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SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
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WALDEN
OR
LIFE IN THE WOODS
BY
HENRY D. THOREAU
EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE
BY
JAMES CLOYD BOWMAN, M.A.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE
IOWA STATE COIXEGE
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK
^K
K^
\^'^
Copyright 1917 by
Scott, Foresman and Company
^0
4^
OCT 27 m
©C1,A477289
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Economy 27
II. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For 97
III. Beading 114
IV. Sounds 125
V. Solitude ; 141
VI. Visitors 151
VII. The Beanfield 164
VIII. The Village 175
IX. The Ponds 181
X. Baker Farm 2()6
XI. Higher Laws 214
XII. Brute Neighbors 226
XIII. House-warming 239
XIV. Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors 255
XV. Winter Animals 269
XVI. The Pond in Winter 279
XVII. Spring 294
XVIII. Conclusion 313
INTRODUCTION
1
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Henry David Thoreau was born July 12, 1817, in Concord,
Massachusetts. On his father's side he was descended from a
merchant family. His grandfather, a man of Scotch and
French extraction, came to New England from the island of
Jersey, and opened a store on Long Wharf in Boston. Before
his death, he moved to Concord, where Henry's father earned
on the family business until through reverses he lost all of his
inherited substance. Later, he found a modest support for his
family through the manufacture of lead pencils, Henry thus
characterized his father : "I think I may say that he was wholly
unpretending, and there was this peculiarity in his aim, that
though he had pecuniary difficulties to contend with the greater
l)art of his life, he always studied how to make a good article,
pencil or other (for he practiced various arts), and was never
satisfied with what he had produced. Nor was he ever in the
least disposed to put off a poor one for the sake of pecuniary
gain, as if he labored for a higher end,"
The personality of Henry's mother stood in broad contrast to
that of his father. She was of old New England stock, possessed
unusual vivacity, inherent nimbleness of wit, and a natural love
of society. An incessant talker, she had an unfailing fund of
reminiscence and anecdote, and never hesitated, when necessity
arose, to defend herself with sarcastic rejoinder. She possessed
the good taste which was necessary to make the simple furnish-
ings of her home attractive, and the finesse which enabled her
5
6 WALDEN
to impress her guests with the charm and artistry of her enter-
tainment. Although the brilliant color of her bonnet sometimes
shocked her Puritan neighbors, her stability of character main-
tained their respect.
From the blending of parental characteristics, there was pro-
duced in Thoreau a strikingly complex personality with many
contradictory traits of character. From his father he in-
herited a quiet, retiring manner, an unflinching honesty, a
Puritanic conscience, an unusual ideality, and a lofty aim; from
his paternal ancestry came also a "stimulating contrariness,"
and a great love of nature, Avhich invited him to spend much
of his time out-of-doors; from his mother, a gift of fine con-
versation, and a convivial vein that notr infrequently dominated
his action. He also received by birth a mechanical bent, which
made him clever in the use of tools.
Thureau's boyhood days were spent in Concord. He drove
iiis father's cow to pasture, supplied logs for the family fire-
jdace, and early began his lifelong attachment to the out-of-
doors. As a boy he often preferred to watch his playmates
rather than to take part in their games, although when the mood
was on, he could lead them all in rollicking fun. Most of all, he
enjoyed wandering alone across the fields and along the river
in search for rare flowers and herbs or for Indian relics, and
he felt especially repaid if he chanced to see an occasional
Indian canoeing down the stream. With his brother John, he
often hunted and fished. He was such a serious lad that at the
age of ten the boys .nicknamed him "Judge."
He was fitted — or as he preferred to say, "made unfit" — for
college at the Concord Academy. Although he was frequently
indifferent to the prescribed studies, he was always recognized as
a lad of uncommonly "good understanding." It was during this
period that he grounded himself in elementary Latin and Greek,
the study of which later led him into the secrets of the philoso-
phy and poetry of the ancient peoples, which he so much loved.
INTRODUCTION 7
He lays whatever deficiencies liis academic training suffered, not
to his teachers, but to the fact that "those hours that should
have been devoted to study have been spent in scouring the
woods and exploring the lakes and streams of my native village."
During these years he kept everything about the house in fault-
less repair, and raised the best fruit and melons in the village.
At the age of sixteen Thoreau entered Harvard. He helped
to pay his way in part by occasional terms of teaching, and
the college added to the small amount furnished in this way
from a fund set apart for needy students. He was housed in
Hollis, "with many and noisy neighbors." Preferring the library
to the classroom, and a book and a secluded corner to a room
filled with boisterous companions, he read everything he could
find which related to classical English literature; so eager was he
that he fairly devoured the twenty-one bulky volumes of Chal-
mers' Collection of the English Poets. One of the members of
his class describes him as "cold and unimpassioned," and adds
that "he did not care for people; his classmates seemed very
remote." He himself writes: "Though bodily I have been a
member of Harvard University, heart and soul I have been far
away among the scenes of my boyhood. . . , My spirit yearned
for the sympathy of my old and almost forgotten friend.
