fashion nova olive jacket
chapter 1 - part 1economy when i wrote the following pages, or ratherthe bulk of them, i lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a housewhich i had built myself, on the shore of walden pond, in concord, massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my handsonly. i lived there two years and two months.at present i am a sojourner in civilized life again. i should not obtrude my affairs so much onthe notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmenconcerning my mode of life, which some
would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but,considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. some have asked what i got to eat; if i didnot feel lonesome; if i was not afraid; and the like. others have been curious to learn whatportion of my income i devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who havelarge families, how many poor children i maintained. i will therefore ask those of my readerswho feel no particular interest in me to
pardon me if i undertake to answer some ofthese questions in this book. in most books, the i, or first person, isomitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the maindifference. we commonly do not remember that it is,after all, always the first person that is speaking. i should not talk so much about myself ifthere 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 everywriter, first or last, a simple and sincere
account of his own life, and not merelywhat he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he haslived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. as for the rest of my readers, they willaccept such portions as apply to them. i trust that none will stretch the seams inputting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. i would fain say something, not so muchconcerning the chinese and sandwich
islanders as you who read these pages, whoare said to live in new england; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in thisworld, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is,whether it cannot be improved as well as not. i have travelled a good deal in concord;and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to meto be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. what i have heard of bramins sittingexposed to four fires and looking in the
face of the sun; or hanging suspended, withtheir heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them toresume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquidscan pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, likecaterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops ofpillars--even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which i dailywitness.
the twelve labors of hercules were triflingin comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve,and had an end; but i could never see that these men slew or captured any monster orfinished any labor. they have no friend iolaus to burn with ahot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two springup. i see young men, my townsmen, whosemisfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools;for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. better if they had been born in the openpasture and suckled by a wolf, that they
might have seen with clearer eyes whatfield they were called to labor in. who made them serfs of the soil? why should they eat their sixty acres, whenman is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? they have got to live a man's life, pushingall these things before them, and get on as well as they can. how many a poor immortal soul have i metwell-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life,pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet
by forty, its augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land,tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! the portionless, who struggle with no suchunnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a fewcubic feet of flesh. but men labor under a mistake. the better part of the man is soon plowedinto the soil for compost. by a seeming fate, commonly callednecessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which mothand rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.
it is a fool's life, as they will find whenthey get to the end of it, if not before. it is said that deucalion and pyrrhacreated men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:-- inde genus durum sumus, experiensquelaborum, et documenta damus qua simus origine nati. 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 nature are." so much for a blind obedience to ablundering oracle, throwing the stones over
their heads behind them, and not seeingwhere 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 its finer fruits cannotbe plucked by them. their fingers, from excessive toil, are tooclumsy and tremble too much for that. actually, the laboring man has not leisurefor a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations tomen; his labor would be depreciated in the market. he has no time to be anything but amachine.
how can he remember well his ignorance--which his growth requires--who has so often to use his knowledge? we should feed and clothe him gratuitouslysometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. the finest qualities of our nature, likethe bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. some of you, we all know, are poor, find ithard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath.
i have no doubt that some of you who readthis book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, orfor the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed orstolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. it is very evident what mean and sneakinglives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on thelimits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the latins aes alienum,another's brass, for some of their coins
were made of brass; still living, anddying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent;seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prisonoffenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere ofthin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make hisshoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay upsomething against a sick day, something to
be tucked away in an old chest, or in astocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where,no matter how much or how little. i sometimes wonder that we can be sofrivolous, i may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form ofservitude called negro slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters thatenslave both north and south. it is hard to have a southern overseer; itis worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver ofyourself. talk of a divinity in man! look at the teamster on the highway,wending to market by day or night; does any
divinity stir within him?his highest duty to fodder and water his horses! what is his destiny to him compared withthe shipping interests? does not he drive for squire make-a-stir?how godlike, how immortal, is he? see how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguelyall the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner ofhis own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. public opinion is a weak tyrant comparedwith our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it iswhich determines, or rather indicates, his
fate. self-emancipation even in the west indianprovinces of the fancy and imagination-- what wilberforce is there to bring thatabout? think, also, of the ladies of the landweaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest intheir fates! as if you could kill time without injuringeternity. the mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. what is called resignation is confirmeddesperation. from the desperate city you go into thedesperate country, and have to console
yourself with the bravery of minks andmuskrats. a stereotyped but unconscious despair isconcealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.there is no play in them, for this comes after work. but it is a characteristic of wisdom not todo desperate things. when we consider what, to use the words ofthe catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means oflife, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living becausethey preferred it to any other. yet they honestly think there is no choiceleft.
but alert and healthy natures remember thatthe sun rose clear. it is never too late to give up ourprejudices. no way of thinking or doing, howeverancient, can be trusted without proof. what everybody echoes or in silence passesby as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion,which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on theirfields. what old people say you cannot do, you tryand find that you can. old deeds for old people, and new deeds fornew. old people did not know enough once,perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the
fire a-going; new people put a little drywood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way tokill old people, as the phrase is. age is no better, hardly so well, qualifiedfor an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. one may almost doubt if the wisest man haslearned anything of absolute value by living. practically, the old have no very importantadvice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and theirlives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe;
and it may be that they have some faithleft which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. i have lived some thirty years on thisplanet, and i have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advicefrom my seniors. they have told me nothing, and probablycannot tell me anything to the purpose. here is life, an experiment to a greatextent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. if i have any experience which i thinkvaluable, i am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about.
one farmer says to me, "you cannot live onvegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so hereligiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talksbehind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plowalong in spite of every obstacle. some things are really necessaries of lifein some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuriesmerely, and in others still are entirely unknown. the whole ground of human life seems tosome to have been gone over by their
predecessors, both the heights and thevalleys, and all things to have been cared for. according to evelyn, "the wise solomonprescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the roman praetorshave decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what sharebelongs to that neighbor." hippocrates has even left directions how weshould cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorternor longer. undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui whichpresume to have exhausted the variety and
the joys of life are as old as adam. but man's capacities have never beenmeasured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little hasbeen tried. whatever have been thy failures hitherto,"be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?" we might try our lives by a thousand simpletests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once asystem of earths like ours. if i had remembered this it would haveprevented some mistakes. this was not the light in which i hoedthem.
the stars are the apexes of what wonderfultriangles! what distant and different beings in thevarious mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the samemoment! nature and human life are as various as ourseveral constitutions. who shall say what prospect life offers toanother? could a greater miracle take place than forus to look through each other's eyes for an instant? we should live in all the ages of the worldin an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages.
history, poetry, mythology!--i know of noreading of another's experience so startling and informing as 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, it is very likely tobe my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved sowell? you may say the wisest thing you can, oldman--you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind--i hear anirresistible voice which invites me away from all that. one generation abandons the enterprises ofanother like stranded vessels.
i think that we may safely trust a gooddeal more than we do. we may waive just so much care of ourselvesas we honestly bestow elsewhere. nature is as well adapted to our weaknessas to our strength. the incessant anxiety and strain of some isa well-nigh incurable form of disease. we are made to exaggerate the importance ofwhat work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been takensick? how vigilant we are! determined not to liveby faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillinglysay our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.
so thoroughly and sincerely are wecompelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. this is the only way, we say; but there areas many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. all change is a miracle to contemplate; butit is a miracle which is taking place every instant. confucius said, "to know that we know whatwe know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." when one man has reduced a fact of theimagination to be a fact to his
understanding, i foresee that all men atlength establish their lives on that basis. let us consider for a moment what most ofthe trouble and anxiety which i have referred to is about, and how much it isnecessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. it would be some advantage to live aprimitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if onlyto learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the oldday-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at thestores, what they stored, that is, what are
the grossest groceries. for the improvements of ages have had butlittle influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons,probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors. by the words, necessary of life, i meanwhatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, orfrom long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, everattempt to do without it. to many creatures there is in this sensebut one necessary of life, food.
