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Walden

Thoreau
David
Henry
 1817

ARTES SCIENTIA
VERITAS
LIBRARY OF IGAN
CHTHE
I V E R SITY F MI
UN O

SLPLURITIUS UNUM

TUEBOR

SI-QUE RISPENINSU AMONAM

LAM
CIRCUMSPICE

GIFT OF
ALFRED C. FINNEY
B.S. 1904

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

BYRON A. FINNEY, A.B., 1871
REFERENCE LIBRARIAN, 1891-1916
888
T49
1899
F
H
B.A. Finney

from miss amanda Belser 82

a -a. ,1902
Dec. 25 T
Henry D. Thoreau .
Henry D. Thoreau .
B.A. Finney
from miss amanda Belser

a -a . Dec. 25
,1902 Ty
 WALDEN

CR

LIFE IN THE WOODS

BY

Henry D. Thoreau

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

Charles G. D. Roberts

T. Y. CROWELL & COMPANY

NEW YORK
 COPYRIGHT, 1899,
By T. Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.
V of A. C. Finney
.
4-2-41

CONTENTS.

I.
PAGE
ECONOMY I

II.
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 83

III.
READING . 103

IV.
SOUNDS • • 116

V.
SOLITUDE · 135

VI.
VISITORS . 146

VII.
THE BEANFIELD · 162

VIII.
THE VILLAGE 175
iii
iv CONTENTS.

IX.
PAGE
THE PONDS 182

X.
BAKER FARM 211

XI.
HIGHER LAWS 220

XII.
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 234

XIII.
HOUSE-WARMING • 249

XIV.

FORMER INHABITANTS ; AND WINTER VISITORS · 268

XV.
WINTER ANIMALS 284

XVI.
THE POND IN WINTER • 296

XVII.
SPRING 314

XVIII.
CONCLUSION 336
 INTRODUCTION.

OF all Thoreau's works the one most perfectly

infused with the essence of his genius is " Walden,
or Life in the Woods. " Thoreau has been called
"The Poet-Naturalist," " The New England Stoic,"
"A Modern Jaques, " and many other appellations
in which the coiner of phrases has sought to crystal-
lize into an epithet this strange hybrid of Concord
on Cathay. Though each has a germ of truth in it
to keep it alive, the phrases ticket him falsely. They
are misleading for two reasons. In the first place,
they have the air of definition ; and Thoreau, though
in a sense narrow, has boundaries too wide for any
epithet to contain his qualities. The bigger part of
him is sure to lie outside the lines of any epigram-
matic definition. In the second place, any catch-
word used, for convenience , to label a great man,
should indicate the essential characteristic of his
genius . It should show what he chiefly stands for.
Now Thoreau is very little of a poet, though a thin
ray of the true supernal fire does sometimes flash
from an angle of his ragged verse . He is very much
of a naturalist , of course, a naturalist in the most
vital sense : for he has " named all the birds without
V
vi INTRODUCTION.

a gun " ; he has fulfilled the requirements of Emer-

son, and discerned the souls as well as observed the
bodies of Nature and her children . But it is inci-
dentally, rather than primarily, that he is a naturalist .
He is a naturalist, it seems to me, because through
the intimacy of Nature lay the straightest road to his
goal . He has the obvious ear-marks of the Stoic ;
but in the last analysis he comes out a far-sighted
Epicurean, finding his happiness, his indulgence, in
the ascetic practice of the Stoics . Least of all is he
heir to the melancholic philosopher of Arden ; for
his melancholy is not a pose, but a deep, tempera-
mental fact, perhaps never freely acknowledged to his
own heart, and always lustily denied to the world .
Moreover, Jaques knew his contemporaries, in and
out ; apprehended his own times ; knew his world ;
knew himself. But this modern Jaques did not
know his own day and generation, - did not want
to know them. It is pretty obvious that he had but
a partial and distorted acquaintance with himself.
He knew, however, the great works, the master
minds, of old, whose message has come down to us
so clarified by time that it breathes upon our souls like
a pure spirit. He saw with a clear and kindred eye,
he understood with his heart, the life of field and wood
and water about him . The open sky, the solitudes
of the windy hill-top, the sweep of the storm, the
spacious changes of dark and dawn, these, it seems
to me, spoke to him more clearly than to others .
Nevertheless, though the customary labels on
Thoreau are thus misleading, it is certainly a con-
venience to have every man of genius in some
 INTRODUCTION. vii

handy way ticketed . If we call Thoreau the " Liber-

ator," we remember him by what seems to me the
prime function of his genius . What he chiefly sought
for himself was freedom . What his life and his writ-
ings chiefly do for others is to arouse them, slap cold
water in their faces , prod and hustle them on toward
freedom. To Thoreau freedom meant escape from
the bondage of petty and pinchbeck gods , the chance
to live life fully, the leisure to think , and ripen , and
enjoy . His best work is full of the suggestion of
escape . It invites and urges the reader forth from
his thraldom . It makes for emancipation , - spiritual,
mental , moral, physical . In no other of his books is
this liberating and arousing force so active as in
"Walden," which carries on its title-page the brave
announcement-- " I do not propose to write an ode
to dejection, but to brag as lustily as Chanticleer in
the morning , standing on his roost, if only to wake
my neighbors up. "
In the pages of " Walden," therefore, we come into
most direct contact with those currents of power
which it is Thoreau's part to supply ; we touch his
personality with the most intimate privilege that he
can afford.
But as I have said, Thoreau did not seem to know
himself as thoroughly as he knew the wisdom of
Meng or the ways of the chipmunks familiar to his
door-sill. If we seek to know him merely through
his work, we wrong him in many particulars, and get
a picture of him which is sure to lessen his influence.
He is not as unhuman as he likes to represent him-
self. He is not so perfectly self-sufficing. Above all,
viii INTRODUCTION.

he is not always so robustiously jubilant over the

drawing of his daily breath as he would have us
believe . We wonder, now and then, if he does not
protest upon this point just a shade too vehemently,
as if willing to convince himself along with others.
The first glance at his strong, narrow, deep-lined
face, with its sensitive mouth, sympathetic eyes, and
brow troubled by remembrance, belies many a cold
and confident paragraph . To be fully open to his
charm , to avoid being jarred into unreceptive antag-
onism by his extravagances, we must approach him
through his life as well as through his work. We
must allow fully for his personal equation .
Henry David Thoreau was born at Concord, Mas-
sachusetts, on July 12, 1817. His grandfather was a
Frenchman, his grandmother, on the father's side, a
Scotchwoman. In the fabric of his character, it
seems to me, these two threads run a vivid pattern
upon the austere web of his New Englandism. From
the grandfather he inherited a Gallic fineness, a sin-
gular perception and mastery of the exact phrase, and
perhaps, too, that manual dexterity which enabled
him to do everything aptly and neatly that was to be
done with the fingers . He could make a lead-pencil
or a sentence, the one, like the other, very accurately
adapted to its purpose. From his grandfather, assur-
edly, he derived the curious French accent which not
even forty-five years of purest Concord English could
quite eradicate. From the Scotch grandmother, we
may guess, he drew that inimitable admixture of the
far-leaping, illuminating imagination with the frugality
that could weigh fractions of a farthing. But in the
 INTRODUCTION. ix

main he was true New England, - — strong, somewhat

limited, reticent, unconciliatory, yet liable to surprise
one with sudden irradiations of tenderness and beauty.
His charm is likely to appear as does the clump of
harebell on the rock, or the flushing arbutus blossom
on the rough-leaved hillock in the stump-lot.
Plain living, to the verge of deprivation, was the
rule in the home of Thoreau's childhood ; but the rich
compensation of high thinking was not absent. The
life of the intellect and spirit was perceived at its true
value in that frugal household, and the family stinted
itself with self-sacrificing rigor to provide for his edu-
cation at Harvard . The home was a seeding-place
of abolitionist sentiment. The first daring agitators
gathered there to plan their assault upon the giant
evil of their day ; and thither came the fleeing slaves
with their frightened faces set northward, to be
hidden, and heartened, and passed on to the next
refuge . It was a fit beginning, this, to Thoreau's
work as a " liberator." This high enterprise of his
people must have seemed to him symbolic of a larger
emancipation which was afterwards to engage his
efforts.
At Harvard (where he took his degree in 1837, and
with characteristic frugality effected a saving of five
dollars by refusing his diploma) , he lived a life of
rigid seclusion, shunning acquaintance, and absorbed
in the classics . One friendship he made, however,
and such a one as to justify him in proclaiming him-
self rich in friends though he should know no other.
He met Emerson, and won his comradeship . He
was fourteen years younger than Emerson, and tem-
X INTRODUCTION.

peramentally fitted to receive the impress of his gen-

ius, ―the most penetrating and insistent force, it
seems to me, that American literature has produced .
The mark of Emerson is on all Thoreau's best work.
After college Thoreau's life was uneventful, in the
accepted sense of the word . He lectured a little.
He taught in the Concord Academy for a time. He
had a brief experience as private tutor in the family
of Emerson's brother. He did some surveying for •
the farmers of his neighborhood . He could have
earned his living by any trade which required skill of
the hand, for in this direction his aptitude was mar-
vellous . He was an efficient carpenter. He special-
ized, as we have seen, so far as to learn to make a
lead-pencil ; but as soon as he had achieved a perfect
one he dropped the craft, to the astonishment of his
friends, on the ground that when there was no further
advance to be made he had no further interest in the
effort. In a full survey of the man this does not ap-
pear like caprice, but rather as consistency ; and it
must be remembered that late in life, when his family
needed his support, he resumed the occupation of
making lead-pencils, and earned a living at it.
In 1845 Thoreau built himself the famous " Her-
mitage " on the shore of Walden Pond . His two
years in that congenial solitude resulted in this book
called " Walden," -- which was not published till nine
years later. In 1849 he published " A Week on the
Concord and Merrimac Rivers, ”— many-colored beads
of observation, description, suggestion, apt quotation,
strung upon the slenderest thread of travel . Thoreau
claimed to know the world thoroughly, for he had
 INTRODUCTION. xi

"travelled many years in Concord. " As a matter of

fact, he went somewhat further afield than that, ven-
turing into the Maine woods, over the Canadian bor-
der, and even southward on a daring enterprise into
the very recesses of Staten Island . In truth, how-
ever, few indeed of the famous world-adventurers
travelled to such advantage as he. For the perfect
knowledge of his own little world about Concord
supplied him with a stable point of departure and
secure homing for many a voyage into the infinite.
It was before the migration to Walden Pond that
an episode occurred which needs to be well taken
account of in any estimate of Thoreau's character.
He loved a woman, fitted, it seems, to be his mate ;
and he gave her up to his brother, remaining single
thenceforward for her sake. It is not quite clear what
part the lady had in this outcome ; but the fact that
he was once honestly in love acquits him of too great
remoteness from the brotherhood of men, and ex-
plains in part that underlying melancholy, as from a
sentiment repressed and feeding upon itself, which his
face confesses and his writings too protestingly deny.
Such an act of renunciation is in keeping with the
rest of the man as we find him, though hardly, per-
haps, with his most strenuously advocated theories .
It is difficult to give this factor an exact value, be-
cause it is impossible to know which, in reality,
Thoreau loved best, - the girl, or the fine ecstasy of
self-sacrifice. Renunciation is to some temperaments
a luxury too exquisite to be denied ; and there is
enough of the feminine in Thoreau's mixed make-up to
let one suspect that it may have been so in his case.
xii INTRODUCTION.

However that be, the experience scarred him deeply. m

It proves, moreover, that he was not so icily unre- h
sponsive, so coldly philosophical, so loftily aloof from
the heart-beats of humanity, as he would have us
believe . In the light of this knowledge, as Robert
Louis Stevenson has well said, " these pages, seem-
ingly so cold, are seen to be alive with feeling " ; and
again - “ he was affecting the Spartanism he had not ;
and the old sentimental wound still bled, while he
deceived himself with reasons." We may take it for
granted, then, that when he brags, " I love my fate to
the core and rind," though sincere in the main, he is
sometimes like the little boy in the dark who whistles
to keep up his courage .
On May 6, 1862, at the early age of forty-five,
this devotee of out-doors, this abstemious liver, this
avoider of flesh, wine, and tobacco, this intimate of
sanity and cleanness, with Nature's own permit, it
would seem, to live a hundred years, fell into an
ambuscade . The scourge of his New England in-
heritance came upon him, and he died of consump-
tion. His grave is in Sleepy Hollow, at Concord.
In appearance Thoreau bore a striking resemblance
to Emerson, but with less of mastery in his face, and
more of that sensitive appeal which he was forever
repudiating. Also there was a wildness, a suggestion
of the untamed, quite contradictory to the repose of
Emerson's features . He was of middle height, lean,
long-armed, slant-shouldered, with the large, capable,
nervous hands which know how to do things, and the
long feet that come down noiselessly and flatly on
the twig-strewn forest paths, like an Indian's . His
 INTRODUCTION. xiii

mouth was full-lipped, sensitive, almost self-indulgent,

his nose was large, enduringly forceful like his chin ;
his eyes, of a blue full of light and attractive in
expression, were deep set under rugged brows ; his
forehead was lined, and bore creases of impatient
protest between the brows . This very individual face
was framed in a throat-whisker, of the unlovely pat-
tern so prevalent at that day, and a dishevelled super-
abundance of dark brown hair. He moved swiftly
and furtively . He was not too dignified to dart
through a hedge or over a neighbor's back fence, to
escape an encounter which meant boredom. He was
an untiring writer, an exhaustive reader, and stooped
from his devotion to book and desk. Altogether, in
his appearance no less than in his mental cast, he
was a blend of the scholar and the woodman, the
faun and the savant. However scholastic his for-
mula, there is always a free, fresh impulse behind it.
He is never so chilled by his book-lore but that he
knows how to coax the partridge to feed at his door,
the shy wood-mice to scurry up his sleeve and share
his bread. In this mingling of contradictions lies, I
think, no small part of the magic which gives wings
to Thoreau's message .
As already indicated, both the message and the
magic are nowhere so adequately presented as in
"Walden." The circumstances which gave rise to
this work form a vital portion of the work itself, and
are minutely detailed throughout its pages . But they
might as well be summarized here.
The bondage which proved hardest on Thoreau
was the necessity of expending his time and his best
xiv INTRODUCTION.

forces in the mere struggle for food and shelter.

When these were secured he found he had no leisure
to be wise, no impulse left to carry on his growth.
Looking about him he saw others in worse case than
himself, in a more hopeless and grinding slavery to
the mere cost of subsistence. He saw that for most
others, as for himself, there was small chance of relief
by a diminution of the cost of their seeming necessi-
ties . " The cost of a thing," he said, " is the amount
of what I will call life which is required to be ex-
changed for it, immediately or in the long run." His
only alternative was to reduce the necessities of sub-
sistence to their lowest terms. When, therefore, he
fled from the world to Walden Pond, it was not solely
from a selfish desire to read, write, and cultivate his
powers unhindered. In winning freedom for himself
he would point others the way to freedom . He would
show how very small were those needs of the body
which, too often, a man spends his whole life in
supplying. He would prove that in every life there
might be time to be wise, opportunity to tend the
growth of the spirit. He writes, " I would fain im-
prove every opportunity to wonder and worship. ”
On the shore of Walden Pond, on land which he
got rent free because Emerson owned it, he built
with his own hands " The Hermitage," at a cost, as
he notes in an itemized memorandum, of $28.12 . It
was well built, shingled and plastered, with an honest,
capacious chimney and cheerful open hearth. Here
he lived for two years, chiefly on rice, Indian corn,
rye meal, and molasses, at an average cost of about
twenty-seven cents a week for his food. On the land
 INTRODUCTION. XV

about his cottage he raised a crop of beans, a crop

which he found congenial exercise in cultivating.
The beans yielded him a cash profit of $ 8.71 , and
a large return in philosophic meditations. Here he
got close to the life of beasts, birds, and insects. He
learned to discriminate all their notes . He kept a
calendar of the flowers, and knew to a day when each
would open. He kept voluminous " Fact-books,"
recording minutely his ceaseless observations of him-
self and of Nature. When, after two years of health,
growth, and effective work, he felt that he had ex-
hausted what this kind of life had to give him, - — that
he had perfected it, as he had his lead-pencil, - — and
that he had proved his case, he frankly and without
apology gave up the experiment and returned to the
mitigated distractions of Concord village. As con-
cerned his own personality, the experiment had been
a success ; but when a few years later ( 1854 ) the
book which was its concrete product appeared in
print, it was seen to have been a success also as far
as humanity was concerned. He had expanded the
lessons of his abolitionist childhood . He had made
his cabin on Walden Pond, as Stevenson suggests,
a station on man's underground railway from slavery
to freedom .
"Walden " is a book in which homely sense and
heavenly insight jostle each other on the page . Most
of its characteristics have been already conveyed, in
diffusion, throughout the course of this note. It only
remains to add a word as to its style, and as to the
occasional extravagances of its statements . Its style
is a kind of celestial homespun, plain, often harsh,
xvi INTRODUCTION.

but interwoven not seldom with the radiances of a

white and soaring imagination . Its observations of
the truths of Nature are as exact in their fidelity and
beauty as its statements of higher and obscurer truths
of the spirit are, sometimes at least, exaggerated .
This extravagance, it must be remembered, is delib-
erate and for a purpose. He himself says, " No truth,
we think, was ever expressed but with this sort of em-
phasis, that for the time there seemed to be no other. ”
Recognizing that men are dull to apprehend spiritual
truths, he chose to make such truths more poignant
and inescapable by presenting them without qualifi-
cation, in such a manner that to the temperate mind
they seem like one-sided statements. The reader of
"Walden," in particular, should bear in mind that
Thoreau says : " I fear chiefly lest my expression
may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far
enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experi-
ence, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have
been convinced . • I desire to speak somewhere
without bounds ; like a man in a waking moment, to
men in their waking moments ; for I am convinced
that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foun-
dation of a true expression. Who that has heard
a strain of music feared then lest he should speak
extravagantly any more forever ? "

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS .
 WALDEN.

I.

ECONOMY.

WHEN I wrote the following pages, or rather the

bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from
any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on
the shore ofWalden Pond , in Concord, Massachusetts,
and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.
I lived there two years and two months. At present
I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the
notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had
not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode
of life , which some would call impertinent, though
they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, con-
sidering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent.
Some have asked what I got to eat ; if I did not feel
lonesome ; if I was not afraid ; and the like . Others
have been curious to learn what portion of my income
I devoted to charitable purposes ; and some, who have
large families, how many poor children I maintained .
I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no
particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake
to answer some of these questions in this book. In
most books, the I, or first person, is omitted ; in this
B I
2 WALDEN.

it will be retained ; that, in respect to egotism, is the

main difference . We commonly do not remember
that it is, after all, always the first person that is
speaking. I should not talk so much about myself
if there were anybody else whom I knew as well .
Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the
narrowness of my experience . Moreover, I , on my
side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and
sincere account of his own life, and not merely what
he has heard of other men's lives ; some such account
as he would send to his kindred from a distant land ;
for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a
distant land to me . Perhaps these pages are more
particularly addressed to poor students . As for the
rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as
apply to them . I trust that none will stretch the
seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good
service to him whom it fits .
I would fain say something, not so much concerning
the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders, as you who read
these pages, who are said to live in New England ;
something about your condition, especially your out-
ward condition or circumstances in this world, in this
town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as
bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as
not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord ; and
everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the
inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance
in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard
of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking
in the face of the sun ; or hanging suspended , with
their heads downward, over flames ; or looking at the
heavens over their shoulders " until it becomes impos-
sible for them to resume their natural position , while
 ECONOMY. 3

from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can

pass into the stomach ; " or dwelling, chained for life,
at the foot of a tree ; or measuring with their bodies,
like caterpillars, the breadth ofvast empires ; or stand-
ing on one leg on the tops of pillars, even these
forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible
and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness .
The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in com-
parison with those which my neighbors have under-
taken ; for they were only twelve, and had an end ;
but I could never see that these men slew or captured
any monster or finished any labor. They have no
friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the
hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two
spring up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune
it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and
farming tools ; for these are more easily acquired than
got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open
pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have
seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to
labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why
should they eat their sixty acres, when man is con-
demned to eat only his peck of dirt ? Why should
they begin digging their graves as soon as they are
born ? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all
these things before them, and get on as well as they
can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met
well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creep-
ing 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, mow-
ing, pasture, and wood-lot ! The portionless, who
struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encum-
4 WALDEN.

brances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a

few cubic feet of flesh .
But men labor under a mistake. The better part
of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost.
By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they
are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up
treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves
break through and steal . It is a fool's life, as they
will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by
throwing stones over their heads behind them : —

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum ,

Et documenta, damus quâ simus origine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,

" From thence our kind-hearted is, enduring pain and care,
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle,

throwing the stones over their heads behind them,
not seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country,
through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied
with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors
of life, that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them .
Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and
tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring
man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day ;
he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to
men ; his labor would be depreciated in the market.
He has no time to be anything but a machine. How
can he remember well his ignorance — which his
growth requires - who has so often to use his knowl-
 ECONOMY. 5

edge ? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously

sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before
we judge of him . The finest qualities ofour nature, like
the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most
delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor
one another thus tenderly.
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to
live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I
have no doubt that some of you who read this book are
unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actu-
ally eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast
wearing or are already worn out, and have come to
this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing
your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what
mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight
has been whetted by experience ; always on the limits,
trying to get into business and trying to get out of
debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins æs
alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were
made of brass ; still living, and dying, and buried by
this other's brass ; always promising to pay, promis-
ing to pay, to-morrow, and dying to-day, insolvent ;
seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many
modes, only not state-prison offences ; lying, flattering,
voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civil-
ity, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vapor-
ous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor
to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or
his carriage, or import his groceries for him ; making
yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against
a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old
chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more
safely, in a brick bank ; no matter where, no matter
how much or how little .
6 WALDEN.*

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I

may almost say, as to attend to the gross but some-
what foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery,
there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave
both north and south. It is hard to have a southern
overseer ; it is worse to have a northern one ; but worst
ofall when you are the slave-driver ofyourself. Talk of
a divinity in man ! Look at the teamster on the high-
way, wending to market by day or night ; does any
divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder
and water his horses ! What is his destiny to him
compared with the shipping interests ? Does not he
drive for Squire Make-a-stir ? How godlike, how im-
mortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks , how
vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor
divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion
of himself, a fame won by his own deeds . Public
opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private
opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is
which determines, or rather indicates, his fate . Self-
emancipation even in the West Indian provinces ofthe
fancy and imagination , ― what Wilberforce is there
to bring that about ? Think, also, of the ladies ofthe
land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not
to betray too green an interest in their fates ! As if
you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation .
From the desperate city you go into the desperate
Country, and have to console yourself with the
bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but
unconscious despair is concealed even under what are
called the games and amusements of mankind . There
is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it
 ECONOMY. 7

is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate

things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the
catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the
true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if
men had deliberately chosen the common mode of
living because they preferred it to any other. Yet
they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert
and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way
of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted
without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence
passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood
to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had
trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain
on their fields . What old people say you cannot do
you try and find that you can . Old deeds for old
people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not
know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to
keep the fire a-going ; new people put a little dry wood
under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the
speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the
phrase is . Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified
for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so
much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the
wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by
living. Practically, the old have no very important
advice to give the young, their own experience has
been so partial, and their lives have been such miser-
able failures, for private reasons, as they must believe ;
and it may be that they have some faith left which
belies that experience, and they are only less young
than they were. I have lived some thirty years on
this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable
8 WALDEN.

of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell
me anything, to the purpose . Here is life, an exper-
iment to a great extent untried by me ; but it does not
avail me that they have tried it . If I have any ex-
perience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect
that this my Mentors said nothing about.
Onefarmersays to me, " You cannot live on vegetable
food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones
with ; " and so he religiously devotes a part of his day
to supplying his system with the raw material of bones,
walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which,
with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumber-
ing plough along in spite of every obstacle . Some
things are really necessaries of life in some circles,
the most helpless and diseased, which in others are lux-
uries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to
have been gone over by their predecessors, both the
heights and the valleys, and all things to have been
cared for. According to Evelyn, " the wise Solomon
prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees ;
and the Roman prætors have decided how often you
may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns
which fall on it without trespass, and what share be-
longs to that neighbor. " Hippocrates has even left
directions how we should cut our nails ; that is, even
with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer.
Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which pre-
sume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life
are as old as Adam . But man's capacities have never
been measured ; nor are we to judge of what he can
do by any precedents, so little has been tried. What-
ever have been thy failures hitherto, " be not afflicted,
 ECONOMY.
II
my child, for who shall assign to th
left undone? " I mean whatever,
We might try our lives by a thown exertions, has✔
as, for instance, that the same sun has become, so
beans illumines at once a system of e any, whether
If I had remembered this it would havhy, ever at-
some mistakes . This was not the light there is
hoed them . The stars are the apexes of wi To the
derful triangles ! What distant and different btable
in the various mansions of the universe are contem-
plating the same one at the same moment ! Nature
and human life are as various as our several consti-
tutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to
another ? Could a greater miracle take place than
for us to look through each other's eyes for an in-
stant? We should live in all the ages ofthe world in an
hour ; ay, in all the worlds ofthe ages . History, Poetry,
Mythology ! I know of no reading of another's ex-
perience so startling and informing as this would be..
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I
believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any-
thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
What demon possessed me that I behaved so well ?
You may say the wisest thing you can, old man , - -
you who have lived seventy years, not without honor
of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites
me away from all that. One generation abandons
the enterprises of another like stranded vessels .
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more
than we do . We may waive just so much care of
ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature
is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength .
The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-
nigh incurable form of disease We are made to
8 WALDEN.

of valuable or evebortance of what work we do ; and

They have told me I done by us ! or, what if we had
me anything, to the How vigilant we are ! determined
iment to a great eith if we can avoid it ; all the day
avail me that thert, at night we unwillingly say our
perience whic commit ourselves to uncertainties . So
that this Dy and sincerely are we compelled to live,
One faing our life, and denying the possibility of
foodge. This is the only way, we say ; but there are
as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one
centre . All change is a miracle to contemplate ; but
it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Confucius said, " To know that we know what we
know, and that we do not know what we do not
know, that is true knowledge. " When one man has
reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his
understanding, I foresee that all men will at length
establish their lives on that basis .

Let us consider for a moment what most of the

trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about,
and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or,
at least, careful . It would be some advantage to live
a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of
an outward civilization , if only to learn what are the
gross necessaries of life and what methods have been
taken to obtain them ; or even to look over the old
day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that
men most commonly bought at the stores, what they
stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries . For
the improvements of ages have had but little influ-
ence on the essential laws of man's existence ; as our
skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from
those of our ancestors .
 ECONOMY. II

By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever,

of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has
been from the first, or from long use has become, so
important to human life that few, if any, whether
from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever at-
tempt to do without it. To many creatures there is
in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the
bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable
grass, with water to drink ; unless he seeks the Shel-
ter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of
the brute creation requires more than Food and Shel-
ter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate
may, accurately enough, be distributed under the
several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel ;
for not till we have secured these are we prepared to
entertain the true problems of life with freedom and
a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only
houses, but clothes and cooked food ; and possibly
from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire,
and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose
the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and
dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper
Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own
internal heat ; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel,
that is, with an external heat greater than our own
internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin?
Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Terra
del Fuego that, while his own party, who were well
clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too
warm , these naked savages, who were farther off,
were observed, to his great surprise, " to be streaming
with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." So,
we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with
impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes.
12 WALDEN.

Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of 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 slow com-
bustion, and disease and death take place when this
is too rapid ; or for want of fuel, or from some defect
in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital
heat is not to be confounded with fire ; but so much
for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above
list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synony-
mous with the expression, animal heat ; for while
Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up
the fire within us, — and Fuel serves only to prepare
that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies
by addition from without, - Shelter and Clothing
also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and
absorbed .
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies is to keep
warm, to keep the vital heat in us . What pains we
accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Cloth-
ing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our
night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to
prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has
its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow!
The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold
world ; and to cold , no less physical than social , we
refer directly a great part of our ails . The summer,
in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of
Elysian life . Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then
unnecessary ; the sun is his fire, and many of the
fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays ; while Food
generally is more various, and more easily obtained,
 ECONOMY. 13

and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unneces-

sary. At the present day, and in this country, as I
find my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an
axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the stu-
dious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books,
rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a
trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side
of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and
devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in
order that they may live, — that is, keep comfortably
warm, - — and die in New England at last . The lux-
uriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm,
but unnaturally hot ; as I implied before, they are
cooked, ofcourse à la mode.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called
comforts, of life are not only not indispensable, but
positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind .
With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have
ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the
poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo,
Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has
been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.
We know not much about them. It is remarkable
that we know so much of them as we do. The same
is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors
of their race. None can be an impartial or wise ob-
server of 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 it was once admi-
rable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely fo
have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but
14 WALDEN.

so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates,

a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and
trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not
only theoretically, but practically. The success of
great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-
like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift
to live merely by conformity, practically as their
fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a
nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate
ever? What makes families run out ? What is the
nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys
nations ? Are we sure that there is none of it in
our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of
his age even in the outward form of his life. He is
not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contem-
poraries . How can a man be a philosopher and not
maintain his vital heat by better methods than other
men ?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which
I have described, what does he want next ? Surely
not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer
food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more
abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hot-
ter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those
things which are necessary to life, there is another
alternative than to obtain the superfluities ; and that
is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from hum-
bler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is
suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle down-
ward, and it may now send its shoot upward also
with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus
firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same
proportion into the heavens above ? - for the nobler
plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the
 ECONOMY. 15

air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated
like the humbler esculents, which, though they may
be biennials, are cultivated only till they have per-
fected their root, and often cut down at top for this
purpose, so that most would not know them in their
flowering season .
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and val-
iant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether
in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnifi-
cently and spend more lavishly than the richest, with-
out ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how
they live, - if, indeed , there are any such, as has been
dreamed ; nor to those who find their encouragement
and inspiration in precisely the present condition of
things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusi-
asm of lovers, -— and, to some extent, I reckon myself
in this number ; I do not speak to those who are well
employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know
whether they are well employed or not ; -- but mainly
to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly
complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the
times, when they might improve them. There are
some who complain most energetically and inconsol-
ably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their
duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy
but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have
accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get
rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or
silver fetters.

If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to

spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise
those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted
" its actual history ; it would certainly astonish
16 WALDEN.

those who know nothing about it . I will only hint at

some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I
have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and
notch it on my stick too ; to stand on the meeting of
two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely
the present moment ; to toe that line. You will par-
don some obscurities, for there are more secrets in
my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily
kept, but inseparable from its very nature . I would
gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint
"No Admittance " on my gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-
dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the trav-
ellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their
tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met
one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp
of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind
a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them
as if they had lost them themselves .
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely,
but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings,
summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stir-
ring about his business, have I been about mine! No
doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning
from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in
the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work . It
is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his ris-
ing, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only
to be present at it.
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside
the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear
and carry it express ! I well-nigh sunk all my capital
in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, e
 ECONOMY. 17

ning in the face of it. If it had concerned either of

the political parties, depend upon it, it would have
appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence .
At other times watching from the observatory of some
cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival ; or waiting
at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I
might catch something, though I never caught much,
and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun .
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no
very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen
fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too
common with writers, I got only my labor for my
pains . However, in this case my pains were their
own reward .
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of
snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faith-
fully ; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest
paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open,
and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where
the public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town,
which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble
by leaping fences ; and I have had an eye to the un-
frequented nooks and corners of the farm ; though I
did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon
worked in a particular field to-day ; that was none of
my business . I have watered the red huckleberry,
the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and
the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet,
which might have withered else in dry seasons .
In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say
it without boasting, faithfully minding my business,
till it became more and more evident that my towns-
men would not after all admit me into the list of town
C
18 WALDEN.

officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate

allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have
kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited , still
less accepted, still less paid and settled . However, I
have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell bas-
kets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neigh-
borhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets ? " he
asked. " No, we do not want any," was the reply.
"What! " exclaimed the Indian, as he went out the
gate, " do you mean to starve us ? ” Having seen his
industrious white neighbors so well off, — that the law-
yer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic
wealth and standing followed, he had said to himself :
I will go into business ; I will weave baskets ; it is a
thing which I can do . Thinking that when he had
made the baskets he would have done his part, and
then it would be the white man's to buy them . He
had not discovered that it was necessary for him to
make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at
least make him think that it was so, or to make some-
thing else which it would be worth his while to buy.
I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture,
but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy
them . Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it
worth my while to weave them, and instead of study-
ing how to make it worth men's while to buy my bas-
kets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of
selling them. The life which men praise and regard
as successful is but one kind. Why should we exag-
gerate any one kind at the expense of the others ?
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to
offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or
living anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I
 ECONOMY. 19

turned my face more exclusively than ever to the

woods, where I was better known . I determined to
go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the
usual capital, using such slender means as I had al-
ready got . My purpose in going to Walden Pond
was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but
to transact some private business with the fewest ob-
stacles ; to be hindered from accomplishing which
for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise
and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish .
I have always endeavored to acquire strict business
habits ; they are indispensable to every man. If your
trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small
counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor,
will be fixture enough. You will export such articles
as the country affords, purely native products, much ice
and pine timber and a little granite, always in native
bottoms . These will be good ventures . To oversee
all the details yourself in person ; to be at once pilot
and captain, and owner and underwriter ; to buy and
sell and keep the accounts ; to read every letter re-
ceived, and write or read every letter sent ; to super-
intend the discharge of imports night and day ; to be
upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time ;
- often the richest freight will be discharged upon a
Jersey shore ; to be your own telegraph, unweariedly
sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels
bound coastwise ; to keep up a steady despatch of
commodities, for the supply of such a distant and
exorbitant market ; to keep yourself informed of the
state of the markets, prospects of war and peace
everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade
and civilization, — taking advantage of the results of
all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all
20 WALDEN.

improvements in navigation ; - charts to be studied,

the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be
ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables
to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the
vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached
a friendly pier, - there is the untold fate of La Perouse ;
universal science to be kept pace with, studying the
lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great ad-
venturers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoeni-
cians down to our day ; in fine, account of stock to be
taken from time to time, to know how you stand . It
is a labor to task the faculties of a man, such prob-
lems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret,
and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal
knowledge.
I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good
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 post and
a good foundation . No Neva marshes to be filled ;
though you must everywhere build on piles of your
own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a
westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep
St. Petersburg from the face of the earth.

As this business was to be entered into without the

usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where
those means, that will still be indispensable to every
such undertaking, were to be obtained . As for Cloth-
ing, to come at once to the practical part of the ques-
tion, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty,
and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it,
than by a true utility . Let him who has work to do
recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain
 CLOTHING. 21

the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to

cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any
necessary or important work may be accomplished
without adding to his wardrobe . Kings and queens
who wear a suit but once, though made by some
tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know
the comfort of wearing a suit that fits . They are no
better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes
on. Every day our garments become more assimi-
lated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the
wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them
aside, without such delay and medical appliances
and some such solemnity even as our bodies . No
man ever stood the lower in my estimation for hav-
ing a patch in his clothes ; yet I am sure that there
is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or
at least clean and unpatched, clothes than to have a
sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended,
perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence . I
sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this ;
-7 who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only,
over the knee ? Most behave as if they believed that
their prospects for life would be ruined if they should
do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town
with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon . Often
if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can
be mended ; but if a similar accident happens to the
legs of his pantaloons , there is no help for it ; for he
considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is
respected . We know but few men, a great many
coats and breeches . Dress a scarecrow in your last
shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest
salute the scarecrow ? Passing a cornfield the other
day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized
22 WALDEN.

the owner of the farm . He was only a little more

weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have
heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who
approached his master's premises with clothes on,
but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an
interesting question how far men would retain their
relative rank if they were divested of their clothes .
Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company
of civilized men, which belonged to the most respected
class ? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous
travels round the world, from east to west, had got
so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she
felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling
dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she
66 was now in a civilized country, where . • people
are judged of by their clothes. " Even in our demo-
cratic New England towns the accidental possession
of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage
alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal re-
spect. But they who yield such respect, numerous
as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a
missionary sent to them. Besides, clothes introduced
sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless ;
a woman's dress, at least, is never done.
A man who has at length found something to do
will not need to get a new suit to do it in ; for him
the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for
an indeterminate period . Old shoes will serve a hero
longer than they have served his valet, if a hero ever
has a valet, bare feet are older than shoes, and he
can make them do . Only they who go to soirées and
legislative halls must have new coats, coats to change
as often as the man changes in them. But if my
jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to
 CLOTHING. 23

worship God in, they will do ; will they not ? Who

ever saw his old clothes, - his old coat, actually worn
out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was
not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy,
by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer
still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less ?
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new
clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If
there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be
made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you,
try it in your old clothes . All men want, not some-
thing to do with, but something to do, or rather some-
thing to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new
suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have
so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way,
that we feel like new men in the old, and that to
retain it would be like keeping new wine in old
bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls,
must be a crisis in our lives . The loon retires to
solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake
casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat,
by an internal industry and expansion ; for clothes
are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Other-
wise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and
be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as
well as that of mankind .
We don garment after garment, as if we grew like
exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside
and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis
or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may
be stripped off here and there without fatal injury ;
our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellu-
lar integument, or cortex ; but our shirts are our liber
or true bark, which cannot be removed without gir-
 24 WALDEN.

dling and so destroying the man . I believe that all

races at some seasons wear something equivalent to
the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply
that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and
that he live in all respects so compactly and pre-
paredly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like
the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed
without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for
most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap
clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit
customers ; while a thick coat can be bought for five
dollars, which will last as many years, thick panta-
loons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and
a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar,
and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a
better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is
he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earn-
ing, there will not be found wise men to do him
reverence ?
When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my
tailoress tells me gravely, " They do not make them
so now," not emphasizing the " They ” at all, as if
she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates,
and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply
because she cannot believe that I mean what I say,
that I am so rash . When I hear this oracular sen-
tence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, em-
phasizing to myself each word separately that I may
come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by
what degree of consanguinity They are related to me,
and what authority they may have in an affair which
affects me so nearly ; and, finally, I am inclined to
answer her with equal mystery, and without any more
emphasis of the " they," " It is true, they did not
 CLOTHING. 25

make them so recently, but they do now. " Of what

use this measuring of me if she does not measure my
character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as
it were a peg to hang the coat on ? We worship not
the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion . She spins
and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head
monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the
monkeys in America do the same . I sometimes de-
spair of getting anything quite simple and honest
done in this world by the help of men. They would
have to be passed through a powerful press first, to
squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they
would not soon get upon their legs again, and then
there would be some one in the company with a mag-
got in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there
nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these
things, and you would have lost your labor. Never-
theless we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat
was handed down to us by a mummy.
On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained
that dressing has in this or any country risen to
the dignity of an art . At present, men make shift to
wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors,
they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a
little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at
each other's masquerade . Every generation laughs
at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry
VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that
of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands . All
costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque . It is only
the serious eye peering from and the sincere life
passed within it, which restrain laughter and conse-
crate the costume of any people . Let Harlequin be
26 WALDEN.

taken with a fit of colic and his trappings will have to

serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a
cannon ball, rags are as becoming as purple. )
The childish and savage taste of men and women
for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squint-
ing through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the
particular figure which this generation requires to-
day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste
is merely whimsical . Of two patterns which differ
only by a few threads more or less of a particular
color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on
the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the
lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fash-
ionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous
custom which it is called . It is not barbarous merely
because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable .
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best
mode by which men may get clothing . The condi-
tion of the operatives is becoming every day more
like that of the English ; and it cannot be wondered
at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the prin-
cipal object is, not that mankind may be well and
honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corpora-
tions may be enriched . In the long run men hit
only what they aim at. Therefore, though they
should fail immediately, they had better aim at some-
thing high.

