of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as insummer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the ambertwilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of theinhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over ourheads.

Early in the morning, while all things arecrisp with frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, andlet down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickereland perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions andtrust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings andcomings stitch towns together in parts where else they would beripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear- naughts on thedry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizenis in artificial. They never consulted with books, and know and cantell much less than they have done. The things which they practiceare said not yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel withgrown perch for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into asummer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew whereshe had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in midwinter? Oh, hegot worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caughtthem. His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of thenaturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. Thelatter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search ofinsects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, andmoss 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 carriedout in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallowsthe perch, and the fisher-man swallows the pickerel; and so all thechinks in the scale of being are filled.

When I strolled around the pond in mistyweather I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruderfisher-man had adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder branchesover the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apartand an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end ofthe line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passedthe slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above theice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, wouldshow when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist atregular intervals as you walked half way round the pond.

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see themlying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice,making a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised bytheir rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are soforeign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to ourConcord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beautywhich separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod andhaddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not greenlike the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; butthey have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowersand precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalizednuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Waldenall over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animalkingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here- thatin this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams andchaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this greatgold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in anymarket; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with afew convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like amortal translated before his time to the thin air ofheaven.

 

As I was desirous to recover the long lostbottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice brokeup, early in '46, with compass and chain and sounding line. Therehave been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, ofthis pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It isremarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pondwithout taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two suchBottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believedthat Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking downthrough the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into thebargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching coldin their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of haymight be drived," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubtedsource of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from theseparts. Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" anda 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 payingout the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurablecapacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that Waldenhas a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at anunusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stoneweighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when thestone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before thewater got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly onehundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which ithas risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkabledepth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared bythe imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not reacton the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep andpure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite some ponds willbe thought to be bottomless.

A factory-owner, bearing what depth I hadfound, thought that it could not be true, for, judging from hisacquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an angle. Butthe deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as mostsuppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys.They are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is sounusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section throughits centre not deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied,would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. WilliamGilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, andusually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland,which he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathomsdeep, four miles in breadth, and about fifty miles long, surroundedby mountains, observes, "If we could have seen it immediately afterthe diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it,before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it haveappeared!

 

"So high as heaved the tumid hills, solow

Down sunk a hollow bottom broad anddeep,

Capacious bed of waters."

 

But if, using the shortest diameter of LochFyne, we apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen,appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, itwill appear four times as shallow. So much for the increased horrorsof the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smilingvalley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horridchasm," from which the waters have receded, though it requires theinsight and the far sight of the geologist to convince theunsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye maydetect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, andno subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to concealtheir history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highwaysknow, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amountof it is, the imagination, give it the least license, dives deeperand soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of theocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with itsbreadth.

As I sounded through the ice I coulddetermine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than ispossible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I wassurprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there areseveral acres more level than almost any field which is exposed tothe sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarilychosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; andgenerally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for eachone hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or fourinches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes evenin quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under thesecircumstances is to level all inequalities. The regularity of thebottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of theneighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayeditself in the soundings quite across the pond, and its directioncould be determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape becomesbar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water andchannel.

When I had mapped the pond by the scale often rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than a hundredin all, I observed this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed thatthe number indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centreof the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and thenbreadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatestlength intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the pointof greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so nearlylevel, the outline of the pond far from regular, and the extremelength and breadth were got by measuring into the coves; and I saidto myself, Who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest partof the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rulealso for the height of mountains, regarded as the opposite ofvalleys? We know that a hill is not highest at its narrowestpart.

Of five coves, three, or all which had beensounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths anddeeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion ofwater within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and toform a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two capesshowing the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also,has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the covewas wider compared with its length, the water over the bar was deepercompared with that in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadthof the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you havealmost elements enough to make out a formula for allcases.

In order to see how nearly I could guess,with this experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observingthe outlines of a surface and the character of its shores alone, Imade 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; andas the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of leastbreadth, where two opposite capes approached each other and twoopposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point a short distancefrom the latter line, but still on the line of greatest length, asthe deepest. The deepest part was found to be within one hundred feetof this, still farther in the direction to which I had inclined, andwas only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a streamrunning through, or an island in the pond, would make the problemmuch more complicated.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we shouldneed only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, toinfer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only afew laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by anyconfusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance ofessential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmonyare commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but theharmony which results from a far greater number of seeminglyconflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected,is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points ofview, as, to the traveller, a mountain outline varies with everystep, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutelybut one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehendedin its entireness.