to the bison of the prairie it is a fewinches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the shelter of theforest or the mountain's shadow. none of the brute creation requires morethan food and shelter. the necessaries of life for man in thisclimate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads offood, shelter, clothing, and fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life withfreedom and a prospect of success. man has invented, not only houses, butclothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth offire, and the consequent use of it, at
first a luxury, arose the present necessityto sit by it. we observe cats and dogs acquiring the samesecond nature. by proper shelter and clothing welegitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of fuel,that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properlybe said to begin? darwin, the naturalist, says of theinhabitants of tierra del fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed andsitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise,"to be streaming with perspiration at
undergoing such a roasting." so, we are told, the new hollander goesnaked with impunity, while the european shivers in his clothes. is it impossible to combine the hardinessof these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? according to liebig, man's body is a stove,and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs.in cold weather we eat more, in warm less. the animal heat is the result of a slowcombustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for wantof fuel, or from some defect in the
draught, the fire goes out. of course the vital heat is not to beconfounded with fire; but so much for analogy. it appears, therefore, from the above list,that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animalheat; for while food may be regarded as the fuel which keeps up the fire within us--and fuel serves only to prepare that food or toincrease the warmth of our bodies by addition from without--shelter and clothingalso serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed.
the grand necessity, then, for our bodies,is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. what pains we accordingly take, not onlywith our food, and clothing, and shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grassand leaves at the end of its burrow! the poor man is wont to complain that thisis a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly agreat part of our ails. the summer, in some climates, makespossible to man a sort of elysian life.
fuel, except to cook his food, is thenunnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked byits rays; while food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and clothing and shelter are wholly or halfunnecessary. at the present day, and in this country, asi find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, awheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and canall be obtained at a trifling cost. yet some, not wise, go to the other side ofthe globe, to barbarous and unhealthy
regions, and devote themselves to trade forten or twenty years, in order that they may live--that is, keep comfortably warm--anddie in new england at last. the luxuriously rich are not simply keptcomfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as i implied before, they are cooked, of coursea la mode. > chapter 1 - part 2economy most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances tothe elevation of mankind. with respect to luxuries and comforts, thewisest have ever lived a more simple and
meagre life than the poor. the ancient philosophers, chinese, hindoo,persian, and greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches,none so rich in inward. we know not much about them. it is remarkable that we know so much ofthem as we do. the same is true of the more modernreformers and benefactors of their race. none can be an impartial or wise observerof human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury,whether in agriculture, or commerce, or
literature, or art.there are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. yet it is admirable to profess because itwas once admirable to live. to be a philosopher is not merely to havesubtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to liveaccording to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, andtrust. it is to solve some of the problems oflife, not only theoretically, but practically. the success of great scholars and thinkersis commonly a courtier-like success, not
kingly, not manly. they make shift to live merely byconformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors ofa noble race of men. but why do men degenerate ever? what makes families run out?what is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations?are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? the philosopher is in advance of his ageeven in the outward form of his life. he is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed,like his contemporaries.
how can a man be a philosopher and notmaintain his vital 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 more warmth of the same kind, asmore and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundantclothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. when he has obtained those things which arenecessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain thesuperfluities; and that is, to adventure on
life now, his vacation from humbler toilhaving commenced. the soil, it appears, is suited to theseed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward alsowith confidence. why has man rooted himself thus firmly inthe earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?--for thenobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like thehumbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till theyhave perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, 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 in heaven or hell, andperchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, notknowing how they live--if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor tothose who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it withthe fondness and enthusiasm of lovers--and, to some extent, i reckon myself in thisnumber; 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 idlycomplaining 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 theirduty i also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross,but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own goldenor silver fetters
if i should attempt to tell how i havedesired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readerswho are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it i will only hintat some of the enterprises which i have cherished in any weather, at any hour of the day ornight, i have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too;to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely thepresent moment; to toe that line. you will pardon some obscurities, for thereare more secrets in my trade than in most
men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, butinseparable from its very nature. i would gladly tell all that i know aboutit, 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 i have spokenconcerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. i have met one or two who had heard thehound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, andthey seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
to anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawnmerely, but, if possible, nature herself! how many mornings, summer and winter,before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have i been about mine! no doubt, many of my townsmen have met mereturning from this enterprise, farmers starting for boston in the twilight, orwoodchoppers going to their work it is true, i never assisted 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 and carry it express! i well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, andlost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it if it hadconcerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the gazette with the earliest intelligenceat other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, totelegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that i might catch something, thoughi never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun
for a long time i was reporter to ajournal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print thebulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, i got only my labor for my pains however, in this case mypains were their own reward. for many years i was self-appointedinspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, ifnot of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at allseasons, 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 by leaping fences; and ihave had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though i did not always know whether jonas or solomon workedin a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. i have watered the red huckleberry, thesand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape andthe yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons in short, i went on thus for a long time (imay say it without boasting), faithfully
minding my business, till it became moreand more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure witha moderate allowance. my accounts, which i can swear to have keptfaithfully, i have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still lesspaid and settled. however, i have not set my heart 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 outthe gate, "do you mean to starve us?" having seen his industrious white neighborsso well off--that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealthand standing followed--he had said to himself: i will go into business; i will weave baskets; it is a thing which i cando. thinking that when he had made the basketshe would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them hehad not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him thinkthat it was so, or to make something else
which it would be worth his while to buyi too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but i had not made itworth any one's while to buy them. yet not the less, in my case, did i thinkit worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worthmen's while to buy my baskets, i studied rather how to avoid the necessity ofselling them. the life which men praise and regard assuccessful is but one kind. why should we exaggerate any one kind atthe expense of the others? finding that my fellow-citizens were notlikely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhereelse, but i must shift for myself, i turned
my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where i was better known idetermined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital,using such slender means as i had already got my purpose in going to walden pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearlythere, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to behindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appearednot so sad as foolish i have always endeavored to acquire strictbusiness habits; they are indispensable to
every man if your trade is with thecelestial empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some salem harbor, will be fixture enough you will exportsuch articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pinetimber and a little granite, always in native bottoms these will be goodventures. to oversee all the details yourself inperson; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and selland 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 at the same time--often the richest freight will be discharged upon a jersey shore;--to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping thehorizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch ofcommodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of themarkets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendenciesof trade and civilization--taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and allimprovements in navigation;--charts to be
studied, the position of reefs and newlights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of somecalculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendlypier--there is the untold fate of la prouse;--universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all greatdiscoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from hanno andthe phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time totime, to know how you stand. it is a labor to task the faculties of aman--such problems of profit and loss, of
interest, of tare and tret, and gauging ofall 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 and the ice trade;it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation no neva marshes tobe filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. it is said that a flood-tide, with awesterly wind, and ice in 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 where those means, thatwill still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. as for clothing, to come at once to thepractical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty anda regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. let him who has work to do recollect thatthe object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this stateof society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or
important work may be accomplished withoutadding to his wardrobe. kings and queens who wear a suit but once,though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort ofwearing a suit that fits. they are no better than wooden horses tohang the clean clothes on. every day our garments become moreassimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until wehesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some suchsolemnity even as our bodies. no man ever stood the lower in myestimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet i am sure that there isgreater anxiety, commonly, to have
fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a soundconscience but even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed isimprovidence. i sometimes try my acquaintances by suchtests as this--who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? most behave as if they believed that theirprospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. it would be easier for them to hobble totown with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon.
often if an accident happens to agentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legsof his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected we knowbut few men, a great many coats and breeches. dress a scarecrow in your last shift, youstanding shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? passing a cornfield the other day, close bya hat and coat on a stake, i recognized the owner of the farm.he was only a little more weather-beaten
than when i saw him last. i have heard of a dog that barked at everystranger who approached 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 their clothes. could you, in such a case, tell surely ofany company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class? when madam pfeiffer, in her adventuroustravels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as asiatic russia, shesays that she felt the necessity of wearing
other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "wasnow in a civilized country, where people are judged of by their clothes." even in our democratic new england townsthe accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipagealone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. but they yield such respect, numerous asthey are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them beside,clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman'sdress, at least, is never done.