As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a

necessary of life, though there are instances of men
having done without it for long periods in colder
countries than this . Samuel Laing says that " The
Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which
he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night
 SHELTER. 27

after night on the snow in a degree of cold

which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in
any woollen clothing." He has seen them asleep thus .
Yet he adds, " They are not hardier than other peo-
ple." But, probably, man did not live long on the
earth without discovering the convenience which
there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which
phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions
of the house more than of the family ; though these
must be extremely partial and occasional in those
climates where the house is associated in our
thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly,
and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is
unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was
formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the
Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's
march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark
of a tree signified that so many times they had
camped. Man was not made so large limbed and
robust but that he must seek to narrow his world,
and wall in a space such as fitted him . He was at
first bare and out of doors ; but though this was
pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by day-
light, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing
of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race
in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe him-
self with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve,
according to the fable, wore the bower before other
clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth , or
comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of
the affections.
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the
human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a
hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the
28 WALDEN.

world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out

doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well
as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not re-
member the interest with which when young he
looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a
cave ? It was the natural yearning of that portion of
our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us.
From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm
leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and
stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles,
of stones and tiles . At last, we know not what it is
to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in
more senses than we think. From the hearth to the
field is a great distance. It would be well perhaps if
we were to spend more of our days and nights with-
out any obstruction between us and the celestial
bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under
a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not
sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence
in dovecots .
However, if one designs to construct a dwelling
house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee
shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a work-
house, a labyrinth without a clew, a museum, an alms-
house, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead .
Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely neces-
sary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town,
living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow
was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought
that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out
the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living
honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits,
was a question which vexed me even more than it
does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat
 SHELTER. 29

callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six

feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked
up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that
every man who was hard pushed might get such a
one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in
it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained
and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have
freedom in his love, and in his soul be free . This did
not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable
alternative . You could sit up as late as you pleased,
and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any
landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a
man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger
and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to
death in such a box as this . I am far from jesting.
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated
with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A com-
fortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived
mostly out of doors , was once made here almost en-
tirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to
their hands. Goodkin, who was superintendent of
the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony,
writing in 1674, says, " The best of their houses are
covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of
trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when
the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with press-
ure of weighty timber, when they are green .
The meaner sort are covered with mats which they
make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently
tight and warm, but not so good as the former. ...
Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and
thirty feet broad. ....
. I have often lodged in their
wigwams, and found them as warm as the best Eng-
ish houses ." He adds that they were commonly
30 WALDEN.

carpeted and lined within with well-wrought em-

broidered mats, and were furnished with various
utensils . The Indians had advanced so far as to
regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended
over the hole in the roof and moved by a string.
Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in
a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in
a few hours ; and every family owned one, or its
apartment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as
good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and sim-
pler wants ; but I think that I speak within bounds when
I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests,
and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wig-
wams, in modern civilized society not more than one
half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and
cities, where civilization especially prevails, the num-
ber of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction
of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this out-
side garment of all, become indispensable summer and
winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams,
but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live.
I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of
hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that
the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little,
while the civilized man hires his commonly because
he cannot afford to own it ; nor can he, in the long
run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by
merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures
an abode which is a palace compared with the sav-
age's . An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hun-
dred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him
to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spa-
cious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fire-
 SHELTER. 31

place, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump,

spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other
things. But how happens it that he who is said to
enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized
man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as
a savage ? If it is asserted that civilization is a real
advance in the condition of man, and I think that
it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,
- it must be shown that it has produced better dwell-
ings without making them more costly ; and the cost
of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which
is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in
the long run. An average house in this neighborhood
costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this
sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's
life, even if he is not encumbered with a family ; —
estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor
at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others
receive less ; -so that he must have spent more than
half his life commonly before his wigwam will be
earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead ,
this is but a doubtful choice of evils . Would the
savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a
palace on these terms ?
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole
advantage of holding this superfluous property as a
fund in store against the future, so far as the indi-
vidual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of fu-
neral expenses . But perhaps a man is not required to
bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an impor-
tant distinction between the civilized man and the
savage ; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for
our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an
institution, in which the life of the individual is to a
1
 N
32 WALDE .

great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and per-

fect that of the race . But I wish to show at what a
sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to
suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all
the advantage without suffering any of the disadvan-
tage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have
always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour
grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge ?
"As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have
occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel."
" Behold all souls are mine ; as the soul of the
father, so also the soul of the son is mine : the soul
that sinneth it shall die ."
When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of
Concord, who are at least as well off as the other
classes, I find that for the most part they have been
toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may
become the real owners of their farms, which´com-
monly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else
bought with hired money, - and we may regard one
third of that toil as the cost of their houses, — but
commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is
true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value
of the farm , so that the farm itself becomes one great
encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it,
being well acquainted with it, as he says . On apply-
ing to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they
cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own
their farms free and clear . If you would know the
history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where
they are mortgaged . The man who has actually paid
for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every
neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are
three such men in Concord. What has been said of
 SHELTER. 33

the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-

seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of
the farmers . With regard to the merchants, however,
one of them says pertinently that a great part of their
failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely
failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is in-
convenient ; that is, it is the moral character that
breaks down . But this puts an infinitely worse face
on the matter, and suggests, besides, that probably
not even the other three succeed in saving their souls,
but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they
who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are
the spring-boards from which much of our civilization
vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands
on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex
Cattle Show goes off here with éclat annually, as if all
the joints of the agricultural machine were suent.
The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem 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 trap with a hair springe to catch comfort and inde-
pendence, and then, as he turned away, got his own
leg into it. This is the reason he is poor ; and for a
similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand
savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As
Chapman sings :--
"The false society of men-
for earthly greatness
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air."

And when the farmer has got his house, he may

not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the
house that has got him. As I understand it, that was
D
34 WALDEN.

a valid objection urged by Momus against the house

which Minerva made, that she " had not made it
movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might
be avoided ; " and it may still be urged, for our
houses are such unwieldy property that we are often
imprisoned rather than housed in them ; and the bad
neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves .
I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who,
for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their
houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but
have not been able to accomplish it, and only death
will set them free .
Granted that the majority are able at last either to
own or hire the modern house with all its improve-
ments . While civilization has been improving our
houses, it has not equally improved the men who are
to inhabit them . It has created palaces, but it was
not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if
the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the
savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his
life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts
merely, why should we 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 in outward circumstances above the sav-
age, others have been degraded below him. The
luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indi-
gence of another. On the one side is the palace, on
the other are the almshouse and " silent poor. " The
myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the
Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not
decently buried themselves . The mason who finishes
the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance
 SHELTER. 35

to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake

to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences
of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body
of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of
savages . I refer to the degraded poor, not now to
the degraded rich . To know this I should not need
to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere
border our railroads, that last improvement in civiliza-
tion ; 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 imagina-
ble, wood pile, and the forms of both old and young
are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrink-
ing from cold and misery, and the development of all
their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is
fair to look at that class by whose labor the works
which distinguish this generation are accomplished .
Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition
of the operatives of every denomination in England,
which is the great workhouse of the world . Or I
could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of
the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast
the physical condition of the Irish with that of the
North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander,
or any other savage race before it was degraded by
contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt
that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of
civilized rulers . Their condition only proves what
squalidness may consist with civilization . I hardly
need refer now to the laborers of our Southern States
who produce the staple exports of this country, and
are themselves a staple production of the South.
But to confine myself to those who are said to be in
moderate circumstances .
36 WALDEN.

Most men appear never to have considered what a

house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all
their lives because they think that they must have
such a one as their neighbors have . As if one were to
wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out
for him, or, gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap
of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because
he could not afford to buy him a crown ! It is possi-
ble to invent a house still more convenient and luxu-
rious than we have, which yet all would admit that
man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always
study to obtain more of these things, and not some-
times to be content with less ? Shall the respectable
citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example,
the necessity of the young man's providing a certain
number of superfluous glowshoes, and umbrellas, and
empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he
dies ? Why should not our furniture be as simple
as the Arab's or the Indian's ? When I think of the
benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized
as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to
man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their
heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture . Or what
if I were to allow - would it not be a singular allow-
ance? that our furniture should be more complex
than the Arab's, in proportion as we are morally and
intellectually his superiors ! At present our houses
are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good house-
wife would sweep out the greater part into the dust
hole, and not leave her morning's work undone .
Morning work ! By the blushes of Aurora and the
music of Memnon, what should be man's morning
work in this world ? I had three pieces of limestone
on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they re-
 SHELTER. 37

quired to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my

mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the
window in disgust. How, then, could I have a fur-
nished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for
no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has
broken ground .
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fash-
ions which the herd so diligently follow. The trav-
eller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon
discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a
Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their ten-
der mercies he would soon be completely emasculated .
I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to
spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience,
and it threatens without attaining these to become no
better than a modern drawing-room, with its divans,
and ottomans, and sunshades, and a hundred other
Oriental things, which we are taking west with us, in-
vented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate
natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should
be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather
sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be
crowded on a velvet cushion . I would rather ride on
earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to
heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and
breathe a malaria all the way.
The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in
the primitive ages imply this advantage at least, that
they left him still but a sojourner in nature . When
he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated
his journey again . He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in
this world, and was either threading the valleys, or
crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain tops.
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools . The
 DEN
38 WAL .

man who independently plucked the fruits when he

was hungry is become a farmer : and he who stood
under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no
longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on
earth and forgotten heaven . We have adopted Chris-
tianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture .
We have built for this world a family mansion, and for
the next a family tomb. The best works of art are
the expression of man's struggle to free himself from
this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to
make this low state comfortable and that higher state
to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this
village for a work of fine art, if any had come down
to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets,
furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail
to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust
of a hero or a saint . When I consider how our houses
are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their in-
ternal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that
the floor does not give way under the visitor while he
is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantel-piece, and
let him through into the cellar, to some solid and hon-
est though earthy foundation . I cannot but perceive
that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing jumped
at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts
which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied
with the jump ; for I remember that the greatest genu-
ine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record is
that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have
cleared twenty-five feet on level ground . Without fac-
titious support, man is sure to come to earth again be-
yond that distance . The first question which I am
tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impro-
priety is, Who bolsters you ? Are you one of the
 SHELTER. 39

ninety-seven who fail, or the three who succeed? An-

swer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look
at your baubles and find them ornamental. The cart
before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Be-
fore we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects
the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be
stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful liv-
ing be laid for a foundation : now, a taste for the
beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there
is no house and no housekeeper .
Old Johnson, in his " Wonder-Working Provi-
dence," speaking of the first settlers of this town ,
with whom he was contemporary, tells us that " they
burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter
under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon
timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at
the highest side." They did not " provide them
houses," says he, " till the earth, by the Lord's bless-
ing, brought forth bread to feed them,” and the first
year's crop was so light that " they were forced to cut
their bread very thin for a long season. " The secre-
tary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in
Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished
to take up land there, states more particularly, that
"those in New Netherland, and especially in New
England, who have no means to build farm houses at
first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the
ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long
and as broad as they think proper, case the earth
inside with wood all round the wall, and line the
wood with the bark of trees or something else to pre-
vent the caving in of the earth ; floor this cellar with
plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a
roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark
40 WALDEN.

" or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in
these houses with their entire families for two, three,
and four years, it being understood that partitions are
run through those cellars, which are adapted to the
size of the family . The wealthy and principal men
in New England, in the beginning of the colonies,
commenced their first dwelling houses in this fashion
for two reasons : firstly, in order not to waste time
in building, and not to want food the next season ;
secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring
people whom they brought over in numbers from
Fatherland . In the course of three or four years,
when the country became adapted to agriculture, they
built themselves handsome houses, spending on them
several thousands ."
In this course which our ancestors took there was
a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were
to satisfy the more pressing wants first . But are the
more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think
of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings,
I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet
adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to
cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our fore-
fathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural
ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest
period ; but let our houses first be lined with beauty,
where they come in contact with our lives, like the
tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it.
But, alas ! I have been inside one or two of them,
and know what they are lined with.
Though we are not so degenerate but that we
might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear
skins to-day, it certainly is better to accept the ad-
vantages, though so dearly bought, which the inven-
 BUILDING THE HOUSE. 41

tion and industry of mankind offer. In such a

neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and
bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than
suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient
quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones.
I speak understandingly on this subject, for I have
made myself acquainted with it both theoretically
and practically. With a little more wit we might
use these materials so as to become richer than the
richest now are, and make our civilization a 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 an axe

and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, near-
est to where I intended to build my house, and began
to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in
their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin with-
out borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous
course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an
interest in your enterprise . The owner of the axe,
as he released his hold on it, said that it was the
apple of his eye ; but I returned it sharper than I
received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I
worked, covered with pine woods, through which
I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in
the woods where pines and hickories were springing
up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved,
though there were some open spaces, and it was all
dark colored and saturated with water. There were
some slight flurries of snow during the days that I
worked there ; but for the most part when I came
out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow
sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmos-
42 WALDEN.

phere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I

heard the lark and pewee and other birds already
come to commence another year with us. They
were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of
man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth,
and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch it-
self. One day, when my axe had come off and I had
cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a
stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond
hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake
run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, appar-
ently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there,
or more than a quarter of an hour ; perhaps because
he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state . It
appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in
their present low and primitive condition ; but if they
should feel the influence of the spring of springs
arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a
higher and more ethereal life . I had previously seen
the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with por-
tions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting
for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it
rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of
the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose
groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost,
or like the spirit of the fog.
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing
timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow
axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like
thoughts, singing to myself, - —

Men say they know mary things ;

But lo ! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
 BUILDING THE HOUSE. 43

And a thousand appliances ;

The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows.
I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of
the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor
timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on,
so that they were just as straight and much stronger
than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised
or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other
tools by this time. My days in the woods were not
very long ones ; yet I usually carried my dinner of
bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which
it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine
boughs which hadodut off and towabbrendowas
imparted some of theire fraghuneegfats thyhands were
covered with a thick sound of quitdryshe Bard
done I was more the had the egofthepine
tree, though I had cubdowespen the ghiolde
become better acquainted with its Sometimes a
rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of
my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips
which I had made.
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my
work, but rather made the most of it, my house was
framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought
the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked
on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards . James Col-
lins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one.
When I called to see it he was not at home. I walked
about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the
window was so deep and high. It was of small dimen-
sions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else
to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as
ifit were a compost heap . The roof was the soundest
44 WALDEN.

part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by

the sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial
passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C.
came to the door and asked me to view it from the
inside. The hens were driven in by my approach .
It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part,
dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there
a board which would not bear removal. She lighted
a lamp to show me the inside ofthe roof and the walls,
and also that the board floor extended under the bed,
warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust
hole two feet deep. In her own words, they were
"good boards overhead, good boards all around, and
good window of the whole squares originally,
nlythe cat harpassed out that way lately. There
was a statedavhed, and a place toisit, an infant in the
Sings frlibrebit was born,basilkparasol, gilt-framed
looking glass, andragrated new coffee mill nailed to
an oak sapling, all told the bargain was soon con-
cluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned.
I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night,
he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to
nobody else meanwhile : I to take possession at six .
It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate
certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims, on the score
of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the
only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his
family on the road. One large bundle held their all,
bed, coffee mill, looking-glass, hens, — all but the
cat, she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as
I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks ,
and so became a dead cat at last.
I took down this dwelling the same morning, draw-
ing the nails, and removed it to the pond side by
 BUILDING THE HOUSE. 45

small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass

there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One
early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along
the woodland path . I was informed treacherously by
a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in
the intervals of the carting, transferred the still toler-
able, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes
to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to
pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned
with spring thoughts, at the devastation ; there being
a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to repre-
sent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insig-
nificant event one with the removal of the gods of
Troy.
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the
south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his bur-
row, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and
the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven
deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze
in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not
stoned ; but the sun having never shone on them, the
sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours' work .
I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground,
for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for
an equable temperature. Under the most splendid
house in the city is still to be found the cellar where
they store their roots as of old, and long after the
superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its
dent in the earth . The house is still but a sort of
porch at the entrance of a burrow .
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help
of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so
good an occasion for neighborliness than from any
necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man
 N
46 WALDE .

was ever more honored in the character of his raisers

than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the
raising of loftier structures one day. I began to
occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was
boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully
feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly im-
pervious to rain ; but before boarding I laid the foun-
dation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads
of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms . I
built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before
a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking
in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in
the morning : which mode I still think is in some
respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual
one. When it stormed before my bread was baked , I
fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them
to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in
that way . In those days, when my hands were much
employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of
paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or table-
cloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact an-
swered the same purpose, as the Iliad.

It would be worth the while to build still more de-

liberately than I did, considering, for instance, what
foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have
in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any
superstructure until we found a better reason for it than
our temporal necessities even . There is some of the
same fitness in a man's building his own house that
there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows
but if men constructed their dwellings with their own
hands, and provided food for themselves and families
simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would
 ARCHITECTURE. 47

be universally developed, as birds universally sing

when they are so engaged? But alas ! we do like
cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests
which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller
with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we
forever resign the pleasure of construction to the car-
penter? What does architecture amount to in the ex-
perience of the mass of men ? I never in all my walks
came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an
occupation as building his house. We belong to the
community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth
part of a man : it is as much the preacher, and the
merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of
labor to end ? and what object does it finally serve?
No doubt another may also think for me ; but it is
not therefore desirable that he should do so to the
exclusion of my thinking for myself.
True, there are architects so called in this country,
and I have heard of one at least possessed with the
idea of making architectural ornaments have a core
of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were
a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his
point of view, but only a de better than the com-
mon dilettantism . A sentimental reformer in archi-
tecture, he began the cornice, not at the foundation .
It was only big t put a core of t within the
· ery sugar plum in fact might have
almond or coway seed in it, though I hold that
almonds are host wholesome without the sugar, -
and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build
truly within and without, and let the ornaments take
care of themselves . What reasonable man ever sup-
posed that ornaments were something outward and
1 in the skin merely, — that the tortoise got his spotted
 DEN
48 WAL .

shell, or the shellfish its mother-o'-pearl tints, by such

a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity
Church ? But a man has no more to do with the style
of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that
of its shell : nor need the soldier be so idle as to try
to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard .
The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when
the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean
over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth
to the rude occupants, who really knew it better than
he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know
has gradually grown from within outward, out of the
necessities and character of the indweller, who is the
only builder, out of some unconscious truthfulness,
and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appear-
ance ; and whatever additional beauty of this kind is
destined to be produced will be preceded by a like
unconscious beauty of life . The most interesting
dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are
the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages
of the poor commonly ; it is the life of the inhabitants
whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their
surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque ; and
equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box,
when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to
the imagination , and there is as little straining after
effect in the style of his awelling. A great propor-
tion of architectural ornaments are literally hollo
and a September gale would strip them off, like bor
rowed plumes, without injury to the substantials.
They can do without architecture who have no olives
nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were
made about the ornaments of style in literature, and
the architects of our Bibles spent as much time about
 ARCHITECTURE. 49

their cornices as the architects of our churches do ?

So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and
their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth,
how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him ,
and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would
signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted
them and daubed it ; but the spirit having departed
out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing
his own coffin, — the architecture of the grave, and
66 carpenter " is but another name for " coffin-maker."
One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take
up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your
house that color . Is he thinking of his last and nar-
row house? Toss up a copper for it as well . What
an abundance of leisure he must have ! Why do you
take up a handful of the dirt ? Better paint your house
your own complexion ; let it turn pale or blush for
you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage
architecture ! When you have got my ornaments
ready I will wear them.
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the
sides of my house, which were already impervious to
rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the
first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to
straighten with a plane.
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house,
ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with
a garret and a closet, a large window on each side,
two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fire-
place opposite . The exact cost of my house, paying
the usual price for such materials as I used, but not
counting the work, all of which was done by myself,
was as follows ; and I give the details because very
few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and
E
 50 WALDEN.

fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various

materials which compose them :- :

. Boards · Mostly shanty

$8 034 { boards.
Refuse shingles for roof and sides . · 4 00
Laths I 25
Two second-hand windows with glass 2 43
One thousand old brick • · 4 00
Two casks of lime · • 2 40 That was high.
More than I
Hair • 0 31 needed.
Mantle-tree iron • · · 0 15
Nails • · 3.90
Hinges and screws • Ο 14
Latch · • • Ο ΙΟ
Chalk · · • • O OI
carried a good
Transportation • I 40 I
part on my back.
In all $28 12

These are all the materials excepting the timber,

stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right.
I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly
of the stuff which was left after building the house.
I intend to build me a house which will surpass any
-on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury,
as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me
no more than my present one.
I thus found that the student who wishes for a
shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not
greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If
I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is
that I brag for humanity rather than for myself ; and
my short-comings and inconsistencies do not affect
the truth of my statement . Notwithstanding much
cant and hypocrisy, - chaff which I find it difficult to
 ECONOMY. 51

separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry

as any man, - I will breathe freely and stretch myself
in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and
physical system ; and I am resolved that I will not
through humility become the devil's attorney. I will
endeavor to speak a good word for the truth . At
Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's room ,
which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty
dollars each year, though the corporation had the ad-
vantage of building thirty-two side by side and under
one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience
of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence
in the fourth story . I cannot but think that if we had
more true wisdom in these respects, not only less
education would be needed, because, forsooth, more
would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary
expense of getting an education would in a great
measure vanish. Those conveniences which the
student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him
or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life
as they would with proper management on both sides.
Those things for which the most money is demanded
are never the things which the student most wants .
Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term
bill, while for the far more valuable education which
he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his
contemporaries no charge is made . The mode of
founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscrip-
tion of dollars and cents, and then following blindly
the principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a
principle which should never be followed but with
circumspection, to call in a contractor who makes
this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irish-
men or other operatives actually to lay the foundations,
 52 WALDEN.

while the students that are to be are said to be fitting

themselves for it ; and for these oversights successive
generations have to pay. I think that it would be
better than this, for the students, or those who desire
to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation them-
selves. The student who secures his coveted leisure
and retirement by systematically shirking any labor
necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprof-
itable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience
which alone can make leisure fruitful. " But," says
one, " you do not mean that the students should go to
work with their hands instead of their heads ? " I do
not mean that exactly, but I mean something which
he might think a good deal like that ; I mean that
they should not play life, or study it merely, while the
community supports them at this expensive game, but
earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could
youths better learn to live than by at once trying the
J experiment of living ? Methinks this would exercise
their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a
boy to know something about the arts and sciences,
for instance, I would not pursue the common course,
which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of
some professor, where anything is professed and
practised but the art of life ; to survey the world
through a telescope or a microscope, and never with
his natural eye ; to study chemistry, and not learn how
his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it
is earned ; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and
not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond
he is a satellite himself ; or to be devoured by the
monsters that swarm all around him, while contem-
plating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which
would have advanced the most at the end of a month,
 ECONOMY. 53

the boy who had made his own jackknife from the
ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much
as would be necessary for this, - or the boy who had
attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in
the meanwhile, and had received a Rogers' penknife
from his father ? Which would be most likely to cut
his fingers ? . . . To my astonishment I was in-
formed on leaving college that I had studied naviga-
tion ! — why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor
I should have known more about it. Even the poor
student studies and is taught only political economy,
while that economy of living which is synonymous
with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our
colleges . The consequence is that while he is read-
ing Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his
father in debt irretrievably.
As with our colleges, so with a hundred " modern
improvements " : there is an illusion about them ;
there is not always a positive advance . The devil
goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his
early share and numerous succeeding investments in
them . Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things .
They are but improved means to an unimproved end,
an end which it was already but too easy too arrive
at ; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We
are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph
from Maine to Texas ; but Maine and Texas, it may
be, have nothing important to communicate . Either
is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest
to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but
when he was presented, and one end of her ear trum-
pet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As
if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk
54 WALDEN.

sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic

and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the
new ; but perchance the first news that will leak
through into the broad, flapping American ear will
be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping
cough . After all, the man whose horse trots a mile
in a minute does not carry the most important mes-
sages ; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come
round eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if
Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.
One says to me, " I wonder that you do not lay up
money ; you love to travel ; you might take the cars
and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country."
But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the
swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my
friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The
distance is thirty miles ; the fare ninety cents . That
is almost a day's wages . I remember when wages
were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night ;
I have travelled at that rate by the week together.
You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare,
and arrive there sometime to-morrow, or possibly
this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in
season. ` - Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be
working here the greater part of the day. And so, if
the railroad reached round the world, I think that I
should keep ahead of you ; and as for seeing the
country and getting experience of that kind, I should
have to cut your acquaintance altogether.
Such is the universal law, which no man can ever
outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may
say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad
round the world available to all mankind is equiva-
 ECONOMY. 55

lent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men

have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this
activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all
will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and
for nothing ; but though a crowd rushes to the depot,
and the conductor shouts " All aboard ! " when the
smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it
will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest
are run over, and it will be called, and will be, " A
melancholy accident. " No doubt they can ride at
last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they
survive so long, but they will probably have lost their
elasticity and desire to travel by that time . This
spending of the best part of one's life earning money
in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the
least valuable part of it, reminds me of the English-
man who went to India to make a fortune first, in
order that he might return to England and live the
life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at
once . "What ! " exclaim a million Irishmen start-
ing up from all the shanties in the land, " is not this
railroad which we have built a good thing ? " Yes, I
answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have
done worse ; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine,
that you could have spent your time better than dig-
ging in this dirt.

Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or

twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method,
in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about
two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it
chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes,
corn, peas, and turnips . The whole lot contains
eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories,
56 WALDEN.

and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars

and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was
"good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on. "
I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the
owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to
cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all
once. I got out several cords of stumps in ploughing,
which supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left
small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable
through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the
beans there. The dead and for the most part unmer-
chantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood
from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my
fuel . I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the
ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My
farm outgoes for the first season were, for implements,
seed, work, &c . , $ 14 72. The seed corn was given
me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless
you plant more than enough . I got twelve bushels of
beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some
peas and sweet corn . The yellow corn and turnips
were too late to come to anything. My whole income
from the farm was
$ 23 44
Deducting the outgoes • 14 72
There are left · $ 871

besides produce consumed and on hand at the time

this estimate was made of the value of $4 50 , -— the
amount on hand much more than balancing a little
grass which I did not raise . All things considered,
that is, considering the importance of a man's soul
and of to-day, notwithstanding the short time occu-
pied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of
its transient character, I believe that that was doing
better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
 ECONOMY. 57

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all

the land which I required, about a third of an acre,
and I learned from the experience of both years, not
being in the least awed by many celebrated works on
husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one
would live simply and eat only the crop which he
raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange
it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and
expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a
few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to
spade up that than to use oxen to plough it, and to
select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure
the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work
as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the sum-
mer ; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse,
or cow, or pig, as at present . I desire to speak im-
partially on this point, and as one not interested in
the success or failure of the present economical and
social arrangements . I was more independent than
any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a
house or farm , but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment . Besides
being better off than they already, if my house had
been burned or my crops had failed, I should have
been nearly as well off as before .
I am wont to think that men are not so much the
keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the
former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange
work ; but if we consider necessary work only, the
oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their
farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his
part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying,
and it is no boy's play. Certainly no nation that
lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of phi-
 DEN
58 WAL .

losophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use

the labor of animals. True, there never was and is
not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am
I certain it is desirable that there should be. How-
ever, I should never have broken a horse or bull and
taken him to board for any work he might do for me,
for fear I should become a horseman or a herdsman
merely ; and if society seems to be the gainer by so
doing, are we certain that what is one man's gain is
not another's loss, and that the stable-boy has
equal cause with his master to be satisfied ? Granted
that some public works would not have been con-
structed without this aid, and let man share the glory
of such with the ox and horse ; does it follow that he
could not have accomplished works yet more worthy
ofhimself in that case ? When men begin to do, not
merely unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle
work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few
do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other
words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus
not only works for the animal within him, but, for a
symbol of this, he works for the animal without him .
Though we have many substantial houses of brick or
stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by
the degree to which the barn overshadows the house.
This town is said to have the largest houses for oxen,
cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand
in its public buildings ; but there are very few halls for
free worship or free speech in this county. It should
not be by their architecture, but why not even by their
power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to
commemorate themselves ? How much more admir-
able the Bhagvat- Geeta than all the ruins of the East !
Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A
 ARCHITECTURE. 59

simple and independent mind does not toil at the bid-

ding of any prince . Genius is not a retainer to any
emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold , or marble,
except to a trifling extent . To what end, pray, is so
much stone hammered ? In Arcadia, when I was
there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations
are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate
the memory of themselves by the amount of ham-
mered stone they leave . What if equal pains were
taken to smooth and polish their manners ? One
piece of good sense would be more memorable than a
monument as high as the moon . I love better to see
stones in place . The grandeur of Thebes was a vul-
gar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall
that bounds an honest man's field than a hundred-
gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true
end of life. The religion and civilization which are
barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples ; but
what you might call Christianity does not . Most of
the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only.
It buries itself alive . As for the Pyramids, there is
nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact
that so many men could be found degraded enough to
spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambi-
tious booby, whom it would have been wiser and
manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given
his body to the dogs . I might possibly invent some
excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it.
As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it
is much the same all the world over, whether the
building be an Egyptian temple or the United States
Bank . It costs more than it comes to . The main-
spring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and
bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young
60 WALDEN.

architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius, with

hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson
& Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries be-
gin to look down 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, and he got so far that, as he
said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle ;
but I think that I shall not go out of my way to ad-
mire the hole which he made. Many are concerned
about the monuments of the West and East, -— to know
who built them . For my part, I should like to know
who in those days did not build them, who were
above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics .
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various
other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for ' I
have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $ 13 34 .
The expense of food for eight months, namely, from
July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates
were made, though I lived there more than two years,
- -not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some
peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of
what was on hand at the last date, was
Rice • • $1 731
Molasses · I 73 Cheapest form of the saccharine.
experiments

Rye meal 1 041

Indian meal . · 099 Cheaper than rye.
which

Pork · · O 22
88 Costs more than Indian meal,
All

Flour • ·
both money and trouble.
failed.

Sugar · • 0 80
Lard • · • 0 65
Apples . O 25
Dried apple • ·
Sweet potatoes Ο ΙΟ
One pumpkin о об
One watermelon O 02
Salt o 03
 ECONOMY. 61

Yes, I did eat $8 74, all told ; but I should not thus
unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that
most ofmy readers were equally guilty with myself, and
that their deeds would look no better in print . The
next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my
dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a wood-
chuck which ravaged my beanfield , — effect his trans-
migration , as a Tartar would say, - — and devour him ,
partly for experiment's sake ; but though it afforded
me a momentary enjoyment , notwithstanding a musky
flavor , I saw that the longest use would not make
that a good practice , however it might seem to have
your woodchucks ready dressed by the village
butcher.
Clothing and some incidental expenses within the
same dates, though little can be inferred from this
item, amounted to

$8 401
Oil and some household utensils 2 00

So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for wash-

ing and mending, which for the most part were done
out of the house, and their bills have not yet been
received, and these are all and more than all the
ways by which money necessarily goes out in this
part ofthe world, were
House $28 12}
Farm one year • • • · • 14 72
Food eight months • 874
Clothing, &c., eight months • 8 40
Oil, &c., eight months • 2.00
In all $61 991

I address myself now to those of my readers who have

62 WALDEN.

a living to get . And to meet this I have for farm

produce sold
$23 44
Earned by day-labor • · 13 34
In all • $36 78
which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves
a balance of $25 21 on the one side, - this being
very nearly the means with which I started , and the
measure of expenses to be incurred, —and on the
other, besides the leisure and independence and health
thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I
choose to occupy it.
These statistics, however accidental and therefore
uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain
completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing
was given me of which I have not rendered some
account. It appears from the above estimate, that
my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven
cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this,
rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a
very little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink
water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly,
who loved so well the philosophy of India. To meet
the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as
well state that if I dined out occasionally, as I always
had done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do
again, it was frequently to the detriment of my
domestic arrangements . But the dining out, being,
as I have stated, a constant element, does not in the
least affect a comparative statement like this .
I learned from my two years' experience that it
would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's
necessary food, even in this latitude ; that a man may
 BREAD 63

use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain

health and strength. I have made a satisfactory
dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a
dish of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I gath-
ered in my cornfield, boiled and salted . I give the
Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name.
And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in
peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient
number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the
addition of salt ? Even the little variety which I used
was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of
health . Yet men have come to such a pass that they
frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for
want of luxuries ; and I know a good woman who
thinks that her son lost his life because he took to
drinking water only.
The reader will perceive that I am treating the sub-
ject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of
view, and he will not venture to put my abstemious-
ness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt,
genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out
of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber
sawed off in building my house ; but it was wont to
get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour
also ; but have at last found a mixture of rye and
Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold
weather it was no little amusement to bake several
small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning
them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs .
They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and
they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other
noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by
wrapping them in cloths . I made a study of the
64 WALDE .
N

ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, con-

sulting such authorities as offered, going back to the
primitive days and first invention of the unleavened
kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats
men first reached the mildness and refinement of this
diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies
through that accidental souring of the dough which,
it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and
through the various fermentations thereafter, till I
came to " good, sweet, wholesome bread, " the staff
of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread,
the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is
religiously preserved like the vestal fire, - some pre-
cious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the
Mayflower, did the business for America, and its
influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerea-
lian billows over the land, -— this seed I regularly and
faithfully procured from the village, till at length one
morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast ; by
which accident I discovered that even this was not
indispensable, - for my discoveries were not by the
synthetic but analytic process, — and I have gladly
omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly
assured me that safe and wholesome bread without
yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a
speedy decay of the vital forces . Yet I find it not to
be an essential ingredient, and after going without it
for a year am still in the land of the living ; and I am
glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full
in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and dis-
charge its contents to my discomfiture . It is simpler
and more respectable to omit it . Man is an animal
who more than any other can adapt himself to all
climates and circumstances. Neither did I put any
 BREAD. 65

sal soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread . It

would seem that I made it according to the recipe which
Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before
Christ. " Panem depsticium sic facito . Manus mor-
tariumque bene lavato . Farinam in mortarium indito,
aquæ paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene
subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu . " Which I
take to mean " Make kneaded bread thus . Wash
your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the
trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly.
When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake
it under a cover," that is, in a baking-kettle . Not a
word about leaven . But I did not always use this
staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of
my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month .
Every New Englander might easily raise all his
own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn,
and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets .
for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and in-
dependence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is
rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a
still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the
most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the
grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is
at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the
store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or
two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow
on the poorest land, and the latter does not require
the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do
without rice and pork ; and if I must have some con-
centrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could
make a very good molasses either of pumpkins or
beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few
maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these
F
66 WALDEN.

were growing I could use various substitutes besides

those which I have named. " For, " as the Fore-
fathers sang,

"we can make liquor to sweeten our lips

Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips."
Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to ob-
tain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the
seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I should
probably drink the less water. I do not learn that
the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it.
Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as
my food was concerned, and having a shelter already,
it would only remain to get clothing and fuel . The
pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer's
family, thank Heaven there is so much virtue still
in man ; for I think the fall from the farmer to the
operative as great and memorable as that from the
man to the farmer ; - -and in a new country fuel is an
encumbrance . As for a habitat, if I were not per-
mitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the
same price for which the land I cultivated was sold —
namely, eight dollars and eight cents . But as it was,
I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by
squatting on it .
There is a certain class of unbelievers who some-
times ask me such questions as, if I think that I can
live on vegetable food alone ; and to strike at the
root of the matter at once, —for the root is faith,
I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on
board nails . It they cannot understand that, they
cannot understand much that I have to say. For my
part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind
being tried ; as that a young man tried for a fortnight
 FURNITURE. 67

to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth

for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and
succeeded . The human race is interested in these
experiments, though a few old women who are inca-
pacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills,
may be alarmed.

My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the

rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an
account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three
chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair
of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-
pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks,
three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug
for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor
that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness .
There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the
village garrets to be had for taking them away. Fur-
niture ! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without
the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a
philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture
packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the
light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly ac-
count of empty boxes ? That is Spaulding's furniture .
I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether
it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one ; the
owner always seemed poverty-stricken . Indeed, the
more you have of such things the poorer you are .
Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a
dozen shanties ; and if one shanty is poor, this is a
dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever
but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ ; at last to
go from this world to another newly furnished, and
leave this to be burned ? It is the same as ifall these
68 WALDEN.

traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not

move over the rough country where our lines are cast
without dragging them , dragging his trap . He was
a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap . The muskrat
will gnaw his third leg off to be free . No wonder
man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead
set! " 66 Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by
a dead set? " If you are a seer, whenever you meet a
man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that
he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen
furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will
not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and
making what headway he can. I think that the man
is at a dead set who has got through a knot hole or
gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot fol-
low him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear
some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all
girded and ready, speak of his " furniture," as whether
it is insured or not. " But what shall I do with my
furniture ?" My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's
web then. Even those who seem for a long while not
to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will
find have some stored in somebody's barn. I look
upon England to-day as an old gentleman who is
travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which
has accumulated from long housekeeping, which he
has not the courage to burn ; great trunk, little trunk,
bandbox, and bundle. Throw away the first three at
least . It would surpass the powers of a well man
nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should
certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and
run. When I have met an immigrant tottering under
a bundle which contained his all - looking like an
enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of
 FURNITURE. 69

his neck - I have pitied him, not because that was his
all, but because he had all that he could carry. If I
have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a
light one and do not nip me in a vital part . But per-
chance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me noth-
ing 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 meat
of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade
my carpet, and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I
find it still better economy to retreat behind some
curtain which nature has provided, than to add a
single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady
once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare
within the house, nor time to spare within or without
to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet
on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the
beginnings of evil .
Not long since I was present at the auction of a
deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual : -
" The evil that men do lives after them."

As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had

begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the
rest was a dried tapeworm . And now, after lying
half a century in his garret and other dust holes,
these things were not burned ; instead of a bonfire, or
purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or
increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected
to view them, bought them all, and carefully trans-
ported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie
there till their estates are settled, when they will start
again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.
70 WALDEN.

The customs of some savage nations might, per-

chance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least
go through the semblance of casting their slough an-
nually ; they have the idea of the thing, whether they
have the reality or not . Would it not be well if we
were to celebrate such a 66 busk," or " feast of first
fruits," as Bartram describes to have been the custom
of the Mucclasse Indians ? "When a town celebrates
the busk," says he, "having previously provided them-
selves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other
household utensils and furniture, they collect all their
worn-out clothes and other despicable things, sweep
and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town,
of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and
other old provisions they cast together into one com-
mon heap, and consume it with fire . After having
taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire
in the town is extinguished . During this fast they
abstain from the gratification of every appetite and
passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed ;
all malefactors may return to their town.
"On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rub-
bing dry wood together, produces new fire in the
public square, from whence every habitation in the
town is supplied with the new and pure flame. "
They then feast on the new corn and fruits and
dance and sing for three days, " and the four follow-
ing days they receive visits and rejoice with their
friends from neighboring towns who have in like
manner purified and prepared themselves. ”
The Mexicans also practised a similar purification
at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that
it was time for the world to come to an end.
I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is,
 ECONOMY. 71

as the dictionary defines it, " outward and visible sign

of an inward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have
no doubt that they were originally inspired directly
from heaven to do thus, though they have no Biblical
record of the revelation.