What I have observed of the pond is no lesstrue in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the twodiameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and theheart in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of theaggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors and waves of lifeinto his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be theheight or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know howhis shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to inferhis depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainouscircumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and arereflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him.But a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In ourbodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates acorresponding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across theentrance of our every cove, or particular inclination; each is ourharbor for a season, in which we are detained and partiallyland-locked. These inclinations are not whimsical usually, but theirform, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of theshore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is graduallyincreased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence ofthe waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was atfirst but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was harboredbecomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein thethought secures its own conditions- changes, perhaps, from salt tofresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a marsh. At the advent ofeach individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a barhas risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poornavigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and onupon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of thebays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go intothe dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, andno natural currents concur to individualize them.

As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I havenot discovered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps,with a thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for wherethe water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summerand 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 werestacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by sidewith the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over asmall space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, whichmade them think that there was an inlet there. They also showed me inanother place what they thought was a "leach-hole," through which thepond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing meout on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten feetof water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to needsoldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested,that if such a "leach-hole" should be found, its connection with themeadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some, coloredpowder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting astrainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of theparticles carried through by the current.

While I was surveying, the ice, which wassixteen inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. It iswell known that a level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from theshore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a level onland directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quartersof an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. Itwas probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instrumentswere delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust ofthe earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the thirdon the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise orfall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a differenceof several feet on a tree across the pond. When I began to cut holesfor sounding there were three or four inches of water on the iceunder a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water beganimmediately to run into these holes, and continued to run for twodays in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every side, andcontributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of thepond; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice. Thiswas somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let thewater out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally anew freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifullymottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider'sweb, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn bythe water flowing from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, whenthe ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow ofmyself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, theother on the trees or hillside.

 

While yet it is cold January, and snow andice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the villageto get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically,wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January- wearinga 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 coolhis summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond,unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element andair, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through thefavoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer there.It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through thestreets. 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 sawpit-fashion with them, I standing underneath.

In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundredmen of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning,with many carloads of ungainly-looking farming tools-sleds, plows,drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man wasarmed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described inthe New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether theyhad come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grainrecently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged thatthey meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil wasdeep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentlemanfarmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which,as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order tocover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the onlycoat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hardwinter. They went to work at once, plowing, barrowing, rolling,furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on making this amodel farm; but when I was looking sharp to see what kind of seedthey dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenlybegan to book up the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, cleandown to the sand, or rather the water- for it was a very springysoil- indeed all the terra firma there was- and haul it away onsleds, and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. Sothey came and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from thelocomotive, from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemedto me, like a flock of arctic snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Waldenhad her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his team, slippedthrough a crack in the ground down toward Tartarus, and he who was sobrave before suddenly became but the ninth part of a man, almost gaveup his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house, andacknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes thefrozen soil took a piece of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow gotset in the furrow and had to be cut out.

To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, withYankee overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice.They divided it into cakes by methods too well known to requiredescription, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidlyhauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons andblock and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as somany barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and rowupon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed topierce the clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get outa 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 thepassage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariablyate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. Theystacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feethigh on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay betweenthe outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, thoughnever so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities,leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finallytopple 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 avenerable 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 nottwenty-five per cent of this would reach its destination, and thattwo or three per cent would be wasted in the cars. However, a stillgreater part of this heap had a different destiny from what wasintended; for, either because the ice was found not to keep so wellas was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some otherreason, it never got to market. This heap, made in the winter of'46-7 and estimated to contain ten thousand tons, was finally coveredwith hay and boards; and though it was unroofed the following July,and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed to the sun,it stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not quitemelted till September, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greaterpart.

Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near athand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, andyou can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merelygreenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one ofthose great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the villagestreet, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object ofinterest to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Waldenwhich in the state of water was green will often, when frozen, appearfrom the same point of view blue. So the hollows about this pondwill, sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a greenish watersomewhat 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 airthey contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is aninteresting subject for contemplation. They told me that they hadsome in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as goodas ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, butfrozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is thedifference between the affections and the intellect.

Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window ahundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses andapparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see onthe first page of the almanac; and as often as I looked out I wasreminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable ofthe sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirtydays more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the puresea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees,and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces willappear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear asolitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see alonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his formreflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securelylabored.

Thus it appears that the swelteringinhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay andCalcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect inthe stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, sincewhose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparisonwith which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial;and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previousstate of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions.I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meetthe servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, whostill sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwellsat the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet hisservant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it weregrate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingledwith the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is waftedpast the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides,makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore andthe mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of theIndian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard thenames.

 


SPRING

 

THE OPENING of large tracts by theice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for thewater, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away thesurrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, forshe 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 passingthrough it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open inthe course of a winter, not excepting that Of '52-3, which gave theponds 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, beginningto melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it beganto freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absoluteprogress of the season, being least affected by transient changes oftemperature. A severe cold of it few days duration in March may verymuch retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature ofWalden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust intothe middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32', orfreezing point; near the shore at 33'; in the middle of Flint's Pond,the same day, at 32 1/2'; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallowwater, under ice a foot thick, at 36'. This difference of three andit half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and theshallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion ofit is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so muchsooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this timeseveral inches thinner than in the middle. In midwinter the middlehad been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, every onewho has waded about the shores of the pond in summer must haveperceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where onlythree or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on thesurface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun notonly exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the airand earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, andis reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms thewater and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that itis melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing theair bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward anddownward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappearssuddenly 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 theappearance of honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air cellsare at right angles with what was the water surface. Where there is arock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is muchthinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat;and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freezewater in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulatedunderneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of thesun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When awarm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow ice fromWalden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle,there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod ormore wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, asI have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate asburning-glasses to melt the ice beneath.

The phenomena of the year take place everyday in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking,the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, thoughit may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is beingcooled more rapidly until the morning, The day is an epitome of theyear. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the springand fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of theice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after acold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint's Pond to spendthe day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice with thehead of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or asif I had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began to boom about anhour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun's raysslanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawnedlike a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was keptup three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomedonce more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. Inthe right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun withgreat regularity. But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks,and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost itsresonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have beenstunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the "thundering ofthe pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond doesnot thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expectits thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in theweather, it does. Who would have suspected so large and cold andthick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to whichit thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand inthe spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillae. Thelargest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule ofmercury in its tube.

One attraction in coming to the woods to livewas that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring comein. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and I canset my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns aregradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; andI see how I shall get through the winter without adding to mywoodpile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alertfor the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of somearriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores mustbe now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of hiswinter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard thebluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a footthick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away bythe water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though itwas completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, themiddle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that youcould put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the nextday evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it wouldhave wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away.One year I went across the middle only five days before itdisappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the1st of April; in '46, the 25th of March; in '47, the 8th of April; in'51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 18th of April; in '53, the 23d ofMarch; in '54, about the 7th of April.

Every incident connected with the breaking upof the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather isparticularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so greatextremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the riverhear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud asartillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, andwithin a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comesout of the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who has beena close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard toall her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks when he wasa 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 theage of Methuselah- told me- and I was surprised to hear him expresswonder at any of Nature's operations, for I thought that there wereno secrets between them- that one spring day he took his gun andboat, 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 theriver, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where helived, to Fair Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered forthe most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he wassurprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing anyducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in thepond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, toawait 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 somewould be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there about anhour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularlygrand and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard, graduallyswelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorableending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once likethe sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and,seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he found, tohis surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started while he laythere, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard wasmade by its edge grating on the shore- at first gently nibbled andcrumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecksalong the island to a considerable height before it came to astandstill.

At length the sun's rays have attained theright angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt thesnowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkeredlandscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which thetraveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music ofa thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled withthe blood of winter which they are bearing off.

Few phenomena gave me more delight than toobserve the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing downthe sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on myway to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale,though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material musthave been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. Thematerial was sand of every degree of fineness and of various richcolors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes outin the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sandbegins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting outthrough the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seenbefore. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one withanother, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half waythe law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows ittakes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpysprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down onthem, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of somelichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds'feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. Itis a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we seeimitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient andtypical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves;destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle tofuture geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cavewith its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades ofthe sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the differentiron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowingmass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatterinto strands, the separate streams losing their semicylindrical formand gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as theyare more moist, till they form an almost flat sand, still variouslyand beautifully shaded, but in which you call trace the originalforms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they areconverted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, andthe forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple- marks on thebottom.