a man who has at length found something todo will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has laindusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. old shoes will serve a hero longer thanthey have served his valet--if a hero ever has a valet--bare feet are older thanshoes, and he can make them do. only they who go to soirees and legislativeballs must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. but if my jacket and trousers, my hat andshoes, are fit to worship god in, they will do; will they not?
who ever saw his old clothes--his old coat,actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not adeed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer,who could do with less? i say, beware of all enterprises thatrequire new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes if there is not a newman, how can the new clothes be made to fit? if you have any enterprise before you, tryit in your old clothes. all men want, not something to do with, butsomething to do, or rather something to be
perhaps we should never procure a new suit,however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men inthe old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. the loon retires to solitary ponds to spendit. thus also the snake casts its slough, andthe caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; forclothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil otherwise we shall be found
sailing under false colors, and beinevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind we don garment after garment, as if we grewlike exogenous plants by addition without our outside and often thin and fancifulclothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatalinjury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, orcortex; 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 to the shirt. it is desirable that a man be clad sosimply that he can lay 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-handed without anxiety while one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good asthree thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be boughtfor five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars,cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a
pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two anda half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poorthat, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise mento 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 emphasizingthe "they" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the fates, and i find it difficult to get made what i want,simply because she cannot believe that i mean what i say, that i am so rash.
when i hear this oracular sentence, i amfor a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separatelythat i may come at the meaning of it, that i may find out by what degree of consanguinity they are related to me, andwhat authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally,i am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the "they"--"it is true, they did not makethem so recently, 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 pegto bang the coat on?
we worship not the graces, nor the parcae,but fashion. she spins and weaves and cuts with fullauthority the head monkey at paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys inamerica do the same. i sometimes despair of getting anythingquite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. they would have to be passed through apowerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would notsoon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an eggdeposited there nobody knows when, for not
even fire kills these things, and you wouldhave lost your labor nevertheless, we will not forget that some egyptian wheat washanded down to us by a mummy on the whole, i think that it cannot bemaintained that dressing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. at present men make shift to wear what theycan get. like shipwrecked sailors, they put on whatthey can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laughat each other's masquerade. every generation laughs at the oldfashions, but follows religiously the new. we are amused at beholding the costume ofhenry viii, or queen elizabeth, as much as
if it was that of the king and queen of thecannibal islands. all costume off a man is pitiful orgrotesque. it is only the serious eye peering from andthe sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate thecostume of any people. let harlequin be taken with a fit of thecolic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.when the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple. the childish and savage taste of men andwomen for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopesthat they may discover the particular
figure which this generation requirestoday. 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 sold readily, the other lieon the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionablecomparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called.it is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. i cannot believe that our factory system isthe best mode by which men may get
clothing the condition of the operativesis becoming every day more like that of the english; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as i have heard or observed,the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but,unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched in the long run men hit only what they aim at therefore, though they 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 having done without itfor long periods in colder countries than
this. samuel laing says that "the laplander inhis skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, willsleep night after night on the snow... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollenclothing" he had seen them asleep thus. yet he adds, "they are not hardier thanother people." but, probably, man did not live long on theearth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domesticcomforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house
more than of the family; though these mustbe extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house isassociated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, isunnecessary in our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering atnight in the indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a treesignified that so many times they had camped. man was not made so large limbed and robustbut that he must seek to narrow his world
and wall in a space such as fitted him. he was at first bare and out of doors; butthough this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainyseason and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not madehaste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house.adam and eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. man wanted a home, a place of warmth, orcomfort, first of warmth, then the warmth of the affections
we may imagine a time when, in the infancyof the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. every child begins the world again, to someextent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. it plays house, as well as horse, having aninstinct for it who does not remember the interest with which, when young, he lookedat shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? it was the natural yearning of thatportion, any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us.
from the cave we have advanced to roofs ofpalm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, ofboards and shingles, of stones and tiles. at last, we know not what it is to live inthe open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. from the hearth the field is a greatdistance it would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nightswithout any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saintdwell there so long birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocencein dovecots.
however, if one designs to construct adwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little yankee shrewdness, lest after allhe find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, aprison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. consider first how slight a shelter isabsolutely necessary. i have seen penobscot indians, in thistown, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deeparound them, and i thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out thewind. formerly, when how to get my livinghonestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed meeven more than it does now, for
unfortunately i am become somewhat callous, i used to see a large box by the railroad,six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night;and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holesin it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hookdown the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free this did not appear the worst, nor by any means adespicable alternative you could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you gotup, go abroad without any landlord or
house-lord dogging you for rent many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of alarger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as thisi am far from jesting economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity,but it cannot so be disposed of. a comfortable house for a rude and hardyrace, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of suchmaterials as nature furnished ready to their hands gookin, who was superintendent of the indians subject to the massachusettscolony, writing in 1674, says, "the best of their houses are covered very neatly, tightand warm, with barks of trees, slipped from
their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, withpressure of weighty timber, when they are green the meaner sort are covered withmats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former some ihave seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad. i have often lodged in their wigwams, andfound them as warm as the best english houses." he adds that they were commonly carpetedand lined within with well-wrought
embroidered mats, and were furnished withvarious utensils. the indians had advanced so far as toregulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof andmoved by a string. such a lodge was in the first instanceconstructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; andevery family owned one, or its apartment in one. chapter 1 - part 3economy in the savage state every family owns ashelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but ithink that i speak within bounds when i say
that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, andthe savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one halfthe families own a shelter in the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of thosewho own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole the rest pay an annual taxfor this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of indian wigwams, butnow helps to keep them poor as long as they live.
i do not mean to insist here on thedisadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savageowns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to ownit; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire but, answers one, by merelypaying this tax, the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace comparedwith the savage's. an annual rent of from twenty-five to ahundred dollars (these are the country rates) entitles him to the benefit of theimprovements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, rumford
fire-place, back plastering, venetianblinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. but how happens it that he who is said toenjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who hasthem not, is rich as a savage? if it is asserted that civilization is areal advance in the condition of man--and i think that it is, though only the wiseimprove their advantages--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and thecost of a thing is the amount of what i will call life which is required to beexchanged for it, immediately or in the
long run. an average house in this neighborhood costsperhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteenyears of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a family--estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor atone dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;--so that he must havespent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. if we suppose him to pay a rent instead,this is but a doubtful choice of evils. would the savage have been wise to exchangehis wigwam for a palace on these terms?
it may be guessed that i reduce almost thewhole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against thefuture, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses but perhaps a man is notrequired to bury himself. nevertheless this points to an importantdistinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they havedesigns on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of theindividual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that ofthe race.
but i wish to show at what a sacrifice thisadvantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as tosecure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage what mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always withyou, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set onedge? "as i live, saith the lord god, ye shallnot have occasion any more to use this proverb in israel "behold all souls are mine; as the soul ofthe father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die."
when i consider my neighbors, the farmersof concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, i find that for the mostpart they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonlythey have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money--and we mayregard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses--but commonly they have not paid for them yet it is true, theencumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itselfbecomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being wellacquainted with it, as he says.