For more than five years I maintained myself

thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found
that by working about six weeks in a year, I could
meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my
winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free
and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-
keeping, and found that my expenses were in propor-
tion, or rather out of proportion , to my income,
for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say
think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time
into the bargain . As I did not teach for the good
of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood , this
was a failure. I have tried trade ; but I found that
it would take ten years to get under way in that, and
that then I should probably be on my way to the devil.
I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing
what is called a good business . When formerly I was
looking about to see what I could do for a living, some
sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends
being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought
often and seriously of picking huckleberries ; that
surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice,
- for my greatest skill has been to want but little,
so little capital it required, so little distraction from
my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my
acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the
professions, I contemplated this occupation as most
like theirs ; ranging the hills all summer to pick the
72 WALDEN.

berries which came in my way, and thereafter care-

lessly dispose of them ; so, to keep the flocks of
Admetus . I also dreamed that I might gather the
wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as
loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city,
by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that
trade curses everything it handles ; and though you
trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse
of trade attaches to the business .
As I preferred some things to others, and especially
valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet suc-
ceed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning
rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery,
or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet.
If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire
these things, and who know how to use them when
acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are
"industrious," and appear to love labor for its own
sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse
mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say.
Those who would not know what to do with more lei-
sure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice
as hard as they do, — work till they pay for themselves,
and get their free papers. For myself I found that the
occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent
of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty
days in a year to support one. The laborer's day ends
with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to
devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of
his labor ; but his employer, who speculates from
month to month, has no respite from one end of the
year to the other.
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experi-
ence, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a
 ECONOMY. 73

hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and

wisely ; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still
the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary
that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his
brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.
One young man of my acquaintance, who has in-
herited some acres, told me that he thought he should
live as I did, if he had the means . I would not have
any one adopt my mode of living on any account ; for,
besides that before he has fairly learned it I may have
found out another for myself, I desire that there may be
as many different persons in the world as possible ; but
I would have each one be very careful to find out and
pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's
or his neighbor's instead . The youth may build or
plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing
that which he tells me he would like to do . It is by a
mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor
or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye ; but
that is sufficient guidance for all our life . We may not
arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we
would preserve the true course .
Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is
truer still for a thousand, as a large house is not pro-
portionally more expensive than a small one , since one
roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall
separate several apartments . But for my part, I pre-
ferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will com-
monly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to
convince another of the advantage of the common wall ;
and when you have done this, the common partition, to
be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other
may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side
in repair. The only coöperation which is commonly
74 WALDEN.

possible is exceedingly partial and superficial ; and

what little true coöperation there is, is as if it were
not, being a harmony inaudible to men . If a man
has faith he will coöperate with equal faith every-
where ; if he has not faith, he will continue to live
like the rest of the world, whatever company he is
joined to . To coöperate, in the highest as well as the
lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard
it proposed lately that two young men should travel
together over the world, the one without money, earn-
ing his means as he went, before the mast and behind
the plough , the other carrying a bill of exchange in his
pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long
be companions or coöperate, since one would not
operate at all. They would part at the first interest-
ing crisis in their adventures . Above all, as I have
implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day ;
but he who travels with another must wait till that
other is ready, and it may be a long time before they
get off.

But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my

townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged
very little in philanthropic enterprises . I have made
some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others
have sacrificed this pleasure also . There are those who
have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake
the support of some poor family in the town ; and if I
had nothing to do, - for the devil finds employment for
the idle, -- I might try my hand at some such pastime
as that. However, when I have thought to indulge
myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an
obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all
respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have
 PHILANTHROPY. 75

even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they

have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain
poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted
in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust
that one at least may be spared to other and less
humane pursuits . You must have a genius for
charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-
good, that is one of the professions which are full .
Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may
seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my con-
stitution. Probably I should not consciously and
deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the
good which society demands of me, to save the
universe from annihilation ; and I believe that a like
but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all
that now preserves it. But I would not stand between
any man and his genius ; and to him who does this
work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul
and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the world call
it doing evil, as it is most likely they will.
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar
one ; no doubt many of my readers would make a
similar defence . At doing something, I will not
engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good, —
I do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fel-
low to hire ; but what that is, it is for my employer to
find out. What good I do, in the common sense of
that word, must be aside from my main path, and for
the most part wholly unintended . Men say, practi-
cally, Begin where you are and such as you are, with-
out aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with
kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I
were to preach at all in this strain, I should say
rather, Set about being good . As if the sun should
76 WALDEN.

stop when he has kindled his fires up to the splendor

of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go
about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every
cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats,
and making darkness visible, instead of steadily in-
creasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of
such brightness that no mortal can look him in the
face, and then, and in the meanwhile too , going
about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or
rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the
world going about him getting good. When Phaeton,
wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his benefi-
cence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove
out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of
houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched
the surface of the earth, and dried up every spring,
and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length
Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a
thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief at his death,
did not shine for a year.
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from
goodness tainted . It is human, it is divine, carrion.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my
house with the conscious design of doing me good, I
should run for my life, as from that dry and parching
wind of the African deserts called the simoom , which
fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust
till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some
of his good done to me, - some of its virus mingled
with my blood . No, -in this case I would rather
suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man
to me because he will feed me if I should be starving,
or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of
a ditch if I should ever fall into one . I can find you
 PHILANTHROPY. 779

a Newfoundland dog that will do as much . Philan-

thropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the broad-
est sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly
kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward ;
but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred
Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us
in our best estate, when we are most worthy to be
helped? I never heard of a philanthropic meeting
in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to
me, or the like of me.
The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who,
being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of tor-
ture to their tormentors . Being superior to physical
suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were supe-
rior to any consolation which the missionaries could
offer ; and the law to do as you would be done by fell
with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who,
for their part, did not care how they were done by,
who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came
very near freely forgiving them all they did.
Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most
need, though it be your example which leaves them far
behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and
do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious
mistakes sometimes . Often the poor man is not so
cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross .
It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune.
If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags
with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers
who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged
clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and some-
what more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold
day, one who had slipped into the water came to my
house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three
78 WALDEN.

pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got

down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged
enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse
the extra garments which I offered him, he had so
many intra ones . This ducking was the very thing
he needed . Then I began to pity myself, and I saw
that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a
flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There
are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one
who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who
bestows the largest amount of time and money on
the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to
produce that misery which he strives in vain to re-
lieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the
proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's
liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to
the poor by employing them in their kitchens .
Would they not be kinder if they employed them-
selves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of
your income in charity ; maybe you should spend the
nine tenths so, and done with it . Society recovers
only a tenth part of the property then . Is this owing
to the generosity of him in whose possession it is
found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice?
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is suf-
ficiently appreciated by mankind . Nay, it is greatly
overrated ; and it is our selfishness which overrates
it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in
Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because,
as he said, he was kind to the poor ; meaning him-
self. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more
esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers .
I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man
of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her
 PHILANTHROPY. 79

scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakspeare,

Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak
next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profes-
sion required it of him, he elevated to a place far
above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They
were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry . Every one must
feel the falsehood and cant of this . The last were
not England's best men and women ; only, perhaps,
her best philanthropists .
I would not subtract anything from the praise that
is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice
for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to
mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness
and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and
leaves . Those plants of whose greenness withered
we make herb tea for the sick, serve but a humble
use, and are most employed by quacks . I want the
flower and fruit of a man ; that some fragrance be
wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor
our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial
and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which
costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious.
This is a charity which hides a multitude of sins .
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with
the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs as an at-
mosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart
our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease,
and not our disease, and take care that this does not
spread by contagion. From what southern plains
comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes
reside the heathen to whom we would send light ?
Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we
would redeem ? If anything ail a man, so that he
does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in
80 WALDEN.

his bowels even, - for that is the seat of sympathy, —

he forthwith sets about reforming -— the world . Being
a microcosm himself, he discovers, and it is a true dis-
covery, and he is the man to make it, that the world
has been eating green apples ; to his eyes, in fact, the
globe itself is a great green apple, which there is dan-
ger awful to think of that the children of men will
nibble before it is ripe ; and straightway his drastic
philanthropy seeks out the Esquimau and the Pata-
gonian, and embraces the populous Indian and Chinese
villages ; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic ac-
tivity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their
own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspep-
sia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of
its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life
loses its crudity and is once more sweet and whole-
some to live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater
than I have committed . I never knew, and never shall
know, a worse man than myself.
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not
his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though
he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail . Let
this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morn-
ing rise over his couch, and he will forsake his gener-
ous companions without apology. My excuse for not
lecturing against the use of tobacco is that I never
chewed it ; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-
chewers have to pay ; though there are things enough
I have chewed, which I could lecture against . If you
should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthro-
pies, do not let your left hand know what your right
hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the
drowning and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time,
and set about some free labor.
 PHILANTHROPY. 81

Our manners have been corrupted by communica-

tion with the saints . Our hymn-books resound with
a melodious cursing of God and enduring him forever.
One would say that even the prophets and redeemers
had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes
of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irre-
pressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memo-
rable praise of God . All health and success does me
good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear ;
all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does
me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me
or I with it. If, then, we would indeed restore man-
kind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural
means, let us first be as simple and well as Nature
ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own
brows, and take up a little life into our pores . Do
not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor
to become one of the worthies of the world.
I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik
Sadi of Shiraz, that " They asked a wise man, saying :
Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High
God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none
azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no
fruit ; what mystery is there in this ? He replied : Each
has its appropriate produce, and appointed season,
during the continuance of which it is fresh and bloom-
ing, and during their absence dry and withered ; to
neither of which states is the cypress exposed, be-
ing always flourishing ; and of this nature are the
azads, or religious independents . -Fix not thy heart
on that which is transitory ; for the Dijlah, or Tigris,
will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of
caliphs is extinct : if thy hand has plenty, be liberal
as the date tree ; but if it affords nothing to give away,
be an azad, or free man, like the cypress ."
 COMPLEMENTAL VERSES .

THE PRETENSIONS OF POVERTY .

"Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,

To claim a station in the firmament,
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
With roots and pot-herbs ; where thy right hand,
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.
We not require the dull society
Of your necessitated temperance,
Or that unnatural stupidity
That knows nor joy nor sorrow ; nor your forc'd
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active . This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds ; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
All-seeing prudence, magnanimity
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
For which antiquity hath left no name,
But patterns only, such as Hercules,
Achilles, Theseus . Back to thy loath'd cell ;
And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
Study to know but what those worthies were."
T. CAREW.
82
 II.

WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED

FOR.

AT a certain season of our life we are accustomed

to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.
I have thus surveyed the country on every side within
a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have
bought all the farms in succession , for all were to be
bought, and I knew their price . I walked over each
farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed
on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at
any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind ; even
put a higher price on it, took everything but a
deed of it, -
- took his word for his deed, for I dearly
love to talk, cultivated it, and him too to some
extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it
long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This expe-
rience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-
estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there
I might live, and the landscape radiated from me ac-
cordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat ?
better if a country seat. I discovered many a site
for a house not likely to be soon improved, which
some might have thought too far from the village,
but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well,
there I might live, I said ; and there I did live, for an
hour, a summer and a winter life ; saw how I could
83
84 WALDEN.

let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and
see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of
this region, wherever they may place their houses,
may be sure that they have been anticipated . An
afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard,
woodlot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or
pines should be left to stand before the door, and
whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best
advantage ; and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for
a man is rich in proportion to the number of things
which he can afford to let alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I even had
the refusal of several farms, - the refusal was all I
wanted, but I never got my fingers burned by
actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual
possession was when I bought the Hollowell place,
and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected mate-
rials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on
or off with ; but before the owner gave me a deed of
it, his wife — every man has such a wife - changed
her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me
ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth,
I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my
arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten
cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all to-
gether. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and
the farm too, for I had carried it far enough ; or
rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just
what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man,
made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my
ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow
left. I found thus that I had been a rich man with-
out any damage to my property. But I retained the
landscape, and I have since annually carried off what
 WHERE I LIVED. 85

it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to

landscapes,
"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute."

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having

enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the
crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild
apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for
many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme,
the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly
impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the 1
cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me,
were : its complete retirement, being about two miles
from the village, half a mile from the nearest neigh-
bor, and separated from the highway by a broad
field ; its bounding on the river, which the owner
said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring,
though that was nothing to me ; the gray color and
ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapi-
dated fences, which put such an interval between me
and the last occupant ; the hollow and lichen-covered
apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of
neighbors I should have ; but above all, the recollec-
tion I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river,
when the house was concealed behind a dense grove
of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog
bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor
finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the
hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young
birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in
short, had made any more of his improvements. To
enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on ;
86 WALDEN.

like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders, — I

never heard what compensation he received for that,
and do all those things which had no other motive
or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmo-
lested in my possession of it ; for I knew all the while
that it would yield the most abundant crop of the
kind I wanted if I could only afford to let it alone.
But it turned out as I have said.
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming
on a large scale (I have always cultivated a garden) ,
was that I had had my seeds ready. Many think
that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that
time discriminates between the good and the bad :
and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to
be disappointed . But I would say to my fellows,
once for all, As long as possible live free and uncom-
mitted . It makes but little difference whether you
are committed to a farm or the county jail.
Old Cato, whose " De Re Rusticâ " is my " cultiva-
tor, " says, and the only translation I have seen makes
sheer nonsense of the passage, " When you think of
getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy
greedily ; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do
not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener
you go there the more it will please you, if it is good ."
I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and
round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first,
that it may please me the more at last.

The present was my next experiment of this kind,

which I purpose to describe more at length ; for con-
venience, putting the experience of two years into
one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an
ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer
 WHERE I LIVED. 87

in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake.

my neighbors up .
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that
is, began to spend my nights as well as days there,
which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the
fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for
winter, but was merely a defence against the rain ,
without plastering or chimney, the walls being of
rough weather-stained boards, with wide chinks,
which made it cool at night. The upright white
hewn studs and freshly planed door and window cas-
ings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the
morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew,
so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would
exude from them. To my imagination it retained
throughout the day more or less of this auroral char-
acter, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain
which I had visited the year before . This was an
airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling
god, and where a goddess might trail her garments .
The winds which passed over my dwelling were such
as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the
broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial
music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem
of creation is uninterrupted ; but few are the ears that
hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth
everywhere.
The only house I had been the owner of before, if
I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally
when making excursions in the summer, and this is
still rolled up in my garret ; but the boat, after pass-
ing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of
time. With this more substantial shelter about me,
I had made some progress toward settling in the
88 WALDEN.

world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of

crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder.
It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines .
I did not need to go out doors to take the air, for the
atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness . It
was not so much within doors as behind a door
where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Hari-
vansa says, " An abode without birds is like a meat
without seasoning ." Such was not my abode, for I
found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds ; not by
having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near
them. I was not only nearer to some of those which
commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but
to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the
forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, — ---
the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the
field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a
mile and a half south of the village of Concord and
somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive
wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two
miles south of that our only field known to fame,
Concord Battle Ground ; but I was so low in the
woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the
rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon .
For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond
it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a
mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other
lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its
mighty clothing of mist, and here and there, by de-
grees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface
were revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were
stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the
woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal
 WHERE I LIVED. 89

conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon

the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides
of mountains .
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in
the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when,
both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky
Overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of even-
ing, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was
heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is
never smoother than at such a time ; and the clear
portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened
by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, be-
comes a lower heaven itself so much the more im-
portant. From a hill top near by, where the wood
had recently been cut off, there was a pleasing vista
southward across the pond, through a wide indenta-
tion in the hills which form the shore there, where
their opposite sides sloping toward each other sug-
gested a stream flowing out in that direction through
a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That
way I looked between and over the near green hills
to some distant and higher ones in the horizon,
tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I
could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still
bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the north-
west, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint,
and also of some portion of the village. But in other
directions, even from this point, I could not see over
or beyond the woods which surrounded me . It is
well to have some water in your neighborhood, to
give buoyancy to and float the earth . One value even
of the smallest well is that when you look into it
you see that the earth is not continent but insular.
This is as important as that it keeps butter cool.
90 WALDEN.

When I looked across the pond from this peak toward

the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I dis-
tinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their
seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth
beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated
and floated even by this small sheet of intervening
water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt
was but dry land.
Though the view from my door was still more con-
tracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the
least. There was pasture enough for my imagina-
tion. The low shrub-oak plateau to which the op-
posite shore arose, stretched away toward the prairies
of the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording
ample room for all the roving families of men.
" There are none happy in the world but beings who
enjoy freely a vast horizon, " -
— said Damodara, when
his herds required new and larger pastures.
Both place and time were changed and I dwelt
nearer to those parts of the universe and to those
ears in history which had most attracted me. Where
I live was as far off as many a region viewed nightly
by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and
delectable places in some remote and more celestial
corner of the system, behind the constellation of
Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and disturbance.
I discovered that my house actually had its site in
such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned,
part of the universe . If it were worth the while to
settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the
Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really
there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which
I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as
fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen
 WHERE I LIVED. 91

only in moonless nights by him . Such was that part

of creation where I had squatted

"There was a shepherd that did live,

And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by."

What should we think of the shepherd's life if his

flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his
thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make
my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence,
with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a wor
shipper of Aurora as the Greeks..I got up early and
bathed in the pond ; that was a religious exercise,
and one of the best things which I did . They say
that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of
king Tching-thang to this effect Renew thyself
completely each day ; do it again and again, and for-
ever again." I can understand that Morning brings
back the heroic ages . I was as much affected by the
faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and un-
imaginable tour through mys apartment at earliest
dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows
open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of
fame. It was Homer's requiem ; itself an Iliad and
Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wander-
ings . There was something cosmical about it ; a
standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the ever-
lasting vigor and fertility of the world . The morn-
ing, which is the most memorable season of the day,
is the awakening hour. Then there is least som-
nolence in us ; and for an hour, at least, some part
of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day
92 WALDEN.

and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it

can be called a day, to which we are not awakened
by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of
some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly
acquired force and aspirations from within, accom-
panied by the undulations of celestial music, instead
of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air — to a
higher life than we fell asleep from ; and thus the
darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good,
no less than the light. That man who does not
believe that each day contains an earlier, more
sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned,
has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending
and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his
sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather,
are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries
again what noble life it can make. All memorable
events, I should say, transpire in morning time and
in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, " All in-
telligences awake with the morning. " Poetry and
art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions
of men, date from such an hour. All poets and
heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and
emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic
and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the
day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the
clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morn-
ing is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.
Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep . Why
is it that men give so poor an account of their day if
they have not been slumbering ? They are not such
poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with
drowsiness they would have performed something.
The millions are awake enough for physical labor ;
 WHAT I LIVED FOR. 93

but only one in a million is awake enough for effective

intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions
to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.
I have never yet met a man who was quite awake .
How could I have looked him in the face ?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves
awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite ex-
pectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in
our soundest sleep . I know of no more encouraging
fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate
his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to
be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful ; but
it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very at-
mosphere and medium through which we look, which
morally we can do . To effect the quality of the day,
that is the highest of arts . Every man is tasked to
make his life, even in its details, worthy of the con-
templation of his most elevated and critical hour. If
we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information
as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how
this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live delib-
erately, to front only the essential facts of life, and
see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not,
when I came to die, discover that I had not lived . I
did not wish to live what was not life, living is so
dear ; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless
it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and
Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into
a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and
94 WALDEN.

genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to

the world ; or if it were sublime, to know it by experi-
ence, and be able to give a true account of it in my
next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are
in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the
devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded
that it is the chief end of man here to " glorify God
and enjoy him forever. "
Still we live meanly, like ants ; though the fable
tells us that we were long ago changed into men ; like
pygmies we fight with cranes ; it is error upon error,
and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its
occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness .
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man
has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers,
or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and
lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity ! I
say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hun-
dred or a thousand ; instead of a million count half
a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail .
In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life,
such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and
thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man
has to live, if he would not founder and go to the
bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckon-
ing, and he must be a great calculator indeed who
succeeds . Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals
a day, if it be necessary eat but one ; instead of a
hundred dishes, five ; and reduce other things in pro-
portion. Our life is like a German Confederacy,
made up of petty states, with its boundary forever
fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you
how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself,
with all its so- called internal improvements, which,
 WHAT I LIVED FOR. 95

by the way, are all external and superficial, is just

such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, clut-
tered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps,
ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of
calculation and a worthy aim, as the million house-
holds in the land ; and the only cure for it as for
them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than
Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose .
It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that
the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk
through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour,
without a doubt, whether they do or not ; but whether
we should live like baboons or like men, is a little
uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge
rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go
to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will
build railroads ? And if railroads are not built, how
shall we get to heaven in season ? But if we stay at
home and mind our business, who will want rail-
roads ? We do not ride on the railroad ; it rides
upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers
are that underlie the railroad ? Each one is a man,
an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid
on them, and they are covered with sand, and the
cars run smoothly over them. They are sound
sleepers, I assure you . And every few years a new
lot is laid down and run over ; so that, if some have
the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the mis-
fortune to be ridden upon . And when they run over
a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary
sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they
suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about
it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know
that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to
 96 WALDEN.

keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it

is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up
again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of
life ? We are determined to be starved before we
are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves
nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to
save nine to-morrow . As for work, we haven't any
of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance,
and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should
only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a
fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly
a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, not-
withstanding that press of engagements which was
his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy,
nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake
all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property
from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much
more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it
known, did not set it on fire, ― or to see it put out,
and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely ;
yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly
a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner, but when
he wakes he holds up his head and asks, " What's
the news ?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his
sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every
thSfno

half hour, doubtless for no other purpose ; and then,

90 oч
o
e z
'

to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed . After
a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the
e
е

breakfast . "Pray tell me anything new that has

happened to a man anywhere on this globe," — and
he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has
had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito
River ; never dreaming the while that he lives in the
 WHAT I LIVED FOR. 97

dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and

has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-
office. I think that there are very few important com-
munications made through it . To speak critically, I
never received more than one or two letters in my
life I wrote this some years ago - that were worth
the postage . The penny-post is, commonly, an in-
stitution through which you seriously offer a man that
penny for his thought which is so often safely offered
in jest . And I am sure that I never read any
memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one
man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or
one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one
steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the
Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot
ofgrasshoppers in the winter, --we never need read of
another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with
the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances
and applications ? To a philosopher all news, as it is
called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old
women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after
this gossip . There was such a rush, as I hear, the other
day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by
the last arrival, that several large squares of plate
glass belonging to the establishment were broken by
the pressure , news which I seriously think a ready
wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years before-
hand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for
instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and
the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada,
from time to time in the right proportions, — -
they
may have changed the names a little since I saw the
-
papers, — and serve up a bull-fight when other enter-
H
 N
98 WALDE .

tainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us

as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in
Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under
this head in the newspapers : and as for England,
almost the last significant scrap of news from that
quarter was the revolution of 1649 ; and if you have
learned the history of her crops for an average year,
you never need attend to that thing again, unless your
speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If
one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers,
nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a
French revolution not excepted .
What news ! how much more important to know
what that is which was never old ! 66 Kieou-he-yu
(great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to
Khoung-tseu to know his news . Khoung-tseu caused
the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned
him in these terms : What is your master doing ?
The messenger answered with respect : My master
desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he
cannot come to the end of them. The messenger be-
ing gone, the philosopher remarked : What a worthy
messenger! What a worthy messenger! " The
preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers
on their day ofrest at the end of the week, ― for Sun-
day is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not
the fresh and brave beginning of a new one, with
this one other draggletail of a sermon, should shout
with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast ! Why so
seeming fast, but deadly slow? ”
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest
truths, while reality is fabulous . If men would stead-
ily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to
be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we
 WHAT I LIVED FOR. 99

know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian

Nights' Entertainments . If we respected only what
is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry
would resound along the streets. When we are un-
hurried and wise, we perceive that only great and
worthy things have any permanent and absolute
existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are
but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhil-
arating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumber-
ing, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men
establish and confirm their daily life of routine and
habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory
foundations . Children, who play life, discern its true
law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live
it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experi-
ence, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo
book that" There was a king's son, who, being expelled
in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a
forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state,
imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with
which he lived . One of his father's ministers having
discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the
misconception of his character was removed, and he
knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the
Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances in
which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the
truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then
it knows itself to be Brahme." I perceive that we in-
habitants of New England live this mean life that we
do because our vision does not penetrate the surface
of things We think that that is which appears to be.
man should walk through this town and see only
the reality, where, think you, would the " Mill-dam "
Seto Ifhe should give us an account of the realities
100 WALDEN.

he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in

his description . Look at a meeting-house, or a court-
house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and
say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and
they would all go to pieces in your account of them .
Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the sys-
tem, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after
the last man. In eternity there is indeed something
true and sublime. But all these times and places and
occasions are now and here . God Himselfculminates
in the present moment, and will never be more divine
in the lapse of all the ages . And we are enabled to
apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by
the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality
that surrounds us. The universe constantly and
obediently answers to our conceptions ; whether we
travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us
spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the
artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but
some of his posterity at least could accomplish it .
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and
not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and
mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise
early and fast, or break fast, gently and without per-
turbation ; let company come and let company go, let
the bells ring and the children cry, determined to
make a day of it. Why should we knock under and
go with the stream ? Let us not be upset and over-
whelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a
dinner, situated in the meridian shallows . Weather
this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way
is down hill . With unrelaxed nerves, with morning
vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast
like Ulysses . If the engine whistles, let it whi
 WHAT I LIVED FOR. ΙΟΙ

it is hoarse for its pains . Ifthe bell rings, why should

we run? We will consider what kind of music they
are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge
our feet downward through the mud and slush of opin-
ion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion and
appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe,
through Paris and London, through New York and
Boston and Concord, through church and state,
through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we
come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we
can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake ; and
then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and
frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or
a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge,
not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages
might know how deep a freshet of shams and appear-
ances had gathered from time to time. If you stand
right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see
the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a
cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through
the heart and marrow, and so you will happily con-
clude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave
only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the
rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities ;
if we are alive, let us go about our business
Time is but the stream I go a- fishing in. I drink
at it ; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and
detect how shallow it is Its thin current slides away,
but eternity remains. I would drink deeper ; fish in
the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot
count cue. I know not the first letter of the alphabet,
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise
as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver ; it
discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things . I
 102 WALDEN.

do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than

is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all
my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells
me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some
creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I
would mine and burrow my way through these hills .
I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts ;
so bythe divining rod and thin rising vapors I judge ;
and here I will begin to mine.

leesuiand the b
Stabby1 gaiden- og 1 mus

bila tashus nidan eldi wollyw

inith blow to vie
ww viddag al dood dra
 III.

READING .

WITH a little more deliberation in the choice of

their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essen-
tially students and observers, for certainly their nature
and destiny are interesting to all alike . In accu-
mulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in
founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even,
we are mortal ; but in dealing with truth we are im-
mortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The
oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a cor-
ner of the veil from the statue of the divinity ; and
still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze
upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him
that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now re-
views the vision. No dust has settled on that robe ;
no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed .
That time which we really improve, or which is im-
provable, is neither past, present, nor future.
My residence was more favorable, not only to
thought, but to serious reading, than a university ;
and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary
circulating library, I had more than ever come within
the influence of those books which circulate round the
world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and
are now merely copied from time to time on to linen
paper. Says the poet Mir Camar Uddin Mast, " Be-
ing seated to run through the region of the spiritual
103
 104 WALDEN.

world ; I have had this advantage in books . To be

intoxicated by a single glass of wine ; I have experi-
enced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of
the esoteric doctrines ." I kept Homer's Iliad on my
table through the summer, though I looked at his
page only now and then. Incessant labor with my
hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my
beans to hoe at the same time, made more study im-
possible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of
such reading in future. I read one or two shallow
books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that
employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked
where it was then that I lived.
The student may read Homer or Eschylus in the
Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness,
for it implies that he in some measure emulate their
heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages .
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of
our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead
to degenerate times ; and we must laboriously seek the
meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger
sense than common use permits out of what wisdom
and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap
and fertile press, with all its translations, has done
little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiq-
uity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which
they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is
worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours,
if you learn only some words of an ancient language,
which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to
be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not
in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the
few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes
speak as if the study of the classics would at length
 READING. 105

make way for more modern and practical studies ;

but the adventurous student will always study clas-
sics, in whatever language they may be written and
however ancient they may be. For what are the
classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man ?
They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and
there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in
them as Delphi and Dodona never gave . We might
as well omit to study Nature because she is old . To
read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit,
is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader
more than any exercise which the customs of the day
esteem . It requires a training such as the athletes
underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole
life to this object . Books must be read as deliberately
and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough
even to be able to speak the language of that nation
by which they are written, for there is a memorable
interval between the spoken and the written language,
the language heard and the language read . The one
is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect
merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously,
like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the
maturity and experience of that ; if that is our mother
tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select
expression, too significant to be heard by the ear,
which we must be born again in order to speak. The
crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin
tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the
accident of birth to read the works of genius written
in those languages ; for these were not written in that
Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select lan-
guage of literature . They had not learned the nobler
dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials
106 WALDEN.

on which they were written were waste paper to them ,

and they prized instead a cheap contemporary litera-
ture. But when the several nations of Europe had
acquired distinct though rude written languages of
their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising
literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars
were enabled to discern from that remoteness the
treasures of antiquity . What the Roman and Grecian
multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few
scholars read, and a few scholars only are still read-
ing it.
However much we may admire the orator's occa-
sional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words
are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting
spoken language as the firmament with its stars is
behind the clouds . There are the stars, and they who
can may read them . The astronomers forever com-
ment on and observe them. They are not exhalations
like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What
is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to
be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the in-
spiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the
mob before him, to those who can hear him ; but the
writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who
would be distracted by the event and the crowd which
inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of
mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with
him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A writ-
ten word is the choicest of relics . It is something at
once more intimate with us and more universal than
any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to
life itself. It may be translated into every language,
and not only be read but actually breathed from all
 READING. 107

human lips ; not be represented on canvas or in

marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life it-
self. The symbol of an ancient man's thought be-
comes a modern man's speech . Two thousand sum-
mers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian lit-
erature , as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and
autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene
and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them
against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured
wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of genera-
tions and nations . Books , the oldest and the best,
stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every
cottage . They have no cause of their own to plead,
but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his
common sense will not refuse them. Their authors
are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every soci-
ety, and, more than kings or emperors , exert an influ-
ence on mankind . When the illiterate and perhaps
scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry
his coveted leisure and independence , and is admitted
to the circles of wealth and fashion , he turns inevita-
bly at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible
circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of
the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and in-
sufficiency ofall his riches, and further proves his good
sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his
children that intellectual culture whose want he so
keenly feels ; and thus it is that he becomes the
founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient
classics in the language in which they were written
must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history
of the human race ; for it is remarkable that no tran-
script of them has ever been made into any modern
108 WALDEN.

tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded

as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been
printed in English , nor Æschylus, nor Virgil even, -
works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful al-
most as the morning itself ; for later writers, say what
we will of their genius , have rarely, if ever, equalled
the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and
heroic literary labors of the ancients . They only talk
of forgetting them who never knew them . It will be
soon enough to forget them when we have the learn-
ing and the genius which will enable us to attend to
and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed
when those relics which we call Classics, and the still
older and more than classic but even less known Scrip-
tures ofthe nations, shall have still further accumulated,
when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zend-
avestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and
Shakspeares, and all the centuries to come shall have
successively deposited their trophies in the forum of
the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale
heaven at last.
The works of the great poets have never yet been
read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
They have only been read as the multitude read the
stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.
Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry con-
venience, as they have learned to cipher in order to
keep accounts and not be cheated in trade ; but of
reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know lit-
tle or nothing ; yet this only is reading, in a high sense,
not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the
nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have
to stand on tiptoe to read and devote our most alert
and wakeful hours to.
 READING. 109

I think that having learned our letters we should

read the best that is in literature, and not be forever
repeating our a b abs, and words of one syllable, in
the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and
foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if
they read or hear read, and perchance have been con-
victed by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and
for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their
faculties in what is called easy reading. There is a
work in several volumes in our Circulating Library
entitled Little Reading, which I thought referred to
a town of that name which I had not been to . There
are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can di-
gest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of
meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be
wasted . If others are the machines to provide this
provender, they are the machines to read it. They
read the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Se-
phronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved
before, and neither did the course of their true love
run smooth, - at any rate, how it did run and stum-
ble, and get up again and go on! how some poor un-
fortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never
have gone up as far as the belfry ; and then, having
needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings
the bell for all the world to come together and hear,
O dear ! how he did get down again ! For my part, I
think that they had better metamorphose all such as-
piring heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-
cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constella-
tions, and let them swing round there till they are
rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men
with their pranks . The next time the novelist rings
the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn
ΙΙΟ WALDEN.

down. " The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance

of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of ' Tit-
tle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts ; a great rush ;
don't all come together. " All this they read with
saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and
with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet
need no sharpening, just as some little four-year- old
bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinder-
ella, - - without any improvement, that I can see, in
the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more
skill in extracting or inserting the moral . The result
is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations,
and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the
intellectual faculties . This sort of gingerbread is
baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or
rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer
market.
The best books are not read even by those who are
called good readers . What does our Concord culture
amount to? There is in this town, with a very few ex-
ceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books
even in English literature, whose words all can read
and spell. Even the college-bred and so called liber-
ally educated men here and elsewhere have really little
or no acquaintance with the English classics ; and as
for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient clas-
sics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will
know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere
made to become acquainted with them . I know a
woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French
paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that,
but to " keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian
by birth ; and when I ask him what he considers the
best thing he can do in this world, he says, besides
 READING. III

this, to keep up and add to his English . This is about

as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to
do, and they take an English paper for the purpose.
One who has just come from reading perhaps one of
the best English books will find how many with whom
he can converse about it ? Or suppose he comes from
reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose
praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate ; he
will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep si-
lence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor
in our colleges who, if he has mastered the difficulties
of the language, has proportionally mastered the diffi-
culties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has
any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader ;
and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of man-
kind, who in this town can tell me even their titles?
Most men do not know that any nation but the He-
brews have had a scripture. A man, any man , will
go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver
dollar, but here are golden words, which the wisest
men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the
wise of every succeeding age have assured us of ;
and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading,
the primers and class-books, and when we leave school,
the Little Reading," and story books, which are for
boys and beginners ; and our reading, our conversa-
tion and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy
only of pygmies and manikins .
ea aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this
our Concord soil has produced, whose names are
hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato
and never read his book ? As if Plato were my towns-
man and I never saw him, - my next neighbor and I
never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of
112 WALDEN.

his words. But how actually is it ? His Dialogues,

which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the
next shelf, and yet I never read them . We are under-
bred and low-lived and illiterate ; and in this respect
I confess I do not make any very broad distinction
between the illiterateness of my townsman who can-
not read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has
learned to read only what is for children and feeble
intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of
antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they
were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little
higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of
the daily paper .
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers .
There are probably words addressed to our condition
exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand,
would be more salutary than the morning or the spring
to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face
of things for us. How many a man has dated a new
era in his life from the reading of a book. The book
exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles
and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable
things we may find somewhere uttered. These same
questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us
have in their turn occurred to all the wise men ; not
one has been omitted ; and each has answered them,
according to his ability, by his words and his life.
Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The
solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Con-
cord, who has had his second birth and peculiar re-
ligious experience, and is driven as he believes into
silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may
think it is not true ; but Zoroaster, thousands of years
ago, travelled the same road and had the same experi-
 READING. 113

ence ; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and

treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said
to have invented and established worship among men.
Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and,
through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies,
with Jesus Christ Himself, and let "our church " go by
the board .
We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century
and are making the most rapid strides of any nation.
But consider how little this village does for its own
culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor
to be flattered by them, for that will not advance
either of us . We need to be provoked, -goaded
like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a com-
paratively decent system of common schools, schools
for infants only ; but excepting the half-starved Ly-
ceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning
of a library suggested by the state, no school for our-
selves. We spend more on almost any article of
bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment .
It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did
not leave off our education when we begin to be men
and women . It is time that villages were universities,
and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities,
with leisure if they are indeed so well off- to pur-
sue liberal studies the rest of their lives . Shall the
world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever?
Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal
education under the skies of Concord ? Can we not
hire some Abelard to lecture to us ? Alas ! what with
foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are
kept from school too long, and our education is sadly
neglected. In this country, the village should in some
respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe.
I
114 WALDEN.

It should be the patron of the fine arts . It is rich

enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refine-
ment. It can spend money enough on such things
as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian
to propose spending money for things which more
intelligent men know to be of far more worth . This
town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-
house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will
not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put
into that shell, in a hundred years . The one hundred
and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Ly-
ceum in the winter is better spent than any other
equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nine-
teenth century, why should we not enjoy the advan-
tages which the nineteenth century offers ? Why
should our life be in any respect provincial ? If we
will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Bos-
ton and take the best newspaper in the world at once?
not be sucking the pap of " neutral family " papers,
or browsing " Olive Branches ” here in New England .
Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us,
and we will see if they know anything. Why should
we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co.
to select our reading ? As the nobleman of cultivated
taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his
culture, genius - learning — wit — books — paint-
ings -- statuary music -― philosophical instruments,
and the like ; so let the village do, - not stop short
at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library,
and three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers
got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with
these. To act collectively is according to the spirit
of our institutions ; and I am confident that, as our
circumstances are more flourishing, our means are
 *

READING. 115

greater than the nobleman's. New England can hire

all the wise men in the world to come and teach her,
and board them round the while, and not be provin-
cial at all . That is the uncommon school we want .
Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of
men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the
river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at
least over the darker gulf of ignorance which sur-
rounds us.
 IV.

SOUNDS .

BUT while we are confined to books, though the

most select and classic, and read only particular writ-
ten languages, which are themselves but dialects and
provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language
which all things and events speak without metaphor,
which alone is copious and standard . Much is pub-
lished, but little printed . The rays which stream
through the shutter will be no longer remembered
when the shutter is wholly removed. No method
nor aíscipline can supersede the necessity of being
forever on the alert . What is a course of history, or
philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected,
or the best society, or the most admirable routine of
life, compared with the discipline of looking always at
what is to be seen ? Will you be a reader, a student
merely, or a seer ? Read your fate, see what is before
you , and walk on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer ; I hoed
beans. Nay, I often did better than this . There
were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the
bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of
the head or hands . I love a broad margin to my life.
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my
accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from
sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines
and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude
and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted
116
 SOUNDS. 117

noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling

in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's
wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the
lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in
the night, and they were far better than any work of
the chands would have been. They were not time
subtracted from my life, but so much over and above
my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
inean by contemplation and the forsaking of works .
For the most part, I minded not how the hours went.
The day advanced as if to light some work of mine ;
it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing
memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like
the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good for-
tune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the
hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or
suppressed warble which he might hear out of my
nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing
the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced
into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock ; for I
lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that
"for yesterday, to day, and to-morrow they have only
one word, and they express the variety of meaning
by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to
morrow, and overhead for the passing day!" This
was sheer idleness to. my fellow-townsmen , no doubtty
but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their
standard, I should not have been found wanting. A
man must find his occasions in himself, it is true .
The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove
his indolence.
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life,
over those who were obliged to look abroad for
amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life
118 WALDEN.

itself was become my amusement and never ceased to

be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and with-
out an end. If we were always indeed getting our
living, and regulating our lives according to the last
and best mode we had learned, we should never be
troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely
enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh pros-
pect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime
When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting al
my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bed-
stead making but one budget, dashed water on the
floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it,
and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white ;
and by the time the villagers had broken their fast
the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to
allow me to move in again, and my meditations were
almost uninterrupted . It was pleasant to see my
whole household effects out on the grass, making a
little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged
table, from which I did not remove the books and
pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories .
They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if
unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted
to stretch an awning over them and take my seat
there . It was worth the while to see the sun shine
on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them ;
so much more interesting most familiar objects look
out doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next
bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and
blackberry vines run round its legs ; pine cones, chest-
nut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about.
It looked as if this was the way these forms came to
be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and
-
bedstead, because they once stood in their midst.
 SOUNDS. 119

My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on

the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young
forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen
rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led
down the hill. In my front yard grew the straw-
berry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and
goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and
ground-nut . Near the end of May, the sand-cherry
(cerasus pumila) adorned the sides of the path with
its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically
about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed
down with good-sized and handsome cherries, fell
over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted
them out of compliment to Nature, though they were
scarcely palatable. The sumach (rhus glabra) grew
luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the
embankment which I had made, and growing five or
six feet the first season . Its broad pinnate tropical
leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The
large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring
from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, devel-
oped themselves as by magic into graceful green and
tender boughs, an inch in diameter ; and sometimes,
as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow
and tax their weak joints , I heard a fresh and tender
bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when
there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by
its own weight . In August, the large masses of
berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many
wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety
crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down
and broke the tender limbs .
120 WALDEN.

