Economy-1
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Ey()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 of Walden Pond, in cord,
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 mu the notiy
readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my
townsmen ing my mode of life, whie would call
imperti, though they do not appear to me at all imperti,
but, sidering the circumstances, very natural ai.
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
ortion of my ine I devoted to charitable purposes; and
some, who have large families, hooor children I maintained.
I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular
i io pardon me if I uake to answer some of these
questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is
omitted; in this it will be retaihat, in respect to egotism,
is the main difference. We only 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 fio this theme by the narrowness
of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer,
first or last, a simple and sincere at of his own life, and not
merely what he has heard of other mens lives; some such at 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 servi whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much ing the ese
and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to
live in New England; something about your dition, especially your
outward dition 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 ot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal
in cord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the
inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penan a thousand
remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins 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 bees impossible for them to resume
their natural position, while from the twist of the neothing but
liquids pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, ed for life,
at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like
caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on
the tops of pillars -- even these forms of scious penance are
hardly more incredible and astonishing than the ses which I daily
witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in parison
with those which my neighbors have uaken; 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
Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydras head, but as
soon as one head is crushed, tw up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortu is to have
ied 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 o 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 mans life, pushing all these things before them, a
on as well as they . How many a poor immortal soul have I met
well-nigh crushed and smothered us load, creeping down the
road of life, pushing before it a bary-five feet by forty,
its Augean stables never sed, and one hundred acres of land,
tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who
struggle with no sunecessary ied encumbrances, find it
labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is
soon plowed into the soil for post. By a seeming fate, only
called y, 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 fools 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 dota damus qua simus ii.
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--
"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."
So much for a blind obedieo a blundering oracle, throwing the
stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this paratively free try, through mere
ignorand mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and
superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits ot be
plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy
and tremble too much for that. Actually, the lab man has not
leisure for a true iy day by day; he ot afford to sustain
the ma relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the
market. He has no time to be anything but a mae. How he
remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has
so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him
gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we
judge of him. The fi qualities of our nature, like the bloom on
fruits, be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we
do not treat ourselves nor one ahus tenderly.
Some of you, we all knooor, 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 uo pay for all the dinners
which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are
fast wearing or are already worn out, and have e 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 beeed by experience; always on the limits,
trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very
a slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, anothers brass,
for some of their s were made of brass; still living, and dying,
and buried by this others brass; alromising to pay, promising
to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry
favor, to get , by how many modes, only not state-prison
offenses; lying, flattering, voting, trag yourselves into a
nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and
vaporous 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 stog behind the plastering, or, more safely, in
the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
I sometimes wohat we be so frivolous, I may almost
say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat fn form of
servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle
masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a
Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of
all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity
in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by
day ht; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty
to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him pared
with the shipping is? Does not he drive for Squire
Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers
and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor
divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a
fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant pared
with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it
is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fand
imagination -- what Wilberforce is there t that about?
Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions
against the last day, not to betray too green an i in their
fates! As if you could kill time without injuriernity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called
resignation is firmed desperation. From the desperate city you
go into the desperate try, and have to sole yourself with the
bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unscious
despair is cealed even under what are called the games and
amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this es
after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do
desperate things.
When we sider 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 ode
of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they holy
think there is no choice left. But alert ahy natures
remember that the sun rose clear. It is oo late to give up
our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however a,
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, whie had trusted for a cloud that would
sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you
ot do, you try and find that you . Old deeds for old people,
and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once,
perce, 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 er, 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 miserable failures, for private reasons,
as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left
which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they
were. I have lived some thirty years on this pla, and I have yet
to hear the first syllable of valuable or even ear advice from
my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably ot tell me
anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great
extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried
it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to
reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.