on applying to the assessors, i amsurprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own theirfarms free and clear. if you would know the history of thesehomesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. the man who has actually paid for his farmwith labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him i doubt if thereare three such men in concord what has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in ahundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers with regard to themerchants, however, one of them says
pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniaryfailures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it isinconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down but this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, andsuggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving theirsouls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly bankruptcy and repudiation are thespringboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns itssomersets, but the savage stands on the
unelastic plank of famine. yet the middlesex cattle show goes off herewith eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent. the farmer is endeavoring to solve theproblem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself.to get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. with consummate skill he has set his trapwith a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away,got his own leg into it. this is the reason he is poor; and for asimilar reason we are all poor in respect
to a thousand savage comforts, thoughsurrounded by luxuries. as chapman sings, "the false society of men----for earthly greatness all heavenly comforts rarefies to air." and when the farmer has got his house, hemay not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. as i understand it, that was a validobjection urged by momus against the house which minerva made, that she "had not madeit movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may
still be urged, for our houses are suchunwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; andthe bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves i know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, fornearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and moveinto the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set themfree. granted that the majority are able at lasteither to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. while civilization has been improving ourhouses, it has not equally improved the men
who are to inhabit them it has createdpalaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings and if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than thesavage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining grossnecessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? but how do the poor minority fare?perhaps it will be found that just in proportion as some have been placed inoutward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. the luxury of one class is counterbalancedby the indigence of another.
on the one side is the palace, on the otherare the almshouse and "silent poor." the myriads who built the pyramids to bethe tombs of the pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decentlyburied themselves. the mason who finishes the cornice of thepalace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam it is a mistake tosuppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of theinhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages.i refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich.
to know this i should not need to lookfarther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that lastimprovement in civilization; where i see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door,for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the formsof both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the developmentof all their limbs and faculties is checked. it certainly is fair to look at that classby whose labor the works which distinguish
this generation are accomplished. such too, to a greater or less extent, isthe condition of the operatives of every denomination in england, which is the greatworkhouse of the world. or i could refer you to ireland, which ismarked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map contrast the physicalcondition of the irish with that of the north american indian, or the south sea islander, or any other savage race beforeit was degraded by contact with the civilized man. yet i have no doubt that that people'srulers are as wise as the average of
civilized rulers their condition onlyproves what squalidness may consist with civilization i hardly need refer now to the laborers in our southern states whoproduce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production ofthe south. but to confine myself to those who are saidto be in moderate circumstances. most men appear never to have consideredwhat a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives becausethey think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. as if one were to wear any sort of coatwhich the tailor might cut out for him, or,
gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or capof woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him acrown! it is possible to invent a house still moreconvenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man couldnot afford to pay for. shall we always study to obtain more ofthese things, and not sometimes to be content with less? shall the respectable citizen thus gravelyteach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing acertain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers forempty guests, before he dies?
why should not our furniture be as simpleas the arab's or the indian's? when i think of the benefactors of therace, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divinegifts to man, i do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload offashionable furniture. or what if i were to allow--would it not bea singular allowance?--that our furniture should be more complex than the arab's, inproportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! at present our houses are cluttered anddefiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dusthole, and not leave her morning's work
undone morning work! by the blushes of aurora and the music ofmemnon, what should be man's morning work in this world? i had three pieces of limestone on my desk,but i was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when thefurniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window indisgust. how, then, could i have a furnished house? i would rather sit in the open air, for nodust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.
it is the luxurious and dissipated who setthe fashions which the herd so diligently follow the traveller who stops at the besthouses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself totheir tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. i think that in the railroad car we areinclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatenswithout attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing-room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and ahundred other oriental things, which we are
taking west with us, invented for theladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the celestial empire, which jonathan should be ashamed to know thenames of i would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowdedon a velvet cushion i would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancycar of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way. the very simplicity and nakedness of man'slife in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left himstill but a sojourner in nature when he
was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again he dwelt,as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, orcrossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops but lo! men have become thetools of their tools. the man who independently plucked thefruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree forshelter, a housekeeper. we now no longer camp as for a night, buthave settled down on earth and forgotten heaven we have adopted christianity merelyas an improved method of agri-culture we have built for this world a family mansion,and for the next a family tomb.
the best works of art are the expression ofman's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art ismerely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten there is actually no place in this villagefor a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, ourhouses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. there is not a nail to hang a picture on,nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint when i consider how our housesare built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and
sustained, i wonder that the floor does notgive way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantelpiece,and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthyfoundation. i cannot but perceive that this so-calledrich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and i do not get on in the enjoyment of thefine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for i remember that the greatest genuine leap,due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering arabs, who aresaid to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground without factitious support,
man is sure to come to earth again beyondthat distance. the first question which i am tempted toput to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, who bolsters you? are you one of the ninety-seven who fail,or the three who succeed? answer me these questions, and then perhapsi may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental the cart before the horse isneither beautiful nor useful before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives mustbe stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation:now, a taste for the beautiful is most
cultivated out of doors, where there is nohouse and no housekeeper old johnson, in his "wonder-workingprovidence," speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he wascontemporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, castingthe soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at thehighest side." they did not "provide them houses," sayshe, "till the earth, by the lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feedthem," and the first year's crop was so light that "they were forced to cut theirbread very thin for a long season."
the secretary of the province of newnetherland, writing in dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to takeup land there, states more particularly that "those in new netherland, and especially in new england, who have nomeans to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pitin the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside withwood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else toprevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it
overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof ofspars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can livedry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that partitionsare run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the family thewealthy and principal men in new england, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling-houses in this fashionfor two reasons: firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to wantfood the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom
they brought over in numbers fromfatherland in the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted toagriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them severalthousands." in this course which our ancestors tookthere was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the morepressing wants first but are the more pressing wants satisfied now? when i think of acquiring for myself one ofour luxurious dwellings, i am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yetadapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far
thinner than our forefathers did theirwheaten not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in therudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tenementof the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. but, alas!i have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with. though we are not so degenerate but that wemight possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is betterto accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of
mankind offer in such a neighborhood asthis, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained thansuitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. i speak understandingly on this subject,for i have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically with alittle more wit we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilizationa blessing the civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.but to make haste to my own experiment. near the end of march, 1845, i borrowed anaxe and went down to the woods by walden
pond, nearest to where i intended to buildmy house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber it is difficult to beginwithout borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit yourfellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise the owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it wasthe apple of his eye; but i returned it sharper than i received it it was apleasant hillside where i worked, covered with pine woods, through which i looked out on the pond, and a small open field in thewoods where pines and hickories were
springing up the ice in the pond was notyet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark-colored andsaturated with water. there were some slight flurries of snowduring the days that i worked there; but for the most part when i came out on to therailroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in thespring sun, and i heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commenceanother year with us. they were pleasant spring days, in whichthe winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that hadlain torpid began to stretch itself one
day, when my axe had come off and i had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving itwith a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to swell thewood, i saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as i stayedthere, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly comeout of the torpid state it appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but ifthey should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they wouldof necessity rise to a higher and more
ethereal life. i had previously seen the snakes in frostymornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waitingfor the sun to thaw them. on the 1st of april it rained and meltedthe ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, i heard a stray goosegroping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. so i went on for some days cutting andhewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having manycommunicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,--
men say they know many things;but lo! they have taken wings-- the arts and sciences,and a thousand appliances; the wind that blowsis all that any body knows. i hewed the main timbers six inches square,most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side,leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones each stick wascarefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for i had borrowed other tools by thistime. my days in the woods were not very longones; yet i usually carried my dinner of
bread and butter, and read the newspaper inwhich it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which i had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of theirfragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch before i had done iwas more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though i had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted withit. sometimes a rambler in the wood wasattracted by the 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 and ready for theraising. i had already bought the shanty of jamescollins, an irishman who worked on the fitchburg railroad, for boards. james collins' shanty was considered anuncommonly fine one when i called to see it he was not at home. i walked about the outside, at firstunobserved from within, the window was so deep and high it was of small dimensions,with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compostheap.