The whole bank, which is from twenty to fortyfeet 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, theproduce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable isits springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the oneside the inert bank- for the sun acts on one side first- and on theother this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affectedas if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist whomade the world and me- had come to where he was still at work,sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his freshdesigns about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe,for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as thevitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands ananticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earthexpresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the ideainwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnantby it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally,whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a wordespecially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat(leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos,globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words);externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed anddried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b(single-lobed, or B, double-lobed), with the liquid l behind itpressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to themeaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birdsare still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from thelumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. Thevery globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomeswinged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, asif it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants haveimpressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but oneleaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is interveningearth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in theiraxils.

When the sun withdraws the sand ceases toflow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branchand branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance howblood-vessels are formed. If you look closely you observe that firstthere pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sandwith a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its wayslowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat andmoisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in itseffort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separatesfrom the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or arterywithin that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing likelightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, andever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidlyyet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the bestmaterial its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel.Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which thewater deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finersoil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What isman but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but adrop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from thethawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expandand flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand aspreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may beregarded, fancifully, as a lichen, Umbilicaria, on the side of thehead, with its lobe or drop. The lip-labium, from labor (?)- laps orlapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifestcongealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, theconfluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the browsinto the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones.Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and nowloitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of theleaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends toflow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused itto flow yet farther.

Thus it seemed that this one hillsideillustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Makerof this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipherthis hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last?This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance andfertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in itscharacter, and there is no end to the heaps of liver, lights, andbowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but thissuggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again ismother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; thisis Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythologyprecedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winterfumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in herswaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side.Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace,showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The earth is not amere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leavesof a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, butliving poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers andfruit- not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whosegreat central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. You may meltyour metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can;they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earthflows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it areplastic like clay in the hands of the potter.

Ere long, not only on these banks, but onevery hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of theground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the seawith music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with hisgentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The onemelts, the other but breaks in pieces.

 

When the ground was partially bare of snow,and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasantto compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peepingforth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which hadwithstood the winter-life- everlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, andgraceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently thanin summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; evencotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hardhack, meadowsweet,and other strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries whichentertain the earliest birds- decent weeds, at least, which widowedNature wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our wintermemories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which,in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already inthe mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style, olderthan Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter aresuggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. Weare accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisteroustyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses ofSummer.

At the approach of spring the red squirrelsgot under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I satreading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirrupingand vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; andwhen I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fearand respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No,you don't- chickaree- chickaree. They were wholly deaf to myarguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strainof invective that was irresistible.

The first sparrow of spring! The yearbeginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblingsheard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, thesong sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of wintertinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories,chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brookssing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low overthe meadow, is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. Thesinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and the icedissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsideslike a spring fire- "et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribusevocata"- as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet thereturning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame;- thesymbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon,streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost,but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay withthe fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out ofthe ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing daysof June, when the rills are dry, the grass-blades are their channels,and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream,and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our humanlife but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green bladeto eternity.

Walden is melting apace. There is a canal tworods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still atthe east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the mainbody. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore-olit, olit, olit- chip, chip, chip, che char- che wiss, wiss, wiss.He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curvesin the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, butmore regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe buttransient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But thewind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reachesthe living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon ofwater sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of gleeand youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of thesands on its shore- a silvery sheen as from the scales of aleuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrastbetween winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. Butthis spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.

The change from storm and winter to sereneand mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elasticones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It isseemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filledmy house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winterstill overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. Ilooked out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray icethere lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in asummer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, thoughnone was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remotehorizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard formany a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget formany a thousand more- the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. Othe evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I couldever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig. This atleast is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch pines and shrub oaksabout my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed theirseveral characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect andalive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knewthat it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twigof the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is pastor not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geeseflying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late fromSouthern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint andmutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could bear the rush oftheir wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied mylight, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So Icame in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in thewoods.