As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks

are circling about my clearing ; the tantivy of wild
pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my view,
or perching restless on the white-pine boughs behind
my house, gives a voice to the air ; a fishhawk dimples
the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish ;
a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and
seizes a frog by the shore ; the sedge is bending under
the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither ;
and for the last half hour I have heard the rattle of
railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like
the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Bos-
ton to the country . For I did not live so out of the
world as that boy who, as I hear, was put out to a
farmer in the east part of the town, but erelong ran
away and came home again, quite down at the heel
and homesick. He had never seen such a dull and
out-of-the-way place ; the folks were all gone off ; why,
you couldn't even hear the whistle ! I doubt if there
is such a place in Massachusetts now : —
"In truth, our village has become a butt
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er
Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is - Concord."

The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a

hundred rods south of where I dwell . I usually go to
the village along its causeway, and am, as it were,
related to society by this link. The men on the freight
trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow
to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often,
and apparently they take me for an employee ; and so
I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere
in the orbit of the earth.
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods
 SOUNDS. 121

summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a

hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me
that many restless city merchants are arriving within
the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders
from the other side . As they come under one hori-
zon, they shout their warning to get off the track to
the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two
towns . Here come your groceries, country ; your
rations, countrymen ! Nor is there any man so inde-
pendent on his farm that he can say them nay. And
here's your pay for them ! screams the countryman's
whistle ; timber like long battering rams going twenty
miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs
enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that
dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering
civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the
Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry
meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cot-
ton, down goes the woven cloth ; up comes the silk,
down goes the woollen ; up come the books, but down
goes the wit that writes them.
When I meet the engine with its train of cars mov-
ing offwith planetary motion,—or, rather, like a comet,
for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and
with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since
its orbit does not look like a returning curve, — with
its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in
golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud
which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its
masses to the light, as if this travelling demigod,
this cloud-compeller, would erelong take the sunset
sky for the livery of his train ; when I hear the iron
horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder,
shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and
122 WALDEN.

smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged horse

or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology
I don't know) , it seems as if the earth had got a
race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems,
and men made the elements their servants for noble
ends ! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were
the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as
that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the ele-
ments and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany
men on their errands and be their escort.
I watch the passage of the morning cars with the
same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is
hardly more regular . Their train of clouds stretching
far behind and rising higher and higher, going to
heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals
the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into
the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train
of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the
spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early
this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the
mountains, to fodder and harness his steed . Fire, too ,
was awakened thus early to put the vital heat in him
and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent
as it is early ! If the snow lies deep, they strap on
his snow-shoes, and with the giant plough plough a
furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which
the cars, like a following drill- barrow, sprinkle all the
restless men and floating merchandise in the country
for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the country,
stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awak-
ened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when
in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the ele-
ments incased in ice and snow ; and he will reach his
stall only with the morning star, to start once more on
 SOUNDS. 123

his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at

evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the super-
fluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves
and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron
slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and com-
manding as it is protracted and unwearied !
Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of
towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day,
in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without
the knowledge of their inhabitants ; this moment stop-
ping at some brilliant station-house in town or city,
where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dis-
mal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings
and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the vil-
lage day. They go and come with such regularity
and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far,
that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one
well-conducted institution regulates a whole country.
Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since
the railroad was invented ? Do they not talk and think
faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office ?
There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of
the former place . I have been astonished at the mira-
cles it has wrought ; that some of my neighbors, who,
I should have prophesied, once for all, would never
get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand
when the bell rings. To do things " railroad fashion "
is now the by-word ; and it is worth the while to be
warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get
off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot
act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case .
We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never
turns aside . (Let that be the name of your engine . )
Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute
124 WALDEN.

these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the

compass ; yet it interferes with no man's business, and
the children go to school on the other track. We
live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to
be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts .
Every path but your own is the path of fate . Keep
on your own track, then.
What recommends commerce to me is its enter-
prise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and
pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go about
their business with more or less courage and content,
doing more even than they suspect, and perchance
better employed than they could have consciously
devised . I am less affected by their heroism who
stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena
Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the
men who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter
quarters ; who have not merely the three o'clock in
the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was
the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so
early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or
the sinews of their iron steed are frozen . On this
morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is still
raging and chilling men's blood, I hear the muffled
tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of
their chilled breath, which announces that the cars
are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the
veto of a New England northeast snow storm, and I
behold the ploughmen covered with snow and rime,
their heads peering above the mould-board which is
turning down other than daisies and the nests of
field-mice, like boulders of the Sierra Nevada, that
occupy an outside place in the universe.
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene,
 SOUNDS. 125

alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural

in its methods withal, far more so than many fan-
tastic enterprises and sentimental experiments , and
hence its singular success. I am refreshed and ex-
panded when the freight train rattles past me, and I
smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all
the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, re-
minding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and
Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of
the globe . I feel more like a citizen of the world at
the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many
flaxen New England heads the next summer, the
Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks, the old junk,
gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car-
load of torn sails is more legible and interesting now
than if they should be wrought into paper and printed
books . Who can write so graphically the history of
the storms they have weathered as these rents have
done ? They are proof-sheets which need no correc-
tion . Here goes lumber from the Maine woods,
which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen
four dollars on the thousand because of what did go
out or was split up : pine, spruce, cedar, — first,
second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one
quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and cari-
bou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which
will get far among the hills before it gets slacked .
These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the low-
est condition to which cotton and linen descend, the
final result of dress, ― of patterns which are now no
longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukie, as those
splendid articles, English, French, or American
prints, ginghams, muslins, &c ., gathered from all
quarters both of fashion and poverty, going to be-
126 WALDEN.

come paper of one color or a few shades only, on

which forsooth will be written tales of real life, high
and low, and founded on fact! This closed car
smells of salt fish, the strong New England and com-
mercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks
and the fisheries . Who has not seen a salt fish,
thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can
spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the saints to
the blush ? with which you may sweep or pave the
streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster
shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and
rain behind it, —and the trader, as a Concord trader
once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he
commences business, until at last his oldest customer
cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or
mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake,
and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out
an excellent dun fish for a Saturday's dinner. Next
Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their
twist and the angle of elevation they had when the
oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas
of the Spanish main, a type of all obstinacy, and
evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all
constitutional vices . I confess that, practically speak-
ing, when I have learned a man's real disposition, I
have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse
in this state of existence . As the Orientals say, “ A
cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound
round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' labor
bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form."
The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as these
tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe
is what is usually done with them, and then they will
stay put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses
 SOUNDS. 127

or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville,

Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains,
who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and
now perchance stands over his bulk-head and thinks
of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect
the price for him, telling his customers this moment,
as he has told them twenty times before this morn-
ing, that he expects some by the next train of prime
quality. It is advertised in the Cuttingsville Times .
While these things go up other things come down.
Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my
book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern
hills, which has winged its way over the Green
Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow
through the township within ten minutes, and scarce
another eye beholds it ; going
"to be the mast
Of some great ammiral."

And hark ! here comes the cattle-train bearing the

cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and
cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and
shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the
mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown
from the mountains by the September gales . The
air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep,
and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were
going by. When the old bell-wether at the head
rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like
rams and the little hills like lambs . A car-load of
drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves
now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their
useless sticks as their badge of office . But their
dogs, where are they ? It is a stampede to them ;
128 WALDEN.

they are quite thrown out ; they have lost the scent.
Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peterboro'
Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green
Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their
vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity
are below par now. They will slink back to their
kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike
a league with the wolf and the fox . So is your pas-
toral life whirled past and away. But the bell rings,
and I must get off the track and let the cars go by :
What's the railroad to me?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes banks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-blowing,
And the blackberries a-growing,
but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods . I will
not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its
smoke and steam and hissing.

Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless
world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer
feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For
the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my medita-
tions are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a
carriage or team along the distant highway.
Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lin-
coln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the
wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were,
natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness .
At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound
acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine
needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp
 SOUNDS. 129

which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest

possible distance produces one and the same effect,
a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the interven-
ing atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth inter-
esting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.
There came to me in this case a melody which the
air had strained, and which had conversed with every
leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the
sound which the elements had taken up and modu-
lated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is , to
some extent, an original sound, and therein is the
magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition
of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the
voice of the wood ; the same trivial words and notes
sung by a wood-nymph.
At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the
horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melo-
dious, and at first I would mistake it for the voices of
certain minstrels by whom I was sometimes sere-
naded, who might be straying over hill and dale ;
but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when
it was prolonged into the cheap and natural music of
the cow. I do not mean to be satirical, but to ex-
press my appreciation of those youths ' singing, when
I state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to the
music of the cow, and they were at length one
articulation of Nature.
Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the sum-
mer, after the evening train had gone by, the whippoor-
wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a
stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house.
They would begin to sing almost with as much pre-
cision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular
time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening.
K
130 WALDEN.

I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with

their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five at once
in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar
behind another, and so near me that I distinguished
not only the cluck after each note, but often that
singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web,
only proportionally louder. Sometimes one would
circle round and round me in the woods a few feet
distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I
was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout
the night, and were again as musical as ever just
before and about dawn .
When other birds are still the screech owls take up
the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu.
Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian . Wise
midnight hags ! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit
tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most
solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of
suicide lovers remembering the pangs and delights
of supernal love in the infernal groves . Yet I
love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses,
trilled along the woodside ; reminding me sometimes
of music and singing birds ; as if it were the dark and
tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would
fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and
melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in
human shape night-walked the earth and did the
deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their
wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their
transgressions . They give me a new sense of the
variety and capacity of that nature which is our
common dwelling. Oh-0-0-0-0 that I never had been
bor-r-r-r-n ! sighs one on this side of the pond, and
circles with the restlessness of despair to some new
 SOUNDS. 131

perch on the gray oaks . Then — that I never had

been bor-r-r-r-n ! echoes another on the farther side
with tremulous sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n ! comes
faintly from far in the Lincoln woods.
I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at
hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound
in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and
make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a
human being, ― some poor weak relic of mortality
who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal,
yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley,
made more awful by a certain gurgling melodious-
ness, - I find myself beginning with the letters gl
when I try to imitate it, -expressive of a mind
which has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in
the mortification of all healthy and courageous
thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and
insane howlings . But now one answers from far
woods in a strain made really melodious by distance,
- - Hoo hoo hoo hoorer hoo ; and indeed for the most
part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether
heard by day or night, summer or winter.
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the
idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound
admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which
no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped
nature which men have not recognized . They repre-
sent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which
all have . All day the sun has shone on the surface
of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands
hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate
above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens,
and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath ; but
now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a
 132 WALDEN.

different race of creatures awakes to express the

meaning of Nature there.
Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of
wagons over bridges, -a sound heard farther than
almost any other at night, —the baying of dogs, and
sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow
in a distant barn-yard . In the meanwhile all the
shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy
spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still
unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian
lake, — if the Walden nymphs will pardon the com-
parison, for though there are almost no weeds, there
are frogs there, -- who would fain keep up the hilari-
ous rules of their old festal tables, though their voices
have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at
mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become
only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet in-
toxication never comes to drown the memory of the
past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and
distention . The most aldermanic, with his chin
upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his
drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a
deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes
round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk,
tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk ! and straightway comes over
the water from some distant cove the same password
repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has
gulped down to his mark ; and when this observance
has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the
master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk !
and each in his turn repeats the same down to the
least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest-paunched, that
there be no mistake ; and then the bowl goes round
again and again, until the sun disperses the morning
 SOUNDS. 133

mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond,

but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and
pausing for a reply.
I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-
crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might
be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music
merely, as a singing bird . The note of this once wild
Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of
any bird's, and if they could be naturalized without
being domesticated, it would soon become the most
famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor
of the goose and the hooting of the owl ; and then
imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses
when their lords' clarions rested! No wonder that
man added this bird to his tame stock, to say
nothing of the eggs and drumsticks . To walk in a
winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded,
their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow
on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the re-
sounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other
birds, - think of it ! It would put nations on the
alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise
earlier and earlier every successive day of his life,
till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and
wise ? This foreign bird's note is celebrated by the
poets of all countries along with the notes of their
native songsters . All climates agree with brave
Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the
natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are
sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the
Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice ; but
its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers .
I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that
you would have said there was a deficiency of domes
134 WALDEN.

tic sounds ; neither the churn, nor the spinning-wheel,

nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of
the urn, nor children crying , to comfort one. An old-
fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of
ennui before this . Not even rats in the wall, for they
were starved out, or rather were never baited in, -
only squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a
whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay screaming
beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the
house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a flock of
wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox
to bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole,
those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing.
No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard .
No yard! but unfenced Nature reaching up to your
very sills. A young forest growing up under your
windows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines
breaking through into your cellar ; sturdy pitch-pines
rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want
of room, their roots reaching quite under the house .
Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale,
-a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots
behind your house for fuel . Instead of no path to the
front-yard gate in the Great Snow, -no gate— no
front-yard, - and no path to the civilized world !
 V.

SOLITUDE.

THIS is a delicious evening, when the whole body is

one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.
I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a
part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of
the pond in my shirt sleeves , though it is cool as well
as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to at-
tract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to
me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and
the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling
wind from over the water. Sympathy with the flut-
tering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my
breath ; yet , like the lake, my serenity is rippled but
not ruffled . These small waves raised by the even-
ing wind are as remote from storm as the smooth re-
flecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind
still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash,
and some creatures lull the rest with their notes .
The repose is never complete . The wildest animals
do not repose, but seek their prey now ; the fox, and
skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods
without fear. They are Nature's watchmen, — links
which connect the days of animated life .
When I return to my house I find that visitors have
been there and left their cards, either a bunch of
flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil
on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip . They who come
135
136 WALDEN.

rarely to the woods take some little piece of the for

est into their hands to play with by the way, which
they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One
has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and
dropped it on my table. I could always tell if visitors
had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs
or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of
what sex or age or quality they were by some slight
trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass
plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the rail-
road, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of
a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the
passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods
off by the scent of his pipe.
There is commonly sufficient space about us . Our
horizon is never quite at our elbows . The thick
wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but some-
what is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, ap-
propriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed
from Nature . For what reason have I this vast
range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented
forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men ?
My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house
is visible from any place but the hill tops within half
a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by
woods all to myself ; a distant view of the railroad
where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of
the fence which skirts the woodland road on the
other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I
live as on the prairies . It is as much Asia or Africa
as New England . I have, as it were, my own sun and
moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At
night there was never a traveller passed my house, or
knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or
 SOLITUDE. 137

ast man ; unless it were in the spring, when at long

intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts,
-- they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond
of their own natures, and baited their hooks with
darkness, - but they soon retreated, usually with
light baskets, and left " the world to darkness and to
me," and the black kernel of the night was never
profaned by any human neighborhood . I believe
that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark,
though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and
candles have been introduced .
Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet
and tender, the most innocent and encouraging so-
ciety may be found in any natural object, even for the
poor misanthrope and most 'melancholy man. There
can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in
the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There
was never yet such a storm but it was Eolian music
to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly
compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness .
While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust
that nothing can make life a burden to me. The
gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in
the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but
good for me, too . Though it prevents my hoeing
them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it
should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot
in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low
lands, it would still be good for the grass on the up-
lands, and, being good for the grass, it would be
good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself
with other men , it seems as if I were more favored
by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am
conscious of ; as if I had a warrant and surety at
138 WALDEN.

their hands which my fellows have not, and were es-

pecially guided and guarded . I do not flatter myself,
but if it be possible they flatter me . I have never felt
lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of soli-
tude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came
to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the Tnear
neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene
and healthy life. To be alone was something un-
pleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a
slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my
recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these
thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such
sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very
pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight
around my house, an infinite and unaccountable
friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining
me, as made the fancied advantages of human neigh-
borhood insignificant, and I have never thought of
them since . Every little pine needle expanded and
swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so
distinctly made aware of the presence of something
kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accus-
tomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the near-
est of blood to me and humanest was not a person
nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be
strange to me again. —
" Mourning untimely consumes the sad ;
Few are their days in the land of the living,
Beautiful daughter of Toscar."

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long

rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me
to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon,
soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting ; when an
 SOLITUDE. 139

early twilight ushered in a long evening in which

many thoughts had time to take root and unfold them-
selves . In those driving northeast rains which tried
the village houses so , when the maids stood ready with
mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out,
I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all
entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection . In one
heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large
pitch-pine across the pond , making a very conspicu-
ous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to
bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches
wide, as you would groove a walking-stick . I passed
it again the other day, and was struck with awe on
looking up and beholding that mark, now more dis-
tinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt
came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago.
Men frequently say to me, " I should think you would
feel lonesome down there , and want to be nearer to
folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially."
I am tempted to reply to such, - This whole earth
which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far
apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabit-
ants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot
be appreciated by our instruments ? Why should I
feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?
This which you put seems to me not to be the most
important question. What sort of space is that which
separates a man from his fellows and makes him soli-
tary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can
bring two minds much nearer to one another. What
do we want most to dwell near to ? Not to many
men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room,
the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery,
Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most con-
140 WALDEN.

gregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence

in all our experience we have found that to issue, as
the willow stands near the water and sends out its
roots in that direction . This will vary with different
natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig
his cellar. . . . I one evening overtook one of my
townsmen, who has accumulated what is called " a
handsome property, " —though I never got a fair
view of it, on the Walden road, driving a pair of
cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could
bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of
life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passa-
bly well ; I was not joking. And so I went home to
my bed, and left him to pick his way through the dark-
ness and the mud to Brighton, or Bright-town,
which place he would reach sometime in the morning .
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a
dead man makes indifferent all times and places .
The place where that may occur is always the same,
and indescribably pleasant to all our senses . For the
most part we allow only outlying and transient cir-
cumstances to make our occasions . They are, in
fact, the cause of our distraction . Nearest to all
things is that power which fashions their being.
Next to us the grandest laws are continually being
executed . Next to us is not the workman whom we
have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but
the workman whose work we are.
" How vast and profound is the influence of the sub-
tile powers of Heaven and of Earth ! "
"We seek to perceive them, and we do not see
them ; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear
them ; identified with the substance of things, they
cannot be separated from them. "
 SOLITUDE. 143

" They cause that in all the universe he fireside every

sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in thend
holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to
their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences .
They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our
right ; they environ us on all sides. "
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not
a little înteresting to me . Can we not do without the
society of our gossips a little while under these circum-
stances, --have our own thoughts to cheer us ? Con-
fucius says truly, " Virtue does not remain as an aban-
doned orphan ; it must of necessity have neighbors ."
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane
sense . By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand
aloof from actions and their consequences ; and all
things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We
are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either
the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky look-
ing down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical
exhibition ; on the other hand, I may not be affected
by an actual event which appears to concern me much
more. I only know myself as a human entity ; the
scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections ; and
am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can
stand as remote from myself as from another. How-
ever intense my experience, I am conscious of the
presence of and criticism of a part of me, which, as it
were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no
experience, but taking note of it ; and that is no more
I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy,
of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a
kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far
as he was concerned . This doubleness may easily
make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
 WALDEN.
140

gregate L esome to be alone the greater part of

e time. To be in company, even with the best, is
soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone .
I never found the companion that was so companion-
able as solitude. We are for the most part more
lonely when we go abroad among men than when we
stay in our chambers . A man thinking or working is
always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is
not measured by the miles of space that intervene be-
tween a man and his fellows. The really diligent
student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The
farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day,
hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he
is employed ; but when he comes home at night he
cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his
thoughts, but must be where he can 66 see the folks,"
and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, himself for
his day's solitude ; and hence he wonders how the
student can sit alone in the house all night and most
of the day without ennui and " the blues " ; but he
does not realize that the student, though in the house,
is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods,
as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recre-
ation and society that the latter does, though it may
be a more condensed form of it.
Society is commonly too cheap . We meet at very
short intervals, not having had time to acquire any
new value for each other. We meet at meals three
times a day, and give each other a new taste of that
old musty cheese that we are. We have to agree on
a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness,
to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we
need not come to open war. We meet at the post-
 SOLITUDE. 143

office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every

night ; we live thick and are in each other's way, and
stumble over one another, and I think that we thus
lose some respect for one another. Certainly less
frequency would suffice for all important and hearty
communications . Consider the girls in a factory,
never alone, hardly in their dreams . It would be
better if there were but one inhabitant to a square
mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in
his skin, that we should touch him.
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying
of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose
loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with
which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased .
imagination surrounded him, and which he believed
to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental
health and strength, we may be continually cheered
by a like but more normal and natural society, and
come to know that we are never alone.
I have a great deal of company in my house ; es-
pecially in the morning, when nobody calls . Let me
suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey
an idea of my situation . I am no more lonely than the
loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden
Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I
pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue
angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters . The sun
is alone, except in thick weather, when there some-
times appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God
is alone, -— but the devil, he is far from being alone ;
he sees a great deal of company ; he is legion . I am
no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in
a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a
humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill
144 WALDEN.

Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the

south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or
the first spider in a new house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings,
when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the
wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who
is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it,
and fringed it with pine woods ; who tells me stories
of old time and of new eternity ; and between us we
manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth
and pleasant views of things, even without apples or
cider, ― a most wise and humorous friend, whom I
love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever
did Goffe or Whalley ; and though he is thought to be
dead, none can show where he is buried . An elderly
dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood , invisible to
most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love
to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to
her fables ; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility,
and her memory runs back farther than mythology,
and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on
what fact every one is founded, for the incidents oc-
curred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old
dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and
is likely to outlive all her children yet .
The indescribable innocence and beneficence of
Nature, - of sun and wind and rain, of summer and
winter, such health, such cheer, they afford forever !
and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that
all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness
fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the
clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and
put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should
ever for a just cause grieve . Shall I not have intelli-
 SOLITUDE. 145

gence with the earth ? Am I not partly leaves and

vegetable mould myself?
What is the pill which will keep us well, serene,
contented ? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but
our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable,
botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself
young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day,
and fed her health with their decaying fatness . For
my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a
mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea,
which come out of those long shallow black-schooner-
looking wagons which we sometimes see made to
carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted
morning air. Morning air ! If men will not drink of
this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we
must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for
the benefit of those who have lost their subscription
ticket to morning time in this world . But remember,
it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest
cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and
follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no
worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that
old herb-doctor Esculapius, and who is represented
on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in
the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes
drinks ; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who
was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who
had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor
of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly
sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady
that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it
was spring.
L
 VI.

VISITORS .

I THINK that I love society as much as most, and

am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker
for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in
my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might pos-
sibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room,
if my business called me thither.
I had three chairs in my house : one for solitude,
two for friendship, three for society . When visitors
came in larger and unexpected numbers, there was
but the third chair for them all, but they generally
economized the room by standing up . It is surpris-
ing how many great men and women a small house
will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls,
with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we
often parted without being aware that we had come
very near to one another. Many of our houses, both
public and private, with their almost innumerable
apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the
storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear
to me extravagantly large for their inhabitants.
They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem
to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised
when the herald blows his summons before some
Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come
creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a
ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some
hole in the pavement .
146
 VISITORS. 147

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so

small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient
distance from my guest when we began to utter the
big thoughts in big words . You want room for your
thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or
two before they make their port . The bullet of your
thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet
motion and fallen into its last and steady course be-
fore it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may
plough out again through the side of his head . Also ,
our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their
columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations,
must have suitable broad and natural boundaries,
even a considerable neutral ground, between them.
I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the
pond to a companion on the opposite side . In my
house we were so near that we could not begin to
hear, we could not speak low enough to be heard ;
as when you throw two stones into calm water so
near that they break each other's undulations . If we
are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can
afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and
feel each other's breath ; but if we speak reservedly
and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that
all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to
evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate
society with that in each of us which is without, or
above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent,
but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot
possibly hear each other's voice in any case. Re-
ferred to this standard, speech is for the convenience
of those who are hard of hearing ; but there are
many fine things which we cannot say if we have to
shout. As the conversation began to assume a loftier
148 WALDEN.

and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs

farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite
corners, and then commonly there was not room
enough.
My " best " room, however, my withdrawing room,
always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun
rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house.
Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests
came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept
the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things
in order.
If one guest came he sometimes partook of my
frugal meal and it was no interruption to conversation
to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising
and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the
meanwhile . But if twenty came and sat in my house,
there was nothing said about dinner, though there
might be bread enough for two, more than if eating
were a forsaken habit ; but we naturally practised
abstinence ; and this was never felt to be an offence
against hospitality, but the most proper and con-
siderate course. The waste and decay of physical
life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously
retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its
ground. I could entertain thus a thousand as well
as twenty ; and if any ever went away disappointed
or hungry from my house when they found me at
home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized
with them at least. So easy is it, though many
housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better
customs in the place of the old . You need not rest
your reputation on the dinners you give . For my
own part, I was never so effectually deterred from
frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus
 VISITORS. 149

whatever, as by the parade one made about dining

me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout
hint never to trouble him so again . I think I shall
never revisit those scenes . I should be proud to
have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser
which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut
leaf for a card :

"Arrivéd there, the little house they fill,

Ne looke for entertainment where none was;
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will :
The noblest mind the best contentment has."

When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plym-

outh Colony, went with a companion on a visit of
ceremony to Massasoit on foot through the woods,
and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were
well received by the king, but nothing was said about
eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote
their own words, - " He laid us on the bed with him-
self and his wife, they at the one end and we at the
other, it being only plank, laid a foot from the ground,
and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief
men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us ; so
that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our
journey." At one o'clock the next day Massasoit
"brought two fishes that he had shot," about thrice
as big as a bream ; "these being boiled, there were
at least forty looked for a share in them. The most
ate of them. This meal only we had in two nights
and a day ; and had not one of us bought a partridge,
we had taken our journey fasting." Fearing that
they would be light-headed for want of food and also
sleep, owing to " the savages' barbarous singing (for
they used to sing themselves asleep) ," and that they
150 WALDEN.

might get home while they had strength to travel,

they departed . As for lodging, it is true they were
but poorly entertained, though what they found an
inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor ;
but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how
the Indians could have done better. They had noth-
ing to eat themselves, and they were wiser than to
think that apologies could supply the place of food to
their guests ; so they drew their belts tighter and
said nothing about it. Another time when Winslow
visited them, it being a season of plenty with them,
there was no deficiency in this respect.
As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I
had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at
any other period of my life ; I mean that I had some.
I met several there under more favorable circum-
stances than I could anywhere else . But fewer came
to see me upon trivial business . In this respect, my
company was winnowed by my mere distance from
town. I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean
of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty,
that for the most part, so far as my needs were con-
cerned, only the finest sediment was deposited around
me. Besides, there were wafted to me evidences of
unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other
side.
Who should come to my lodge this morning but a
true Homeric or Paphlagonian man, - - he had so
suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot
print it here, - a Canadian, a wood-chopper and
post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who
made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog
caught. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, " if it
were not for books," would " not know what to do
 VISITORS. 151

rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one

wholly through for many rainy seasons . Some priest
who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to
read his verse in the testament in his native parish
far away ; and now I must translate to him, while he
holds the book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus, for
his sad countenance . 66 Why are you in tears, Patro-
clus, like a young girl ? " .
" Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia ?
They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, son of Æacus, among the Myrmidons,
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve. "

He says, " That's good . " He has a great bundle of

white-oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered
this Sunday morning. " I suppose there's no harm in
going after such a thing to-day," says he. To him
Homer was a great writer, though what his writing was
about he did not know. A more simple and natural
man it would be hard to find . Vice and disease,
which cast such a sombre moral hue over the world,
seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He
was about twenty-eight years old , and had left Canada
and his father's house a dozen years before to work in
the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last,
perhaps in his native country . He was cast in the
coarsest mould ; a stout but sluggish body, yet grace-
fully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy
hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasion-
ally lit up with expression . He wore a flat gray cloth
cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cowhide
boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually
carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past
my house, ― for he chopped all summer, -— in a tin
152 WALDEN.

pail ; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in

a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt ;
and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along
early, crossing my beanfield, though without anxiety.
or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit.
He wasn't a-going to hurt himself. He didn't care if
he only earned his board . Frequently he would leave
his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a
woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half
to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where
he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour
whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till
nightfall, loving to dwell long upon these themes.
He would say, as he went by in the morning : " How
thick the pigeons are ! If working every day were
not my trade, I could get all the meat I should want
by hunting, pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, par-
tridges, - by gosh ! I could get all I should want for
a week in one day."
He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some
flourishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his
trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts
which came up afterward might be more vigorous and
a sled might slide over the stumps ; and instead of
leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he
would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which
you could break off with your hand at last .
He interested me because he was so quiet and soli-
tary and so happy withal : a well of good humor and
contentment which overflowed at his eyes . His mirth
was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work
in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with
a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction , and a salutation
in Canadian French, though he spoke English as well.
 VISITORS. 153

When I approached him he would suspend his work,

and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of
a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner
bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed
and talked . Such an exuberance of animal spirits
had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on
the ground with laughter at anything which made
him think and tickled him . Looking round upon the
trees he would exclaim, - " By George ! I can enjoy
myself well enough here chopping ; I want no better
sport." Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused him-
self all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing
salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked . In
the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed
his coffee in a kettle ; and as he sat on a log to eat his
dinner the chickadees would sometimes come round
and alight on his arm and peck at the potato in his
fingers ; and he said that he " liked to have the little
fellers about him."
•
In him the animal man chiefly was developed . In
physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to
the pine and the rock . I asked him once if he was
not sometimes tired at night, after working all day ;
and he answered with a sincere and serious look,
" Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life . " But the in-
tellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were
slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed
only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the
Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the
pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness,
but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a
child is not made a man, but kept a child . When Na-
ture made him, she gave him a strong body and con-
tentment for his portion, and propped him on every
154 WALDEN.

side with reverence and reliance, that he might live

out his threescore years and ten a child . He was so
genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction
would serve to introduce him, more than if you intro-
duced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to
find him out as you did. He would not play any part.
Men paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed
and clothe him ; but he never exchanged opinions with
them. He was so simply and naturally humble — if
he can be called humble who never aspires — that
humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he
conceive of it . Wiser men were demigods to him . If
you told him that such a one was coming, he did as if
he thought that anything so grand would expect
nothing of himself, but take all the responsibility on
itself, and let him be forgotten still . He never heard
the sound of praise . He particularly reverenced the
writer and the preacher. Their performances were
miracles . When I told him that I wrote considerably,
he thought for a long time that it was merely the
handwriting which I meant, for he could write a re-
markably good hand himself. I sometimes found the
name of his native parish handsomely written in the
snow by the highway, with the proper French accent,
and knew that he had passed . I asked him if he ever
wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had
read and written letters for those who could not, but
he never tried to write thoughts, no, he could not,
he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him,
and then there was spelling to be attended to at the
same time !
I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer
asked him if he did not want the world to be changed ;
but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Cana-
 VISITORS. 155

dian accent, not knowing that the question had ever

been entertained before, " No, I like it well enough . "
It would have suggested many things to a philosopher
to have dealings with him . To a stranger he appeared
to know nothing of things in general ; yet I sometimes
saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I
did not know whether he was as wise as Shakspeare
or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect
him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity . A
townsman told me that when he met him sauntering
through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and
whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in
disguise .
His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic,
in which last he was considerably expert. The former
was a sort of cyclopædia to him, which he supposed to
contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it
does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him
on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed
to look at them in the most simple and practical light.
He had never heard of such things before . Could he
do without factories ? I asked . He had worn the
home-made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good .
Could he dispense with tea and coffee? Did this
country afford any beverage besides water? He had
soaked hemlock leaves in water and drunk it, and
thought that was better than water in warm weather.
When I asked him if he could do without money, he
showed the convenience of money in such a way as
to suggest and coincide with the most philosophical
accounts of the origin of this institution, and the very
derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were his
property, and he wished to get needles and thread at
the store, he thought it would be inconvenient, and
156 WALDEN.

impossible soon, to go on mortgaging some portion

of the creature each time to that amount. He could
defend many institutions better than any philosopher,
because, in describing them as they concerned him, he
gave the true reason for their prevalence, and specu-
lation had not suggested to him any other. At an-
other time, hearing Plato's definition of a man, -a
biped without feathers, — and that one exhibited a
cock plucked and called it Plato's man, he thought it
an important difference that the knees bent the wrong
way. He would sometimes exclaim : " How I love to
talk ! By George, I could talk all day! " I asked him
once, when I had not seen him for many months, if he
had got a new idea this summer. "Good Lord," said
he, " a man that has to work as I do, if he does not
forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. Maybe
the man you hoe with is inclined to race ; then, by
gorry, your mind must be there ; you think of weeds."
He would sometimes ask me first, on such occasions , if
I had made any improvement. One winter day I asked
him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to
suggest a substitute within him for the priest without,
and some higher motive for living. " Satisfied ! " said
he ; 66 some men are satisfied with one thing, and some
with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough,
will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire
and his belly to the table, by George ! " Yet I never,
by any manoeuvring, could get him to take the spirit-
ual view of things ; the highest that he appeared to
conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you might
expect an animal to appreciate ; and this, practically,
is true of most men. If I suggested any improvement
in his mode of life, he merely answered, without
expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet
 VISITORS. 157

he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like

virtues.
There was a certain positive originality, however
slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally ob-
served that he was thinking for himself and express-
ing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I
would any day walk ten miles to observe it, and it
amounted to the reorigination of many of the insti-
tutions of society. Though he hesitated, and per-
haps failed to express himself distinctly, he always
had a presentable thought behind. Yet his thinking
was so primitive and immersed in his animal life,
that, though more promising than a merely learned
man's, it rarely ripened to anything which can be
reported. He suggested that there might be men of
genius in the lowest grades of life, however perma-
nently humble and illiterate, who take their own view
always, or do not pretend to see at all ; who are as
bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be,
though they may be dark and muddy.

Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and

the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling,
asked for a glass of water. I told them that I drank
at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them
a dipper. Far off as I lived, I was not exempted from
that annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about
the first of April, when everybody is on the move ;
and I had my share of good luck, though there were
some curious specimens among my visitors . Half-
witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came
to see me ; but I endeavored to make them exercise
all the wit they had, and make their confessions to
me ; in such cases making wit the theme of our con-
158 WALDEN.

versation ; and so was compensated . Indeed, I found

some of them to be wiser than the so-called overseers
of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought
it was time that the tables were turned . With respect
to wit, I learned that there was not much difference
between the half and the whole . One day, in particu-
lar, an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with
others I had often seen used as fencing stuff, standing
or sitting on a bushel in the fields to keep cattle and
himself from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish
to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost simplic-
ity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to
anything that is called humility, that he was " defi-
cient in intellect." These were his words. The
Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord
cared as much for him as for another. " I have always
been so," said he, "from my childhood ; I never had
much mind ; I was not like other children ; I am weak
in the head . It was the Lord's will, I suppose . "
And there he was to prove the truth of his words .
He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely
met a fellow-man on such promising ground, - it was
so simple and sincere and so true, all that he said .
And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to
humble himself was he exalted . I did not know at
first but it was the result of a wise policy. It seemed
that from such a basis of truth and frankness as the
poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse
might go forward to something better than the inter-
course of sages.
I had some guests from those not reckoned com-
monly among the town's poor, but who should be ; who
are among the world's poor, at any rate ; guests who
appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospital-
 VISITORS. 159

ality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface

their appeal with the information that they are re-
solved, for one thing, never to help themselves . I
require of a visitor that he be not actually starving,
though he may have the very best appetite in the
world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not
guests . Men who did not know when their visit had
terminated, though I went about my business again,
answering them from greater and greater remoteness .
Men of almost every degree of wit called on me in the
migrating season. Some who had more wits than they
knew what to do with ; runaway slaves with planta-
tion manners, who listened from time to time, like the
fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying
on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as
much as to say, -
་་ Christian, will you send me back ? "
"O
One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I
helped to forward toward the north star. Men of one
idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling ;
men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like
those hens which are made to take charge of a hun-
dred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of
them lost in every morning's dew, and become
frizzled and mangy in consequence ; men of ideas
instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that
made you crawl all over. One man proposed a book
in which visitors should write their names, as at the
White Mountains ; but, alas ! I have too good a
memory to make that necessary.
I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of
my visitors . Girls and boys and young women gen-
erally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked
160 WALDEN.

in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their

time . Men of business, even farmers, thought only of
solitude and employment, and of the great distance at
which I dwelt from something or other ; and though
they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occa-
sionally, it was obvious that they did not. Restless
committed men, whose time was all taken up in get-
ting a living or keeping it ; ministers who spoke of
God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who
could not bear all kinds of opinions ; doctors, lawyers,
uneasy housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and
bed when I was out, -- how came Mrs. to know
that my sheets were not as clean as hers ? —young
men who had ceased to be young, and had concluded
that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the pro-
fessions, all these generally said that it was not pos-
sible to do so much good in my position . Ay ! there
was the rub . The old and infirm and the timid, of
whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sud-
den accident and death ; to them life seemed full of
danger, what danger is there if you don't think of
any?—and they thought that a prudent man would
carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B. might
be on hand at a moment's warning. To them the
village was literally a com-munity, a league for mutual
defence, and you would suppose that they would not
go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The
amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always dan-
ger that he may die, though the danger must be
allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-
alive to begin with . A man sits as many risks as he
runs . Finally, there were the self-styled reformers,
the greatest bores of all, who thought that I was for-
ever singing, -
 VISITORS. 161

This is the house that I built ;

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

but they did not know that the third line was, -

These are the folks that worry the man

That lives in the house that I built.

I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens ;

but I feared the men-harriers rather.
I had more cheering visitors than the last. Chil-
dren come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday
morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters,
poets and philosophers, in short, all honest pilgrims,
who came out to the woods for freedom's sake, and
really left the village behind, I was ready to greet
with, " Welcome, Englishmen ! welcome, English-
men ! " for I had had communication with that race.
M
 VII.

THE BEANFIELD .