the roof was the soundest part, though agood deal warped and made brittle by the sun. doorsill there was none, but a perennialpassage for the hens under the door board. mrs c came to the door and asked me toview it from the inside. the hens were driven in by my approach. it was dark, and had a dirt floor for themost part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which wouldnot bear removal. she lighted a lamp to show me the inside ofthe roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warningme not to step into the cellar, a sort of
dust hole two feet deep in her own words, they were "good boards overhead, goodboards all around, and a good window"--of two whole squares originally, only the cathad passed out that way lately. there was a stove, a bed, and a place tosit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. the bargain was soon concluded, for jameshad in the meanwhile returned. i to pay four dollars and twenty-five centstonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile:i to take possession at six it were well,
he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claimson the score of ground rent and fuel this he assured me was the only encumbrance.at six i passed him and his family on the road. one large bundle held their all--bed,coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens--all but the cat; she took to the woods and became awild cat, and, as i learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so becamea dead cat at last. i took down this dwelling the same morning,drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond-side by small cartloads, spreading theboards on the grass there to bleach and
warp back again in the sun. one early thrush gave me a note or two as idrove along the woodland path. i was informed treacherously by a youngpatrick that neighbor seeley, an irishman, in the intervals of the carting,transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when i came backto pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, atthe devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. he was there to represent spectatordom, andhelp make this seemingly insignificant
event one with the removal of the gods oftroy. i dug my cellar in the side of a hillsloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down throughsumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoeswould not freeze in any winter the sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but thesun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. it was but two hours' work i tookparticular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men diginto the earth for an equable temperature
under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where theystore their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappearedposterity remark its dent in the earth the house is still but a sort of porch at theentrance of a burrow at length, in the beginning of may, withthe help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion forneighborliness than from any necessity, i set up the frame of my house. no man was ever more honored in thecharacter of his raisers than i. they are destined, i trust, to assist atthe raising of loftier structures one day.
i began to occupy my house on the 4th ofjuly, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edgedand lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding i laid the foundation of a chimney at oneend, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. i built the chimney after my hoeing in thefall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the meanwhileout of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode i still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeablethan the usual one when it stormed before
my bread was baked, i fixed a few boardsover the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours inthat way. in those days, when my hands were muchemployed, i read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, myholder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the samepurpose as the iliad. it would be worth the while to build stillmore deliberately than i did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, awindow, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a betterreason for it than our temporal necessities
even there is some of the same fitness ina man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. who knows but if men constructed theirdwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and familiessimply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are soengaged? but alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos,which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no travellerwith their chattering and unmusical notes. shall we forever resign the pleasure ofconstruction to the carpenter?
what does architecture amount to in theexperience of the mass of men? i never in all my walks came across a manengaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house.we belong to the community. it is not the tailor alone who is the ninthpart of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? no doubt another may also think for me; butit is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of mythinking for myself. true, there are architects so called inthis country, and i have heard of one at
least possessed with the idea of makingarchitectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him all verywell perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the commondilettantism. a sentimental reformer in architecture, hebegan at the cornice, not at the foundation it was only how to put a coreof truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might have an almond or caraway seed in it--though i hold thatalmonds are most wholesome without the sugar--and not how the inhabitant, theindweller, might build truly within and
without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves what reasonable man eversupposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely--that thetortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants ofbroadway their trinity church? but a man has no more to do with the styleof architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor needthe soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on hisstandard. the enemy will find it out he may turnpale when the trial comes.
this man seemed to me to lean over thecornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew itbetter than he. what of architectural beauty i now see, iknow has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities andcharacter of the indweller, who is the only builder--out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever athought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destinedto be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life the most interesting dwellings in this country, asthe painter knows, are the most
unpretending, humble log huts and cottagesof the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely,which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburbanbox, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in thestyle of his dwelling. a great proportion of architecturalornaments are literally hollow, and a september gale would strip them off, likeborrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials.
they can do without architecture who haveno olives nor wines in the cellar. what if an equal ado were made about theornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much timeabout their cornices as the architects of our churches do? so are made the belles-lettres and thebeaux-arts and their professors. much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a fewsticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box itwould signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of thetenant, it is of a piece with constructing
his own coffin--the architecture of thegrave--and "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker" one man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up ahandful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color is he thinkingof his last and narrow house? toss up a copper for it as well what anabundance of leisure be must have! why do you take up a handful of dirt? better paint your house your owncomplexion; let it turn pale or blush for you.an enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture!
when you have got my ornaments ready, iwill wear them before winter i built a chimney, andshingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfectand sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges i was obliged tostraighten with a plane i have thus a tight shingled and plasteredhouse, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and acloset, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite the exact cost ofmy house, paying the usual price for such materials as i used, but not counting thework, 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 the various materialswhich compose them:-- boards.$ 8.03-1/2.....mostly shanty boards. refuse shingles for roof sides...4.00laths............................1.25 two second-hand windows.....with glass..................2.43 one thousand old brick...........4.00two casks of lime................2.40 .....that was high. hair.............................0.31.....more than i needed.
mantle-tree iron.................0.15nails............................3.90 hinges and screws................0.14 latch............................0.10chalk............................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 have also a small woodshed adjoining,made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house
i intend to build me a house which willsurpass any on the main street in concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as itpleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one. i thus found that the student who wishesfor a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rentwhich he now pays annually if i seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that i brag for humanity rather than formyself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth ofmy statement. notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy--chaff which i find it difficult to separate
from my wheat, but for which i am as sorryas any man--i will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physicalsystem; and i am resolved that i will not through humility become the devil'sattorney. i will endeavor to speak a good word forthe truth at cambridge college the mere rent of a student's room, which is only alittle larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-twoside by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of manyand noisy neighbors, and perhaps a
residence in the fourth story i cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom inthese respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, morewould already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an educationwould in a great measure vanish. those conveniences which the studentrequires at cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great asacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides. those things for which the most money isdemanded are never the things which the student most wants tuition, for instance,is an important item in the term bill,
while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the mostcultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. the mode of founding a college is,commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, followingblindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme--a principle which should never be followed but withcircumspection--to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and heemploys irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the
students that are to be are said to befitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive generations have topay. i think that it would be better than this,for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundationthemselves. the student who secures his coveted leisureand retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but anignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience whichalone can make leisure fruitful. "but," says one, "you do not mean that thestudents should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?"
i do not mean that exactly, but i meansomething which he might think a good deal like that; i mean that they should not playlife, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginningto end how could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experimentof living? methinks this would exercise their minds asmuch as mathematics if i wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences,for instance, i would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, whereanything is professed and practised but the
art of life;--to survey the world through atelescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, ormechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to neptune, andnot detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarmall around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. which would have advanced the most at theend of a month--the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dugand smelted, reading as much as would be
necessary for this--or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at theinstitute in the meanwhile, and had received a rodgers' penknife from hisfather? which would be most likely to cut hisfingers? to my astonishment i was informed on leaving college that i hadstudied navigation!--why, if i had taken one turn down the harbor i should haveknown more about it. even the poor student studies and is taughtonly political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous withphilosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges the consequence is, that
while he is reading adam smith, ricardo,and say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. chapter 1 - part 4economy as with our colleges, so with a hundred"modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positiveadvance. the devil goes on exacting compoundinterest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments inthem. our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,which distract our attention from serious things.
they are but improved means to anunimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroadslead to boston or new york. we are in great haste to construct amagnetic telegraph from maine to texas; but maine and texas, it may be, have nothingimportant to communicate either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deafwoman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into hishand, had nothing to say as if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly we are eager to tunnel under theatlantic and bring the old world some weeks
nearer to the new; but perchance the firstnews that will leak through into the broad, flapping american ear will be that theprincess adelaide has the whooping cough. after all, the man whose horse trots a milein a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is not anevangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey i doubt if flying childers ever carried a peck of corn tomill. one says to me, "i wonder that you do notlay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to fitchburg today andsee the country" but i am wiser than that. i have learned that the swiftest travelleris he that goes afoot.