In the morning I watched the geese from thedoor through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rodsoff, so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificialpond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at oncerose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of theircommander, and when they had got into rank circled about over myhead, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, witha regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break theirfast in muddier pools. A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time andtook the route to the north in the wake of their noisiercousins.

For a week I heard the circling, gropingclangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking itscompanion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a largerlife than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen againflying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martinstwittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that thetownship contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fanciedthat they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollowtrees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and thefrog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birdsfly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, andwinds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles andpreserve the equilibrium 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 ofChaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

 

"Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regnarecessit,

Persidaque, et radiis juga subditamatutinis."

 

"The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and theNabathean kingdom,

And the Persian, and the ridges placed underthe morning rays.

 

Man was born. Whether that Artificer ofthings,

The origin of a better world, made him fromthe divine seed;

Or the earth, being recent and latelysundered from the high

Ether, retained some seeds of cognateheaven."

 

A single gentle rain makes the grass manyshades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of betterthoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, andtook advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass whichconfesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; anddid not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of pastopportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winterwhile it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men'ssins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sunholds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our ownrecovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. Youmay have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or asensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of theworld; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning,re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and seehow it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy andbless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence ofinfancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only anatmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holinessgroping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like anew-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes tono vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burstfrom his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and freshas 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 judgedoes not dismis his case- why the preacher does not dismiss hiscongregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God givesthem, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.

"A return to goodness produced each day inthe tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that inrespect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approachesa little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forestwhich has been felled. In like manner the evil which one does in theinterval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to springup again from developing themselves and destroys them.

"After the germs of virtue have thus beenprevented many times from developing themselves, then the beneficentbreath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as thebreath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then thenature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeingthe nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he hasnever possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true andnatural sentiments of man?"

 

"The Golden Age was first created, whichwithout any avenger

Spontaneously without law cherished fidelityand rectitude.

Punishment and fear were not; nor werethreatening words read

On suspended brass; nor did the suppliantcrowd fear

The words of their judge; but were safewithout an avenger.

Not yet the pine felled on its mountains haddescended

To the liquid waves that it might see aforeign world,

And mortals knew no shores but theirown.

 

There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrswith warm

Blasts soothed the flowers born withoutseed."

 

On the 29th of April, as I was fishing fromthe bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing onthe quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I hearda singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks whichboys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a veryslight and graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring likea 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, orlike the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconryand what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. Themerlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for itsname. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It didnot simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks,but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mountingagain and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free andbeautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and thenrecovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its footon terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in theuniverse-sporting there alone- and to need none but the morning andthe ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all theearth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, itskindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, itseemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in thecrevice of a crag;- or was its native nest made in the angle of acloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and linedwith some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now somecliffy cloud.

Beside this I got a rare mess of golden andsilver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string ofjewels. Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of manya first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow rootto willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathedin so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if theyhad been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs nostronger 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 werenot for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We needthe tonic of wildness- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bitternand the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smellthe whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowlbuilds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to theground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn allthings, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable,that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by usbecause unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. We must berefreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanicfeatures, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with itsliving and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain whichlasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our ownlimits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we neverwander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on thecarrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health andstrength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by thepath to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way,especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance itgave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was mycompensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with lifethat myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey onone another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashedout of existence like pulp-tadpoles which herons gobble up, andtortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it hasrained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must seehow little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wiseman is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous afterall, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground.It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to bestereotyped.

Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples,and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around thepond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape,especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mistsand shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. On the third orfourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week ofthe month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery,the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the woodthrush long before. The phoebe had already come once more and lookedin at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enoughfor her, sustaining herself on humming winds with clinched talons, asif she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. Thesulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and thestones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could havecollected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we bear of. Evenin Calidas' drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow withthe golden dust of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling oninto summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.

Thus was my first year's life in the woodscompleted; and the second year was similar to it. I finally leftWalden September 6th, 1847.

 


CONCLUSION

 

TO THE sick the doctors wisely recommend achange of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world.The buckeye does not grow in New England, and the mockingbird israrely heard here. The wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we;he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, andplumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, tosome extent, keeps pace with the seasons cropping the pastures of theColorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by theYellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences are pulled down, andstone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to ourlives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth,you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to theland of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than ourviews of it.