MEANWHILE my beans, the length of whose rows,

added together, was seven miles already planted, were
impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown con-
siderably before the latest were in the ground ; indeed,
they were not easily to be put off. What was the
meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this
small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my
rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted .
They attached me to the earth , and so I got strength
like Antæus . But why should I raise them ? Only
Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all sum-
mer, to make this portion of the earth's surface,
which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johns-
wort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and
pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse . What
Ishall I learn of beans or beans of me ? I cherish
them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to
them ; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad
leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and
rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in
the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and
effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most
of all woodchucks . The last have nibbled for me a
quarter of an acre clean . But what right had I to oust
johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient
herb garden ? Soon, however, the remaining beans
162
 THE BEANFIELD. 163

will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet

new foes.
When I was four years old, as I well remember, I
was brought from Boston to this my native town,
through these very woods and this field, to the pond .
It is one of the oldest scenes stamped on my memory.
And now to-night my flute has waked the echoes over
that very water. The pines still stand here older
than I ; or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my
supper with their stumps, and a new growth is rising
all around, preparing another aspect for new infant
eyes . Almost the same johnswort springs from the
same perennial root in this pasture, and even I have
at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of
my infant dreams, and one of the results of my pres-
ence and influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn
blades, and potato vines.
I planted about two acres and a half of upland ; and
as it was only about fifteen years since the land was
cleared, and I myself had got out two or three cords
of stumps, I did not give it any manure ; but in the
course ofthe summer it appeared by the arrow-heads
which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation
had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans
ere white men came to clear the land, and so, to some
extent, had exhausted the soil for this very crop.
Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run
across the road, or the sun had got above the shrub-
oaks, while all the dew was on, though the farmers
warned me against it, -— I would advise you to do all
your work if possible while the dew is on, I began
to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my beanfield
and throw dust upon their heads . Early in the morn-
ing I worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist
 164 WALDEN.

in the dewy and crumbling sand , but later in the day

the sun blistered my feet. There the sun lighted me
to hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and forward
over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long
green rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a
shrub-oak copse where I could rest in the shade, the
other in a blackberry field where the green berries
deepened their tints by the time I had made another
bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about
the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had
sown, making the yellow soil express its summer
thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in
wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the
earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily
work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or
hired men or boys, or improved implements of hus-
bandry, I was much slower, and became much more
intimate with my beans than usual. But labor of the
hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is
perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a
constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it
yields a classic result. A very agricola laboriosus was
I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and
Wayland to nobody knows where ; they sitting at
their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins
loosely hanging in festoons ; I the home-staying la-
borious native of the soil . But soon my homestead
was out of their sight and thought . It was the only
open and cultivated field for a great distance on either
side of the road ; so they made the most of it ; and
sometimes the man in the field heard more of trav-
ellers' gossip and comment than was meant for his
ear : "Beans so late ! peas so late ! ".- for I continued
to plant when others had begun to hoe, ― the minis-
 THE BEANFIELD. 165

terial husbandman had not suspected it. " Corn, my

boy, for fodder ; corn for fodder. " " Does he live
there ? " asks the black bonnet of the gray coat ; and
the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin
to inquire what you are doing where he sees no
manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip
dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or
plaster. But here were two acres and a half of furrows,
and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw it,
there being an aversion to other carts and horses,
and chip dirt far away. Fellow-travellers as they
rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which
they had passed, so that I came to know how I stood
in the agricultural world. This was one field not in
Mr. Coleman's report. And, by the way, who esti-
mates the value of the crop which Nature yields in the
still wilder fields unimproved by man ? The crop of
English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calcu-
lated, the silicates and the potash ; but in all dells and
pond holes in the woods and pastures and swamps
grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man.
Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between
wild and cultivated fields ; as some states are civilized,
and others half-civilized, and others savage or bar-
barous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a
half-cultivated field . They were beans cheerfully re-
turning to their wild and primitive state that I culti-
vated, and my hoe played the Rans des Vaches for
them .
Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch,
sings the brown-thrasher — or red mavis, as some
love to call him — all the morning, glad of your
society, that would find out another farmer's field if
yours were not here . While you are planting the
166 WALDEN.

seed, he cries, 66 Drop it, drop it, - cover it up ,

-
cover it up, — pull it up, pull it up, pull it up . " But
this was not corn, and so it was safe from such
enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole,
his amateur Paganini performances on one string or
on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet
prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap
sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith.
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with
my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations
who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and
their small implements of war and hunting were
brought to the light of this modern day. They lay
mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore
the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and
some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass
brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil.
When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music
echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accom-
paniment to my labor which yielded an instant and
immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I
hoed, nor I that hoed beans ; and I remembered
with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at
all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to
attend the oratorios . The night-hawk circled over-
head in the sunny afternoons - for I sometimes made
a day of it like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's
eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a
sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very
rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained ;
small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the
ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills,
where few have found them ; graceful and slender,
like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are
 THE BEANFIELD. 167

raised by the wind to float in the heavens ; such

kindredship is in Nature. The hawk is aerial brother
of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his
perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental
unfledged pinions of the sea . Or sometimes I watched
a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alter-
nately soaring and descending, approaching and leav-
ing one another, as if they were the embodiment of
my own thoughts . Or I was attracted by the pas-
sage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a
slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste ;
or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a
sluggish, portentous, and outlandish spotted saia-
mander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our con-
temporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these
sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the
row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which
the country offers .
On gala days the town fires its great guns, which
echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of
martial music occasionally penetrate thus far. To
me, away there in my beanfield at the other end of
the town, the big guns sounded as if a puff ball had
burst ; and when there was a military turnout of which
I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense
all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the
horizon as if some eruption would break out there
soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length
some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over
the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me in-
formation of the " trainers . " It seemed bythe distant
hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the
neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint.
tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their do-
 168 WALDEN.

mestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them down

into the hive again . And when the sound died quite
away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favor-
able breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got the
last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive,
and that now their minds were bent on the honey
with which it was smeared .
I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachu-
setts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping ;
and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with
an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor
cheerfully with a calm trust in the future.
When there were several bands of musicians, it
sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows, and
all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately
with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and
inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the
trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit
a Mexican with a good relish, - for why should we
always stand for trifles ? —and looked round for a
woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon.
These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine,
and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the hori-
zon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the
elm -tree tops which overhang the village. This was
one of the great days ; though the sky had from my
clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it
wears daily, and I saw no difference in it .
It was a singular experience, that long acquaintance
which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and
hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking
over, and selling them, the last was the hardest of
all, — I might add eating, for I did taste. I was
determined to know beans. When they were grow-
 THE BEANFIELD. 169

ing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning

till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day
about other affairs . Consider the intimate and curi-
ous acquaintance one makes with various kinds of
weeds, -- it will bear some iteration in the account,
for there was no little iteration in the labor, - disturb-
ing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and
making such invidious distinctions with his hoe,
levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously
cultivating another. That's Roman wormwood,
that's pigweed, that's sorrel, that's piper-grass,
· have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward
to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if
you do he'll turn himself t'other side up and be as
green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with
cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun
and rain and dews on their side . Daily the beans
saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and
thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches
with weedy dead . Many a lusty crest-waving Hec-
tor, that towered a whole foot above his crowding
comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.
Those summer days which some of my contem-
poraries devoted to the fine arts in Boston and Rome,
and others to contemplation in India, and others to
trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other
farmers of New England, devoted to husbandry .
Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature
a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned,
whether they mean porridge or voting, and ex-
changed them for rice ; but, perchance, as some
must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and
expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It
was on the whole a rare amusement, which, con-
170 WALDEN.

tinued too long, might have become a dissipation.

Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe
them all once, I hoed them unusually well as far as
I went, and was paid for it in the end, " there being
in truth," as Evelyn says, " no compost or lætation
whatsoever comparable to this continual motion,
repastination, and turning of the mould with the
spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, " espe-
cially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which
it attracts the salt, power, or virtue ( call it either)
which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor
and stir we keep about it, to sustain us ; all dungings
and other sordid temperings being but the vicars
succedaneous to this improvement. ” Moreover, this
being one of those " worn -out and exhausted lay
fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as
Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted " vital
spirits " from the air. I harvested twelve bushels
of beans .
But to be more particular, for it is complained that
Mr. Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive ex-
periments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were, -
For a hoe $0 54
Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing 7 50 Too much .
Beans for seed · • 3 12
Potatoes " I 33
Peas " 0 40
Turnip seed о об
White line for crow fence . O 02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours · I 00
Horse and cart to get crop 075
In all · $14 72
My income was (patrem familias vendacem, non
emacem esse oportet) , from
 THE BEANFIELD. 171

Nine bushels
"" and twelve quarts of beans sold • · $16 94
Five large potatoes 2 50
Nine 46 small ་་ 225
Grass · · I 00
Stalks • 0 75
In all $23 44
Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said , of $ 8.71 .
This is the result of my experience in raising
beans. Plant the common small white bush bean
about the first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen
inches apart, being careful to select fresh round and
unmixed seed . First look out for worms, and supply
I vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for
woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will
nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as
they go ; and again, when the young tendrils make
their appearance, they have notice of it, and will
shear them off with both buds and young pods,
sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all, harvest
as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and
have a fair and salable crop ; you may save much
loss by this means .
This further experience also I gained . I said to
myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much
industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed
is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith , inno-
cence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in
this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sus-
tain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these
crops . Alas ! I said this to myself ; but now another
summer is gone, and another, and another, and I am
obliged to say to you , Reader, that the seeds which
I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those
virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality
172 WALDEN.

and so did not come up . Commonly men will only

be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid . This
generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each
new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago,
and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a
fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to my
astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the
seventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie
down in! But why should not the New Englander
try new adventures, and not lay so much stress on
his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards ,
- raise other crops than these ? Why concern our-
selves so much about our beans for seed, and not be
concerned at all about a new generation of men?
We should really be fed and cheered if when we met
a man we were sure to see that some of the qualities
which I have named, which we all prize more than
those other productions, but which are for the most
part broadcast and floating in the air, had taken root
and grown in him. Here comes such a subtile and
ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice,
though the slightest amount or new variety of it,
along the road . Our ambassadors should be in-
structed to send home such seeds as these, and Con-
gress help to distribute them over all the land. We
should never stand' upon ceremony with sincerity.
We should never cheat and insult and banish one
another by our meanness, if there were present the
kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not
meet thus in haste . Most men I do not meet at all,
for they seem not to have time ; they are busy about
their beans. We would not deal with a man thus
plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff
between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially
 THE BEANFIELD. 173

risen out of the earth, something more than erect,

like swallows alighted and walking on the ground :

"And as he spake, his wings would now and then

Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again, "

so that we should suspect that we might be convers-

ing with an angel . Bread may not always nourish
us ; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness
out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant,
when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any
generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed
and heroic joy.
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least,
that husbandry was once a sacred art ; but it is
pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by
us, our object being to have large farms and large
crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession,
nor ceremony, not excepting our Cattle-shows and so-
called Thanksgivings , by which the farmer expresses
a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is re-
minded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and
the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres
and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus
rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling
habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the
soil as property, or the means of acquiring property
chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is de-
graded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of
lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says
that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or
just (maximeque pius quæstus ) , and according to
Varro, the old Romans " called the same earth
Mother and Ceres, and thought that they who
174 WALDEN.

tivated it led a pious and useful life, and that they

alone were left of the race of King Saturn . ”
We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our
cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests with-
out distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays
alike, and the former make but a small part of the
glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course .
In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a
garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of
his light and heat with a corresponding trust and
magnanimity. What though I value the seed of these
beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year?
This broad field which I have looked at so long
looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but away
from me to influences more genial to it, which water
and make it green. These beans have results which
are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for wood-
chucks partly? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica,
obsoletely speca, from spe, hope ) should not be the
only hope of the husbandman ; its kernel or grain
(granum, from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it
bears . How, then, can our harvest fail ? Shall I not
rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose
seeds are the granary of the birds ? It matters little
comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer's
barns. The true husbandman will cease from anx-
iety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the
woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish
his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the
produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not
only his first but his last fruits also .

be...
 VIII.

THE VILLAGE .

AFTER hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in

the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond,
swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and
washed the dust of labor from my person, or
smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had
made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free.
Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear
some of the gossip which is incessantly going on
there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or
from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in
homœopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its
way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.
As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squir-
rels, so I walked in the village to see the men and
boys ; instead of the wind among the pines I heard
the carts rattle . In one direction from my house
there was a colony of muskrats in the river mead-
ows ; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in
the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curi-
ous to me as if they had been prairie dogs, each
sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to
a neighbor's to gossip . I went there frequently to
observe their habits . The village appeared to me a
great news room ; and on one side to support it, as
once at Redding & Company's on State Street, they
kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other gro-
175
176 WALDEN.

ceries . Some have such a vast appetite for the former

commodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive
organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues
without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper
through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhal-
ing ether, it only producing numbness and insensi-
- otherwise it would be often painful to
bility to pain, —
hear, - without affecting the consciousness . I hardly
ever failed, when I rambled through the village, to see
a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder
sunning themselves, with their bodies inclined for-
ward and their eyes glancing along the line this way
and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous ex-
pression, or else leaning against a barn with their
hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop
it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard
whatever was in the wind . These are the coarsest
mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or
cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more
delicate hoppers within doors . I observed that the
vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room ,
the post-office, and the bank ; and, as a necessary
part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and
a fire-engine, at convenient places ; and the houses
were so arranged as to make the most of mankind,
in lanes and fronting one another, so that every trav-
eller had to run the gantlet, and every man, woman,
and child might get a lick at him. Of course, those
who were stationed nearest to the head of the line,
where they could most see and be seen, and have the
first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their
places ; and the few straggling inhabitants in the out-
skirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur,
and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside
 THE VILLAGE. 177

into cow paths, and so escape, paid a very slight

ground or window tax. Signs were hung out on all
sides to allure him ; some to catch him by the appe-
tite, as the tavern and victualling cellar ; some by the
fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's ; and
others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the
barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there
was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at
every one of these houses, and company expected
about these times. For the most part I escaped won-
derfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at
once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is
recommended to those who run the gantlet, or by
keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus,
who, " loudly singing the praises of the gods to his
lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of
danger." Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody
could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much
about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in
the fence. I was even accustomed to make an irrup-
tion into some houses, where I was well entertained,
and after learning the kernels and very last sieve-ful of
news, what had subsided, the prospects of war and
peace, and whether the world was likely to hold to-
gether much longer, I was let out through the rear
avenues, and so escaped to the woods again .
It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to
launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark
and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village
parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian
meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the
woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn
under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving
only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the
N
178 WALDEN.

helm when it was plain sailing. I had many a genial

thought by the cabin fire “ as I sailed . " I was never
cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I
encountered some severe storms . It is darker in the
woods, even in common nights, than most suppose.
I frequently had to look up at the opening between
the trees above the path in order to learn my route,
and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my
feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the
known relation of particular trees which I felt with
my hands, passing between two pines for instance,
not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of
the woods, invariably in the darkest night. Some-
times, after coming home thus late in a dark and
muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my
eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all
the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my
hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall
a single step of my walk, and I have thought that per-
haps my body would find its way home if its master
should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the
mouth without assistance. Several times, when a
visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved
a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the
cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out
to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping
which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his
eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their
way two young men who had been fishing in the
pond. They lived about a mile off through the
woods, and were quite used to the route. A day or
two after one of them told me that they wandered
about the greater part of the night, close by their own
premises, and did not get home till toward morning,
 THE VILLAGE. 179

by which time, as there had been several heavy

showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were very
wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard
of many going astray even in the village streets, when
the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with
a knife, as the saying is . Some who live in the out-
skirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wag-
ons, have been obliged to put up for the night ; and
gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a
mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with
their feet, and not knowing when they turned . It is
a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable ex-
perience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in
a snow storm, even by day, one will come out upon a
well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell
which way leads to the village . Though he knows
that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot
recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as
if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the
perplexity is infinitely greater. In our most trivial
walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steer-
ing like pilots by certain well-known beacons and
head-lands, and if we go beyond our usual course
we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neigh-
boring cape ; and not till we are completely lost, or
turned round, - for a man needs only to be turned
round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,
do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of
Nature. Every man has to learn the points of com-
pass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep
or any abstraction . Not till we are lost, in other
words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin
to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the
infinite extent of our relations.
180 WALDEN.

One afternoon, near the end of the first summer,

when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cob-
bler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I
have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or
recognize the authority of, the state, which buys and
sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the
door of its senate-house . I had gone down to the
woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes,
men will pursue and paw him with their dirty insti-
tutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to
their desperate odd -fellow society. It is true, I might
have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might
have run " amok " against society ; but I preferred
that society should run " amok " against me, it being
the desperate party. However, I was released the
next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned
to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckle-
berries on Fair-Haven Hill. I was never molested
by any person but those who represented the state .
I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held
my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or
windows. I never fastened my door night or day,
though I was to be absent several days ; not even
when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods
of Maine. And yet my house was more respected
than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers .
The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by
my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books
on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet
door, see what was left of my dinner, and what pros-
pect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people
of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered
no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I
never missed anything but one small book, a volume
 THE VILLAGE. 181

of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded , and

this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this
time. I am convinced that if all men were to live
as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would
be unknown. These take place only in communities
where some have got more than is sufficient while
others have not enough . The Pope's Homers would
soon get properly distributed. -
"Nec bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes."
" Nor wars did men molest,
When only beechen bowls were in request."

" You who govern public affairs, what need have you
to employ punishments ? Love virtue, and the people
will be virtuous . The virtues of a superior man are
like the wind ; the virtues of a common man are like
the grass ; the grass, when the wind passes over it,
bends."
 IX.

THE PONDS .

SOMETIMES, having had a surfeit of human society

and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I
rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell,
into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, " to
fresh woods and pastures new, " or, while the sun was
setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blue-
berries on Fair-Haven Hill, and laid up a store for
several days . The fruits do not yield their true flavor
to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them
for the market. There is but one way to obtain it,
yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor
of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge.
It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted
huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckle-
berry never reaches Boston ; they have not been
known there since they grew on her three hills . The
ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with
the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and
they become mere provender . As long as Eternal
Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be
transported thither from the country's hills .
Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day,
I joined some impatient companion who had been
fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and
motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after
practising various kinds of philosophy, had con-
182
 THE PONDS. 183

cluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he be-

longed to the ancient sect of Cœnobites. There was
one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all
kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my
house as a building erected for the convenience of
fishermen ; and I was equally pleased when he sat in
my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while
we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the
boat, and I at the other ; but not many words passed
between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years,
but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmo-
nized well enough with my philosophy. Our inter-
course was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony,
far more pleasing to remember than if it had been
carried on by speech. When, as was commonly the
case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise
the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of
my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling
and dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of
a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl
from every wooded vale and hill side.
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat play-
ing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to
have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon
travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed
with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come
to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark
summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire
close to the water's edge, which we thought attracted
the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms
strung on a thread ; and when we had done, far in
the night, threw the burning brands high into the air
like sky-rockets, which, coming down into the pond,
were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were
184 WALDEN.

suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this,

whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of
men again. But now I had made my home by the
shore .
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the
family had all retired, I have returned to the woods,
and, partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent
the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moon-
light, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from
time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird
close at hand. These experiences were very memo-
rable and valuable to me, — anchored in forty feet of
water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, sur-
rounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and
shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the
moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line
with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their
dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging
sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the
gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight
vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling
about its extremity, of dull uncertain blundering pur-
pose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length
you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned
pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It
was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your
thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal
themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk,
which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to
Nature again . It seemed as if I might next cast my
line upward into the air, as well as downward into
this element which was scarcely more dense. Thus
I caught two fishes as it were with one hook.
 THE PONDS. 185

The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and,

though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur,
nor can it much concern one who has not long fre-
quented it, or lived by its shore ; yet this pond is so
remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a par-
ticular description . It is a clear and deep green well,
half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in cir-
cumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half
acres ; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak
woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by
the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills
rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to
eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they
attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty
feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile.
They are exclusively woodland . All our Concord
waters have two colors at least, one when viewed at
a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.
The first depends more on the light, and follows the
sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at
a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great
distance all appear alike . In stormy weather they are
sometimes of a dark slate color. The sea, however, is
said to be blue one day and green another without any
perceptible change in the atmosphere . I have seen
our river, when, the landscape being covered with
snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass.
Some consider blue " to be the color of pure water,
whether liquid or solid . " But, looking directly down
into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very
different colors. Walden is blue at one time and green
at another, even from the same point of view. Lying
between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the
color of both . Viewed from a hill top it reflects the
186 WALDEN.

color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish

tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then
a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform
dark green in the body of the pond . In some lights,
viewed even from a hill top, it is of a vivid green next
the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection
of the verdure ; but it is equally green there against the
railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before the leaves
are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the
prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand .
Such is the color of its iris . This is that portion, also,
where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat
of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also trans-
mitted through the earth, melts first and forms a nar-
row canal about the still frozen middle . Like the rest
of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather,
so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at
the right angle, or because there is more light mixed
with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue
than the sky itself ; and at such a time, being on its
surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see
the reflection , I have discerned a matchless and in-
describable light blue, such as watered or changeable
silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than
the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green
on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared
but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous greenish blue,
as I remember it, like those patches of the winter sky
seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown.
Yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is
as colorless as an equal quantity of air. It is well-
known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint,
owing, as the makers say, to its " body," but a small
piece of the same will be colorless . How large a body
 THE PONDS. 187

of Walden water would be required to reflect a green

tint I have never proved . The water of our river is
black or a very dark brown to one looking directly
down on it, and like that of most ponds, imparts to the
body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge ; but this
water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the
bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more
unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and dis-
torted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit
studies for a Michael Angelo .
The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily
be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet.
Paddling over it, you may see many feet beneath the
surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only
an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by
their transverse bars, and you think that they must be
ascetic fish that find a subsistence there . Once, in the
winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes
through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped
ashore I tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if
some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods
directly into one of the holes, where the water was
twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down.
on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw
the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with
its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the
pulse of the pond ; and there it might have stood erect
and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted
off, if I had not disturbed it . Making another hole
directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cut-
ting down the longest birch which I could find in the
neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose,
which I attached to its end, and, letting it down care-
fully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew
188 WALDEN.

it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out

again.
The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded
white stones like paving stones, excepting one or two
short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places
a single leap will carry you into water over your head ;
and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that
would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose
on the opposite side . Some think it is bottomless .
It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say
that there were no weeds at all in it ; and of notice-
able plants, except in the little meadows recently over-
flowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer
scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even
a lily, yellow or white , but only a few small heart-leaves
and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two ;
all which however a bather might not perceive ; and
these plants are clean and bright like the element they
grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the
water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the
deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment,
probably from the decay of the leaves, which have
been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a
bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in
midwinter.
We have one other pond just like this, White Pond
in Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles wes-
terly ; but, though I am acquainted with most of the
ponds within a dozen miles of this centre, I do not
know a third of this pure and well-like character.
Successive nations perchance have drunk at, admired,
and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water
is green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting
spring ! Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam
 THE PONDS. 189

and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was

already in existence, and even then breaking up in a
gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a south-
erly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and
geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such
pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had com-
menced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters
and colored them of the hue they now wear, and ob-
tained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond
in the world and distiller of celestial dews . Who
knows in how many unremembered nations ' literatures
this has been the Castalian Fountain ? or what nymphs
presided over it in the Golden Age ? It is a gem of
the first water which Concord wears in her coronet.
Yet perchance the first who came to this well have
left some trace of their footsteps . I have been sur-
prised to detect encircling the pond, even where
a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a
narrow shelf-like path in the steep hill side, alter-
nately rising and falling, approaching and receding
from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of
man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and
still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the
present occupants of the land . This is particularly
distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond
in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appear-
ing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by
weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile
off in many places where in summer it is hardly dis-
tinguishable close at hand . The snow reprints it, as
it were, in clear white type alto-relievo . The orna-
mented grounds of villas which will one day be built
here may still preserve some trace of this... tai at
The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or
190 WALDEN.

not, and within what period, nobody knows, though,

as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly
higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though
not corresponding to the general wet and dryness .
I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and
also when it was at least five feet higher, than when
I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running
into it, very deep water on one side, on which I
helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from
the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not
been possible to do for twenty-five years ; and on the
other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity
when I told them that a few years later I was accus-
tomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the
woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew,
which place was long since converted into a meadow.
But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and
now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higher than
when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years
ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This
makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or
seven feet ; and yet the water shed by the surround-
ing hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow
must be referred to causes which affect the deep
springs . This same summer the pond has begun to
fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation,
whether periodical or not, appears thus to require
many years for its accomplishment. I have observed
one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a
dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be
as low as I have ever known it. Flints' Pond, a mile
eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by
its inlets and outlets , and the smaller intermediate
ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently
 THE PONDS. 191

attained their greatest height at the same time with

the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation
goes, of White Pond.
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves
this use at least : the water standing at this great
height for a year or more, though it makes it difficult
to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have
sprung up about its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines,
birches, alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again,
leaves an unobstructed shore ; for, unlike many ponds ,
and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its
shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the
side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch-pines
fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if
by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments ;
and their size indicates how many years have elapsed
since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation
the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore
is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of pos-
session. These are the lips of the lake on which no
beard grows . It licks its chaps from time to time .
When the water is at its height, the alders, willows ,
and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots sev-
eral feet long from all sides of their stems in the
water, and to the height of three or four feet from the
ground, in the effort to maintain themselves ; and I
have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore,
which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant
crop under these circumstances.
Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore be-
came so regularly paved . My townsmen have all
heard the tradition , the oldest people tell me that they
heard it in their youth, that anciently the Indians were
holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as
192 WALDEN.

high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into
the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story
goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians
were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged
the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old
squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the
pond was named . It has been conjectured that when
the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and
became the present shore. It is very certain, at any
rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there
is one ; and this Indian fable does not in any respect
conflict with the account of that ancient settler
whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when
he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin
vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed
steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well
here . As for the stones, many still think that they
are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the
waves on these hills ; but I observe that the surround-
ing hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones,
so that they have been obliged to pile them up in
walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the
pond ; and, moreover, there are most stones where the
shore is most abrupt ; so that, unfortunately, it is no
longer a mystery to me . I detect the paver. If the
name was not derived from that of some English lo-
cality, - Saffron Walden, for instance, one might
suppose that it was called, originally, Walled-in Pond .
The pond was my well ready dug. For four months
in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times ;
and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the
best, in the town . In the winter, all water which is
exposed to the air is colder than springs and wells
which are protected from it. The temperature of the
 THE PONDS. 193

pond water which had stood in the room where I sat

from five o'clock in the afternoon till noon the next
day, the sixth of March, 1846, the thermometer having
been up to 65° or 70° some of the time, owing partly
to the sun on the roof, was 42°, or one degree colder
than the water of one of the coldest wells in the vil-
lage just drawn . The temperature of the Boiling
Spring the same day was 45°, or the warmest of any
water tried, though it is the coldest that I know of in
summer, when, besides, shallow and stagnant surface
water is not mingled with it. Moreover, in summer,
Walden never becomes so warm as most water which
is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In the
warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar,
where it became cool in the night, and remained so
during the day ; though I also resorted to a spring in
the neighborhood . It was as good when a week old
as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the
pump . Whoever camps for a week in summer bythe
shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few
feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent
ofthe luxury of ice.
There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one
weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of another
which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the
fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he
did not see him, perch and pouts, some of each
weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach
(Leuciscus pulchellus) , a very few breams, and a
-
couple of eels, one weighing four pounds, I am thus
particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its
only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have
heard of here ; — also, I have a faint recollection of a
little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and
194 WALDEN.

a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character,

which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable.
Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish . Its
pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. I
have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at
least three different kinds : a long and shallow one,
steel-colored, most like those caught in the river ; a
bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and re-
markably deep, which is the most common here ; and
another, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but
peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black
spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones
very much like a trout. The specific name reticu-
latus would not apply to this ; it should be gutta-
tus rather. These are all very firm fish, and weigh
more than their size promises . The shiners, pouts,
and perch, also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit
this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer
fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds,
as the water is purer, and they can easily be distin-
guished from them. Probably many ichthyologists
would make new varieties of some of them . There
are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few
mussels in it ; muskrats and minks leave their traces
about it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits
it. Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the
morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had se-
creted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks
and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-
bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and
the peetweets (Totanus macularius) " teter " along its
stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed
a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water ; but
I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull,
like Fair-Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual
 THE PONDS. 195

loon. These are all the animals of consequence which

frequent it now.
You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the
sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten
feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond,
some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by
a foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a
hen's egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At
first you wonder if the Indians could have formed
them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the
ice melted, they sank to the bottom ; but they are
too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for
that . They are similar to those found in rivers ;
but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I
know not by what fish they could be made. Per-
haps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend
a pleasing mystery to the bottom .
The shore is irregular enough not to be monoto-
nous . I have in my mind's eye the western indented
with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beauti-
fully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes
overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves be-
tween . The forest has never so good a setting, nor
is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the
middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from
the water's edge ; for the water in which it is reflected
not only makes the best foreground in such a case,
but, with its winding shore, the most natural and
agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor
imperfection in its edge there, as where the axe has
cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. The
trees have ample room to expand on the water side,
and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that
direction. There Nature has woven a natural selvage,
196 WALDEN.

and the eye rises by just gradations from the low

shrubs of the shore to the highest trees . There are
few traces of man's hand to be seen . The water
laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expres-
sive feature. It is earth's eye ; looking into which the
beholder measures the depth of his own nature . The
fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes
which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around
are its overhanging brows .
Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end
of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a
slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I
have seen whence came the expression, “ the glassy
surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it
looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across
the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods,
separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another.
You would think that you could walk dry under it to
the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim
over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive
below the line, as it were by mistake, and are unde-
ceived . As you look over the pond westward you are
obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes
against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are
equally bright ; and if, between the two, you survey its
surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, ex-
cept where the skater insects, at equal intervals scat-
tered over its whole extent, by their motions in the
sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, per-
chance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swal-
low skims so low as to touch it . It may be that in the
distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in
the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges,
 THE PONDS. 197

and another where it strikes the water ; sometimes the

whole silvery arc is revealed ; or here and there, per-
haps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the
fishes dart at and so dimple it again . It is like molten
glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it
are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass .
You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water,
separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb,
boom of the water nymphs, resting on it . From a hill
top you can see a fish leap in almost any part ; for not
a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth
surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the
whole lake . It is wonderful with what elaborateness
this simple fact is advertised, — this piscine murder
will out, - and from my distant perch I distinguish the
circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in
diameter. You can even detect a water-bug ( Gyrinus)
ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quar-
ter of a mile off ; for they furrow the water slightly,
making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging
lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it
perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated
there are no skaters nor water- bugs on it, but appar-
ently, in calm days, they leave their havens and adven-
turously glide forth from the shore by short impulses
till they completely cover it . It is a soothing employ-
ment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the
warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump
on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and
study the dimpling circles which are incessantly in-
scribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the
reflected skies and trees . Over this great expanse
there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently
smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water
198 WALDEN.

is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all

is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall
on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples,
in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up
of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heav-
ing of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain
are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena
of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the
spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cob-
web sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered
with dew in a spring morning . Every motion of an
oar or an insect produces a flash of light ; and if an
oar falls, how sweet the echo!
In such a day in September or October, Walden is a
perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious
to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so
pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, per-
chance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water.
It needs no fence. Nations come and go without
defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack,
whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding
Nature continually repairs ; no storms, no dust, can
dim its surface ever fresh ; a mirror in which all
impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by
the sun's hazy brush, this the light dust-cloth,
which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but
sends its own to float as clouds high above its sur-
face, and be reflected in its bosom still.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air.
It is continually receiving new life and motion from
above . It is intermediate in its nature between land
and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but
the water itself is rippled by the wind . I see where
the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of
 THE PONDS. 199

light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its

surface . We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the
surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler
spirit sweeps over it.
The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the
latter part of October, when the severe frosts have
come ; and then and in November, usually, in a calm
day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface.
One November afternoon, in the calm at the end of a
rain storm of several days' duration, when the sky was
still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I
observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so
that it was difficult to distinguish its surface ; though
it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but
the sombre November colors of the surrounding hills .
Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the
slight undulations produced by my boat extended al-
most as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appear-
ance to the reflections. But, as I was looking over
the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint
glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped
the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the
surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring
welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one
of these places, I was surprised to find myself sur-
rounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches
long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sport-
ing there and constantly rising to the surface and
dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it . In such
transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting
the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as
in a balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a
kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact
flock of birds passing just beneath my level on the
200 WALDEN.

right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them.
There were many such schools in the pond, apparently
improving the short season before winter would draw
an icy shutter over their broad skylight, sometimes
giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight
breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When
I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made
a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one
had struck the water with a brushy bough, and in-
stantly took refuge in the depths . At length the wind
rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run,
and the perch leaped much higher than before, half
out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long,
at once above the surface . Even as late as the fifth
of December, one year, I saw some dimples on the
surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard im-
mediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to
take my place at the oars and row homeward ; already
the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none
on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking.
But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were pro-
duced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had
scared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly
disappearing ; so I spent a dry afternoon after all.
An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly
sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding
forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw
it all alive with ducks and other water fowl, and that
there were many eagles about it . He came here
a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found
on the shore. It was made of two white-pine logs
dug out and pinned together, and was cut off square
at the ends . It was very clumsy, but lasted a great
many years before it became water-logged and perhaps
 THE PONDS. 201

sank to the bottom . He did not know whose it was ;

it belonged to the pond . He used to make a cable
for his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together.
An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before
the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron
chest at the bottom, and that he had seen it. Some-
times it would come floating up to the shore ; but
when you went toward it, it would go back into deep
water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old
log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of
the same material but more graceful construction,
which perchance had first been a tree on the bank,
and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there
for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake.
I remember that when I first looked into these depths
there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly
lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over
formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when
wood was cheaper ; but now they have mostly disap-
peared.
When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was
completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak
woods, and in some of its coves grape vines had run
over the trees next the water and formed bowers under
which a boat could pass. The hills which form its
shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then
so high, that, as you looked down from the west end,
it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some
kind of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour,
when I was younger , floating over its surface as the
zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle,
and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer
forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the
boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore
202 WALDEN.

my fates had impelled me to ; days when idleness was

the most attractive and productive industry. Many a
forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus
the most valued part of the day ; for I was rich, if not
in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent
them lavishly ; nor do I regret that I did not waste
more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.
But since I left those shores the wood-choppers have
still further laid them waste, and now for many a year
there will be no more rambling through the aisles of
the wood, with occasional vistas through which you
see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is
silent henceforth . How can you expect the birds to
sing when their groves are cut down ?
Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old
log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone,
and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies , in-
stead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are think-
ing to bring its water, which should be as sacred as
the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash
their dishes with ! — to earn their Walden by the
turning of a cock or drawing of a plug ! That devilish
Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard through-
out the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with
his foot, and he it is that has browsed offall the woods
on Walden shore ; that Trojan horse, with a thousand
men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks !
Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore
Hall , to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an
avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest.
Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known,
perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its
purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few
deserve that honor. Though the wood-choppers have
 THE PONDS. 203

laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish
have built their sties by it, and the railroad has in-
fringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed
it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which
my youthful eyes fell on ; all the change is in me. It
has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its
ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand
and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect
from its surface as of yore. It struck me again to-
night, as if I had not seen it almost daily for more
than twenty years, Why, here is Walden, the same
woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago ;
where a forest was cut down last winter another is
springing up by its shore as lustily as ever ; the same
thought is welling up to its surface that was then ; it
is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its
Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a
brave man, surely, in whom there was no guile ! He
rounded this water with his hand, deepened and
clarified it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed
it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by
the same reflection ; and I can almost say, Walden, is
it you?
It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line ;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.
The cars never pause to look at it ; yet I fancy that
the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those
204 WALDEN.

passengers who have a season ticket and see it often,

are better men for the sight. The engineer does not
forget at night, or his nature does not, that he has
beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least
during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to
wash out State-street and the engine's soot. One
proposes that it be called " God's Drop. "
I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor
outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indi-
rectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated,
by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter,
and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord
River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds
through which in some other geological period it may
have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid,
it can be made to flow thither again . If by living
thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods,
so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who
would not regret that the comparatively impure waters
of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself
should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean
wave ?

Flint's or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest

lake and inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden.
It is much larger, being said to contain one hundred
and ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish ;
but it is comparatively shallow, and not remarkably
pure . A walk through the woods thither was often
my recreation . It was worth the while, if only to feel
the wind blow on your cheek freely, and see the
waves run, and remember the life of mariners . I went ⚫
a-chestnutting there in the fall, on windy days, when
the nuts were dropping into the water and were
 THE PONDS. 205

washed to my feet ; and one day, as I crept along its

sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I
came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides
gone, and hardly more than the impression of its flat
bottom left amid the rushes ; yet its model was
sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed pad,
with its veins . It was as impressive a wreck as one
could imagine on the sea-shore, and had as good a
moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould and
undistinguishable pond shore, through which rushes
and flags have pushed up. I used to admire the rip-
ple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of
this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the
wader by the pressure of the water, and the rushes
which grew in Indian file, in waving lines, correspond-
ing to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves
had planted them . There also I have found , in con-
siderable quantities, curious balls, composed appar-
ently of fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from
half an inch to four inches in diameter, and perfectly
spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow
water on a sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on
the shore. They are either solid grass, or have a
little sand in the middle. At first you would say that
they were formed by the action of the waves, like a
pebble ; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse
materials, half an inch long, and they are produced
only at one season of the year. Moreover, the waves,
I suspect, do not so much construct as wear down
a material which has already acquired consistency.
They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite
period.
Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomen-
clature. What right had the unclean and stupid
206 WALDEN.

farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose

shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name
to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better the reflect-
ing surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he
could see his own brazen face ; who regarded even
the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers ; his
fingers grown into crooked and horny talons from the
long habit of grasping harpy-like ; - so it is not named
for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of
him ; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who
never loved it, who never protected it, who never
spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He
had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes
that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which fre-
quent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or
some wild man or child the thread of whose history
is interwoven with its own ; not from him who could
show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded
neighbor or legislature gave him, him who thought
only of its money value ; whose presence perchance
cursed all the shore ; who exhausted the land around
it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within
it ; who regretted only that it was not English hay or
cranberry meadow, - there was nothing to redeem it,
forsooth, in his eyes, - and would have drained and
sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his
mill, and it was no privilege , to him to behold it. I
respect not his labors, his farm where everything has
its price ; who would carry the landscape, who would
carry his God to market if he could get anything
for Him ; who goes to market for his god as it is ; on
whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear
no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees
no fruits, but dollars ; who loves not the beauty of
 THE PONDS. 207

his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they
are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that
enjoys true wealth . Farmers are respectable and
interesting to me in proportion as they are poor,
poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands
like a fungus in a muck-heap, chambers for men,
horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all
contiguous to one another ! Stocked with men! A
great grease-spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk!
Under a high state of cultivation, being manured
with the hearts and brains of men ! As if you were to
raise your potatoes in the churchyard ! Such is a
model farm .
No, no ; if the fairest features of the landscape are
to be named after men, let them be the noblest and
worthiest men alone. Let our lakes receive as true
names at least as the Icarian Sea, where " still the
shore "" a " brave attempt resounds. "

Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to

Flint's ; Fair-Haven, an expansion of Concord River,
said to contain some seventy acres, is a mile south-
west ; and White Pond, of about forty acres, is a
mile and a half beyond Fair- Haven . This is my
lake country. These, with Concord River, are my
water privileges ; and night and day, year in and year
out, they grind such grist as I carry to them.
Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and I my-
self have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attrac-
tive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the
gem of the woods, is White Pond ; a poor name
from its commonness, whether derived from the re-
markable purity of its waters or the color of its sands .
In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser
208 WALDEN.

twin of Walden. They are so much alike that you

would say they must be connected under ground . It
has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the
same hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog-day weather,
looking down through the woods on some of its bays
which are not so deep but that the reflection from the
bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluish
green or glaucous color. Many years since I used to
go there to collect the sand by cart-loads, to make
sand-paper with, and I have continued to visit it ever
since. One who frequents it proposes to call it
Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow-
Pine Lake, from the following circumstance . About
fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch-pine
of the kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it
is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface
in deep water, many rods from the shore. It was
even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and
this was one of the primitive forest that formerly
stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792,
in a " Topographical Description of the Town of
Concord," by one of its citizens, in the Collections of
the Massachusetts Historical Society, the author, after
speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds : “ In
the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water
is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the
place where it now stands, although the roots are
fifty feet below the surface of the water ; the top of
this tree is broken off, and at that place measures
fourteen inches in diameter." In the spring of '49
I talked with the man who lives nearest the pond in
Sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out this
tree ten or fifteen years before . As near as he could
remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the
 THE PONDS. 209

shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep.

It was in the winter, and he had been getting out ice
in the forenoon, and had resolved that in the after-
noon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take
out the old yellow pine . He sawed a channel in the
ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along
and out on to the ice with oxen ; but, before he had
gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it
was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the
branches pointing down, and the small end firmly
fastened in the sandy bottom . It was about a foot
in diameter at the big end, and he had expected to
get a good saw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit
only for fuel, if for that . He had some of it in his
shed then. There were marks of an axe and of
woodpeckers on the but. He thought that it might
have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally
blown over into the pond, and after the top had be-
come water-logged, while the but-end was still dry
and light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up .
His father, eighty years old, could not remember
when it was not there . Several pretty large logs may
still be seen lying on the bottom, where, owing to the
undulation of the surface, they look like huge water
snakes in motion .
This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for
there is little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of
the white lily, which requires mud, or the common
sweet flag, the blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows thinly
in the pure water, rising from the stony bottom all
around the shore, where it is visited by humming
birds in June, and the color both of its bluish blades
and its flowers, and especially their reflections, are
in singular harmony with the glaucous water.
Р
210 WALDEN.