One farmer says to me, "You ot live oable 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 lumbering
plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really
necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased,
whi others are luxuries merely, and in others still are
entirely unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone
over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and
all things to have been cared for. Acc to Evelyn, "the wise
Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and
the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your
neighbors land to gather the as which fall on it without
trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates has
eve dires how we should cut our nails; that is, even with
the ends of the fingers, her shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly
the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the
variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But mans
capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he
do by any prets, so little has been tried. Whatever have
been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who
shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for
instahat the same sun which ripens my beans illumi once
a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would
have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I
hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles!
What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the
universe are plating the same o the same moment! Nature
and human life are as various as our several stitutions. Who
shall say rospect life offers to another? Could a greater
miracle take place than for us to look through each others eyes for
an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour;
ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! -- I
know of no reading of anothers experience so startling and
inf as this would be.
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my
soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be
my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
You may say the wisest thing you , old man -- you who have lived
seventy years, not without honor of a kind -- I hear an irresistible
voice whivites me away from all that. One geion 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 holy bestow
elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our
strength. The incessant ay and strain of some is a well-nigh
incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance
of what work we do; a how much is not done by us! or, what if
we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live
by faith if we avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night
we unwillingly say our prayers and it ourselves to
uainties. So thhly and sincerely are we pelled to
live, revereng our life, and denying the possibility of ge.
This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there
be drawn radii from ore. All ge is a miracle to
plate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every
instant. fucius 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 uanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their
lives on that basis.
Let us sider for a moment what most of the trouble and
ay 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 advao 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 merts, to
see what it was that men most only bought at the stores, what
they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the
improvements of ages have had but little influen the essential
laws of maence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be
distinguished from those of our aors.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that
man obtains by his owions, has been from the first, or from
long use has bee, so important to human life that few, if any,
whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to
do without it. To many creatures there is in this se one
necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few
inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the
Shelter of the forest or the mountains shadow. None of the brute
creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of
life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed
uhe several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for
not till we have secured these are we prepared to eairue
problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has
ied, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly
from the actal discovery of the warmth of fire, and the
sequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present y
to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same sed
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 aernal heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery
properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were
well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm,
these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his
great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing
such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked
with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it
impossible to bihe hardiness of these savages with the
intellectualness of the civilized man? Acc to Liebig, mans
body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal
bustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less.
The animal heat is the result of a slow bustion, and disease and
death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or
from some defe the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the
vital heat is not to be founded with fire; but so much for
analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the
expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression,
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
geed and absorbed.
The grand y, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to
keep the vital heat in us. ains we accly take, not only
with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which
are ht-clothes, robbing the s 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
plain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical
than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The
summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian
life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun
is his fire, and many of the fruits are suffitly cooked by its
rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily
obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary.
At the present day, and in this try, as I find by my own
experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a
wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and
access to a few books, rao necessaries, and all be
obtai a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other
side of the globe, to barbarous and uhy regions, ae
themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may
live -- that is, keep fortably warm -- and die in New England at
last. The l<tt></tt>uxuriously rich are not simply kept fortably warm,
but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course
a la mode.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called forts of
life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrao the
elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and forts, the
wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.
The a philosophers, ese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were
a class than whione has been poorer in outward riches, none so
ri 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 beors of their race. None be an
impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground
of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the
fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or erce, or literature,
or art. There are norofessors of philosophy, but not
philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once
admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle
thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to
live acc 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 only a courtier-like success, not
kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by ity,
practically as their fathers did, and are in no sehe
progenitors of a noble raen. But why do men degee ever?