Nature." "Methinks I should be content to sit at the back-
door in Concord, under the poplar-tree, henceforth forever."
One can understand why he wrote: "The really diligent stu-
dent in one of the hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as
the dervish in the desert." One must not forget, however, that
there was a very different side to his nature. He could also say
with equal sincerity: "Think not that my classmates have no
place in my heart, — but that is too sacred a matter even for a
class-book." During his college days he acquired much knowl-
edge that no professor ever required in a quiz. He read widely ;
he often walked alone and fronted the essential facts of life;
above all, he kept his own personality constantly expanding.
g WALDEX
Tlioreau was graduated from Harvard at the age of twenty,
and President Quincy gave him a recommendation to the effect
that he was "well qualified as an instructor, for employment in
any public or private school or private family." He made a
fruitless journey to Maine in search of a position. On his
I'eturn for a few weeks during the fall of 1837 he taught in
the Concord grammar school; but when the directors demanded
that he administer corporal punishment, he resigned. During
the following three years, in partnership with his brother John,
he maintained a private academy in Concord. In addition to
his regular duties, he read his first lecture on Society before the
( 'oncord Lyceum and began his first Journal or day-book. He
made a voyage of exploration in a boat of his own construction,
on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers with his brother John;
an experience which was later turned into his first published
vvork, The Week. About this time he began to write for the
Dial. He also found time to fall in love; but when he dis-
(Mjvered his brother John's attachment for the same girl, he
resigned in his favor.
When Thoreau abandoned teaching in 1841, he accepted the
invitation to become a member of the Emerson household, and
lived for the following two years with one of the most intellectu-
ally stimulating families in America. His acquaintance with
Emerson dates back to 1837 when a friend of the two families
called Emerson's attention to the fact that a certain passage
from the young man's diary contained a thought similar to one
expressed by the older man in a recent lecture. The result was that
Emerson made an appointment to meet Thoreau, and ever after-
wards took an active interest in his advancement. Thoreau's
duties during the time he lived with Emerson were as varied as
the qualities of his personality. He kept the house in repair; he
furnished the fuel for the fire ; he planted and hoed the garden ;
he helped with the editing and business management of tlii'
Dial. On one or two occasions when Mr. Emerson was absent
INTRODUCTION 9
ou a lecture tour, he acted as sole editor of the magazme. In
these ways, he gave full return for his entertainment.
This intimate contact with Emerson had a marked influence
upon Thoreau. For a time his manners, his tone of voice, his
mode of expression, hecame almost the exact counterpart of
Emerson's. Probably, however, this outward transformation
came about through a strong natural magnetism in Emerson
rather than though any conscious imitation by Thoreau. It is
certain that the younger man's independence of mind and nobil-
ity of character impressed the older man not a little. Emer-
son's son relates that his father "delighted to be led to the very
inner shrines of the wood-gods by this man, clear-eyed and true
and stern enough to be trusted Avith their secrets." As Thoreau
grew older, he sturdily maintained his individuality, and lived
his own life according to the Genius of his own being. Thoreau
was also stimulated much by Mrs. Emerson's high opinion of
him. During this period he continued to write for the Biol,
and to study literature, philosophy, and Nature. He pub-
lished a Walk to Wachusett in the "Boston Miscellany." He
grasped the opportunity for rapid mental expansion which
came to him through meeting and sharing the talk of the many
distinguished visitors who flocked to Mr. Emerson. Diligently
he kept his daily entries in his Journal.
During the winter of 1842 occurred the death of Thoreau's
brother John and of Emerson's son Waldo. In John he lost the
only really intimate friend that he had ever possessed except
Emerson ; in Waldo, the child that he loved most. These events
had a marked effect in deepening his introspective life. Con-
cerning his brother, he wrote: "A man can attend but one fu-
neral in his life, can behold but one cornse." "Only Nature has
a right to prieve pernetuallv, for she onlv is innocent. Soon the
ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing" alonsr the river which he
frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting- serenity
will appear in the face of God, and will not be sorrowful, if he
10 WALDEN
is not." "As for Waldo," he said, "lie died as the mist rises
from the brook, which the sun will soon dart his rays through.