Yet we should oftener look over the tafferelof our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage likestupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but thehome of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing,and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. Onehastens to southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that isnot the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man huntgiraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford raresport; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one'sself.

 

"Direct your eye right inward, and you'llfind

A thousand regions in your mind

Yet undiscovered. Travel them, andbe

Expert in home-cosmography."

 

What does Africa- what does the West standfor? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it mayprove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile,or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around thiscontinent, that we would find? Are these the problems which mostconcern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wifeshould be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where hehimself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark andFrobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higherlatitudes- with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if theybe necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Werepreserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbusto whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels,not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm besidewhich the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummockleft by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect,and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makestheir graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may stillanimate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What wasthe meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all itsparade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact thatthere are continents and seas in the moral world to which every manis an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it iseasier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm andcannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys toassist one, than it is to explore the private seal the Atlantic andPacific Ocean of one's being alone.

 

"Erret, et extremos alter scruteturIberos.

Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet illeviae."

 

Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandishAustralians.

I have more of God, they more of theroad.

 

It is not worth the while to go round theworld to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can dobetter, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to getat the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, GoldCoast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no barkfrom them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is withoutdoubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak alltongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you wouldtravel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, andcause the Sphinx to dash her bead against a stone, even obey theprecept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein aredemanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go tothe wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on thatfarthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or thePacific, nor conduct toward a wornout China or Japan, but leads ondirect, 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 highwayrobbery "to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary inorder to place one's self in formal opposition to the most sacredlaws of society." He declared that "a soldier who fights in the ranksdoes not require half so much courage as a foot-pad"- "that honor andreligion have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firmresolve." This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, ifnot desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough "informal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws ofsociety," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so havetested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for aman to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintainhimself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to thelaws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a justgovernment, if he should chance to meet with such.

I left the woods for as good a reason as Iwent there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives tolive, and could not spare any more time for that one. It isremarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route,and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a weekbefore my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and thoughit is Eve 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 sohelped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft andimpressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mindtravels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the Highways of the world,how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to takea cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck ofthe world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid themountains. 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, andendeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with asuccess unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind,will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberallaws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or theold laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberalsense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universewill appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, norpoverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles inthe 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 andAmerica make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you.Neither men nor toadstools grow so. As if that were important, andthere were not enough to understand you without them. As if Naturecould support but one order of understandings, could not sustainbirds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, andhush and whoa, which Bright can understand, were the best English. Asif there were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest myexpression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enoughbeyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequateto the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! itdepends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks newpastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow whichkicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after hercalf, in milking time. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds;like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for Iam convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay thefoundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of musicfeared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? Inview of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly andundefined in front our outlines dim and misty on that side; as ourshadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. Thevolatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacyof the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; itsliteral monument alone remains. The words which express our faith andpiety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant likefrankincense to superior natures.

Why level downward to our dullest perceptionalways, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is thesense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we areinclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with thehalf-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up earlyenough. "They pretend," as I hear, "that the verses of Kabir havefour different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exotericdoctrine of the Vedas"; but in this part of the world it isconsidered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of morethan one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure thepotato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, whichprevails so much more widely and fatally?

I do not suppose that I have attained toobscurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were foundwith my pages on this score than was found with the Walden ice.Southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the evidenceof 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 themists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure etherbeyond.

Some are dinning in our ears that weAmericans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs comparedwith the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that tothe purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man goand hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and notbe the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his ownbusiness, and endeavor to be what he was made.

Why should we be in such desperate haste tosucceed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keeppace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a differentdrummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measuredor far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as anapple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If thecondition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were anyreality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vainreality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass overourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still atthe true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former werenot?

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo whowas disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into hismind to make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect worktime is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter,he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though Ishould do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to theforest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made ofunsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick afterstick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in theirworks and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness ofpurpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, withouthis knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise withTime, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance becausehe could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in allrespects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat onone of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it theproper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with thepoint of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in thesand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had smoothed andpolished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he hadput on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahmahad awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mentionthese things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, itsuddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into thefairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system inmaking a staff, a world with fun and fair proportions; in which,though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and moreglorious ones had taken their places. And now he saw by the heap ofshavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, theformer lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time hadelapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain ofBrahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. Thematerial was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result beother than wonderful?