i say to my friend, suppose we try who willget there first the distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents that isalmost a day's wages. i remember when wages were sixty cents aday for laborers on this very road. well, i start now on foot, and get therebefore night; i have 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 ajob in season. instead of going to fitchburg, you will beworking here the greater 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 the country andgetting experience of that kind, i should have to cut your acquaintance altogether. such is the universal law, which no man canever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad asit is long. to make a railroad round the worldavailable to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. men have an indistinct notion that if theykeep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ridesomewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the
depot, and the conductor shouts "allaboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceivedthat a few are riding, but the rest are run over--and it will be called, and will be,"a melancholy accident." no doubt they can ride at last who shallhave earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probablyhave lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. this spending of the best part of one'slife earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the leastvaluable part of it reminds me of the englishman who went to india to make a
fortune first, in order that he mightreturn to england and live the life of a poet. he should have gone up garret at once"what!" exclaim a million irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, "isnot this railroad which we have built a good thing?" yes, i answer, comparatively good, that is,you might have done worse; but i wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you couldhave spent your time better than digging in this dirt. before i finished my house, wishing to earnten or twelve dollars by some honest and
agreeable method, in order to meet myunusual expenses, i planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small partwith potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips the whole lot contains eleven acres, mostlygrowing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre one farmer saidthat it was "good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." i put no manure whatever on this land, notbeing the owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much again,and i did not quite hoe it all once.
i got out several cords of stumps inplowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virginmould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there the dead and for the most partunmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have suppliedthe remainder of my fuel i was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing,though i held the plow myself. my farm outgoes for the first season were,for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72- 1/2. the seed corn was given me this nevercosts anything to speak of, unless you
plant more than enough i got twelvebushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. the yellow corn and turnips were too lateto come to anything my whole income from the farm was .$ 23.44deducting the outgoes 14.72-1/2 --------there are left $ 8.71-1/2 beside produce consumed and on hand at thetime this estimate was made of the value of $4.50--the amount on hand much more thanbalancing a little grass which i did not raise.
all things considered, that is, consideringthe importance of a man's soul and of today, notwithstanding the short timeoccupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, i believe that that was doing better than anyfarmer in concord did that 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 learnedfrom the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, arthur young among therest, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise nomore than he ate, and not exchange it for
an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need tocultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up thatthan to use oxen to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all hisnecessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; andthus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. i desire to speak impartially on thispoint, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the presenteconomical and social arrangements.
i was more independent than any farmer inconcord, for i was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of mygenius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. beside being better off than they already,if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, i should have been nearly as welloff 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 are so much thefreer. men and oxen exchange work; but if weconsider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage,their farm is so much the larger.
man does some of his part of the exchangework in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy's play. certainly no nation that lived simply inall respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great ablunder as to use the labor of animals. true, there never was and is not likelysoon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am i certain it is desirable that there shouldbe. however, i should never have broken a horseor bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear i shouldbecome a horseman or a herdsman merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so
doing, are we certain that what is oneman's gain is not another's loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with hismaster to be satisfied? granted that some public works would nothave been constructed without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with the oxand horse; does it follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy ofhimself in that case? when men begin to do, not merelyunnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it isinevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words,become the slaves of the strongest. man thus not only works for the animalwithin him, but, for a symbol of this, he
works for the animal without him. though we have many substantial houses ofbrick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree towhich the barn overshadows the house. this town is said to have the largesthouses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in itspublic buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech inthis county. it should not be by their architecture, butwhy not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek tocommemorate themselves? how much more admirable the bhagvat-geetathan all the ruins of the east!
towers and temples are the luxury ofprinces. a simple and independent mind does not toilat the bidding of any prince. genius is not a retainer to any emperor,nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. to what end, pray, is so much stonehammered? in arcadia, when i was there, i did not seeany hammering stone. nations are possessed with an insaneambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stonethey leave. what if equal pains were taken to smoothand polish their manners?
one piece of good sense would be morememorable than a monument as high as the moon. i love better to see stones in place.the grandeur of thebes was a vulgar grandeur. more sensible is a rod of stone wall thatbounds an honest man's field than a hundred-gated thebes that has wanderedfarther from the true end of life. the religion and civilization which arebarbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might callchristianity does not. most of the stone a nation hammers goestoward its tomb only.
it buries itself alive. as for the pyramids, there is nothing towonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enoughto spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drownedin the nile, and then given his body to the dogs.i might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but i have no time for it. as for the religion and love of art of thebuilders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an egyptiantemple or the united states bank.
it costs more than it comes to. the mainspring is vanity, assisted by thelove of garlic and bread and butter. mr. balcom, a promising young architect,designs it on the back of his vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job islet out to dobson & sons, stonecutters. when the thirty centuries begin to lookdown on it, mankind begin to look up at it. as for your high towers and monuments,there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to china, andhe got so far that, as he said, he heard the chinese pots and kettles rattle; but i think that i shall not go out of my way toadmire the hole which he made.
many are concerned about the monuments ofthe west and the east--to know who built them. for my part, i should like to know who inthose days did not build them--who were above such trifling.but to proceed with my statistics. by surveying, carpentry, and day-labor ofvarious other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for i have as many trades asfingers, i had earned $13.34. the expense of food for eight months,namely, from july 4th to march 1st, the time when these estimates were made, thoughi lived there more than two years--not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and
some peas, which i had raised, norconsidering the value of what was on hand at the last date--was rice....................$ 1.73-1/2molasses................. 1.73 cheapest form of the saccharine.rye meal................. 1.04-3/4 indian meal.............. 0.99-3/4cheaper than rye. pork..................... 0.22all experiments which failed: flour.................... 0.88costs more than indian meal, both money and trouble.sugar.................... 0.80 lard..................... 0.65apples................... 0.25
dried apple.............. 0.22sweet potatoes........... 0.10 one pumpkin.............. 0.06one watermelon........... 0.02 salt..................... 0.03 yes, i did eat $8.74, all told; but ishould not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if i did not know that most of myreaders were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no betterin print. the next year i sometimes caught a mess offish for my dinner, and once i went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravagedmy bean-field--effect his transmigration, as a tartar would say--and devour him,
partly for experiment's sake; but though itafforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, i saw thatthe longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by thevillage butcher. clothing and some incidental expenseswithin the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to $8.40-3/4oil and some household utensils.......2.00 so that all the pecuniary outgoes,excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of thehouse, and their bills have not yet been
received--and these are all and more than all the ways by which money necessarilygoes out in this part of the world--were house............................$ 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 $23.44earned by day-labor.............. 13.34 -------- in all.............................$36.78, which subtracted from the sum of theoutgoes leaves a balance of $25.21-3/4 on the one side--this being very nearly themeans with which i started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred--and on the
other, beside the leisure and independenceand health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as i choose to occupyit. these statistics, however accidental andtherefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have acertain value also. nothing was given me of which i have notrendered some account. it appears from the above estimate, that myfood alone cost me in money about twenty- seven cents a week. it was, for nearly two years after this,rye and indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork,molasses, and salt; and my drink, water.
it was fit that i should live on rice,mainly, who love so well the philosophy of india. to meet the objections of some inveteratecavillers, i may as well state, that if i dined out occasionally, as i always haddone, and i trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to thedetriment of my domestic arrangements. but the dining out, being, as i havestated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement likethis. i learned from my two years' experiencethat it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food,even in this latitude; that a man may use
as simple a diet as the animals, and yetretain health and strength. i have made a satisfactory dinner,satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (portulaca oleracea)which i gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. i give the latin on account of thesavoriness of the trivial name. and pray what more can a reasonable mandesire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears ofgreen sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt? even the little variety which i used was ayielding to the demands of appetite, and
not of health. yet men have come to such a pass that theyfrequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; andi know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinkingwater only. the reader will perceive that i am treatingthe subject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will notventure to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder. bread i at first made of pure indian mealand salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which i baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle orthe end of a stick of timber sawed off in
building my house; but it was wont to getsmoked and to have a piny flavor. i tried flour also; but have at last founda mixture of rye and indian meal most convenient and agreeable. in cold weather it was no little amusementto bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them ascarefully as an egyptian his hatching eggs. they were a real cereal fruit which iripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits,which i kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. i made a study of the ancient andindispensable art of bread-making,
consulting such authorities as offered,going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men firstreached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in mystudies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the variousfermentations thereafter, till i came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staffof life. leaven, which some deem the soul of bread,the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved likethe vestal fire--some precious bottleful,
i suppose, first brought over in the mayflower, did the business for america,and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billowsover the land--this seed i regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning i forgot the rules,and scalded my yeast; by which accident i discovered that even this was notindispensable--for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process--and i have gladly omitted it since, though mosthousewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might notbe, and elderly people prophesied a speedy
decay of the vital forces. yet i find it not to be an essentialingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living;and i am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge itscontents to my discomfiture. it is simpler and more respectable to omitit. man is an animal who more than any othercan adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.neither did i put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread.