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the

surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were
permanently congealed, and small enough to be
clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by
slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of
emperors ; but being liquid, and ample, and secured
to us and our successors forever, we disregard them,
and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are
too pure to have a market value ; they contain no
muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how
much more transparent than our characters, are they !
We never learned meanness of them. How much
fairer than the pool before the farmer's door, in which
his ducks swim ! Hither the clean wild ducks come.
Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates
her. The birds with their plumage and their notes
are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or
maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of
Nature ? She flourishes most alone, far from the
towns where they reside . Talk of heaven ! ye dis-
grace earth.
 X.

BAKER FARM.

SOMETIMES I rambled to pine groves, standing like

temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy
boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and
shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks
to worship in them ; or to the cedar wood beyond
Flint's Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue
berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand be-
fore Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the
ground with wreaths full of fruit ; or to swamps where
the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white-
spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the
swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful
fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vege-
table winkles ; where the swamp-pink and dogwood
grow, the red alder-berry glows like eyes of imps, the
waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in
its folds, and the wild-holly berries make the beholder
forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled
and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits,
too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on some
scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds
which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away
in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a
wood or swamp, or on a hill top : such as the black-
birch, of which we have some handsome specimens
two feet in diameter ; its cousin the yellow-birch, with
its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first ; the
211
212 WALDEN.

beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen.

painted, perfect in all its details, of which, excepting
scattered specimens, I know but one small grove of
sizable trees left in the township, supposed by some
to have been planted by the pigeons that were once
baited with beech nuts near by ; it is worth the while
to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this
wood ; the bass ; the hornbeam ; the celtis occiden-
talis, or false elm, of which we have but one well-
grown ; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or
a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a
pagoda in the midst of the woods ; and many others
I could mention . These were the shrines I visited
both summer and winter.
Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment
of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of
the atmosphere, tingeing the grass and leaves around,
and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crys-
tal . It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a
short while, I lived like a dolphin . If it had lasted
longer it might have tinged my employments and life.
As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to won-
der at the halo of light around my shadow, and would
fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited
me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen be-
fore him had no halo about them, that it was only
natives that were so distinguished . Benvenuto Cellini
tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible
dream or vision which he had during his confinement
in the castle of St. Angelo, a resplendent light ap-
peared over the shadow of his head at morning and
evening, whether he was in Italy or France, and it was
particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist
with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon
 BAKER FARM. 213

to which I have referred, which is especially observed

in the morning, but also at other times, and even by
moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not com-
monly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagi-
nation like Cellini's, it would be basis enough for
superstition. Besides, he tells us that he showed it
to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished
who are conscious that they are regarded at all ?

I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair-

Haven, through the woods, to eke out my scanty
fare of vegetables . My way led through Pleasant
Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat
of which a poet has since sung, beginning, —
66 Thy entry is a pleasant field,
Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook,
By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout,
Darting about."
I thought of living there before I went to Walden.
I " hooked " the apples, leaped the brook, and scared
the musquash and the trout. It was one of those
afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one,
in which many events may happen, a large portion of
our natural life, though it was already half spent when
I started . By the way there came up a shower, which
compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine, pil-
ing boughs over my head, and wearing my handker-
chief for a shed ; and when at length I had made one
cast over the pickerel-weed, standing up to my middle
in water, I found myself suddenly in the shadow of a
cloud, and the thunder began to rumble with such
emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it.
214 WALDEN.

The gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked

flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman . So I made
haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half
a mile from any road, but so much the nearer to
the pond, and had long been uninhabited : -

" And here a poet builded,

In the completed years,
For behold a trivial cabin
That to destruction steers."

So the Muse fables . But therein, as I found, dwelt

now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several
children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his
father at his work, and now came running by his side
from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-
like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father's knee
as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its
home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively
upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not
knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the
hope and cynosure of the world, instead of John Field's
poor starveling brat. There we sat together under
that part of the roof which leaked the least, while it
showered and thundered without. I had sat there
many times of old before the ship was built that
floated this family to America . An honest, hard-
working, but shiftless man plainly was John Field ;
and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many suc-
cessive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove ;
with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking
to improve her condition one day ; with the never
absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visi-
ble anywhere . The chickens, which had also taken
shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like
 BAKER FARM. 215

members of the family, too humanized methought to

roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or
pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host
told me his story, how hard he worked " bogging "
for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with
a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre
and the use of the land with manure for one year, and
his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his
father's side the while, not knowing how poor a bar-
gain the latter had made . I tried to help him with
my experience, telling him that he was one of my
nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing
here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living
like himself ; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean
house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent
of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to ; and how,
if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself
a palace of his own ; that I did not use tea, nor coffee,
nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not
have to work to get them ; again, as I did not work
hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but
a trifle for my food ; but as he began with tea, and
coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work
hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard
he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his
system, and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed
it was broader than it was long, for he was discon-
tented and wasted his life into the bargain ; and yet
he had rated it as a gain, in coming to America, that
here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every
day. But the only true America is that country where
you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may
enable you to do without these, and where the state
does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery
216 WALDEN.

and war and other superfluous expenses which directly

or indirectly result from the use of such things. For
I purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher,
or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the
meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that
were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem
themselves. A man will not need to study history to
find out what is best for his own culture. But alas !
the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be
undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe . I told him,
that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required
thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon
soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin
clothing, which cost not half so much, though he
might think that I was dressed like a gentleman
(which, however, was not the case) , and in an hour
or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if
I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two
days, or earn enough money to support me a week.
If he and his family would live simply, they might all
go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amuse-
ment. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared
with arms akimbo, and both appeared to be wonder-
ing if they had capital enough to begin such a course
with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It
was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw
not clearly how to make their port so ; therefore I sup-
pose they still take life bravely, after their fashion,
face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill
to split its massive columns with any fine entering
wedge, and rout it in detail ; -
— thinking to deal with
it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they
fight at an overwhelming disadvantage, living,
John Field, alas ! without arithmetic, and failing so.
 BAKER FARM. 217

" Do you ever fish ? " I asked. " Oh, yes, I catch a
mess now and then when I am lying by ; good perch
I catch . " "What's your bait ? " " I catch shiners
with fish-worms, and bait the perch with them ."
"You'd better go now, John," said his wife, with
glistening and hopeful face ; but John demurred .
The shower was now over, and a rainbow above
the eastern woods promised a fair evening ; so I took
my departure. When I had got without I asked for
a dish, hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to
complete my survey of the premises ; but there, alas !
are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal,
and bucket irrecoverable . Meanwhile the right culi-
nary vessel was selected, water was seemingly dis-
tilled, and after consultation and long delay passed
out to the thirsty one, -
- not yet suffered to cool, not
yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought ;
so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a
skilfully directed under- current, I drank to genuine
hospitality the heartiest draught I could . I am not
squeamish in such cases when manners are con-
cerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain,
bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to
catch pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs
and bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared
for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to
school and college ; but as I ran down the hill tow-
ard the reddening west, with the rainbow over my
shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my
ear through the cleansed air, from I know not what
quarter, my Good Genius seemed to say, Go fish
and hunt far and wide day by day, farther and
wider, - and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-
218 WALDEN.

sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in

the days of thy youth . Rise free from care before
the dawn, and seek adventures . Let the noon find
thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee every-
where at home. There are no larger fields than
these, no worthier games than may here be played .
Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges
and brakes, which will never become English hay.
Let the thunder rumble ; what if it threaten ruin to
farmers' crops ? that is not its errand to thee. Take
shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and
sheds . Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy
sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through
want of enterprise and faith men are where they are,
buying and selling, and spending their lives like
serfs .
O Baker Farm !
" Landscape where the richest element
Is a little sunshine innocent." ...
" No one runs to revel
On thy rail-fenced lea." ...
" Debate with no man hast thou,
With questions art never perplexed,
As tame at the first sight as now,
In thy plain russet gabardine dressed." ...
"Come ye who love,
And ye who hate,
Children of the Holy Dove,
And Guy Faux of the state,
And hang conspiracies
From the tough rafters of the trees !"

Men come tamely home at night only from the next

field or street, where their household echoes haunt,
 BAKER FARM. 219

and their life pines because it breathes its own breath

over again ; their shadows morning and evening reach
farther than their daily steps . We should come home
from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries
every day, with new experience and character.
Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse
had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting
go 'bogging " ere this sunset. But he, poor man,
disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a
fair string, and he said it was his luck ; but when he
changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too .
Poor John Field ! - I trust he does not read this,
unless he will improve by it, thinking to live by
some derivative old country mode in this primitive
new country, -to catch perch with shiners . It is
good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all
his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with
his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam's
grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this
world, he nor his posterity, till their wading, webbed,
bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels .
 XI.

HIGHER LAWS .

As I came home through the woods with my string

of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I
caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my
path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and
was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw ;
not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness
which he represented . Once or twice, however, while
I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods,
like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandon-
ment, seeking some kind of venison which I might
devour, and no morsel could have been too savage
for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccount-
ably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an
instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual
life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive
rank and savage one, and I reverence them both . I
love the wild not less than the good . The wildness
and adventure that are in fishing still recommended
it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life
and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps
I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when
quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature.
They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery
with which otherwise, at that age, we should have
little acquaintance . Fishermen, hunters, wood-chop-
pers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and
220
 HIGHER LAWS. 221

woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves,

are often in a more favorable mood for observing her,
in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or
poets even, who approach her with expectation . She
is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller
on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters
of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the
Falls of St. Mary a fisherman . He who is only a
traveller learns things at second-hand and by the
halves, and is poor authority. We are most inter-
ested when science reports what those men already
know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a
true humanity, or account of human experience.
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few
amusements, because he has not so many public holi-
days, and men and boys do not play so many games
as they do in England, for here the more primitive
but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the
like have not yet given place to the former. Almost
every New England boy among my contemporaries
shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten
and fourteen ; and his hunting and fishing grounds
were not limited like the preserves of an English
nobleman, but were more boundless even than those
of a savage . No wonder, then, that he did not
oftener stay to play on the common . But already
a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased
•
humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for
perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the ani-
mals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes
to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually
fished from the same kind of necessity that the first
fishers did . Whatever humanity I might conjure up
222 WALDEN.

against it was all factitious, and concerned my phi-

losophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing
only now, for I had long felt differently about fowl-
ing, and sold my gun before I went to the woods .
Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not
perceive that my feelings were much affected . I did
not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit.
As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a
gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology,
and sought only new or rare birds . But I confess
that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer
way of studying ornithology than this. It requires
so much closer attention to the habits of the birds,
that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to
omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection
on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt
if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for
these ; and when some of my friends have asked me
anxiously about their boys, whether they should let
them hunt, I have answered , yes, - remembering that
it was one of the best parts of my education, - make
them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if pos-
sible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not
find game large enough for them in this or any vege-
table wilderness, hunters as well as fishers of men .
Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who
"yave not of the text a pulled hen
That saith that hunters ben not holy men."

There is a period in the history of the individual, as

of the race, when the hunters are the " best men,"
as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity
the boy who has never fired a gun ; he is no more
humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
 HIGHER LAWS. 223

This was my answer with respect to those youths who

were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would
soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thought-
less age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any crea-
ture which holds its life by the same tenure that he
does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child .
I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not al-
ways make the usual philanthropic distinctions .
Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to
the forest, and the most original part of himself. He
goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at
last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him , he
distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or natu-
ralist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole
behind . The mass of men are still and always young
in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson
is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a
good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good
Shepherd . I have been surprised to consider that
the only obvious employment, except wood- chopping,
ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my
knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half
day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or
children of the town, with just one exception, was
fishing. Commonly they did not think that they were
lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a
long string of fish, though they had the opportunity
of seeing the pond all the while. They might go
there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing
would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose
pure ; but no doubt such a clarifying process would
be going on all the while. The governor and his
council faintly remember the pond, for they went
a-fishing there when they were boys ; but now
224 WALDEN.

they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so

they know it no more forever. Yet even they expect
to go to heaven at last . If the legislature regards it,
it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be
used there ; but they know nothing about the hook of
hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, empal-
ing the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized
communities , the embryo man passes through the
hunter stage of development .
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot
fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried
it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many
of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives
from time to time ; but always when I have done I feel
that it would have been better if I had not fished . I
think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation,
yet so are the first streaks of morning. There is un-
questionably this instinct in me which belongs to the
lower orders of creation ; yet with every year I am less
a fisherman, though without more humanity or even
wisdom ; at present I am no fisherman at all . But I
see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should
again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in
earnest. Besides, there is something essentially un-
clean about this diet, and all flesh, and I began to see
where housework commences, and whence the en-
deavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and re-
spectable appearance, each day, to keep the house
sweet and free from all ill odors and sights . Having
been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well
as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up,
I can speak from an unusually complete experience.
The practical objection to animal food in my case
was its uncleanness ; and, besides, when I had caught
 HIGHER LAWS. 225

and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they

seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was in-
significant and unnecessary, and cost more than it
came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would
have done as well, with less trouble and filth . Like
many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many
years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, &c.; not so
much because of any ill effects which I had traced to
them, as because they were not agreeable to my
imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not
ap-
the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It
peared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in
many respects ; and though I never did so, I went far
enough to please my imagination. I believe that
every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his
higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has
been particularly inclined to abstain from animal
food, and from much food of any kind . It is a signifi-
cant fact, stated by entomologists, I find it in Kirby
and Spence, that " some insects in their perfect state,
though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use
of them ; " and they lay it down as " a general rule,
that almost all insects in this state eat much less
than in that of larvæ. The voracious caterpillar
when transformed into a butterfly," " and the
gluttonous maggot when become a fly," content
themselves with a drop or two of honey or some
other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of
the butterfly still represents the larva. This is the
tidbit which tempts his insectivorous fate . The
gross feeder is a man in the larva state ; and there
are whole nations in that condition , nations without
fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray
them .
226 WALDEN.

It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean

a diet as will not offend the imagination ; but this, I
think, is to be fed when we feed the body ; they
should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps
this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need
not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt
the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment
into your dish, and it will poison you . It is not
worth the while to live by rich cookery . Most men
would feel shame if caught preparing with their
own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal
or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by
others . Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized,
and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and
women. This certainly suggests what change is to
be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination
will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied
that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a car-
nivorous animal ? True, he can and does live, in a
great measure, by preying on other animals ; but this
is a miserable way, - - as any one who will go to snar-
ing rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn, — and
he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who
shall teach man to confine himself to a more inno-
cent and wholesome diet . Whatever my own prac-
tice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the
destiny of the human race, in its gradual improve-
ment, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the sav-
age tribes have left off eating each other when they
came in contact with the more civilized.
If one listens to the faintest but constant sugges-
tions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees
not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead
him ; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute
 HIGHER LAWS. 227

and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured ob-

jection which one healthy man feels will at length
prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind .
No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.
Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps
no one can say that the consequences were to be re-
gretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher
principles. If the day and the night are such that
you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance
like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic,
more starry, more immortal, that is your success .
All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause
momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains
and values are farthest from being appreciated. We
easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget
them . They are the highest reality. Perhaps the
facts most astounding and most real are never com-
municated by man to man. The true harvest of my
daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable
as the tints of morning or evening . It is a little star-
dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have
clutched .
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish ;
I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish,
if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water
so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural
sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep
sober always ; and there are infinite degrees of
drunkenness . I believe that water is the only drink
for a wise man ; wine is not so noble a liquor ; and
think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup
of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea !
Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them !
Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently
228 WALDEN.

slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will

destroy England and America . Of all ebriosity, who
does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he
breathes ? I have found it to be the most serious
objection to coarse labors long continued, that they
compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also . But
to tell the truth , I find myself at present somewhat
less particular in these respects . I carry less religion
to the table, ask no blessing ; not because I am wiser
than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because,
however much it is to be regretted, with years I have
grown more coarse and indifferent . Perhaps these
questions are entertained only in youth, as most
believe of poetry. My practice is " nowhere," my
opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regard-
ing myself as one of those privileged ones to whom
the Ved refers when it says that " he who has true
faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all
that exists," that is, is not bound to inquire what is
his food, or who prepares it ; and even in their case
it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has
remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to
"the time of distress ."
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible
satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no
share ? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a
mental perception to the commonly gross sense of
taste, that I have been inspired through the palate,
that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside
had fed my genius . " The soul not being mistress
of herself," says Thseng-tseu, " one looks, and one
does not see ; one listens, and one does not hear ;
one eats, and one does not know the savor of food . "
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can
 HIGHER LAWS. 229

never be a glutton ; he who does not cannot be

otherwise. A puritan may go to his brown- bread
crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman
to his turtle . Not that food which entereth into the
mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it
is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity,
but the devotion to sensual savors ; when that which
is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or
inspire our spiritual life , but food for the worms that
possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles,
muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine
lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot,
or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even.
He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot.
The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this
slimy beastly life, eating and drinking.
Our whole life is startlingly moral . There is never
an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Good-
ness is the only investment that never fails . In the
music of the harp which trembles round the world it
is the insisting on this which thrills us . The harp is
the travelling patterer for the Universe's Insurance
Company, recommending its laws, and our little good-
ness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the
youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the uni-
verse are not indifferent, but are forever on the side
of the most sensitive . Listen to every zephyr for
some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortu-
nate who does not hear it . We cannot touch a
string or move a stop but the charming moral trans-
fixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way
off, is heard as music, a proud sweet satire on the
meanness of our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which
230 WALDEN.

awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.

It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be
wholly expelled ; like the worms which, even in life
and health, occupy our bodies . Possibly we may
withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I
fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own ;
that we may be well, yet not pure . The other day I
picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and
sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there
was an animal health and vigor distinct from the
spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means
than temperance and purity. "That in which men
differ from brute beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing
very inconsiderable ; the common herd lose it very
soon ; superior men preserve it carefully. " Who
knows what sort of life would result if we had at-
tained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could
teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith .
"A command over our passions, and over the ex-
ternal senses of the body, and good acts, are declared
by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approxi-
mation to God." Yet the spirit can for the time
pervade and control every member and function of
the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest
sensuality into purity and devotion . The generative
energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and
makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates
and inspires us . Chastity is the flowering of man ;
and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and
the like, are but various fruits which succeed its
Man flows at once to God when the channel of prone
is open. By turns our purity inspires and our,t hear ;
ity casts us down . He is blessed who is of food . "
that the animal is dying out in him day is food can
 HIGHER LAWS. 231

the divine being established . Perhaps there is none

but has cause for shame on account of the inferior
and brutish nature to which he is allied . I fear, that
we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and
satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of
appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our
disgrace . -
་ '་ How happy's he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and disaforested his mind !
*
Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
But he's those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse."
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms ;
all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat,
or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are
but one appetite, and we only need to see a person
do any one of these things to know how great a sen-
sualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit
1 with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one
mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
If you would be chaste, you must be temperate .
What is chastity ? How shall a man know if he is
chaste ? He shall not know it. We have heard of
this virtue, but we know not what it is . We speak
conformably to the rumor which we have heard.
From exertion come wisdom and purity ; from sloth
ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality
is a sluggish habit of mind . An unclean person is
universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove,
whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes with-
out being fatigued . If you would avoid uncleanness,
232 WALDEN.

and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at clean-

ing a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but
she must be overcome . What avails it that you are
Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if
you deny yourself no more, if you are not more reli-
gious ? I know of many systems of religion esteemed
heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame,
and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to
the performance of rites merely.
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because
of the subject, - I care not how obscene my words
are, but because I cannot speak of them without
betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without
shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about
another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak
simply of the necessary functions of human nature .
In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was
reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing
was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however of-
fensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how
to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and
the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely
excuse himself by calling these things trifles .
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his
body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his
own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead .
We are all sculptors and painters , and our material is
our own flesh and blood and bones . Any nobleness
begins at once to refine a man's features, any mean-
ness or sensuality to imbrute them .
John Farmer sat at his door one September even-
ing, after a hard day's work, his mind still running
on his labor more or less . Having bathed he sat
down to recreate his intellectual man . It was a
 HIGHER LAWS. 233

rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were

apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the
train of his thoughts long when he heard some one
playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with
his mood. Still he thought of his work ; but the
burden of his thought was that though this kept run-
ning in his head, and he found himself planning and
contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him
very little . It was no more than the scurf of his skin,
which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of
the flute came home to his ears out of a different
sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work
for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They
gently did away with the street, and the village, and
the state in which he lived. A voice said to him, -
Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life,
when a glorious existence is possible for you ? Those
same stars twinkle over other fields than these . — But
how to come out of this condition and actually mi-
grate thither ? All that he could think of was to
practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend
into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with
ever increasing respect.
 XII.

BRUTE NEIGHBORS.

SOMETIMES I had a companion in my fishing, who

came through the village to my house from the other
side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was
as much a social exercise as the eating of it.
Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now .
I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-
fern these three hours . The pigeons are all asleep
upon their roosts, no flutter from them. Was that
a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond
the woods just now ? The hands are coming in to
boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread . Why
will men worry themselves so ? He that does not
eat need not work. I wonder how much they have
reaped. Who would live there where a body can
never think for the barking of Bose ? And oh, the
housekeeping ! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs,
and scour his tubs this bright day ! Better not keep
a house. Say, some hollow tree ; and then for morn-
ing calls and dinner-parties ! Only a wood -pecker
tapping. Oh, they swarm ; the sun is too warm there ;
they are born too far into life for me. I have water
from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the
- Hark
shelf. — ! I hear a rustling of the leaves . Is
it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct
of the chase ? or the lost pig which is said to be in
these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain ? It
234
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 235

comes on apace ; my sumachs and sweet-briers trem-

ble. — Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you ? How do you like
the world to-day ?
Poet. See those clouds ; howthey hang! That's the
greatest thing I have seen to-day. There's nothing
like it in old paintings , nothing like it in foreign lands,
— unless when we were off the coast of Spain . That's
a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my
living to get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might
go a-fishing. That's the true industry for poets . It
is the only trade I have learned . Come, let's along.
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon
be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just
concluding a serious meditation . I think that I am
near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while.
But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging
the bait meanwhile . Angle-worms are rarely to be met
with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened
with manure ; the race is nearly extinct . The sport of
digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the
fish, when one's appetite is not too keen ; and this you
may have all to yourself to-day. I would advise you to
set in the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts,
where you see the johnswort waving . I think that I
may warrant you one worm to every three sods you
turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the
grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go
farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the
increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares
of the distances.
Hermit alone. Let me see, where was I ? Me-
thinks I was nearly in this frame of mind ; the world
lay about at this angle . Shall I go to heaven or a-fish-
ing? If I should soon bring this meditation to an end,
 236 WALDEN.

would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I

was as near being resolved into the essence of things
as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not
come back to me. If it would do any good, I would
whistle for them . When they make us an offer, is it
wise to say, We will think of it ? My thoughts have
left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What
was it that I was thinking of ? It was a very hazy day.
I will just try these three sentences of Con-fut-see ;
they may fetch that state about again . I know not
whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem.
There never is but one opportunity of a kind .
Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon ? I have got
just thirteen whole ones, besides several which are im-
perfect or undersized ; but they will do for the smaller
fry ; they do not cover up the hook so much . Those
village worms are quite too large ; a shiner may make a
meal off one without finding the skewer.
Hermit. Well, then , let's be off. Shall we to the
Concord? There's good sport there if the water be not
too high.

Why do precisely these objects which we behold

make a world ? Why has man just these species of
animals for his neighbors ; as if nothing but a mouse
could have filled this crevice ? I suspect that Pilpay
& Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are
all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some
portion of our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the com-
mon ones, which are said to have been introduced into
the country, but a wild native kind not found in the vil-
lage . I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it in-
terested him much. When I was building, one of these
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 237

had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid
the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would
come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the
crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man
before ; and it soon became quite familiar, and would
run over my shoes and up my clothes . It could readily
ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a
squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length,
as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it
ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and
round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the
latter close, and dodged and played at bo-peep with it ;
and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between
my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in
my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like
a fly, and walked away.
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for pro-
tection in a pine which grew against the house . In
June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy
a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods
in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and call-
ing to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving
herselfthe hen of the woods . The young suddenly dis-
perse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as
ifa whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly
resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a trav-
eller has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and
heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her
anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings
to attract his attention, without suspecting their neigh-
borhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin
round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot,
for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is.
The young squat still and flat, often running their heads
238 WALDEN.

under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions

given from a distance, nor will your approach make
them run again and betray themselves . You may even
tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute,
without discovering them . I have held them in my
open hand at such a time, and still their only care ,
obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to
squat there without fear or trembling . So perfect is
this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the
leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it
was found with the rest in exactly the same position
ten minutes afterward . They are not callow like the
young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and
precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult
yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes
is very memorable . All intelligence seems reflected
in them. They suggest not merely the purity of in-
fancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience . Such
an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval
with the sky it reflects . The woods do not yield an-
other such gem . The traveller does not often look
into such a limpid well . The ignorant or reckless
sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time,
and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some
prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the
decaying leaves which they so much resemble . It is
said that when hatched by a hen they will directly
disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they
never hear the mother's call which gathers them
again. These were my hens and chickens .
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and
free though secret in the woods, and still sustain
themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected
by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 239

live here ! He grows to be four feet long, as big as

a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting
a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the
woods behind where my house is built, and probably
still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I
rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after
planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a
spring which was the source of a swamp and of a
brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile
from my field . The approach to this was through a
succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young
pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the swamp .
There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a
spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean firm sward
to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well
of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful
without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose
almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was
warmest. Thither too the wood- cock led her brood,
to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above
them down the bank, while they ran in a troop be-
neath ; but at last, spying me, she would leave her
young and circle round and round me, nearer and
nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken
wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off
her young, who would already have taken up their
march, with faint wiry peep, single file through the
swamp, as she directed . Or I heard the peep of the
young when I could not see the parent bird . There
too the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or fluttered
from bough to bough of the soft white-pines over my
head ; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest
bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive . You
only need sit still long enough in some attractive
240 WALDEN.

spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit

themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character.
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather
my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one
red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long,
and black, fiercely contending with one another.
Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled
and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly.
Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips
were covered with such combatants, that it was not a
duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of
ants, the red always pitted against the black, and fre-
quently two red ones to one black. The legions of
these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in
my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn
with the dead and dying, both red and black. It
was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the
only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was rag-
ing ; internecine war ; the red republicans on the
one hand, and the black imperialists on the other.
On every side they were engaged in deadly combat,
yet without any noise that I could hear, and human
soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a
couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces,
in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-
day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life
went out. The smaller red champion had fastened
himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and
through all the tumblings on that field never for an
instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the
root, having already caused the other to go by the
board ; while the stronger black one dashed him
from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer,
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 241

had already divested him of several of his members .

They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs .
Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat .
It was evident that their battle-cry was. Conquer or
die. In the meanwhile there came along a single
red ant on the hill side of this valley, evidently full
of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or
had not yet taken part in the battle ; probably the
latter, for he had lost none of his limbs ; whose
mother had charged him to return with his shield or
upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who
had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to
avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal
combat from afar, ― for the blacks were nearly twice
the size of the red, - he drew near with rapid pace
till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the
combatants ; then, watching his opportunity, he
sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his
operations near the root of his right fore-leg, leaving
the foe to select among his own members ; and so
there were three united for life, as if a new kind of at-
traction had been invented which put all other locks
and cements to shame . I should not have wondered
by this time to find that they had their respective
musical bands stationed on some eminent chip , and
playing their national airs the while, to excite the
slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself
excited somewhat even as if they had been men .
The more you think of it, the less the difference.
And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Con-
cord history, at least, if in the history of America,
that will bear a moment's comparison with this,
whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the
patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and
R
242 WALDEN.

for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden . Concord

Fight ! Two killed on the patriots ' side, and Luther
Blanchard wounded ! Why, here every ant was a
Buttrick, " Fire ! for God's sake fire ! " — and thou-
sands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer . There
was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that
it was a principle they fought for, as much as our
ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their
tea ; and the results of this battle will be as impor-
tant and memorable to those whom it concerns as
those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least .
I took up the chip on which the three I have partic-
ularly described were struggling, carried it into my
house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-
sill, in order to see the issue . Holding a microscope
to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he
was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his
enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own
breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had
there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-
plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce ; and
the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with
ferocity such as war only could excite. They strug-
gled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when
I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads
of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads
were hanging on either side of him like ghastly tro-
phies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly
fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble
struggles, being without feelers and with only the
remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other
wounds, to divest himself of them ; which at length,
after half an hour more, he accomplished . I raised
the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 243

crippled state. Whether he finally survived that com-

bat, and spent the remainder of his days in some
Hôtel des Invalides, I do not know ; but I thought
that his industry would not be worth much thereafter.
I never learned which party was victorious, nor the
cause of the war ; but I felt for the rest of that day as
if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by wit-
nessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a
human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants
have long been celebrated and the date of them
recorded, though they say that Huber is the only
modern author who appears to have witnessed them.
"Æneas Sylvius," say they, " after giving a very cir-
cumstantial account of one contested with great ob-
stinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a
pear tree," adds that " This action was fought in the
pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence
of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who re-
lated the whole history of the battle with the greatest
fidelity.' A similar engagement between great and
small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which
the small ones, being victorious, are said to have
buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those
of their giant enemies a prey to the birds . This
event happened previous to the expulsion of the
tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden . " The
battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency
of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's
Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle
in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in
the woods, without the knowledge of his master, and
ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and wood-
244 WALDEN.

chucks' holes ; led perchance by some slight cur

which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still
inspire a natural terror in its denizens ; now far be-
hind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward some
small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then,
cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight,
imagining that he is on the track of some stray mem-
ber of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to
see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond,
for they rarely wander so far from home. The sur-
prise was mutual . Nevertheless the most domestic
cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears
quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and
stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there
than the regular inhabitants . Once, when berrying,
I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods,
quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their
backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few
years before I lived in the woods there was what was
called a 66 winged cat " in one of the farm-houses in
Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's . When
I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunt-
ing in the woods, as was her wont ( I am not sure
whether it was a male or female, and so use the more
common pronoun) , but her mistress told me that she
came into the neighborhood a little more than a year
before, in April, and was finally taken into their house ;
that she was of a dark brownish gray color, with a
white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a
large bushy tail like a fox ; that in the winter the fur
grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming
strips ten or twelve inches long by two and a half
wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side
loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 245

these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair

of her " wings, " which I keep still . There is no
appearance of a membrane about them . Some
thought it was part flying squirrel or some other
wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according
to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by
the union of the marten and domestic cat. This
would have been the right kind of cat for me to
keep, if I had kept any ; for why should not a poet's
cat be winged as well as his horse ?
In the fall the loon ( Colymbus glacialis) came, as
usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the
woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen .
At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen
are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and
three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and
spy-glasses . They come rustling through the woods
like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon.
Some station themselves on this side of the pond,
some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipres-
ent ; if he dive here he must come up there. But
now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves
and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon
can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond
with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with
their discharges . The waves generously rise and dash
angrily, taking sides with all waterfowl, and our
sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and
unfinished jobs . But they were too often success-
ful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the
morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out
of my cove within a few rods . If I endeavored to
overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would
manœuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so
246 WALDEN.

that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the

latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for
him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one very
calm October afternoon, for such days especially they
settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, hav-
ing looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly
one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle
a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and
betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he
dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before.
He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he
he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he
came to the surface this time, for I had helped to
widen the interval ; and again he laughed long and
loud, and with more reason than before. He ma-
nœuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half
a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to
the surface, turning his head this way and that, he
coolly surveyed the water and the land, and appar-
ently chose his course so that he might come up
where there was the widest expanse of water and at
the greatest distance from the boat . It was surpris-
ing how quickly he made up his mind and put his
resolve into execution . He led me at once to the
widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from
it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain,
I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine .
It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface
of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your
adversary's checker disappears beneath the board,
and the problem is to place yours nearest to where
his will appear again. Sometimes he would come
up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having
apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 247

winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had

swum farthest he would immediately plunge again,
nevertheless ; and then no wit could divine where
in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he
might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had
time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in
its deepest part . It is said that loons have been
caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath
the surface, with hooks set for trout, though Walden
is deeper than that . How surprised must the fishes
be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere
speeding his way amid their schools ! Yet he ap-
peared to know his course as surely under water as
on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once
or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the sur-
face, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly
dived again. I found that it was as well for me to
rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to en-
deavor to calculate where he would rise ; for again
and again, when I was straining my eyes over the
surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his
unearthly laugh behind me . But why, after display-
ing so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself
the moment he came up by that loud laugh ? Did not
his white breast enough betray him ? He was indeed
a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the
plash of the water when he came up, and so also
detected him . But after an hour he seemed as fresh
as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than
at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he
sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the
surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet be-
neath . His usual note was this demoniac laughter,
yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl ; but occasion-
ally, when he had balked me most successfully and
248 WALDEN.

come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn un-

earthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than
any bird ; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the
ground and deliberately howls. This was his loon-
ing, perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard
here, making the woods ring far and wide . I con-
cluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, con-
fident of his own resources. Though the sky was by
this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I
could see where he broke the surface when I did not
hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air,
and the smoothness of the water were all against him.
At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered
one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god
of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a
wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled
the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed
as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his
god was angry with me ; and so I left him disappear-
ing far away on the tumultuous surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cun-
ningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond,
far from the sportsman ; tricks which they will have
less need to practice in Louisiana bayous . When
compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round
and round and over the pond at a considerable height,
from which they could easily see to other ponds and
the river, like black motes in the sky ; and when I
thought they had gone off thither long since, they
would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter
of a mile on to a distant part which was left free ; but
what besides safety they got by sailing in the middle
of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water
for the same reason that I do.
 XIII.

HOUSE-WARMING .

IN October I went a-graping to the river meadows,

and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their
beauty and fragrance than for food. There too I ad-
mired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small
waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly
and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake,
leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly
measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only,
and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New
York ; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of
lovers of Nature there. So butchers rake the tongues
of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of the torn
and drooping plant . The barberry's brilliant fruit was
likewise food for my eyes merely ; but I collected a
small store of wild apples for coddling, which the
proprietors and travellers had overlooked. When
chestnuts were ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter.
It was very exciting at that season to roam the then
boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln, they now
sleep their long sleep under the railroad, - with a bag
on my shoulder, and a stick to open burrs with in my
hand, for I did not always wait for the frost, amid the
rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red-
squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I
sometimes stole, for the burrs which they had selected
were sure to contain sound ones . Occasionally I
249
250 WALDEN.

climbed and shook the trees. They grew also behind

my house, and one large tree which almost overshad-
owed it was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented
the whole neighborhood , but the squirrels and the jays
got most of its fruit ; the last coming in flocks early
in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burrs
before they fell. I relinquished these trees to them
and visited the more distant woods composed wholly
of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were a
good substitute for bread. Many other substitutes
might, perhaps, be found . Digging one day for fish-
worms I discovered the ground-nut ( Apios tuberosa)
on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of
fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had
ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and
had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crim-
pled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of
other plants without knowing it to be the same. Cul-
tivation has well-nigh exterminated it . It has a sweet-
ish taste, much like that of a frostbitten potato, and I
found it better boiled than roasted . This tuber
seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own
children and feed them simply here at some future
period . In these days of fatted cattle and waving
grain-fields, this humble root, which was once the
totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known
only by its flowering vine ; but let wild Nature reign
here once more, and the tender and luxurious English
grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes,
and without the care of man the crow may carry back
even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield
of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is
said to have brought it ; but the now almost extermi-
nated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in
 HOUSE-WARMING. 251

spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous,

and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the
diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Mi-
nerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it ;
and when the reign of poetry commences here, its
leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our
works of art .
Already, by the first of September, I had seen two
or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond,
beneath where the white stems of three aspens di-
verged, at the point of a promontory, next the water.
Ah, many a tale their color told ! And gradually from
week to week the character of each tree came out, and
it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the
lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery sub-
stituted some new picture, distinguished by more
brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the
walls.
The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in Octo-
ber, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows
within and onthe walls overhead, sometimes deterring
visitors from entering. Each morning, when they
were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but
I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them ; I
even felt complimented by their regarding my house
as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seri-
ously, though they bedded with me ; and they gradu-
ally disappeared, into what crevices I do not know,
avoiding winter and unspeakable cold .
Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter
quarters in November, I used to resort to the north-
east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the
pitch-pine woods and the stony shore, made the fire-
side of the pond ; it is so much pleasanter and whole-
252 WALDEN.

somer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than

by an artificial fire . I thus warmed myself by the still
glowing embers which the summer, like a departed
hunter, had left.

When I came to build my chimney I studied ma-

sonry. My bricks being second-hand ones required
to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more
than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels . The
mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to
be still growing harder ; but this is one of those say-
ings which men love to repeat whether they are true
or not. Such sayings themselves grow harder and
adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many
blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them .
Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of
second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained
from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them
is older and probably harder still . However that
may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the
steel which bore so many violent blows without being
worn out. As my bricks had been in a chimney be-
fore, though I did not read the name of Nebuchad-
nezzar on them, I picked out as many fireplace bricks
as I could find, to save work and waste, and I filled
the spaces between the bricks about the fireplace
with stones from the pond shore, and also made my
mortar with the white sand from the same place . I
lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital
part of the house . Indeed, I worked so deliberately,
that though I commenced at the ground in the morn-
ing, a course of bricks raised a few inches above the
floor served for my pillow at night ; yet I did not get
a stiff neck for it that I remember ; my stiff neck is of
 HOUSE-WARMING. 253

older date. I took a poet to board for a fortnight

about those times, which caused me to be put to it
for room . He brought his own knife, though I had
two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them
into the earth. He shared with me the labors of
cooking. I was pleased to see my work rising so
square and solid by degrees, and reflected that, if it
proceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a long
time. The chimney is to some extent an independent
structure, standing on the ground and rising through
the house to the heavens ; even after the house is
burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance
and independence are apparent. This was toward
the end of summer . It was now November.

The north wind had already begun to cool the

pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing
to accomplish it, it is so deep. When I began to have
a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the
chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of
the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I
passed some cheerful evenings in that cool and airy
apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards
full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high over-
head. My house never pleased my eye so much after
it was plastered, though I was obliged to confess that
it was more comfortable . Should not every apart-
ment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create
some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows
may play at evening about the rafters ? These forms
are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than
fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture .
I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say,
when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.
254 WALDEN.