Do not the flowers die every autumn'? ... I was not startled
to hear that he was dead : it seemed the most natural event that
could happen. His fine organization demanded it, and nature
gently yielded its request. . . . Neither will Nature manifest
any sorrow at this death, but soon the note of the lark will be
heard down in the meadow, and fresh dandelions will spring
from the old stocks where he plucked them last summer." In
this experience with death he came to view human life in its
larger aspects as related to the serenity of the universe.
In 1843, he received an invitation to tutor the children of
Emerson's brother William, who lived at Castleton, Staten
Island. The offer was accepted in the hope that it might lead to
permanent literary employment in New York City, as he was
already recognized as one of the most promising contributors to
the Dial. He met the various New York publishers, but with
little success aside from forming a lasting friendship witli
Horace Greeley. He also tried to find employment as a school
teacher, but failed in this, too, and returned to Concord in the
fall of 1843, when he had completed his engagement as tutor.
During the following year, he lived at home, and helped his
father manufacture lead pencils. He applied himself with
great diligence, and was soon able "from a box containing a
bushel or more of loose pencils to take up just a dozen pencils
at every grasp." In attempting to improve the quality and
make a better pencil than was then on the market, he carried on
a tireless series of experiments, and having somewhat satisfied
himself with the results, took his work to the chemists and
artists of Boston for their examination. They reported that his
pencil was the equal of the best imported product of London.
When he came home with the proof of the excellence of his
workmanship, his friends assured him that his fortune was as
good as made. He, however, replied that he was done with lead
INTRODUCTION H
pencils. "I would not do again that I have done once." The
fact is — though he maintained the utmost silence on the subject
— that he was dreaming- dreams and building castles in the air.
He was interested in knowledge, in the development of his own
personality, in the art of living well, rather than in the conven-
tional routine of business. He was constantly aiming at turn-
ing his experience into books; this explains why he studied
Nature so consistently^ and why he kept his Journal so faith-
fully for so many years. "Here have I been these forty years
learning the language of these fields that I may the better ex-
press myself."
Arrived at the age of twenty-eight, Thoreau faced the crisis
of his life. On the one hand, business invited him to comfort,
to local popularity, to wealth ; on the other, authorship and the
development of his own i)ersonality, to the disappointment of
his friends and neighbors, to poverty. Thoreau proved him-
self a man who "dared to live his thoughts." His nature de-
manded for its fullest development "a retreat suitable for phil-
osophical meditation, and the practice of a simpler, hardier,
and healthier life." He was influenced not a little in his de-
cision by the silent influence of Emerson, by the encourage-
ment of Channing and Alcott, and by the spirit of the times.
Social reform dominated the thought of Concord. Almost
every person had some scheme or other for improving society.
Most people advocated a return from the complex, artificial
life of society, to simplicity, to nature. In order to attain to
this state it was pretty generally agreed that each should
largely earn his living with his own hands. But this was
only the minor part of the program : the real fruits were to
be garnered in high thinking, in "the feeling of the infinite."
The movement was, in fact, a healthy reaction against the
narrow, selfish, conventional materialism of the age. As to
the most practical means for securing these ends, there was a
difference of opinion. Some maintained that the solution lay in
12 WALDEN
collective action, in communism ; for these, the Brook Farm ex-
periment was the most noteworthy effort. Others believed in
individualism; for these, Thoreau's life at Walden Pond was
the most successful experiment.
Thoreau seems to have considered trying the experiment of
retiring from society as early as 1841. For several days dur-
ing this year he visited his friend, Stearns Wheeler, who was
attempting a solitary life in a hut on Flint's Pond. Thoreau
wrote in his Journal at the time : "I want to go soon and live
away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering
among the reeds." Later, Thoreau's fancy w^as attracted to the
Hollowell Farm, which stood in deep seclusion near the river,
about two miles distant from Concord. He went so far as to
make a bargain to buy it, and was disappointed for a time when
the owner asked to be released from his agreement. Later still,
after the death of his brother John, he naturally turned to
Walden Pond. It was here that as boj's he and John had swum
and fished and hunted. It was here that he had often drifted
about in his boat, lost in musings and day-dreams. It was here
that Emerson was planning to establish a summer camp. It
was here that his friend Channing strongly urged him to estab-
lish himself : "I see nothing for you in this earth but that field
which I once christened 'Briers' ; go out upon that, build youi--
self a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring your-
self alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you. Eal
yourself up ; you will eat nobody else, nor anything else."
