The Village
百度搜索 Walden 天涯 或 Walden 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, Iusually 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, circulatiher from mouth to mouth, or from neer to
neer, and which, taken in homoeopathic 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 squirrels, so
I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind
among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one dire from my
house there was a y of muskrats in the river meadows; uhe
grove of elms and buttonwoods iher horizon was a village of
busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, each
sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbors
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 o Redding & panys on State Street, they
kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and roceries. Some
have such a vast appetite for the former odity, that is, the
news, and such sound digestive ans, that they sit forever in
public avenues without stirring, a simmer and whisper
through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaliher, it
only produg numbness and insensibility to pain -- otherwise it
would often be painful to bear -- without affeg the
sciousness. 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 ined forward and their
eyes glang along the lihis way and that, from time to time,
with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with
their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up.
They, being only 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 maery, they kept a bell, a
big gun, and a fire-e ve places; and the houses
were sed as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and
fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the
gau, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him.
Of course, those who were stationed o the head of the line,
where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at
him, pa<q>.９９lｉb.</q>id the highest prices for their places; and the few
straggling inhabitants iskirts, where long gaps in the line
began to occur, and the travel藏书网ler could get over walls or turn aside
into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window
tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch
him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by
the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jewellers; 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 pany
expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully
from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without
deliberation to the goal, as is reeo those who run the
gau, 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, a 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 a
fence. I was even aced to make an irruption into some houses,
where I was well eained, and after learning the kernels and
very last sieveful of news -- what had subsided, the prospects of
eace, and whether the world was likely to hold together
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,
a sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a
bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in
the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches
with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the
helm, or even tying up the helm when it lain sailing. I had
many a genial thought by the fire "as I sailed." I was never
cast away nor distressed in aher, though I entered some
severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in on nights,
than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening
betweerees 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 knowion of particular trees
which I felt with my hands, passiween two pines for instance,
not more thaeen inches apart, in the midst of the woods,
invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after ing 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 siep of my walk, and I have thought
that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should
forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without
assistance. Several times, when a visitor ced to stay into
evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to duct him to
the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out to him
the dire 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 m, by which time,
as there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the
leaves were very wet, they were dreo 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 iskirts, having e to town
a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the
night; alemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile
out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not
knowing wheurned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well
as valuable experieo be lost in the woods any time. Often in
a snow-storm, even by day, one will e out upon a well-known road
a find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village.
Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he ot
reize a feature in it, but it is as strao him as if it were
a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is
infinitely great<q>藏书网</q>er. In our most trivial walks, we are stantly,
though unsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known
beas and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still
carry in our minds the bearing of some neighb cape; and not
till we are pletely lost, or turned round -- for a man needs only
to be turned round oh his eyes shut in this world to be lost
-- do reciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every
man has to learn the points of pass again as often as be awakes,
whether from sleep or any abstra. 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 infient of our
relations.
Oernoohe end of the first summer, when I went to
the village to get a shoe from the cobblers, I was seized and put
into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax
to, he 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 institutions, and, if they , strain 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 day, obtained my mended shoe, auro the woods in
season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was
never molested by any person but those who represehe State. I
had no loor 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 fall I spent a fht in the woods of Maine. A 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 rospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of
every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious
invenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but
one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly
gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this
time. I am vihat if all meo live as simply as I
then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place
only in unities where some have got more than is suffit
while others have not enough. The Popes Homers would soo
properly distributed.
"Nec bella fuerunt,
Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes."
"Nor wars did men molest,
When only bee 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 on
man are like the grass -- I the grass, when the wind passes over it,
bends."
百度搜索 Walden 天涯 或 Walden 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.