I had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood

from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot
form on the back of the chimney which I had built,
and I poked the fire with more right and more satis-
faction than usual . My dwelling was small, and I
could hardly entertain an echo in it ; but it seemed
larger for being a single apartment and remote from
neighbors. All the attractions of a house were con-
centrated in one room ; it was kitchen, chamber,
parlor, and keeping-room ; and whatever satisfaction
parent or child, master or servant, derive from living
in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master
of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic
villa " cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti
lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriæ
erit," that is, " an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so
that it may be pleasant to expect hard times ; it will
be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory . " I had
in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of
peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little
rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a
peck each .
I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous
house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materi-
als, and without gingerbread-work, which shall still
consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial,
primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare
rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven
over one's head, — useful to keep off rain and snow ;
where the king and queen posts stand out to receive
your homage, when you have done reverence to the
prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over
the sill ; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach
up a torch upon a pole to see the roof ; where some
 HOUSE-WARMING. 255

may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a

window, and some on settles, some at one end of the
hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with
the spiders, if they choose ; a house which you have
got into when you have opened the outside door, and
the ceremony is over ; where the weary traveller may
wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without
further journey ; such a shelter as you would be glad
to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the
essentials of a house, and nothing for house -keeping ;
where you can see all the treasures of the house at
one view, and everything hangs upon its peg that a
man should use ; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor,
chamber, store-house, and garret ; where you can see
so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so con-
venient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil,
and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your
dinner and the oven that bakes your bread, and the
necessary furniture and utensils are the chief orna-
ments ; where the washing is not put out, nor the
fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes
requested to move from off the trap-door, when the
cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn
whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you
without stamping . A house whose inside is as open
and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in
at the front door and out at the back without seeing
some of its inhabitants ; where to be a guest is to be
presented with the freedom of the house, and not to
be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up
in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home
there, in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host
does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the
mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his
256 WALDEN.

alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the

greatest distance . There is as much secrecy about
the cooking as if he had a design to poison you . I
am aware that I have been on many a man's premises,
and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not
aware that I have been in many men's houses . I
might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who
lived simply in such a house as I have described, if
I were going their way ; but backing out of a modern
palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I
am caught in one.
It would seem as if the very language of our parlors
would lose all its nerve and degenerate into parlaver
wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its sym-
bols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so
far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters , as it
were ; in other words, the parlor is so far from the
kitchen and workshop . The dinner even is only the
parable of a dinner, commonly. As if only the savage
dwelt near enough to Nature and Truth to borrow a
trope from them. How can the scholar, who dwells
away in the North West Territory or the Isle of Man,
tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen ?
However, only one or two of my guests were ever
bold enough to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me ;
but when they saw that crisis approaching they beat
a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake the house
to its foundations. Nevertheless, it stood through a
great many hasty-puddings .
I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I
brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this
purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat,
a sort of conveyance which would have tempted me
to go much farther if necessary. My house had in
 HOUSE-WARMING. 257

the meanwhile been shingled down to the ground on

every side. In lathing I was pleased to be able to
send home each nail with a single blow of the ham-
mer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster
from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I re-
membered the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine
clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once,
giving advice to workmen. Venturing one day to sub-
stitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized
a plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel with-
out mishap, with a complacent look toward the lath-
ing overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward ; and
straightway, to his complete discomfiture, received
the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired
anew the economy and convenience of plastering,
which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a
handsome finish, and I learned the various casualties
to which the plasterer is liable . I was surprised to
see how thirsty the bricks were, which drank up all
the moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it,
and how many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a
new hearth . I had the previous winter made a small
quantity of lime by burning the shells of the Unio
fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake ofthe
experiment ; so that I knew where my materials came
from . I might have got good limestone within a mile
or two and burned it myself, if I had cared to do so.
The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in
the shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even
weeks before the general freezing. The first ice is
especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark,
and transparent, and affords the best opportunity
that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is
shallow ; for you can lie at your length on ice only
$
258 WALDEN.

an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of

the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only
two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a
glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth
then. There are many furrows in the sand where
some creature has travelled about and doubled on its
tracks ; and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases
of cadis worms made of minute grains of white
quartz. Perhaps these have creased it, for you find
some of their cases in the furrows, though they are
deep and broad for them to make. But the ice itself
is the object of most interest, though you must im-
prove the earliest opportunity to study it. If you
examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you
find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at
first appeared to be within it, are against its under
surface, and that more are continually rising from the
bottom ; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid
and dark, that is, you see the water through it.
These bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of
an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and
you see your face reflected in them through the ice.
There may be thirty or forty of them to a square
inch . There are also already within the ice narrow
oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch
long, sharp cones with the apex upward ; or oftener,
if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles, one
directly above another, like a string of beads. But
these within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious
as those beneath . I sometimes used to cast on
stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which
broke through carried in air with them, which formed
very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath .
One day when I came to the same place forty-eight
 HOUSE-WARMING. 259

hours afterward, I found that those large bubbles

were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had
formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam in the
edge of a cake . But as the last two days had been
very warm , like an Indian summer, the ice was not
now transparent, showing the dark green color of the
water, and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or
gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger
than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded
under this heat and run together, and lost their
regularity ; they were no longer one directly over
another, but often like silvery coins poured from a
bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if
occupying slight cleavages . The beauty of the ice
was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom .
Being curious to know what position my great bub-
bles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out
a cake containing a middling-sized one, and turned it
bottom upward . The new ice had formed around
and under the bubble, so that it was included be-
tween the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice,
but close against the upper, and was flattish, or per-
haps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a
quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter ;
and I was surprised to find that directly under the
bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in
the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five-
eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin parti-
tion there between the water and the bubble, hardly
an eighth of an inch thick ; and in many places the
small bubbles in this partition had burst out down-
ward, and probably there was no ice at all under the
largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. I
inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles
260 WALDEN.

which I had first seen against the under surface of

the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in
its degree, had operated like a burning-glass on the ice
beneath to melt and rot it. These are the little air guns
which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop .

At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I

had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl
around the house as if it had not had permission to
do so till then. Night after night the geese came
lumbering in in the dark with a clangor and a whist-
ling of wings, even after the ground was covered with
snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low
over the woods toward Fair-Haven, bound for Mexico.
Several times, when returning from the village at ten
or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of a
flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the
woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where
they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or
quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845
Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the
night of the 22d of December, Flint's and other
shallower ponds and the river having been frozen
ten days or more ; in '46, the 16th ; in '49, about the
31st ; and in '50, about the 27th of December ; in
'52, the 5th of January ; in '53, the 31st of December.
The snow had already covered the ground since the
25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with
the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into
my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both
within my house and within my breast. My employ-
ment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood
in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my
shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree
 HOUSE-WARMING. 261

under each arm to my shed . An old forest fence

which had seen its best days was a great haul for
me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving
the god Terminus . How much more interesting an
event is that man's supper who has just been forth in
the snow to hunt, nay, you may say, steal, the fuel to
cook it with ! His bread and meat are sweet . There
are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the
forests of most of our towns to support many fires,
but which at present warm none, and, some think,
hinder the growth of the young wood . There was
also the drift-wood of the pond . In the course of the
summer I had discovered a raft of pitch- pine logs
with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when
the railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on
the shore. After soaking two years and then lying
high six months it was perfectly sound, though water-
logged past drying. I amused myself one winter day
with sliding this piece-meal across the pond, nearly
half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log
fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on
the ice ; or I tied several logs together with a birch
withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which
had a hook at the end, dragged them across . Though
completely waterlogged and almost as heavy as lead,
they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire ;
nay, I thought that they burned better for the soak-
ing, as if the pitch, being confined by the water,
burned longer as in a lamp .
Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of
England, says that " the encroachments of trespass-
ers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the
borders of the forest," were " considered as great
nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely
262 WALDEN.

punished under the name of purprestures, as tend-

ing ad terrorem ferarum — ad nocumentum forestæ,
&c. ," to the frightening of the game and the detriment
of the forest. But I was interested in the preserva-
tion of the venison and the vert more than the hunt-
ers or wood-choppers, and as much as though I had
been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was
burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I
grieved with a grief that lasted longer and was more
inconsolable than that of the proprietors ; nay, I
grieved when it was cut down by the proprietors
themselves. I would that our farmers when they cut
down a forest felt some of that awe which the old
Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the
light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare) , that
is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The
Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed,
Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this
grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and
children, & c.
It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood
even in this age and in this new country, a value more
permanent and universal than that of gold . After all
our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a
pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our
Saxon and Norman ancestors . If they made their
bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux,
more than thirty years ago, says that the price of
wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia “ nearly
equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood
in Paris, though this immense capital annually re-
quires more than three hundred thousand cords, and
is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles
by cultivated plains ." In this town the price of wood
 HOUSE-WARMING. 263

rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how

much higher it is to be this year than it was the last.
Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the
forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the
wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privi-
lege of gleaning after the wood-chopper. It is now
many years that men have resorted to the forest for
fuel and the materials of the arts ; the New Eng-
lander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the
Celt, the farmer and Robinhood, Goody Blake and
Harry Gill, in most parts of the world the prince and
the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally re-
quire still a few sticks from the forest to warm them
and cook their food . Neither could I do without
them .
Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of
affection. I loved to have mine before my window,
and the more chips the better to remind me of my
pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody
claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the
sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps
which I had got out of my beanfield. As my driver
prophesied when I was ploughing, they warmed me
twice, once while I was splitting them, and again
when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give
out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get
the village blacksmith to " jump " it ; but I jumped
him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods
into it, made it do . If it was dull, it was at least
hung true .
A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure . It
is interesting to remember how much of this food for
fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth . In
previous years I had often gone " prospecting " over
264 WALDEN.

some bare hill side, where a pitch-pine wood had

formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They
are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty
years old, at least, will still be sound at the core,
though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould,
as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a
ring level with the earth four or five inches distant
from the heart. With axe and shovel you explore
this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as
beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold,
deep into the earth . But commonly I kindled my
fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had
stored up in my shed before the snow came . Green
hickory finely split makes the wood-chopper's kind-
lings, when he has a camp in the woods . Once in a
while I got a little of this . When the villagers were
lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave
notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden
vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I
was awake.
Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest ;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts ;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun ;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.

Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little

of that, answered my purpose better than any other.
I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a
walk in a winter afternoon ; and when I returned,
 HOUSE-WARMING. 265

three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive

and glowing. My house was not empty though I was
gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper
behind. It was I and Fire that lived there ; and
commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One
day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that
I would just look in at the window and see if the
house was not on fire ; it was the only time I remem-
ber to have been particularly anxious on this score ;
so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed,
and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned
a place as big as my hand. But my house occupied
so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof was
so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in the
middle of almost any winter day.
The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third
potato, and making a snug bed even there of some
hair left after plastering and of brown paper ; for
even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth
as well as man, and they survive the winter only
because they are so careful to secure them. Some of
my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on
purpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes
a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered
place ; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up
some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that,
instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in
which he can move about divested of more cumbrous
clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of
winter, and by means of windows even admit the
light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. Thus
he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a
little time for the fine arts . Though, when I had
been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my
266 WALDEN.

whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the

genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my
faculties and prolonged my life . But the most luxu-
riously housed has little to boast of in this respect,
nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the
human race may be at last destroyed. It would be
easy to cut their threads any time with a little sharper
blast from the north . We go on dating from Cold
Fridays and Great Snows ; but a little colder Friday,
or greater snow, would put a period to man's exist-
ence on the globe.
The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for
economy, since I did not own the forest ; but it did
not keep fire so well as the open fire-place . Cook-
ing was then, for the most part, no longer a poetic,
but merely a chemic process . It will soon be forgot-
ten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast
potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion . The
stove not only took up room and scented the house,
but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had lost a
companion . You can always see a face in the fire.
The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his
thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have
accumulated during the day. But I could no longer
sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of
a poet recurred to me with new force. -
"Never, bright flame, may be denied to me
Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy.
What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright ?
What but my fortunes sunk so low in night ?
"Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,
Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all ?
Was thy existence then too fanciful
For our life's common light, who are so dull?
 HOUSE- WARMING. 267

Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold

With our congenial souls ? secrets too bold ?
Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire
Warms feet and hands - nor does to more aspire ;
By whose compact utilitarian heap
The present may sit down and go to sleep,
Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked ,
And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked."
 XIV .

FORMER INHABITANTS ; AND WINTER

VISITORS .

I WEATHERED Some merry snow-storms, and spent

some cheerful winter evenings by my fire-side, while
the snow whirled wildly without, and even the hoot-
ing of the owl was hushed . For many weeks I met
no one in my walks but those who came occasionally
to cut wood and sled it to the village . The elements,
however, abetted me in making a path through the
deepest snow in the woods, for when I had once gone
through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks,
where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the
sun melted the snow, and so not only made a dry bed
for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my
guide . For human society I was obliged to conjure
up the former occupants of these woods. Within the
memory of many of my townsmen the road near
which my house stands resounded with the laugh and
gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it
were notched and dotted here and there with their
little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much
more shut in by the forest than now. In some places,
within my own remembrance, the pines would scrape
both sides of a chaise at once, and women and chil-
dren who were compelled to go this way to Lincoln
alone and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a
good part of the distance. Though mainly but a
268
 FORMER INHABITANTS. 269

humble route to neighboring villages, or for the

woodman's team, it once amused the traveller more
than now by its variety, and lingered longer in his
memory. Where now firm open fields stretch from
the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple
swamp on a foundation of logs, the remnants of
which, doubtless, still underlie the present dusty
highway, from the Stratten, now the Alms House,
Farm, to Brister's Hill.
East of my beanfield, across the road, lived Cato
Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gen-
tleman of Concord village ; who built his slave a
house, and gave him permission to live in Walden
Woods ; ― Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis.
Some say that he was a Guinea Negro . There are a
few who remember his little patch among the walnuts,
which he let grow up till he should be old and need
them ; but a younger and whiter speculator got them
at last. He too, however, occupies an equally nar-
row house at present. Cato's half-obliterated cellar
hole still remains, though known to few, being con-
cealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines . It is
now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus glabra),
and one of the earliest species of goldenrod (Solidago
stricta) grows there luxuriantly.
Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to
town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house,
where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the
Walden Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she
had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the war
of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English sol-
diers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, and
her cat and dog and hens were all burned up together.
She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. One
270 WALDEN.

old frequenter of these woods remembers that as he

passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to
herself over her gurgling pot, - — "Ye are all bones,
bones ! " I have seen bricks amid the oak copse
there.
Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister's
Hill, lived Brister Freeman, " a handy Negro," slave
of Squire Cummings once, - there where grow still
the apple trees which Brister planted and tended ;
large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and cider-
ish to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in
the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side,
near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers
who fell in the retreat from Concord, -where he is
styled " Sippio Brister," Scipio Africanus he had
some title to be called, " a man of color," as if he
were discolored. It also told me, with staring empha-
sis, when he died ; which was but an indirect way of
informing me that he ever lived . With him dwelt
Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet
pleasantly, — large, round, and black, blacker than
any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as
never rose on Concord before or since .
Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road
in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the
Stratten family ; whose orchard once covered all the
slope of Brister's Hill, but was long since killed out
by pitch-pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old
roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty
village tree.
Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location,
on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the
wood ; ground famous for the pranks of a demon not
distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a
 FORMER INHABITANTS. 271

prominent and astounding part in our New England.

life, and deserves, as much as any mythological char-
acter, to have his biography written one day ; who
first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and
then robs and murders the whole family, - New Eng-
land Rum . But history must not yet tell the trage-
dies enacted here ; let time intervene in some meas-
ure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them . Here
the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that
once a tavern stood ; the well the same, which tem-
pered the traveller's beverage and refreshed his steed.
Here then men saluted one another, and heard and
told the news, and went their ways again.
Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago,
though it had long been unoccupied . It was about
the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous
boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake . I lived
on the edge of the village then, and had just lost my-
self over Davenant's Gondibert, that winter that I
labored with a lethargy, — which, by the way, I never
knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having
an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is
obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in
order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the
consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers ' collec-
tion of English poetry without skipping. It fairly
overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on
this when the bells rang fire, and in hot haste the en-
gines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of
men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had
leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over
the woods , ― we who had run to fires before, — barn,
shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. " It's Baker's
barn," cried one. " It is the Codman Place, " affirmed
272 WALDEN.

another. And then fresh sparks went up above the

wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted
"Concord to the rescue ! " Wagons shot past with
furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance ,
among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Com-
pany, who was bound to go however far ; and ever
and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow
and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was afterward
whispered , came they who set the fire and gave the
alarm . Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting
the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road
we heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of
the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas ! that we
were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled
our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond
on to it ; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far
gone and so worthless . So we stood round our engine,
jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through
speaking trumpets , or in lower tone referred to the
great conflagrations which the world has witnessed,
including Bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we
thought that, were we there in season with our " tub "
and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened
last and universal one into another flood . We finally
retreated without doing any mischief, — returned to
sleep and Gondibert . But as for Gondibert, I would
except that passage in the preface about wit being the
soul's powder,-"but most of mankind are strangers
to wit, as Indians are to powder. "
It chanced that I walked that way across the fields
the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a
low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and
discovered the only survivor of the family that I know,
the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was
 FORMER INHABITANTS. 273

interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and

looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cin-
ders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He
had been working far off in the river meadow all day,
and had improved the first moments that he could
call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his
youth . He gazed into the cellar from all sides and
points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if
there was some treasure, which he remembered, con-
cealed between the stones, where there was absolutely
nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house
being gone, he looked at what there was left . He was
soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence im-
plied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted,
where the well was covered up ; which, thank Heaven,
could never be burned ; and he groped long about the
wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and
mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a
burden had been fastened to the heavy end, - all that
he could now cling to, to convince me that it was no
common " rider." I felt it, and still remark it almost
daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a
family.
Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and
lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived
Nutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln .
Farther in the woods than any of these, where the
road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the pot-
ter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthen
ware, and left descendants to succeed him. Neither
were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by
sufferance while they lived ; and there often the sheriff
came in vain to collect the taxes, and " attached a chip,"
for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, there
T
274 WALDEN.

being nothing else that he could lay his hands on. One
day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who was
carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse
against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the
younger. He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of
him, and wished to know what had become of him. I
had read of the potter's clay and wheel in Scripture,
but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use
were not such as had come down unbroken from those
days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and I
was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever prac-
tised in my neighborhood.
The last inhabitant of these woods before me was
an Irishman, Hugh Quoil ( if I have spelt his name
with coil enough) , who occupied Wyman's tenement, —
Col. Quoil, he was called . Rumor said that he had been
a soldier at Waterloo . If he had lived I should have
made him fight his battles over again . His trade here
was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena ;
Quoil came to Walden Woods . All I know of him is
tragic . He was a man of manners, like one who had
seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech
than you could well attend to . He wore a great coat in
midsummer, being affected with the trembling de-
lirium, and his face was the color of carmine . He
died in the road at the foot of Brister's Hill shortly
after I came to the woods, so that I have not remem-
bered him as a neighbor. Before his house was pulled
down, when his comrades avoided it as " an unlucky
castle," I visited it. There lay his old clothes curled up
by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised plank
bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a
bowl broken at the fountain. The last could never
have been the symbol of his death, for he confessed
 FORMER INHABITANTS. 275

to me that, though he had heard of Brister's Spring,

he had never seen it ; and soiled cards, kings of dia-
monds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the
floor. One black chicken which the administrator
could not catch, black as night and as silent, not even
croaking, awaiting Reynard , still went to roost in the
next apartment. In the rear there was the dim outline
of a garden, which had been planted but had never re-
ceived its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking
fits, though it was now harvest time. It was overrun
with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last
stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a wood-
chuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the
house, a trophy of his last Waterloo ; but no warm
cap or mittens would he want more.
Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these
dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries,
raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel bushes, and sumachs
growing in the sunny sward there ; some pitch-pine or
gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook, and
a sweet-scented black-birch , perhaps, waves where the
door-stone was . Sometimes the well dent is visible,
where once a spring oozed ; now dry and tearless grass ;
or it was covered deep, — not to be discovered till some
late day, — with a flat stone under the sod, when the
last of the race departed . What a sorrowful act must
that be, - the covering up of wells ! coincident with the
opening of wells of tears . These cellar dents, like de-
serted fox burrows, old holes, are all that is left where
once were the stir and bustle of human life, and "fate,
free-will, foreknowledge absolute," in some form and di-
alect or other were by turns discussed . But all I can
learn of their conclusions amounts to just this, that
" Cato and Brister pulled wool ; " which is about as
276 WALDEN.

edifying as the history of more famous schools of

philosophy.
Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the
door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its
sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by
the musing traveller ; planted and tended once by
children's hands, in front-yard plots, -- now standing
by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving place to
new-rising forests ; -- the last of that stirp, sole sur-
vivor of that family. Little did the dusky children
think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which
they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house
and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive
them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and
grow man's garden and orchard, and tell their story
faintly to the lone wanderer a half century after they
had grown up and died, - blossoming as fair, and
smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its
still tender, civil, cheerful, lilac colors.
But this small village, germ of something more, why
did it fail while Concord keeps its ground ? Were
there no natural advantages , ― no water privileges, for-
sooth ? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister's
Spring, - privilege to drink long and healthy draughts
at these, all unimproved by these men but to dilute
their glass . They were universally a thirsty race.
Might not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-
parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business have
thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like
the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the
land of their fathers ? The sterile soil would at least
have been proof against a low-land degeneracy. Alas !
how little does the memory of these human inhabitants
enhance the beauty of the landscape ! Again, perhaps,
 WINTER VISITORS. 277

Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my

house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet .
I am not aware that any man has ever built on the
spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on
the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are
ruins, whose gardens cemeteries . The soil is blanched
and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary
the earth itself will be destroyed . With such reminis-
cences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.

At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the

snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house
for a week or a fortnight at a time, but there I lived
as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry
which are said to have survived for a long time buried
in drifts, even without food ; or like that early settler's
family in the town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage
was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 when
he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the hole
which the chimney's breath made in the drift, and so
relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned
himself about me ; nor needed he, for the master of
the house was at home. The Great Snow ! How
cheerful it is to hear of! When the farmers could not
get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and
were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their
houses, and when the crust was harder cut off the trees
in the swamps ten feet from the ground, as it appeared
the next spring.
In the deepest snows, the path which I used from
the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might
have been represented by a meandering dotted line,
with wide intervals between the dots . For a week of
even weather I took exactly the same number of steps,
278 WALDEN.

and of the same length, coming and going, stepping

deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers
in my own deep tracks, to such routine the winter
reduces us, yet often they were filled with heaven's
own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my
walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently
tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow
to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow-
birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines ; when
the ice and snow, causing their limbs to droop, and so
sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir
trees ; wading to the tops of the highest hills when
the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level, and
shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every
step ; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on
my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into
winter quarters . One afternoon I amused myself by
watching a barred owl ( Strix nebulosa) sitting on one
of the lower dead limbs of a white-pine, close to the
trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of
him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched
the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me.
When I made most noise he would stretch out his
neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes
wide ; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to
nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching
him halfan hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open,
like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only
a narrow slit left between their lids, by which he pre-
served a peninsular relation to me ; thus, with half-
shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and
endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that
interrupted his visions . At length, on some louder
noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and
 WINTER VISITORS. 279

sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at

having his dreams disturbed ; and when he launched
himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading
his wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the
slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the
pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neigh-
borhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way as it
were with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch,
where he might in peace await the dawning of his day.
As I walked over the long causeway made for the
railroad through the meadows, I encountered many a
blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer
play ; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek,
heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also . Nor
was it much better by the carriage road from Brister's
Hill. For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian,
when the contents of the broad open fields were all
piled up between the walls of the Walden road, and
half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last
traveller. And when I returned new drifts would have
formed through which I floundered, where the busy
northwest wind had been depositing the powdery
snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not a rab-
bit's track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of
a meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed
to find, even in mid-winter, some warm and springy
swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still
put forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier
bird occasionally awaited the return of spring.
Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I re-
turned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep
tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and
found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my
house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sun-
 280 WALDEN.

day afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard

the cronching of the snow made by the step of a
long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods
sought my house, to have a social " crack " ; one of
the few of his vocation who are 66 men on their
farms " ; who donned a frock instead of a professor's
gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of
church or state as to haul a load of manure from his
barn-yard . We talked of rude and simple times,
when men sat about large fires in cold bracing
weather, with clear heads ; and when other dessert
failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise
squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which
have the thickest shells are commonly empty.
The one who came from farthest to my lodge,
through deepest snows and most dismal tempests,
was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter,
even a philosopher, may be daunted ; but nothing
can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love.
Who can predict his comings and goings ? His
business calls him out at all hours, even when doc-
tors sleep . We made that small house ring with
boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of
much sober talk, making amends then to Walden
vale for the long silences . Broadway was still and
deserted in comparison . At suitable intervals there
were regular salutes of laughter, which might have
been referred indifferently to the last-uttered or the
99
forthcoming jest. We made many a " bran new
theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which com-
bined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-
headedness which philosophy requires .
I should not forget that during my last winter at
the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at
 WINTER VISITORS. 281

one time came through the village, through snow and

rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the
trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings.
One of the last of the philosophers, Connecticut
gave him to the world , — he peddled first her wares,
afterwards, as he declares, his brains . These he
peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man,
bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel.
I think that he must be the man of the most faith of
any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a
better state of things than other men are acquainted
with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed
as the ages revolve . He has no venture in the pres-
ent. But though comparatively disregarded now,
when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will
take effect, and masters of families and rulers will
come to him for advice.
" How blind that cannot see serenity ! "

A true friend of man ; almost the only friend of

human progress . An Old Mortality, say rather an
Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith mak-
ing plain the image engraven in men's bodies, the
God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monu-
ments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces
children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and enter-
tains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some
breadth and elegance . I think that he should keep a
caravansary on the world's highway, where philoso-
phers of all nations might put up, and on his sign
should be printed : " Entertainment for man, but not
for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet
mind, who earnestly seek the right road . " He is
perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets
282 WALDEN.

of any I chance to know ; the same yesterday and

to-morrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked,
and effectually put the world behind us ; for he was
pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus.
Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens
and the earth had met together, since he enhanced
the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man,
whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which re-
flects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever
die ; Nature cannot spare him.
Having each some shingles of thought well dried,
we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and
admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin
pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we
pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought
were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler
on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the
clouds which float through the western sky, and the
mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dis-
solve there. There we worked , revising mythology,
rounding a fable here and there, and building castles
in the air for which earth offered no worthy founda-
tion. Great Looker! Great Expecter ! to converse
with whom was a New England Night's Entertain-
ment. Ah ! such discourse we had, hermit and phi-
losopher, and the old settler I have spoken of, — we
three, it expanded and racked my little house ; I
should not dare to say how many pounds' weight
there was above the atmospheric pressure on every
circular inch ; it opened its seams so that they had to
be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the
consequent leak ; — but I had enough of that kind of
oakum already picked .
There was one other with whom I had " solid sea-
 WINTER VISITORS. 283

sons," long to be remembered, at his house in the

village, and who looked in upon me from time to
time ; but I had no more for society there.
There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected
the Visitor who never comes . The Vishnu Purana
says, "The house-holder is to remain at eventide in
his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or
longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest . "
I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long
enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see
the man approaching from the town.
 XV.

WINTER ANIMALS.

WHEN the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded

not only new and shorter routes to many points, but
new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape
around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after
it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled
about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide
and so strange that I could think of nothing but
Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me
at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not
remember to have stood before ; and the fishermen,
at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving
slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers
or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabu-
lous creatures, and I did not know whether they were
giants or pygmies . I took this course when I went to
lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no
road and passing no house between my own hut and
the lecture room . In Goose Pond, which lay in my
way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their
cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen
abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like the
rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and
interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could
walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep
on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined
to their streets . There, far from the village street,
284
 WINTER ANIMALS. 285

and, except at very long intervals, from the jingle of

sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard
well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn
pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.
For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter
days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a
hooting owl indefinitely far ; such a sound as the
frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plec-
trum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood,
and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw
the bird while it was making it . I seldom opened
my door in a winter evening without hearing it ; Hoo
hoo hoo, hoorer hoo, sounded sonorously, and the first
three syllables accented somewhat like how der do ;
or sometimes hoo hoo only. One night in the begin-
ning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine
o'clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose,
and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their
wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low
over my house. They passed over the pond toward
Fair-Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my
light, their commodore honking all the while with a
regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl from
very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous
voice I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods,
responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if de-
termined to expose and disgrace this intruder from
Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and
volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of
Concord horizon . What do you mean by alarming
the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me?
Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an
hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as
well as yourself ? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was
286 WALDEN.

one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard . And

yet, if you had a discriminating ear, there were in it
the elements of a concord such as these plains never
saw nor heard .
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond,
my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it
were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were
troubled with flatulency and bad dreams ; or I was
waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as
if some one had driven a team against my door, and
in the morning would find a crack in the earth a
quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over
the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a
partridge or other game, barking raggedly and demo-
niacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anx-
iety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to
be dogs outright and run freely in the streets ; for if
we take the ages into our account, may there not be a
civilization going on among brutes as well as men ?
They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men,
still standing on their defence, awaiting their trans-
formation. Sometimes one came near to my window,
attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me,
and then retreated .
Usually the red squirrel ( Sciurus Hudsonius )
waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up
and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the
woods for this purpose. . In the course of the winter
I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet-corn,
which had not got ripe, on to the snow crust by my
door, and was amused by watching the motions of
the various animals which were baited by it. In the
twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and
 WINTER ANIMALS. 287

made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels

came and went, and afforded me much entertainment
by their manœuvres. One would approach at first
warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the
snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the
wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful
speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable
haste with his " trotters," as if it were for a wager,
and now as many paces that way, but never getting
on more than half a rod at a time ; and then sud-
denly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a
gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe
were fixed on him, — for all the motions of a squirrel,
even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply
spectators as much as those of a dancing girl,
wasting more time in delay and circumspection than
would have sufficed to walk the whole distance,
I never saw one walk, -- and then suddenly, before
you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top
of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chid-
ing all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talk-
ing to all the universe at the same time, - for no
reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was
aware of, I suspect . At length he would reach the
corn, and selecting a suitable ear, brisk about in the
same uncertain trigonometrical way to the top most
stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he
looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supply-
ing himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling
at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs
about ; till at length he grew more dainty still and
played with his food, tasting only the inside of the
kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over
the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp
288 WALDEN.

and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it

with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if sus-
pecting that it had life, with a mind not made up
whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off ; now
thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in
the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste
many an ear in a forenoon ; till at last, seizing some
longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than
himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out
with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by
the same zigzag course and frequent pauses, scratch-
ing along with it as if it were too heavy for him and
falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal be-
tween a perpendicular and horizontal, being deter-
mined to put it through at any rate ; - a singularly
frivolous and whimsical fellow ; and so he would
get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to
the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and
I would afterwards find the cobs strewed about the
woods in various directions.
At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams
were heard long before, as they were warily making
their approach an eighth of a mile off ; and in a stealthy
and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer
and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels
have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch-pine bough,
they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which
is too big for their throats and chokes them ; and after
great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the
endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills.
They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much
respect for them ; but the squirrels, though at first
shy, went to work as if they were taking what was
their own .
 WINTER ANIMALS. 289

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which,

picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew
to the nearest twig, and, placing them under their
claws, hammered away at them with their little bills,
as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were suf-
ficiently reduced for their slender throats . A little
flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out
of my wood-pile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint
flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the
grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more
rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be
from the wood-side . They were so familiar that at
length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was
carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I
once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a
moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I
felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance
than I should have been by any epaulet I could have
worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be quite
familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when
that was the nearest way.
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and
again near the end of winter, when the snow was
melted on my south hill side and about my wood-pile,
the partridges came out of the woods morning and
evening to feed there . Whichever side you walk. in
the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring
wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs
on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams
like golden dust ; for this brave bird is not to be
scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by
drifts, and, it is said, " sometimes plunges from on
wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed
for a day or two. " I used to start them in the open
U
290 WALDEN.

land also, where they had come out of the woods at

sunset to " bud " the wild apple trees. They will
come regularly every evening to particular trees, where
the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the
distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a lit-
tle . I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any
rate. It is Nature's own bird which lives on buds
and diet-drink .
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter after-
noons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading
all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to
resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the
hunting horn at intervals, proving that man was in the
rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts
forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following
pack pursuing their Actæon . And perhaps at evening
I see the hunters returning with a single brush trail-
ing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn .
They tell me that if the fox would remain in the
bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he
would run in a straight line away no fox-hound could
overtake him ; but, having left his pursuers far be-
hind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and
when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where
the hunters await him . Sometimes, however, he will
run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to
one side, and he appears to know that water will not
retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw
a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when
the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way
across, and then return to the same shore . Erelong
the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent.
Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass
my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and
 WINTER ANIMALS. 291

hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species

of madness, so that nothing could divert them from
the pursuit . Thus they circle until they fall upon the
recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake every-
thing else for this . One day a man came to my hut
from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made
a large track, and had been hunting for a week by him-
self. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I
told him, for every time I attempted to answer his
questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do
you do here? " He had lost a dog, but found a man.
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to
come to bathe in Walden once every year when the
water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon
me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one
afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood,
and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry
of hounds approaching, and erelong a fox leaped the
wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the
other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not
touched him . Some way behind came an old hound
and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their
own account, and disappeared again in the woods .
Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick
woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the
hounds far over toward Fair-Haven still pursuing the
fox ; and on they came, their hounding cry which
made all the woods ring sounding nearer and nearer,
now from Well- Meadow, now from the Baker Farm .
For a long time he stood still and listened to their
music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the
fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy
coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sym-
on
pathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keepinwere
292 WALDEN.

the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind ; and,

leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and
listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment
compassion restrained the latter's arm ; but that was
a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can fol-
low thought his piece was levelled, and whang! — the
fox rolling over the rock lay dead on the ground.
The hunter still kept his place and listened to the
hounds . Still on they came, and now the near woods
resounded through all their aisles with their demoniac
cry. At length the old hound burst into view with
muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if pos-
sessed, and ran directly to the rock ; but spying the
dead fox she suddenly ceased her hounding, as if
struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and
round him in silence ; and one by one her pups
arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into
silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came for-
ward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was
solved. They waited in silence while he skinned the
fox, then followed the brush awhile, and at length
turned off into the woods again . That evening a
Weston Squire came to the Concord hunter's cottage
to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week
they had been hunting on their own account from
Weston woods . The Concord hunter told him what
he knew and offered him the skin ; but the other de-
clined it and departed . He did not find his hounds
that night, but the next day learned that they had
crossed the river and put up at a farm-house for the
night, whence, having been well fed, they took their
departure early in the morning.
The hunter who told me this could remember one
mm Nutting, who used to hunt bears on Fair-Haven
 WINTER ANIMALS. 293

Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concord

village ; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose
there . Nutting had a famous fox-hound named Bur-
goyne, - he pronounced it Bugine, which my in-
formant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book " of an
old trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-
clerk, and representative, I find the following entry:
Jan. 18th, 1742-3, " John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox
0-2-3 ; " they are not found here ; and in his ledger,
Feb. 7th, 1743 , Hezekiah Stratton has credit " by a
Catt skin 0-1-4) ; " of course a wild-cat, for Strat-
ton was a sergeant in the old French war, and would
not have got credit for hunting less noble game .
Credit is given for deerskins also, and they were
daily sold. One man still preserves the horns of the
last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another
has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his
uncle was engaged . The hunters were formerly a
numerous and merry crew here . I remember well
one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the
road-side and play a strain on it wilder and more
melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunt-
ing horn.
At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes
met with hounds in my path prowling about the
woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid,
and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed .
Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of
nuts . There were scores of pitch -pines around my
house, from one to four inches in diameter, which had
been gnawed by mice the previous winter, -a Nor-
wegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and
deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion
of pine bark with their other diet . These trees were
294 WALDEN.

alive and apparently flourishing at mid-summer, and

many of them had grown a foot, though completely
girdled ; but after another winter such were without
exception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse
should thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its din-
ner, gnawing round instead of up and down it ; but
perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees,
which are wont to grow up densely.
The hares (Lepus Americanus ) were very familiar.
One had her form under my house all winter, sepa-
rated from me only by the flooring, and she startled
me each morning by her hasty departure when I be-
gan to stir, thump, thump, thump, striking her
head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They
used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the
potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so
nearly the color of the ground that they could hardly
be distinguished when still . Sometimes in the twi-
light I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sit-
ting motionless under my window . When I opened
my door in the evening, off they would go with a
squeak and a bounce . Near at hand they only ex-
cited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two
paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet un-
willing to move ; a poor wee thing, lean and bony,
with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slen-
der paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained
the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last
toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy,
almost dropsical . I took a step, and lo, away it
scudded with an elastic spring over the snow crust,
straightening its body and its limbs into graceful
length, and soon put the forest between me and
itself, - the wild free venison, asserting its vigor
 WINTER ANIMALS. 295

and the dignity of Nature . Not without reason was

its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus,
levipes, lightfoot, some think.)
What is a country without rabbits and partridges ?
They are among the most simple and indigenous ani-
mal products ; ancient and venerable families known
to antiquity as to modern times ; of the very hue and
substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to
the ground, - and to one another ; it is either winged
or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild
creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away,
only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling
leaves . The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to
thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolu-
tions occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and
bushes which spring up afford them concealment,
and they become more numerous than ever. That
must be a poor country indeed that does not support
a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around
every swamp may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk,
beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which
some cow-boy tends.
 XVI.

THE POND IN WINTER.

AFTER a still winter night I awoke with the im-

pression that some question had been put to me, which
I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep,
as what- how- when - where ? But there was dawn-
ing Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at
my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and
no question on her lips . I awoke to an answered
question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying
deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the
very slope of the hill on which my house is placed,
seemed to say, Forward ! Nature puts no question and
answers none which we mortals ask . She has long
ago taken her resolution. " O Prince, our eyes con-
template with admiration and transmit to the soul the
wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe . The
night veils without doubt a part of this glorious crea-
tion ; but day comes to reveal to us this great work,
which extends from earth even into the plains of the
ether."
Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and
pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream .
After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining rod
to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling sur-
face of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath,
and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to
the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will
296
 THE POND IN WINTER. 297

support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow

covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distin-
guished from any level field. Like the marmots in
the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes
dormant for three months or more. Standing on the
snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills,
I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a
foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where,
kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor
of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through
a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor
the same as in summer ; there a perennial waveless
serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, cor-
responding to the cool and even temperament of the
inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over
our heads .
Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with
frost, men come with fishing reels and slender lunch,
and let down their fine lines through the snowy field
to take pickerel and perch ; wild men, who instinc-
tively follow other fashions and trust other authorities
than their townsmen, and by their goings and com-
ings stitch towns together in parts where else they
would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in
stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore,
as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial .
They never consulted with books, and know and can
tell much less than they have done . The things
which they practise are said not yet to be known .
Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for
bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a
summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at
home, or knew where she had retreated . How, pray,
did he get these in mid-winter ? Oh, he got worms
298 WALDEN.

out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he

caught them . His life itself passes deeper in Nature
than the studies of the naturalist penetrate ; himself a
subject for the naturalist . The latter raises the moss
and bark gently with his knife in search of insects ;
the former lays open logs to their core with his axe,
and moss and bark fly far and wide . He gets his
living by barking trees . Such a man has some right
to fish, and I love to see Nature carried out in him.
The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swal-
lows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pick-
erel ; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are
filled .
When I strolled around the pond in misty weather
I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which
some ruder fisherman had adopted . He would per-
haps have placed alder branches over the narrow
holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart
and an equal distance from the shore, and having
fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its
being pulled through, have passed the slack line over
a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and
tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down,
would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed
through the mist at regular intervals as you walked
halfway round the pond .
Ah, the pickerel of Walden ! when I see them lying
on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in
the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am
always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were
fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets , even
to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life.
They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty.
which separates them by a wide interval from the ca-
 THE POND IN WINTER. 299

daverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted

in our streets . They are not green like the pines,
nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky ; but
they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors,
like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the
pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden
water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all
through ; are themselves small Waldens in the ani-
mal kingdom, Waldenses . It is surprising that they
are caught here, — that in this deep and capacious
spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises
and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this
great gold and emerald fish swims . I never chanced
to see its kind in any market ; it would be the cyno-
sure of all eyes there . Easily, with a few convulsive
quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal
translated before his time to the thin air of heaven .

As I was desirous to recover the long-lost bottom

of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the
ice broke up, early in '46, with compass and chain
and sounding line . There have been many stories
told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this
pond, which certainly had no foundation for them-
selves . It is remarkable how long men will believe
in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the
trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottom-
less Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood . Many
have believed that Walden reached quite through to
the other side of the globe . Some who have lain
flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through
the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into
the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the
fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast
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 THE POND IN WINTER. 301

holes " into which a load of hay might be driven," if

there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source
of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from
these parts. Others have gone down from the village
*with a " fifty-six ” and a wagon load of inch rope, but
yet have failed to find any bottom ; for while the
"fifty-six " was resting by the way, they were paying
out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly
immeasurable capacity for marvellousness . But I can
assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight
bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual,
depth . I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a
stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could
tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by
having to pull so much harder before the water got
underneath to help me. The greatest depth was ex-
actly one hundred and two feet ; to which may be
added the five feet which it has risen since, making
one hundred and seven . This is a remarkable depth
for so small an area ; yet not an inch of it can be
spared by the imagination . What if all ponds were
shallow ? Would it not react on the minds of men ?
I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure
for a symbol . While men believe in the infinite some
ponds will be thought to be bottomless .
A factory owner, hearing what depth I had found,
thought that it could not be true, for, judging from
his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so
steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are not so
deep in proportion to their area as most suppose,
and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable
valleys . They are not like cups between the hills ;
for this one, which is so unusually deep for its area,
appears in a vertical section through its centre not
302 WALDEN.

deeper than a shallow plate . Most ponds, emptied,

would leave a meadow no more hollow than we fre-
quently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in
all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct,
standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland,
which he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or
seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth," and
about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, ob-
serves, " If we could have seen it immediately after
the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature
occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a
horrid chasm it must have appeared !