What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which
ees aroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of
it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even
iward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed,
warmed, like his poraries. How 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 wa? Surely not more warmth of the
same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses,
finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and
hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtaihose 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 humbler toil having enced. The soil, it appears,
is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it
may now send its shoot upward also with fidence. Why has man
rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the
same proportion into the heavens above? -- for the nobler plants are
valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far
from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler ests,
which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they
have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this
purpose, so that most would not know them in their fl season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules t and valiant natures,
who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and
perce build more magnifitly and spend more lavishly than the
richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they
live -- if, ihere are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to
those who find their encement and inspiration in precisely the
present dition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and
enthusiasm of lovers -- and, to some extent, I reyself 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 distented, and idly
plaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they
might improve them. There are some who plain most eically
and insolably 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, et rid of it, and thus have fed their
own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life
in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who
are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly
astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some
of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In aher, at any hour of the day ht, I have been
anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too;
to stand on the meeting of two eterhe past and future,
which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will
pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than
in most mens, a 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 orail. Many are the travellers I have spoken
ing 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 evehe 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 ms, summer and winter,
before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been
about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning
from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston iwilight,
or woodchoing to their work. It is true, I never assisted
the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last
importanly 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 owh into
the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had ed either
of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in
the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watg
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 catething, 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 tributions, and, as is too on with writers, I got only
my labor for my pains. However, in this case my paiheir
own reward.
For many years I was self-appointed ior of snow-storms and
rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of
highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping
them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where
the public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a
faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I
have had ao the unfrequented nooks and ers 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 le-tree,
the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow
violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.
In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without
boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and
more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the
list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate
allowance. My ats, which I swear to have kept faithfully,
I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less
paid aled. However, I have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indiao sell baskets at the
house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to
buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the
reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do
you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors
so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by
some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself:
I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I
do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have
done his part, and then it would be the white mans to buy them. He
had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth
the others while to buy them, or at least make him think that it
was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while
to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but
I had not made it worth any ones while to buy them. Yet not the
less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and
instead of studying how to make it worth mens while to buy my
baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the y of selling
them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one
kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the
others?
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any
room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but
I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever
to the woods, where I was better known. I determio go into
business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using
such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to
Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to
transae private business with the fewest obstacles; to be
hindered from aplishing which for want of a little on sense,
a little enterprise and busialent, 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 ting house on the coast, in some Salem
harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as
the try affords, purely native products, much id 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 ahe ats; to read every letter received, and write
or read every letter sent; to superihe 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 odities, for the supply of such a distant and
exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the
markets, prospects of eace everywhere, and anticipate the
tendencies of trade and civilization -- taking advantage of the
results of all expl expeditions, using new passages and all
improvements in navigation; -- charts to be studied, the position of
reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and
ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of
some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have
reached a friendly pier -- there is the untold fate of La Prouse;
-- universal sce to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all
great discoverers and navigatreat adventurers and merts,
from Hanno and the Phoenis down to our day; in fine, at of
stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a
labor to task the faculties of a man -- such problems of profit and
loss, of i, 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 at of the railroad and the ice trade;
it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it
is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes 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 i 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 jecture where those means, that
will still be indispensable to every sudertaking, were to be
obtained. As for Clothing, to e at oo the practical part of
the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of y and
a regard for the opinions of men, in pr it, than by a true
utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of
clothing is, first, to retaial heat, and sedly, in this
state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of
any necessary or important work may be aplished without adding
to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but ohough
made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, ot know
the fort of wearing a suit that fits. They are er than
wooden horses to hang the clothes on. Every day arments
beore assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the
wearers character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such
delay and medical appliances and some sunity even as our
bodies. No maood the lower in my estimation for having a
pat his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater ay,
only, to have fashionable, or at least and unpatched
clothes, than to have a sound sce. But even if the rent is
not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I
sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this -- Who could
wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most 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 brokehan with a broken pantaloon. Often if an
act happens to a gentlemans legs, they be mended; but if a
similar act happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no
help for it; for he siders, not what is truly respectable, but
what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and
breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing
shiftless by, who would not soo salute the scarecrow? Passing a
field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I
reized 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 roached his masters premises with
clothes on, but was easily quieted by a hief. It is an
iing 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 pany of civilized men which beloo 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 y of wearing
other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the
authorities, for she "was now in a civilized try, where ...
people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our democratiew
England towns the actal possession of wealth, and its
maion in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor
almost universal respect. But they yield such respeumerous as
they are, are so far heathen, ao have a missionary sent to
them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you
may call endless; a womans dress, at least, is never done.