it would seem that i made it according tothe recipe which marcus porcius cato gave about two centuries before christ."panem depsticium sic facito. manus mortariumque bene lavato. farinam in mortarium indito, aquae paulatimaddito, subigitoque pulchre. ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoquesub testu." which i take to mean,--"make kneaded breadthus. wash your hands and trough well.put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. when you have kneaded it well, mould it,and bake it under a cover," that is, in a
baking kettle.not a word about leaven. but i did not always use this staff oflife. at one time, owing to the emptiness of mypurse, i saw none of it for more than a month. every new englander might easily raise allhis own breadstuffs in this land of rye and indian corn, and not depend on distant andfluctuating markets for them. yet so far are we from simplicity andindependence that, in concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, andhominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.
for the most part the farmer gives to hiscattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is atleast no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. i saw that i could easily raise my bushelor two of rye and indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, andthe latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if i must havesome concentrated sweet, i found by experiment that i could make a very goodmolasses either of pumpkins or beets, and i knew that i needed only to set out a few
maples to obtain it more easily still, andwhile these were growing i could use various substitutes beside those which ihave named. "for," as the forefathers sang,-- "we can make liquor to sweeten our lips ofpumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips." finally, as for salt, that grossest ofgroceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or,if i did without it altogether, i should probably drink the less water. i do not learn that the indians evertroubled themselves to go after it.
thus i could avoid all trade and barter, sofar as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain toget clothing and fuel. the pantaloons which i now wear were wovenin a farmer's family--thank heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for i thinkthe fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;--and in a new country, fuelis an encumbrance. as for a habitat, if i were not permittedstill to squat, i might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land icultivated was sold--namely, eight dollars and eight cents.
but as it was, i considered that i enhancedthe value of the 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 on vegetable foodalone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once--for the root is faith--i am accustomed to answer such, that i can liveon board nails. if they cannot understand that, they cannotunderstand much that i have to say. for my part, i am glad to hear ofexperiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight tolive on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar.
the squirrel tribe tried the same andsucceeded. the human race is interested in theseexperiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own theirthirds in mills, may be alarmed. my furniture, part of which i made myself--and the rest cost me nothing of which i have not rendered an account--consisted ofa bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, askillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, threeplates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp.
none is so poor that he need sit on apumpkin. that is shiftlessness. there is a plenty of such chairs as i likebest in the village garrets to be had for taking them away.furniture! thank god, i can sit and i can standwithout the aid of a furniture warehouse. what man but a philosopher would not beashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to thelight of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? that is spaulding's furniture.i could never tell from inspecting such a
load whether it belonged to a so-calledrich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. indeed, the more you have of such thingsthe poorer you are. each load looks as if it contained thecontents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times aspoor. pray, for what do we move ever but to getrid of our furniture, our exuviae: at last to go from this world to another newlyfurnished, and leave this to be burned? it is the same as if all these traps werebuckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our linesare cast without dragging them--dragging
his trap. he was a lucky fox that left his tail inthe trap. the muskrat will gnaw his third leg off tobe free. no wonder man has lost his elasticity. how often he is at a dead set!"sir, if i may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?" if you are a seer, whenever you meet a manyou will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him,even to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn,
and he will appear to be harnessed to itand making what headway he can. i think that the man is at a dead set whohas got through a knot-hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannotfollow him. i cannot but feel compassion when i hearsome trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his"furniture," as whether it is insured or "but what shall i do with my furniture?"--my gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. even those who seem for a long while not tohave any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody'sbarn.
i look upon england today as an oldgentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which hasaccumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; greattrunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. throw away the first three at least. it would surpass the powers of a well mannowadays to take up his bed and walk, and i should certainly advise a sick one to laydown his bed and run. when i have met an immigrant totteringunder a bundle which contained his all-- looking like an enormous wen which hadgrown out of the nape of his neck--i have pitied him, not because that was his all,but because he had all that to carry.
if i have got to drag my trap, i will takecare that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. but perchance it would be wisest never toput one's paw into it. i would observe, by the way, that it costsme nothing for curtains, for i have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon,and i am willing that they should look in. the moon will not sour milk nor taint meatof mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet; and if he issometimes too warm a friend, i find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than toadd a single item to the details of
housekeeping. a lady once offered me a mat, but as i hadno room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, ideclined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. it is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.not long since i was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had notbeen ineffectual:-- "the evil that men do lives after them." as usual, a great proportion was trumperywhich had begun to accumulate in his father's day.among the rest was a dried tapeworm.
and now, after lying half a century in hisgarret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, orpurifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. the neighbors eagerly collected to viewthem, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dustholes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. when a man dies he kicks the dust. the customs of some savage nations might,perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblanceof casting their slough annually; they have
the idea of the thing, whether they havethe reality or not. would it not be well if we were tocelebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first fruits," as bartram describes to have beenthe custom of the mucclasse indians? "when a town celebrates the busk," says he,"having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and otherhousehold utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleansetheir houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all theremaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap,and consume it with fire.
after having taken medicine, and fasted forthree days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. during this fast they abstain from thegratification of every appetite and passion whatever.a general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town." "on the fourth morning, the high priest, byrubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whenceevery habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame." they then feast on the new corn and fruits,and dance and sing for three days, "and the
four following days they receive visits andrejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified andprepared themselves." the mexicans also practised a similarpurification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time forthe world to come to an end. i have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament,that is, as the dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward andspiritual grace," than this, and i have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from heaven to do thus, thoughthey have no biblical record of the revelation.
for more than five years i maintainedmyself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and i found that, by working aboutsix weeks in a year, i could meet all the expenses of living. the whole of my winters, as well as most ofmy summers, i had free and clear for study. i have thoroughly tried school-keeping, andfound that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income,for i was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, andi lost my time into the bargain. as i did not teach for the good of myfellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure.
i have tried trade but i found that itwould take ten years to get under way in that, and that then i should probably be onmy way to the devil. i was actually afraid that i might by thattime be doing what is called a good business. when formerly i was looking about to seewhat i could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes offriends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, i thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely i coulddo, and its small profits might suffice-- for my greatest skill has been to want butlittle--so little capital it required, so
little distraction from my wonted moods, ifoolishly thought. while my acquaintances went unhesitatinglyinto trade or the professions, i contemplated this occupation as most liketheirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so,to keep the flocks of admetus. i also dreamed that i might gather the wildherbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of thewoods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. but i have since learned that trade curseseverything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse oftrade attaches to the business.
as i preferred some things to others, andespecially valued my freedom, as i could fare hard and yet succeed well, i did notwish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other 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 them when acquired, irelinquish to them the pursuit. some are "industrious," and appear to lovelabor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; tosuch i have at present nothing to say. those who would not know what to do withmore leisure than they now enjoy, i might
advise to work twice as hard as they do--work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. for myself i found that the occupation of aday-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirtyor forty days in a year to support one. the laborer's day ends with the going downof the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independentof his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to theother. in short, i am convinced, both by faith andexperience, that to maintain one's self on
this earth is not a hardship but a pastime,if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are stillthe sports of the more artificial. it is not necessary that a man should earnhis living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than i do. chapter 1 - part 5economy one young man of my acquaintance, who hasinherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as i did, if he hadthe means. i would not have any one adopt my mode ofliving on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it i may havefound out another for myself, i desire that
there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but i would haveeach one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's orhis mother's or his neighbor's instead. the youth may build or plant or sail, onlylet him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. it is by a mathematical point only that weare wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; butthat is sufficient guidance for all our life. we may not arrive at our port within acalculable period, 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 not proportionally moreexpensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and onewall separate several apartments. but for my part, i preferred the solitarydwelling. moreover, it will commonly be cheaper tobuild the whole yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the commonwall; and when you have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other may prove abad neighbor, and also not keep his side in
repair. the only co-operation which is commonlypossible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true co-operation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. if a man has faith, he will co-operate withequal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like therest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. to co-operate in the highest as well as thelowest sense, means to get our living together.