No face which we can give to a matter willstead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For themost part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Throughan infinity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves intoit, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doublydifficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, thecase that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truthis better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on thegallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors,"said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they takethe first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.

However mean your life is, meet it and liveit; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as youare. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder willfind faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You mayperhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in apoor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of thealmshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow meltsbefore its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mindmay live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in apalace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independentlives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive withoutmisgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by thetown; but it oftener happens that they are not above supportingthemselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable.Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not troubleyourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn theold; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell yourclothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not wantsociety. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, likea spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had mythoughts about me. The philosopher said: "From an army of threedivisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; fromthe man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought."Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to manyinfluences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility likedarkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty andmeanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." Weare often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth ofCroesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentiallythe same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty,if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are butconfined to the most significant and vital experiences; you arecompelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar andthe most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. Youare defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower levelby magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluitiesonly. Money is not required to buy one necessary of thesoul.

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, intowhose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, inthe repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confusedtintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. Myneighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen andladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am nomore interested in such things than in the contents of the DailyTimes. The interest and the conversation are about costume andmanners 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, ofthe Hon. Mr.-- of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient andfleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yardlike the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings- not walk inprocession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walkeven with the Builder of the universe, if I may- not to live in thisrestless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand orsit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They areall on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech fromsomebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is hisorator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that whichmost strongly and rightfully attracts me;- not hang by the beam ofthe scale and try to weigh less- not suppose a case, but take thecase that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which nopower can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commerce tospring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not playat kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read thatthe traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hardbottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller'shorse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "Ithought you said that this bog had a hard bottom." "So it has,"answered the latter, "but you have not got half way to it yet." So itis with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy thatknows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rarecoincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishlydrive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep meawake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Donot depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it sofaithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your workwith satisfaction- a work at which you would not be ashamed to invokethe Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven shouldbe as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying onthe work.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, giveme truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine inabundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth werenot; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. Thehospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no needof ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine andthe fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, andpurer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, andcould not buy. The style, the house and grounds and "entertainment"pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me waitin his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality.There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. Hismanners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called onhim.

How long shall we sit in our porticoespractising idle and musty virtues, which any work would makeimpertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, andhire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth topractise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind.This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being thelast of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris andRome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in artand science and literature with satisfaction. There are the Recordsof the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men!It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. "Yes, we have donegreat deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die"- that is,as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great menof Assyria- where are they? What youthful philosophers andexperimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yetlived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months in thelife of the race. If we have had the seven-years' itch, we have notseen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted witha mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delvedsix feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We knownot where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time.Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on thesurface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As Istand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forestfloor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and askmyself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its headfrom me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its racesome cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactorand Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

There is an incessant influx of novelty intothe world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need onlysuggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the mostenlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, butthey are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, whilewe believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change ourclothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large andrespectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We donot believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which canfloat the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it inhis mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next comeout of the ground? The government of the world I live in was notframed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over thewine.

The life in us is like the water in theriver. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, andflood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, whichwill drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where wedwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed,before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard thestory which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong andbeautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table ofapple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixtyyears, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts- from anegg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, asappeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heardgnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of anurn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortalitystrengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and wingedlife, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layersof woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first inthe alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been graduallyconverted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb- heardperchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man,as they sat round the festive board- may unexpectedly come forth fromamidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy itsperfect summer life at last!

I do not say that John or Jonathan willrealize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which merelapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out oureyes 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.

 

THE END


July 12, 1817 - May 6,1862


"Moreover, I, on my side,require of every writer, first or last,
a simple and sincere account of his own life . . ." -Walden

The facts of Thoreau's life are appropriately spare for one who wrote, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand. . . ." He was born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts; graduated from Harvard College in 1837; made a living primarily by surveying land and helping with the family pencil-making and ground lead business, though he taught school for several years when he was in his 20s and lectured from time to time from 1838 until 1860; traveled rarely (but almost always wrote about it when he did); and died at the age of 44 on May 6, 1862. Neither he nor any of his three siblings married; his only brother died in 1842 and one sister in 1849. As he recommended to others, Thoreau actively sought this simplicity in his circumstances in order to enjoy extraordinary richness in his intellectual and spiritual life, and his writings testify to his success.

Writings of HD Thoreau