A man who has at length found something to do will not o
get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain
dusty in the garret for a..n ierminate period. Old shoes will
serve a hero lohan they have served his valet -- if a hero
ever has a valet -- bare feet are older than shoes, and he make
them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must
have new coats, coats to ge as often as the man ges in them.
But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship
God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes
-- his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive
elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some
poor boy, by him perce 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 the new clothes be made
to fit? If you have aerprise before you, try it in your old
clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to
do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a
new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so
ducted, 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 looires to solitary ponds
to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the
caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion;
for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise
we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be iably
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, stantly worn, are our cellular integument,
or cortex; but our <var></var>shirts are our liber, or true bark, which ot
be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe
that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the
shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he lay
his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects
so pactly and preparedly that, if aake the town, he ,
like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without
ay. While ohick garment is, for most purposes, as good as
three thin ones, and cheap clothing be obtai prices really
to suit ers; while a thick coat be bought for five
dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two
dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat
for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half
ts, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so
poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not
be found wise men to do him reverence?
When I ask farment 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 ot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so
rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment
absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that
I may e at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree
of sanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they
may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am
ined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more
emphasis of the "they" -- "It is true, they did not make them so
retly, 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 bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces,
nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with
full authority. The head mo Paris puts on a travellers cap,
and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of
getting anything quite simple and ho 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 soo upon their legs again; and then there would be some one
in the pany with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg
deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these
things, and you would have lost your labor. heless, we will
not fet that some Egyptia was handed down to us by a
mummy.
On the whole, I think that it ot be maintaihat dressing
has in this or any try risen to the dignity of an art. At
present men make shift to wear what they get. Like shipwrecked
sailors, they put on what they find on the beach, and at a
little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each others
masquerade. Every geion laughs at the old fashions, but
folliously the new. We are amused at beholding the e
of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the
King and Queen of the ibal Islands. All e off a man is
pitiful rotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and
the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and
secrate the e of any people. Let Harlequiaken with a
fit of the colid his trappings will have to serve that mood too.
When the soldier is hit by a onball, rags are as being as
purple.
The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns
keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they
may discover the particular figure which this geion requires
today. The manufacturers have learhat 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 seasoter bees the most fashionable.
paratively, tattooing is not the hideous which it is
called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is
skin-deep and unalterable.
I ot believe that our factory system is the best mode by
which men may get clothing. The dition of the operatives is
being every day more like that of the English; and it ot be
wo, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the
principal object is, not that mankind may be well and holy clad,
but, uionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long
run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should
fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.
As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary
of life, though there are instanen having dohout it
for long periods in colder tries than this. Samuel Laing says
that "the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he
puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on
the snow ... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of
one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep
thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But,
probably, man did not live long on the earth without disc the
venience which there is in a house, the domestiforts, which
phrase may have inally sighe satisfas 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 c at night. In
the Indian gazettes a as the symbol of a days march, and a
row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree sighat so
many times they had camped. Man was not made se 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 leasant enough in serene and warm weather, by
daylight, the rainy season and the wio say nothing of the
torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his ra the bud if he had
not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam
and Eve, acc to the fable, wore the bower before other
clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or fort, first of
warmth, then the warmth of the affes.
We may imagiime when, in the infancy of the human race,
some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter.
Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to
stay outdoors, even i and cold. It plays house, as well as
horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the
i with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any
approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion,
any portion of our most primitive aor which still survived in
us. From the cave we have advao 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 domesti more
sehahink. From the hearth the field is a great
distance. It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of
our days and nights without any obstru 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 inno dovecots.
However, if one designs to struct a dwelling-house, it
behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all
he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a
museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead.
sider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have
seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living is 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 holy, with freedom
left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more
than it does now, for unfortunately I am bee somewhat callous, I
used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three
wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it
suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a
one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to
admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and
hook down the lid, and so have 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.