i heard it proposed lately that two youngmen should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means ashe went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchangein his pocket. it was easy to see that they could not longbe companions or co-operate, since one would not operate at all. they would part at the first interestingcrisis in their adventures. above all, as i have implied, the man whogoes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till thatother is ready, and it 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 hitherto indulgedvery little in philanthropic enterprises. i have made some sacrifices to a sense ofduty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. there are those who have used all theirarts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town;and if i had nothing to do--for the devil finds employment for the idle--i might trymy hand at some such pastime as that. however, when i have thought to indulgemyself in this respect, and lay their heaven under an obligation by maintainingcertain poor persons in all respects as
comfortably as i maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them theoffer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. while my townsmen and women are devoted inso many ways to the good of their fellows, i trust that one at least may be spared toother and less humane pursuits. you must have a genius for charity as wellas for anything else. as for doing-good, that is one of theprofessions which are full. moreover, i have tried it fairly, and,strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
probably i should not consciously anddeliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me,to save the universe from annihilation; and i believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all thatnow preserves it. but i would not stand between any man andhis genius; and to him who does this work, which i decline, with his whole heart andsoul and life, i would say, persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it ismost likely they will. i am far from supposing that my case is apeculiar one; no doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence.
at doing something--i will not engage thatmy neighbors shall 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 to find out. what good i do, in the common sense of thatword, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. men say, practically, begin where you areand such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindnessaforethought go about doing good. if i were to preach at all in this strain,i should say rather, set about being good. as if the sun should stop when he hadkindled his fires up to the splendor of a
moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, andgo about like a robin goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and makingdarkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his genial heat and beneficencetill he is of such brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the meanwhile too, going about theworld in his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy hasdiscovered, the world going about him getting good. when phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenlybirth by his beneficence, had the sun's
chariot but one day, and drove out of thebeaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, anddried up every spring, and made the great desert of sahara, till at length jupiterhurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief athis death, did not shine for a year. there is no odor so bad as that whicharises from goodness tainted. it is human, it is divine, carrion. if i knew for a certainty that a man wascoming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, i should run formy life, as from that dry and parching wind
of the african deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears andeyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that i should get some of his gooddone to me--some of its virus mingled with my blood. no--in this case i would rather suffer evilthe natural way. a man is not a good man to me because hewill feed me if i should be starving, or warm me if i should be freezing, or pull meout of a ditch if i should ever fall into i can find you a newfoundland dog that willdo as much. philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense.
howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind andworthy man in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are ahundred howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our best estate, when we are most worthy to behelped? i never heard of a philanthropic meeting inwhich it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me. the jesuits were quite balked by thoseindians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to theirtormentors. being superior to physical suffering, itsometimes chanced that they were superior
to any consolation which the missionariescould offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, didnot care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and camevery near freely forgiving them all they did. be sure that you give the poor the aid theymost need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind.if you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. we make curious mistakes sometimes.often the poor man is not so cold and
hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross.it is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. if you give him money, he will perhaps buymore rags with it. i was wont to pity the clumsy irishlaborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while i shiveredin my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the watercame to my house to warm him, and i saw him strip off three pairs of pants and twopairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged
enough, it is true, and that he couldafford to refuse the extra garments which i offered him, he had so many intra ones.this ducking was the very thing he needed. then i began to pity myself, and i saw thatit would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shopon him. there are a thousand hacking at thebranches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestowsthe largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives invain 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 byemploying them in their kitchens. would they not be kinder if they employedthemselves there? you boast of spending a tenth part of yourincome in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. is this owing to the generosity of him inwhose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice? philanthropy is almost the only virtuewhich is sufficiently appreciated by
mankind.nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. a robust poor man, one sunny day here inconcord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to thepoor; meaning himself. the kind uncles and aunts of the race aremore esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. i once heard a reverend lecturer onengland, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating herscientific, literary, and political worthies, shakespeare, bacon, cromwell,
milton, newton, and others, speak next ofher christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevatedto a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. they were penn, howard, and mrs. fry.every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. the last were not england's best men andwomen; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists. i would not subtract anything from thepraise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by theirlives and works are a blessing to mankind.
i do not value chiefly a man's uprightnessand benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. those plants of whose greenness withered wemake herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed byquacks. i want the flower and fruit of a man; thatsome fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor ourintercourse. his goodness must not be a partial andtransitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he isunconscious. this is a charity that hides a multitude ofsins.
the philanthropist too often surroundsmankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and callsit sympathy. we should impart our courage, and not ourdespair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does notspread by contagion. from what southern plains comes up thevoice of wailing? under what latitudes reside the heathen towhom we would send light? who is that intemperate and brutal man whomwe would redeem? if anything ail a man, so that he does notperform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even--for that is the seat ofsympathy--he forthwith sets about
reforming--the world. being a microcosm himself, he discovers--and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it--that the world has beeneating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think ofthat the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drasticphilanthropy seeks out the esquimau and the patagonian, and embraces the populous indian and chinese villages; and thus, by afew years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for theirown ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his
dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it werebeginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet andwholesome to live. i never dreamed of any enormity greaterthan i have committed. i never knew, and never shall know, a worseman than myself. i believe that what so saddens the reformeris not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest sonof god, is his private ail. let this be righted, let the spring come tohim, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companionswithout apology.
my excuse for not lecturing against the useof tobacco is, that i never chewed it, that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewershave to pay; though there are things enough i have chewed which i could lectureagainst. if you should ever be betrayed into any ofthese philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for itis not worth knowing. rescue the drowning and tie yourshoestrings. take your time, and set about some freelabor. our manners have been corrupted bycommunication with the saints. our hymn-books resound with a melodiouscursing of god and enduring him forever.
one would say that even the prophets andredeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. there is nowhere recorded a simple andirrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of god. all health and success does me good,however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps tomake me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or i with it. if, then, we would indeed restore mankindby truly indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simpleand well as nature ourselves, dispel the
clouds which hang over our own brows, andtake up a little life into our pores. do not stay to be an overseer of the poor,but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world. i read in the gulistan, or flower garden,of sheik sadi of shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: of the many celebratedtrees which the most high god has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bearsno fruit; what mystery is there in this? he replied, each has its appropriateproduce, and appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh andblooming, and during their absence dry and
withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing;and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents.--fix not thy hearton that which is transitory; for the dijlah, or tigris, will continue to flow through bagdad after the race of caliphs isextinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothingto give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress." complemental versesthe pretensions of poverty thou dost presume too much,poor needy wretch,
to claim a station in the firmamentbecause thy humble cottage, or thy tub, nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue in the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,with roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,tearing those humane passions from the mind, upon whose stocks fair bloomingvirtues flourish, degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,and, gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. we not require the dull societyof your necessitated temperance,
or that unnatural stupiditythat knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd falsely exalted passive fortitudeabove the active. this low abject brood,that fix their seats in mediocrity, become your servile minds; but we advance such virtues only as admit excess,brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, all-seeing prudence, magnanimitythat knows no bound, and that heroic virtue for which antiquity hath left no name,but patterns only, such as hercules, achilles, theseus.back to thy loath'd cell;
and when thou seest the newenlightened sphere, study to know but what those worthies were.t. carew
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