" So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low

Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad, and deep,
"
Capacious bed of waters

But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we

apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have
seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a
shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow.
So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of
Loch Fyne when emptied . No doubt many a smiling
valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly
such a " horrid chasm," from which the waters have
receded, though it requires the insight and the far
sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting
inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye
may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low
horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the
plain have been necessary to conceal their history.
But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways
know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a
shower. The amount of it is, the imagination, give
it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher
 THE POND IN WINTER. 303

than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the

ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable com-
pared with its breadth .
As I sounded through the ice I could determine
the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than
is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze
over, and I was surprised at its general regularity.
In the deepest part there are several acres more level
than almost any field which is exposed to the sun,
wind, and plough . In one instance, on a line arbi-
trarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one
foot in thirty rods ; and generally, near the middle,
I could calculate the variation for each one hundred
feet in any direction beforehand within three or four
inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and
dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this,
but the effect of water under these circumstances is
to level all inequalities . The regularity of the bottom
and its conformity to the shores and the range of the
neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant prom-
ontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the
pond, and its direction could be determined by observ-
ing the opposite shore . Cape becomes bar, and plain
shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel.
When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten
rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more
than a hundred in all, I observed this remarkable
coincidence. Having noticed that the number indi-
cating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre
of the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and
then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the
line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest
breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth, not-
withstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the
304 WALDEN.

outline of the pond far from regular, and the extreme

length and breadth were got by measuring into the
coves ; and I said to myself, Who knows but this
hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean
as well as of a pond or puddle ? Is not this the rule
also for the height of mountains, regarded as the
opposite of valleys ? We know that a hill is not
highest at its narrowest part.
Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded,
were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths
and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be
an expansion of water within the land not only hori-
zontally but vertically, and to form a basin or inde-
pendent pond, the direction of the two capes showing
the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast,
also, has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the
mouth of the cove was wider compared with its length,
the water over the bar was deeper compared with that
in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of
the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore,
and you have almost elements enough to make out a
formula for all cases.
In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this
experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observ-
ing the outlines of its surface and the character of its
shores alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which
contains about forty-one acres, and, like this, has
no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet ; and
as the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line
of least breadth, where two opposite capes approached
each other and two opposite bays receded, I ventured
to mark a point a short distance from the latter line,
but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest.
The deepest part was found to be within one hundred
 THE POND IN WINTER. 305

feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had

inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely sixty
feet. Of course, a stream running through, or an isl-
and in the pond, would make the problem much more
complicated.
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need
only one fact, or the description of one actual phenome-
nor, to infer all the particular results at that point.
Now we know only a few laws, and our result is viti-
ated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in
Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the
calculation . Our notions of law and harmony are com-
monly confined to those instances which we detect ; but
the harmony which results from a far greater number
of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws,
which we have not detected, is still more wonderful .
The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the
traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and
it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely
but one form . Even when cleft or bored through it
is not comprehended in its entireness .
What I have observed of the pond is no less true in
ethics . It is the law of average . Such a rule of the
two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the
system and the heart in man ; but draw lines through
the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man's par-
ticular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves
and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height
or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to
know how his shores trend and his adjacent coun-
try or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed
bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circum-
stances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow
and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a cor-
X
306 WALDEN.

responding depth in him . But a low and smooth

shore proves him shallow on that side . In our bodies,
a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a cor-
responding depth ofthought. Also there is a bar across
the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclina-
tion ; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are
detained and partially land -locked . These inclinations
are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and di-
rection are determined bythe promontories of the shore,
the ancient axes of elevation . When this bar is gradu-
ally increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is
a subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to the
surface, that which was at first but an inclination in
the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes
an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the
thought secures its own conditions, changes, perhaps,
from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a
marsh . At the advent of each individual into this life,
may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the
surface somewhere ? It is true, we are such poor navi-
gators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand offand
on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with
the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public
ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science,
where they merely refit for this world, and no natural
currents concur to individualize them.
As for the inlet or outlet of Walden , I have not dis-
covered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though
perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places
may be found, for where the water flows into the pond
it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in
winter. When the ice-men were at work here in
'46-7, the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected
by those who were stacking them up there, not being
 THE POND IN WINTER. 307

thick enough to lie side by side with the rest ; and the
cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space
was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which
made them think that there was an inlet there . They
also showed me in another place what they thought was
a " leach hole," through which the pond leaked out
under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me
out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity
under ten feet of water ; but I think that I can warrant
the pond not to need soldering till they find a worse
leak than that. One has suggested that if such a
"leach hole " should be found, its connection with
the meadow, if any existed , might be proved by con-
veying some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth
of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring
in the meadow, which would catch some of the parti-
cles carried through by the current.
While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen
inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water.
It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice . At
one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when
observed by means of a level on land directed toward
a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an
inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the
shore. It was probably greater in the middle . Who
knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we
might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth ?
When two legs of my level were on the shore and the
third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the
latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal
amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across
the pond. When I began to cut holes for sounding,
there were three or four inches of water on the ice
under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far ; but the
308 WALDEN.

water began immediately to run into these holes, and

continued to run for two days in deep streams, which
wore away the ice on every side, and contributed es-
sentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond ;
for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice.
This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of
a ship to let the water out. When such holes freeze,
and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a
fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled inter-
nally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider's
web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the
channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a
centre . Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered
with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself,
one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice,
the other on the trees or hill side.

While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are

thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the vil-
lage to get ice to cool his summer drink ; impressively,
even pathetically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of
July now in January, — wearing a thick coat and mit-
tens ! when so many things are not provided for.
It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world
which will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts
and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes,
and carts off their very element and air, held fast by
chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favor-
ing winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the sum-
mer there . It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it
is drawn through the streets . These ice-cutters are
a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went
among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit-
fashion with them, I standing underneath.
 THE POND IN WINTER. 309

In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men

of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our
pond one morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-
looking farming tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows,
turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was
armed with a double-pointed pike -staff, such as is not
described in the New England Farmer or the Culti-
vator. I did not know whether they had come to sow
a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain re-
cently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure,
I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had
done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow
long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who
was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money,
which, as I understood, amounted to half a million
already ; but, in order to cover each one of his dollars
with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin
itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter.
They went to work at once, ploughing, harrowing,
rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were
bent on making this a model farm ; but when I was
looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped
into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly
began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a pecu-
liar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water,
for it was a very springy soil, — indeed, all the
terra firma there was, and haul it away on sleds,
and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in
a bog. So they came and went every day, with a
peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some
point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a
flock of arctic snow-birds . But sometimes Squaw
Walden had her revenge, and a hired man, walking
behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground
310 WALDEN.

down toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before

suddenly became but the ninth part of a man, almost
gave up his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge
in my house, and acknowledged that there was some
virtue in a stove ; or sometimes the frozen soil took a
piece of steel out of a ploughshare, or a plough got
set in the furrow and had to be cut out.
To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee
overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out
the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too
well known to require description, and these, being
sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an
ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block
and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely
as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly
side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the
solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds.
They told me that in a good day they could get out a
thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre.
Deep ruts and " cradle holes " were worn in the ice,
as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over
the same track, and the horses invariably ate their
oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets .
They stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a
pile thirty-five feet high on one side and six or seven
rods square, putting hay between the outside layers
to exclude the air ; for when the wind, though never
so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large
cavities, leaving slight supports or studs only here and
there, and finally topple it down . At first it looked
like a vast blue fort or Valhalla ; but when they began
to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and
this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked
like a venerable moss -grown and hoary ruin, built of
 THE POND IN WINTER. 311

azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, that old

man we see in the almanac, his shanty, as if he had
a design to estivate with us . They calculated that
not twenty-five per cent of this would reach its desti-
nation, and that two or three per cent would be wasted
in the cars. However, a still greater part of this
heap had a different destiny from what intended ; for,
either because the ice was found not to keep so well
as was expected, containing more air than usual, or
for some other reason, it never got to market. This
heap, made in the winter of '46-7 and estimated to
contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered with
hay and boards ; and though it was unroofed the fol-
lowing July, and a part of it carried off, the rest remain-
ing exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and
the next winter, and was not quite melted till Septem-
ber, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greater part.
Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand,
has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue,
and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river,
or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter
of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes
slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street,
and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an
object of interest to all passers . I have noticed that
a portion of Walden which in the state of water was
green will often, when frozen, appear from the same
point of view blue. So the hollows about this pond
will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a green-
ish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will
have frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of water
and ice is due to the light and air they contain, and
the most transparent is the bluest . Ice is an interest-
ing subject for contemplation. They told me that
312 WALDEN.

they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five

years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that
a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen
remains sweet forever ? It is commonly said that this
is the difference between the affections and the in-
tellect.
Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hun-
dred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams
and horses and apparently all the implements of farm-
ing, such a picture as we see on the first page of the
almanac ; and as often as I looked out I was reminded
of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable
of the sower, and the like ; and now they are all gone,
and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from
the same window on the pure sea-green Walden
water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and
sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces
will appear that a man has ever stood there. Per-
haps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and
plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat,
like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the
waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored.
Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of
Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay
and Calcutta, drink at my well . In the morning I
bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal
philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose com-
position years of the gods have elapsed , and in com-
parison with which our modern world and its literature
seem puny and trivial ; and I doubt if that philosophy
is not to be referred to a previous state of existence,
so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I
lay down the book and go to my well for water, and
lo ! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of
 THE POND IN WINTER. 313

Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his

temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells
at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I
meet his servant come to draw water for his master,
and our buckets as it were grate together in the same
well . The pure Walden water is mingled with the
sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it
is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlan-
tis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno,
and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth
of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the
Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexan-
der only heard the names.
 XVII.

SPRING .

THE opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters com-

monly causes a pond to break up earlier ; for the
water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather,
wears away the surrounding ice . But such was not
the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got
a thick new garment to take the place of the old.
This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in
this neighborhood, on account both of its greater
depth and its having no stream passing through it to
melt or wear away the ice . I never knew it to open
in the course of a winter, not excepting that of '52-3,
which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly
opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later
than Flint's Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt
on the north side and in the shallower parts where it
began to freeze . It indicates better than any water
hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being
least affected by transient changes of temperature .
A severe cold of a few days' duration in March may
very much retard the opening of the former ponds,
while the temperature of Walden increases almost
uninterruptedly. Athermometer thrust into the mid-
Idle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at
32°, or freezing point ; near the shore at 33 ° ; in the
middle of Flint's Pond, the same day, at 3210; at a
dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under
314
 SPRING. 315

ice a foot thick, at 36°. This difference of three and

a half degrees between the temperature of the deep
water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact
that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow,
show why it should break up so much sooner than
Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this
time several inches thinner than in the middle. In
mid-winter the middle had been the warmest and the
ice thinnest there . So, also, every one who has
waded about the shores of a pond in summer must
have perceived how much warmer the water is close
to the shore, where only three or four inches deep,
than a little distance out, and on the surface where it
is deep, than near the bottom . In spring the sun not
only exerts an influence through the increased tem-
perature of the air and earth, but its heat passes
through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from
the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the
water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same
time that it is melting it more directly above, making
it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it con-
tains to extend themselves upward and downward
until it is completely honeycombed, and at last dis-
appears suddenly in a single spring rain . Ice has its
grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot
or " comb," that is, assume the appearance of honey-
comb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are
at right angles with what was the water surface.
Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the
surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is fre
quently quite dissolved by this reflected heat ; and 1
have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge
to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the
cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to
316 WALDEN.

both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom

more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a
warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the
snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard, dark, or
transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip
of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more
wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat.
Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within
the ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice
beneath.
The phenomena of the year take place every day in
a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally
speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more
rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so
warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled
more rapidly until the morning. The day is an
epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the
morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the
noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of
the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleas-
ant morning after a cold night, February 24th, 1850 ,
having gone to Flint's Pond to spend the day, I
noticed with surprise that when I struck the ice with
the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many
rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-
head . The pond began to boom about an hour after
sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun's rays
slanted upon it from over the hills ; it stretched itself
and yawned like a waking man with a gradually in-
creasing tumult, which was kept up three or four
hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed
once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing
his influence. In the right stage of the weather a
pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. But
 SPRING. 317

in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the

air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its
resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could
not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The
fishermen say that the " thundering of the pond "
scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond
does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell
surely when to expect its thundering ; but though I
may perceive no difference in the weather, it does.
Who would have suspected so large and cold and
thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive ? Yet it has
its law to which it thunders obedience when it should
as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The
earth is all alive and covered with papillæ. The
largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as
the globule of mercury in its tube.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was

that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the
spring come in . The ice in the pond at length be-
gins to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel in
it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are
gradually melting the snow ; the days have grown
sensibly longer ; and I see how I shall get through
the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large
fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for
the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of
some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for
his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the
woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters . On
the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird,
song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly
a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer, it was
not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up
318 WALDEN.

and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was com-

pletely melted for half a rod in width about the shore,
the middle was merely honeycombed and saturated
with water, so that you could put your foot through it
when six inches thick ; but by the next day evening,
perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would
have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog,
spirited away. One year I went across the middle
only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845
Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April ;
in '46, the 25th of March ; in '47, the 8th of April ; in
'51 , the 28th of March ; in '52, the 18th of April ; in
'53 , the 23rd of March ; in '54 , about the 7th of April.
Every incident connected with the breaking up of
the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather
is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate
of so great extremes . When the warmer days come,
they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at
night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as
if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within
a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator
comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.
One old man, who has been a close observer of Na-
ture, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all
her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks
when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel,
who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire
more of natural lore if he should live to the age of
Methuselah, told me, and I was surprised to hear
him express wonder at any of Nature's operations,
for I thought that there were no secrets between them,
that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and
thought that he would have a little sport with the
ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it
 SPRING. 319

was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down

without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to
Fair-Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, cov-
ered for the most part with a firm field of ice . It was
a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a
body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid
his boat on the north or back side of an island in the
pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on
the south side, to await them. The ice was melted
for three or four rods from the shore, and there was
a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bot-
tom , such as the ducks love, within, and he thought
it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After
he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low
and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand
and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard,
gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have
a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and
roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound
of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and,
seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited ;
but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of
the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in
to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made
by its edge grating on the shore, at first gently
nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up
and scattering its wrecks along the island to a consid-
erable height before it came to a standstill .
At length the sun's rays have attained the right
angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and
melt the snow-banks, and the sun dispersing the mist
smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white
smoking with incense, through which the traveller
picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music
320 WALDEN.

of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins

are filled with the blood of winter which they are
bearing off.
Few phenomena gave me more delight than to ob-
serve the forms which thawing sand and clay assume
in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the rail-
road through which I passed on my way to the vil-
lage, a phenomenon not very common on so large a
scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of
the right material must have been greatly multiplied
since railroads were invented . The material was sand
of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors,
commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost
comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in
the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes
like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow
and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen
before. Innumerable little streams overlap and inter-
lace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid
product, which obeys halfway the law of currents,
and halfway that of vegetation . As it flows it takes
the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of
pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling,
as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and
imbricated thalluses of some lichens ; or you are re-
minded of coral, of leopards' paws or birds' feet, of
brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds.
It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and
color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural
foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chic-
cory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves ; destined per-
haps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle
to future geologists . The whole cut impressed me
as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to
 SPRING. 321

the light. The various shades of the sand are singu-

larly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron
colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish . When
the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the
bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate
streams losing their semi-cylindrical form and gradually
becoming more flat and broad, running together as
they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand,
still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which
you can trace the original forms of vegetation ; till at
length, in the water itself, they are converted into
banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and
the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks
on the bottom.
The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty
feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this
kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a
mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring
day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is
its springing into existence thus suddenly . When
I see on the one side the inert bank, - for the sun
acts on one side first, and on the other this luxuri-
ant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as
if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the
Artist who made the world and me -had come to
where he was still at work, sporting on this bank,
and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs
about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the
globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a
foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body.
You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of
the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth ex-
presses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with
the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned
Y
322 WALDEN.

this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging

leaf sees here its prototype . Internally, whether in
the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a
word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and
the leaves of fat (λeißw, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip
downward, a lapsing ; λoßós, globus, lobe , globe ;
also lap, flap, and many other words ), externally a
dry thin leaf, even as the ƒ and v are a pressed and
dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of
the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed ) , with a liquid
/ behind it pressing it forward . In globe, glb, the
guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the
throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still
drier and thinner leaves . Thus, also, you pass from
the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and flutter-
ing butterfly. The very globe continually transcends
and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit .
Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it
had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water
plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The
whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still
vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and
towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils .
When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow,
but in the morning the streams will start once more
and branch and branch again into a myriad of
others . You here see perchance how blood vessels
are formed . If you look closely you observe that
first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a
stream of softened sand with a drop-like point, like
the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and
blindly downward, until at last with more heat and
moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid por-
tion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most
 SPRING. 323

inert also yields , separates from the latter and forms

for itself a meandering channel or artery within that,
in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like
lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches
to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the
sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the
sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best mate-
rial its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its
channel . Such are the sources of rivers . In the
silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps
the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic
matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue . What is
man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the
human finger is but a drop congealed . The fingers
and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass
of the body. Who knows what the human body
would expand and flow out to under a more genial
heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with
its lobes and veins ? The ear may be regarded,
fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of
the head, with its lobe or drop . The lip - labium,
from labor ( ?) - laps or lapses from the sides of the
cavernous mouth . The nose is a manifest congealed
drop or stalactite . The chin is a still larger drop,
the confluent dripping of the face . The cheeks are
a slide from the brows into the valley of the face,
opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each
rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and
now loitering drop, larger or smaller ; the lobes are
the fingers of the leaf ; and as many lobes as it has,
in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat
or other genial influences would have caused it to
flow yet farther.
Thus it seemed that this one hill side illustrated the
324 WALDEN.

principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker

of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion
will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may
turn over a new leaf at last ? This phenomenon is
more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fer-
tility of vineyards . True, it is somewhat excrementi-
tious in its character, and there is no end to the
heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if the globe were
turned wrong side outward ; but this suggests at least
that Nature has some bowels, and there again is
mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out
of the ground ; this is Spring. It precedes the green
and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular
poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter
fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth
is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth
baby fingers on every side . Fresh curls spring from
the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.
These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the
slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full
blast " within. The earth is not a mere fragment of
dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of
a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries
chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree,
which precede flowers and fruit, — not a fossil earth,
but a living earth ; compared with whose great cen-
tral life all animal and vegetable life is merely para-
sitic. Its throes will heave our exuviæ from their
graves . You may melt your metals and cast them
into the most beautiful moulds you can ; they will
never excite me like the forms which this molten
earth flows out into . And not only it, but the insti-
tutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of
the potter .
 SPRING. 325

Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every

hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes
out ofthe ground like a dormant quadruped from its
burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to
other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle per-
suasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer.
The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces .
When the ground was partially bare of snow, and
a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it
was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the
infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty
of the withered vegetation which had withstood the
winter, -life-everlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and
graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting
frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty
was not ripe till then ; even cotton-grass, cattails,
mulleins, Johnswort, hardhack, meadow-sweet, and
other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted
granaries which entertain the earliest birds, decent
weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am
particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like
top of the wool-grass ; it brings back the summer to
our winter memories, and is among the forms which
art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable king-
dom, have the same relation to types already in the
mind of man that astronomy has . It is an antique
style older than Greek or Egyptian . Many of the
phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inex-
pressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are ac-
customed to hear this king described as a rude and
boisterous tyrant ; but with the gentleness of a lover
he adorns the tresses of Summer.
At the approach of spring the red squirrels got
under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet
326 WALDEN.

as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest

chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and
gurgling sounds that ever were heard ; and when I
stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all
fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying human-
ity to stop them. No you don't chickaree - chick-
aree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or
failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of
invective that was irresistible.
The first sparrow of spring ! The year beginning
with younger hope than ever ! The faint silvery
warblings heard over the partially bare and moist
fields from the bluebird, the song-sparrow, and the
red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they
fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies,
traditions, and all written revelations ? The brooks
sing carols and glees to the spring . The marsh-hawk
sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the
first slimy life that awakes . The sinking sound of
melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dis-
solves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on
the hill sides like a spring fire, -" et primitus orbitur
herba imbribus primoribus evocata," -as if the earth
sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun ;
not yellow but green is the color of its flame ; the
symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like at
long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the
summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon push-
ing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay with
the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill
oozes out of the ground . It is almost identical with
that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills
are dry, the grass-blades are their channels, and from
year to year the herds drink at this perennial green
 SPRING. 327

stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their

winter supply. So our human life but dies down
to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to
eternity.
Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two
rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and
wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has
cracked off from the main body. I hear a song-
sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore, --
olit, olit, olit, -— chip, chip, chip, che, char, —che wiss,
wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it . How
handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of
the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore,
but more regular ! It is unusually hard, owing to the
recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or
waved like a palace floor . But the wind slides east-
ward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the
living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this
ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of
the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy
of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore, -
a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it
were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between
winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive
again . But this spring it broke up more steadily, as
I have said.
The change from storm and winter to serene and
mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright
and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all
things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at
last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house,
though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of
winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping
with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo!
328 WALDEN.

where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the trans-
parent pond already calm and full of hope as in a
summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in
its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it
had intelligence with some remote horizon . I heard
a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many
a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not
forget for many a thousand more, ― the same sweet
and powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin,
at the end of a New England summer day ! If I
could ever find the twig he sits upon ! I mean he; I
mean the twig. This at least is not the Turdus mi-
gratorius. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my
house, which had so long drooped, suddenly re-
sumed their several characters, looked brighter,
greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually
cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that it´
would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at
any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile,
whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker,
I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over
the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from
southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained
complaint and mutual consolation . Standing at my
door, I could hear the rush of their wings ; when,
driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my
light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in
the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and
passed my first spring night in the woods .
In the morning I watched the geese from the door
through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond,
fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden
appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement.
But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up
 SPRING. 329

with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their

commander, and when they had got into rank, circled
about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then
steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from
the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in
muddier pools. A " plump " of ducks rose at the same
time and took the route to the north in the wake of
their noisier cousins.
For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of
some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking
its companion, and still peopling the woods with the
sound of a larger life than they could sustain . In
April the pigeons were seen again flying express in
small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins
twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed
that the township contained so many that it could
afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly
of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere
white men came . In almost all climes the tortoise
and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of
this season, and birds fly with song and glancing
plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds
blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles
and preserve the equilibrium of Nature .
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the
coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos
out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden
Age.
' Eurus ad Auroram, Nabathacaque regna recessit,
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis."
"The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæan
kingdom ,
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning
rays.
330 WALDEN.

Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things,

The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed ;
Or the earth being recent and lately sundered from the high
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven."

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades

greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of
better thoughts . We should be blessed if we lived in
the present always, and took advantage of every acci-
dent that befell us, like the grass which confesses the
influence of the slightest dew that falls on it ; and
did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of
past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.
We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a
pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven.
Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds
out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through
our own recovered innocence we discern the inno-
cence of our neighbors . You may have known your
neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sen-
sualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and de-
spaired of the world ; but the sun shines bright and
warm this first spring morning, recreating the world,
and you meet hin at some serene work, and see how
his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still
joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence
with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are
forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good
will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping
for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps , like
a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south
hill side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some
innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his
 SPRING. 331

gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and

fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered
into the joy of his Lord . Why the jailer does not
leave open his prison doors, - — why the judge does
not dismiss his case, — why the preacher does not
dismiss his congregation ! It is because they do not
obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the
pardon which he freely offers to all .
"A return to goodness produced each day in the
tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes
that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of
vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of
man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled .
In like manner the evil which one does in the inter-
val of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began
to spring up again from developing themselves and
destroys them .
"After the germs of virtue have thus been pre-
vented many times from developing themselves, then
the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to
preserve them . As soon as the breath of evening
does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the
nature of man does not differ much from that of the
brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that
of the brute, think that he has never possessed the
innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and
natural sentiments of man ? ”

"The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.
Punishment and fear were not ; nor were threatening words
read
On suspended brass ; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
The words of their judge ; but were safe without an avenger.
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended
332 WALDEN.

To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,

And mortals knew no shores but their own.
* * * *
There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm
Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed."

On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the

bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge,
standing on the quaking grass and willow roots,
where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling
sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys
play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed
a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk,
alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod
or two over and over, showing the underside of its
wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun,
or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight re-
minded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry
are associated with that sport . The Merlin it seemed
to me it might be called : but I care not for its name.
It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed .
It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like
the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance
in the fields of air ; mounting again and again with
its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful
fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then re-
covering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never
set its foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no
companion in the universe, - sporting there alone, -
and to need none but the morning and the ether with
which it played . It was not lonely, but made all the
earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which
hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens ?
The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth
but by an egg hatched sometime in the crevice of a
 SPRING. 333

crag; -or was its native nest made in the angle of a

cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sun-
set sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze
caught up from earth ? Its eyry now some cliffy
cloud.
Besides this I got a rare mess of golden and silver
and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string
of jewels. Ah ! I have penetrated to those meadows
on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping
from hummock to hummock, from willow root to wil-
low root, when the wild river valley and the woods
were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would
have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering
in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no
stronger proof of immortality . All things must live
in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting ? O
Grave, where was thy victory, then ?
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the
unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.
We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes
in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen
lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe ; to smell the
whispering sedge where only some wilder and more
solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with
its belly close to the ground . At the same time that
we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we re-
quire that all things be mysterious and unexplorable,
that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and
unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can
never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed
by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic
features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness
with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-
cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and pro-
334 WALDEN.

duces freshets. We need to witness our own limits

transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we
never wander. We are cheered when we observe the
vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and dis-
heartens us, and deriving health and strength from the
repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the
path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to
go out of my way, especially in the night when the air
was heavy, but the assurance it gaye me of the strong
appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my com-
pensation for this . I love to see that Nature is so rife
with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed
and suffered to prey on one another ; that tender or-
ganizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence
like pulp, -tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tor-
toises and toads run over in the road ; and that some-
times it has rained flesh and blood ! With the liabil-
ity to accident, we must see how little account is to be
made of it. The impression made on a wise man is
that of universal innocence . Poison is not poisonous
after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a
very untenable ground . It must be expeditious . Its
pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped .
Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other
trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around
the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the
landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were
breaking through mists and shining faintly on the
hill sides here and there. On the third or fourth of
May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first
week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the
brown thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, chewink,
and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long
before. The phoebe had already come once more and
 SPRING. 335

looked in at my door and window, to see if my house

was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on
humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by
the air, while she surveyed the premises . The sul-
phur-like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the
pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore ,
so that you could have collected a barrelful. This is
the " sulphur showers ” we hear of. Even in Calidasa's
drama of Sacontala, we read of " rills dyed yellow with
the golden dust of the lotus. " And so the seasons
went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into
higher and higher grass.
Thus was my first year's life in the woods com-
pleted ; and the second year was similar to it. I
finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.
 XVIII.

CONCLUSION .

To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change

of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all
the world. The buckeye does not grow in New Eng-
land, and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here.. The
wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we ; he
breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the
Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern
bayou. Even the bison to some extent keeps pace
with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colo-
rado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him
by the Yellowstone . Yet we think that if rail-fences
are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms,
bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates
decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you
cannot go to Terra del Fuego this summer : but you
may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless . The
universe is wider than our views of it.
Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our
craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voy-
age like stupid sailors picking oakum . The other side
of the globe is but the home of our correspondent.
Our voyage is only great circle-sailing, and the doc-
tors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One
hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe ; but
surely that is not the game he would be after. How
long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could ?
336
 CONCLUSION. 337

Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport ; but

I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one's self. -

" Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find

A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them , and be
Expert in home-cosmography."

What does Africa, what does the West stand

for? Is not our own interior white on the chart?
black though it may prove, like the coast, when dis-
covered . Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger,
or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around
this continent, that we would find ? Are these the
problems which most concern mankind ? Is Franklin
the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so
earnest to find him ? Does Mr. Grinnell know where
he himself is ? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis
and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and
oceans ; explore your own higher latitudes, ―with
shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they
be necessary ; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a
sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve
meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new
continents and worlds within you, opening new chan-
nels, not of trade, but of thought . Every man is the
lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of
the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the
ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-re-
spect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love
the soil which makes their graves, but have no sym-
pathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay.
Patriotism is a maggot in their heads . What was
the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition,
with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recog-
Z
338 WALDEN.

nition of the fact that there are continents and seas

in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus
or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier
to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm
and cannibals , in a government ship, with five hun-
dred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore
the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of
one's being alone. —
་" Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ."
"Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.
I have more of God, they more of the road ."

It is not worth the while to go round the world to

count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till
you can do better, and you may perhaps find some
" Symmes' Hole " by which to get at the inside at last.
England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast
and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea ; but no
bark from them has ventured out of sight of land,
though it is without doubt the direct way to India.
If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform
to the customs of all nations, if you would travel
farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes,
and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a
stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher,
and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye
and the nerve . Only the defeated and deserters go
to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start
now on that farthest western way, which does not pause
at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a
worn- out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent
to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night,
sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.
 CONCLUSION. 339

It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery

"to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary
in order to place one's self in formal opposition to the
most sacred laws of society ." He declared that " a
soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half
so much courage as a foot-pad," — "that honor and
religion have never stood in the way of a well-con-
sidered and a firm resolve." This was manly, as the
world goes ; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A
saner man would have found himself often enough
"in formal opposition " to what are deemed “ the most
sacred laws of society," through obedience to yet more
sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution with-
out going out of his way. It is not for a man to put
himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain
himself in whatever attitude he find himself through
obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be
one of opposition to a just government, if he should
chance to meet with such .
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. L
Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives
to live, and could not spare any more time for that
one . It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we
fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track
for ourselves . I had not lived there a week before my
feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side ; and
though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still
quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have
fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The
surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet
of men ; and so with the paths which the mind travels .
How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of
the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and con-
formity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but
340 WALDEN.

rather to go before the mast and on the deck of

the world, for there I could best see the moonlight
amid the mountains . I do not wish to go below
now .
I learned this, at least, by my experiment : that if
one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he
will meet with a success unexpected in common hours .
He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible
boundary ; new, universal, and more liberal laws will
begin to establish themselves around and within him ;
or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his
favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the
license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as
he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will ap-
pear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude,
nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness . If you
have built castles in the air, your work need not be
lost ; that is where they should be . Now put the foun-
dations under them.
It is a ridiculous demand which England and Amer-
ica make, that you shall speak so that they can under-
stand you . Neither men nor toadstools grow so.
As if that were important, and there were not enough
to understand you without them. As if Nature could
support but one order of understandings, could not
sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as
creeping things, and hush and who, which Bright can
understand, were the best English . As if there were
safety in stupidity alone . I fear chiefly lest my ex-
pression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not
wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my
daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of
which I have been convinced. Extravagance ! it de-
 CONCLUSION. 341

pends on how you are yarded . The migrating buffalo,

which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not
extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail,
leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after her calf, in
milking-time. I desire to speak somewhere without
bounds ; like a man in a waking moment, to men in
their waking moments ; for I am convinced that I can-
not exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of
a true expression . Who that has heard a strain of
music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly
any more forever? In view of the future or possible,
we should live quite laxly and undefined in front, our
outlines dim and misty on that side ; as our shadows
reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. The
volatile truth of our words should continually betray
the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth
is instantly translated ; its literal monument alone re-
mains. The words which express our faith and piety
are not definite ; yet they are significant and fragrant
like frankincense to superior natures .
Why level downward to our dullest perception al-
ways, and praise that as common sense ? The com-
monest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they
express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class
those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-
witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their
wit. Some would find fault with the morning-red, if
they ever got up early enough. " They pretend," as I
hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four different
senses : illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doc-
trine of the Vedas ; " but in this part of the world it is
considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings
admit of more than one interpretation. While Eng-
land endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any
342 WALDEN.

endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so

much more widely and fatally?
I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity,
but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found
with my pages on this score than was found with the
Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue
color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were
muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white ,
but tastes of weeds . The purity men love is like the
mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure
ether beyond .
Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans,
and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs com-
pared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men.
But what is that to the purpose ? A living dog is
better than a dead lion . Shall a man go and hang
himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies,
and not be the biggest pygmy that he can ? Let
every one mind his own business, and endeavor to
be what he was made .
Why should we be in such desperate haste to suc-
ceed, and in such desperate enterprises ? If a man
does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step
to the music which he hears, however measured or
far away. It is not important that he should mature
as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his
spring into summer ? If the condition of things
which we were made for is not yet, what were any
reality which we can substitute ? We will not be
shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains
erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though
when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true
ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?
 CONCLUSION.“ 343

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was

disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came
into his mind to make a staff. Having considered
that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but
into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to
himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I
should do nothing else in my life . He proceeded
instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that
it should not be made of unsuitable material ; and as
he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his
friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in
their works and died, but he grew not older by a
moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution,
and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his
knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no
compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way,
and only sighed at a distance because he could not
overcome him. Before he had found a stock in all
respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin,
and he sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick.
Before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty
of the Candahars was at an end, and with the point
of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race
in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the
time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa
was no longer the pole-star ; and ere he had put on
the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones,
Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times . But
why do I stay to mention these things ? When the
finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly
expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist
into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He
had made a new system in making a staff, a world
with full and fair proportions ; in which, though the
344 WALDEN.

old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and

more glorious ones had taken their places . And
now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his
feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of
time had been an illusion, and that no more time had
elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from
the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder
of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his
art was pure ; how could the result be other than
wonderful?
No face which we can give to a matter will stead
us so well at last as the truth . This alone wears
well . For the most part, we are not where we are,
but in a false position . Through an infirmity of our
natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it,
and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it
is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we
regard only the facts, the case that is . Say what you
have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better
than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing
on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say.
" Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a
knot in their thread before they take the first stitch . "
His companion's prayer is forgotten .
However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; do
not shun it and call it hard names . It is not so bad
as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest.
The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise . Love
your life, poor as it is . You may perhaps have some
pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse.
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the
almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode ;
the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.
I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly
 CONCLUSION. 345

there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

The town's poor seem to me often to live the most
independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply
great enough to receive without misgiving. Most
think that they are above being supported by the
town ; but it oftener happens that they are not above
supporting themselves by dishonest means, which
should be more disreputable . Cultivate poverty like
a garden herb, like sage . Do not trouble yourself
much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.
Turn the old ; return to them . Things do not
change ; we change . Sell your clothes and keep
your thoughts. God will see that you do not want
society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all
my days, like a spider, the world would be just as
large to me while I had my thoughts about me . The
philosopher said : " From an army of three divisions
one can take away its general, and put it in disorder ;
from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot
take away his thought. " Do not seek so anxiously
to be developed, to subject yourself to many in-
fluences to be played on ; it is all dissipation. Hu-
mility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The
shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us,
" and lo creation widens to our view." We are
often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the
wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same,
and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if
you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you
cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you
are but confined to the most significant and vital
experiences ; you are compelled to deal with the
material which yields the most sugar and the most
starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.
346 WALDEN.

You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses

ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money
is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose com-
position was poured a little alloy of bell metal . Often,
in the repose of my midday, there reaches my ears a
confused tintinnabulum from without . It is the
noise of my contemporaries . My neighbors tell me
of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies,
what notabilities they met at the dinner-table ; but I
am no more interested in such things than in the con-
tents of the Daily Times. The interest and the con-
versation are about costume and manners chiefly ;
but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They
tell me of California and Texas, of England and the
Indies, of the Hon. Mr. of Georgia or of Massa-
chusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I
am ready to leap from their court-yard like the Mame-
luke bey. I delight to come to my bearings, not
walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a con-
spicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of
the universe, if I may, not to live in this restless,
nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but
stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are
men celebrating ? They are all on a committee of
arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from some-
body. God is only the president of the day, and
Webster is His orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to
gravitate toward that which most strongly and right-
fully attracts me ; - not hang by the beam of the
scale and try to weigh less, - not suppose a case, but
take the case that is ; to travel the only path I can,
and that on which no power can resist me. It affords
 CONCLUSION. 347

me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch be-

fore I have got a solid foundation . Let us not play at
kittlybenders . There is a solid bottom everywhere.
We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp
before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that
it had. But presently the traveller's horse sank in up
to the girths, and he observed to the boy, " I thought
you said that this bog had a hard bottom." " So it
has," answered the latter, " but you have not got half
way to it yet." So it is with the bogs and quicksands
of society ; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only
what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coinci-
dence is good. I would not be one of those who will
foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering ;
such a deed would keep me awake nights . Give me
a hammer, and let me feel for the furring . Do not
depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch
it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and
think of your work with satisfaction, a work at
which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.
So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven
should be as another rivet in the machine of the uni-
verse, you carrying on the work.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me
truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine
in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincer-
ity and truth were not ; and I went away hungry from
the inhospitable board . The hospitality was as cold
as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice
to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the
wine and the fame of the vintage ; but I thought of
an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious
vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy.
The style, the house and grounds and " entertain-
348 WALDEN.

ment," pass for nothing with me. I called on the

king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted
like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was
a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow
tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have
done better had I called on him.
How long shall we sit in our porticos practising idle
and musty virtues, which any work would make im-
pertinent ? As if one were to begin the day with long-
suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes ; and in
the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness
and charity with goodness aforethought ! Consider
the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of
mankind. This generation reclines a little to con-
gratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line ;
and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome,
thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress
in art and science and literature with satisfaction .
There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies,
and the public Eulogies of Great Men ! It is the
good Adam contemplating his own virtue. " Yes,
we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs,
which shall never die," that is, as long as we can
remember them. The learned societies and great
men of Assyria, — where are they? What youthful
philosophers and experimentalists we are ! There is
not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole hu-
man life. These may be but the spring months in the
life of the race. If we have had the seven-years' itch ,
we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in
Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of
the globe on which we live. Most have not delved
six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above
it. We know not where we are . Besides, we are
 CONCLUSION. 349

sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem

ourselves wise, and have an established order on the
surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambi-
tious spirits ! As I stand over the insect crawling
amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeav-
oring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself
why it will cherish those humble thoughts and hide
its head from me who might, perhaps, be its bene-
factor and impart to its race some cheering informa-
tion, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and
Intelligence that stands over me, the human insect.
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world,
and yet we tolerate incredible dulness . I need only
suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the
most enlightened countries . There are such words as
joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm,
sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordi-
nary and mean. We think that we can change our
clothes only . It is said that the British Empire is
very large and respectable, and that the United States
are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide
rises and falls behind every man which can float the
British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it
in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year
locust will next come out of the ground ? The gov-
ernment of the world I live in was not framed, like
that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the
wine .
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may
rise this year higher than man has ever known it , and
flood the parched uplands ; even this may be the event-
ful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was
not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland
the banks which the stream anciently washed, before
350 WALDEN.

science began to record its freshets . Every one has

heard the story which has gone the rounds of New
England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out
of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which
had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in
Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, —from an
egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still,
as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it ;
which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched
perchance by the heat of an urn . Who does not feel
his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened
by hearing of this ? Who knows what beautiful and
winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages un-
der many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead
dry life of society, deposited at the first in the alburnum
of the green and living tree, which has been gradually
converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,
- heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the
astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive
board, - may unexpectedly come forth from amidst
society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to
enjoy its perfect summer life at last!
I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all
this ; but such is the character of that morrow which
mere lapse oftime can never make to dawn . The light
which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that
day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day
to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Σ