Ey is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but
it ot so be disposed of. A fortable house for a rude and
hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here
almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their
hands. Gookin, who was superinte of the Indians subject to the
Massachusetts y, writing in 1674, says, "The best of their
houses are covered very ly, tight and warm, with barks of trees,
slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and
made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they
are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make
of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but
not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred
feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their
wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses." He
adds that they were only carpeted and lined within with
well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various
utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as tulate 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 structed in
a day or two at most, and taken dout 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 suffit for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think
that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the
air have their s, and the foxes their holes, and the savages
their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half
the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where
civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a
shelter is a very small fra of the whole. The rest pay an
annual tax for this outside garment of all, bee 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 pared with owning, but
it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so
little, while the civilized man hires his only because he ot
afford to own it; nor he, in the long run, aer afford to
hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax, the poor
civilized man secures an abode which is a palapared with the
savages. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars
(these are the try rates) entitles him to the be of the
improvements of turies, spacious apartments, paint and
paper, Rumford fire-place, back plastering, Veian blinds, copper
pump, spring lock, a odious cellar, and many other things. But
hoens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so
only 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
advan the dition of man -- and I think that it is, though
only the wise improve their advantages -- it must be shown that it
has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and
the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is
required to be exged 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 laborers life, even if he is not encumbered with a family --
estimating the peiary value of every mans 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 only 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
exge his wigwam for a pala these terms?
It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of
holding this superfluous property as a fund in stainst the
future, so far as the individual is ed, mainly to the
defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to
bury himself. heless this points to an important distin
between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have
designs on us for our be, in making the life of a civilized
people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a
great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the
race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at
present obtained, and to suggest that ossibly so live as to
secure all the advahout suffering any of the disadvantage.
What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or
that the fathers have eaten srapes, and the childreh
are set on edge?
"As I live, saith the Lod, 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 mihe soul that sih, it shall die."
When I sider my neighbors, the farmers of cord, 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 bee the real owners of their farms, whionly they
have ied with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money --
and we may regard ohird of that toil as the cost of their houses
-- but only they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the
encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the
farm itself bees one great encumbrance, and still a man is found
to i it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On
applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they ot
at oname a dozen iown who own their farms free and clear.
If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the
bank where they are med. The man who has actually paid for
his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor point
to him. I doubt if there are three such men in cord. What has
been said of the merts, that a very large majority, even
y-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the
farmers. With regard to the merts, however, one of them says
pertily that a great part of their failures are not genuine
peiary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their es,
because it is inve; that is, it is the moral character that
breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse fa the matter,
and suggests, beside, that probably not eveher three succeed
in saving their souls, but are perce bankrupt in a worse sense
than they who fail holy. Bankruptd repudiatiohe
springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns
its somersets, but the savage stands on the uic plank of
famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with eclat
annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural mae were
suent.
The farmer is endeav to solve the problem of a livelihood
by a formula more plicated than the problem itself. To get his
shs he speculates in herds of cattle. With mate skill
he has set his trap with a hair spring to catfort and
independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it.
This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all
poor in respect to a thousand savage forts, though surrounded by
luxuries. As Chapman sings,
"The false society of men --
-- for earthly greatness
All heavenly forts 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
uand it, that was a valid obje 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 suwieldy 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 geion,
have been wishing to sell their houses iskirts and move
into the village, but have not been able to aplish it, and only
death will set them free.
Grahat the majority are able at last either to own or hire
the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has
been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who
are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy
to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized mans pursuits
are no worthier than the savages, if he is employed the greater
part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and forts merely,
why should he have a better dwelling than the former?
But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found
that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward
circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him.
The luxury of one class is terbalanced by the indigence of
another. On the one side is the palace, oher are the
almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to
be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlid it may be were
not detly buried themselves. The mason who fihe ice
of the palace returns at night perce to a hut not so good as a
wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a try where the
usual evidences of civilizatio, the dition 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 o look farther than to the shanties which
everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in
civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in
sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light,
without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of
both old and young are permaly tracted by the long habit of
shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their
limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at
that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this
geion are aplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent,
is the dition 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. trast the physical dition of the Irish with that of
the North Ameri Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other
savage race before it was degraded by tact with the civilized
man. Yet I have no doubt that that peoples rulers are as wise as
the average of civilized rulers. Their dition only proves what
squalidness may sist with civilization. I hardly need refer now
to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple
exports of this try, and are themselves a staple produ of
the South. But to fine myself to those who are said to be in
moderate circumstances.
Most men appear o have sidered 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
oo wear any sort of coat which the tailht cut out for
him, radually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck
skin, plain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him
a ! It is possible to i a house still more ve and
luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not
afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these
things, and not sometimes to be tent with less? Shall the
respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the
y of the young mans providing a certain number of
superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, ay guest chambers for
empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as
simple as the Arabs or the Indians? When I think of the
beors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers
from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind
ai their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture.
Or what if I were to allow -- would it not be a singular allowance?
-- that our furniture should be more plex than the Arabs, in
proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At
present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good
housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and
not leave her ms work undone. M work! By the blushes
of Aurora and the musiemnon, what should be mans m work
in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I
was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when
the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out
the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house?
I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the
grass, unless where man has broken ground.
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which
the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best
houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publis presume
him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender
mercies he would soon be pletely emasculated. I think that in
the railroad car we are ined to spend more on luxury than on
safety and venience, and it threatens without attaining these to
bee er than a modern drawing-room, with its divans, and
ottomans, and sun-shades, and a huher oriental things, which
we are taki with us, ied for the ladies of the harem and
the effemiives 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 oh 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 mans life in the primitive
ages imply this adva least, that they left him still but a
sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he
plated 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 bee the
tools of their tools. The man who indepely plucked the fruits
when he was hungry is bee 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 oh and fotten heaven. We have
adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture.
We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the a
family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of mans
struggle to free himself from this dition, but the effect of our
art is merely to make this low state fortable and that higher
state to be fotten. There is actually no pla this village
for a work of fi, if any had e 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 sider how our
houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal
eanaged and sustained, I wohat the floor does not give
way uhe visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the
mantelpiece, a him through into the cellar, to some solid and
hohough earthy foundation. I ot but perceive that this
so-called rid refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not
get on in the enjoyment of the fis which adorn it, my
attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that
the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is
that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared
twenty-five feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man
is sure to e to earth again beyond that distahe first
question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great
impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the y-seven
who fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and
then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them oral.
The cart before the horse is her beautiful nor useful. Before
we adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be
stripped, and our lives must be stripped, aiful housekeeping
aiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the
beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house
and no housekeeper.
Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-W Providence," speaking of the
first settlers of this town, with whom he was porary, 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 Lords
blessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and the first years
crop was so light that "they were forced to cut their bread very
thin for a long season." The secretary of the Province of New
herland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those
who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that
"those in New herland, and especially in New England, who have no
means to build farmhouses at first acc to their wishes, dig a
square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or s<bdo>.</bdo>eve deep, as
long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth ih
wood all round the wall, and lihe wood with the bark of trees or
something else to prevent the g 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 reen sods,
so that they live dry and warm in these houses with their entire
families for two, three, and four years, it being uood 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 ies, eheir first
dwelling-houses in this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order
not to waste time in building, and not to want food the season;
sedly, in order not to disce poor lab people whom they
brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or
four years, when the try became adapted to agriculture, they
built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several
thousands."
In this course which our aors took there was a show of
prude 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 try is not yet
adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our
spiritual bread far thihan our forefathers did their wheaten.
Not that all architectural or is to be ed even in the
rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where
they e in tact with our lives, like the te 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 degee but that we might possibly live
in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to
accept the advahough so dearly bought, which the iion
and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this,
boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily
obtaihan suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in suffit
quantities, or eveempered clay or flat stones. I speak
uandingly 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 bee 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.
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