Early one morning near the end of March, 1845, Thoreau
obeyed the insistent impulse which had been growing upon him
for three or four years. He secured Emerson's permission to
"squat" on his land, borrowed Alcott's axe, and betook himself
to the shore of Walden Pond. Leisurely he began to cut and
frame logs for his hut. He took special pains to find time to
get the full enjoyment from his Avork. Each evening he went
home to the village to sleep. Within three or four weeks he had
INTRODUCTION I3
the logs ready for the walls. He dug bis cellar on the southern
slope of a hill, thirty or forty yards from the water's edge,
bought the planks from the shanty of an Irishman who worked
on the Fitchburg Railroad, and transported them to his build-
ing site. In the beginning of May, "rather to improve so good
an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity," Tho-
reau invited some of his friends to help "raise'' his house. He
was especially proud that among those present were Emerson,
Curtis, Channing, and Alcott. On the fourth day of July — in
commemoration of his own individual independence — he took up
his abode in the hut, and gradually brought it to completion
before the winter set in.
Thoreau was fitted as one man in a thousand for the experi-
ment which he undertook. "My greatest skill,". he wrote, "has
been to want but little." He was always rich I.acause his wants
were so few, and because he knew so well how to supply them
himself. When in need of money he could turn his hand to any
sort of job that wanted to be done since he had "as many trades
as fingers." "He was expert as a walker, swimmer, runner, rower,
and in all outdoor employments." In fact, he was more at home
without than within doors. His personality was especially fitted to
en J03' li\nng alone ; he "never found the companion that was so
companionable as solitude." He was fortunate, too, in that his
nearest neighbor dwelt a mile away. It gave him elbow room
to exercise unobserved his individuality. The wild flowers
and herbs, the fishes, and the wild animals were his nearest
neighbors; they satisfied his incessant thirst for the wild in
nature. And yet he was not so far removed as to become
a confirmed hermit. His friends came frequently to share his
copious conversation and his simple hospitality. Nearly every
day he walked to the village to acquaint himself with the hap-
penings of the world, and to meet his immediate family and
his friends. Often he was invited out to supper, and did not
return to his lodge until a late hour. Above all, his life at
14 WALDEN
Walden Pond gave him the long desired leisure for meditation
and for the practice of writing. His thoughts gradually rip-
ened, and his style refined itself under ceaseless effort. His idea
in going to Walden Pond was not after all to separate himself
from society; it was rather to develop his own personality in
order that he might the better contribute to society. He went
to the pond in the spirit of a student ; he came back to Concord
a teacher.
Thoreau's manner of life at Walden Pond was picturesque
and striking, to say the least. His first "religious exercise" of
the day Avas an early morning bath in the pond. After break-
fast he scrupulously swept his floor and dusted his furniture, —
though he was careful that no time should be wasted that might
be emjDloyed in "dusting his brain." Some mornings his hoe
resounded merrily on the stones of his bean field; other morn-
ings, says he, "I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till
noon, rapt in a reverie, midst the pines, and hickories, and
sumachs, in undisturbed solitude, while the birds sang around
or flitted noiselessly through the house, until by the sun falling
in at my west window, or the noise of some traveler's wagon on
the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time." He
found long intervals for the study of wild nature ; he spent on
the average of at least one-half of each day in the open air..
He became the "self-appointed inspector of snow storms and
rain storms" and watched with much pleasure the dawns and
the sunsets. Not a flavor of the breeze passed him unheeded
and he opened every sense to its natural surroundings. He
became as truly a part of nature as were the trees and the
birds and the wild animals. A portion of each day he set apart
for the reading of his favorite authors and for the careful writ-
ing of his diligent observations and experiences. "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, starrv, and imnKH'tal — that is your success." He
INTRODUCTION 15
was never in a hurry; he was never unemployed. His indi-
viduality found a perfect environment for its normal growth
and expression. The crudities of youth, which he had brought
with him to Walden Pond, gradually disappeared as he took
on the decision and dignity of manhood.
When a friend called, Thoreau would seat him opposite him-
self, and would lead him, with rare conversational power, into
the ideal realms of philosophy or Oriental religion and poetry
or contemporary life; or he would take him forth under the
trees and along the pond, where he found inexhaustible re-
sources for entertainment. "Every plant or flower on the bank
or in the water, and every fish, turtle, frog, lizard about us, was
transformed by the wand of his knowledge from the low form
into which the spell of our ignorance had reduced it, into a
mystic beauty. Like no one else, he knew the meaning of every
note and movement of bird and beast, and fish and insect."^
When his guest chanced to stay beyond the dinner hour, Thoreau
took him to the hillside in front of his cabin, where he had
made a hole in the ground inlaid with cobblestones. Here
he built a wood fire, and while the stones heated, brought
flour or meal from the hut, carried it to the shore, and mixed it
with pond water. Returning, he raked the coals aside, spread
the dough upon the heated stones, brought from his cellar
dressed horned pouts, placed them upon other stones, and served
beans which had been previously baked. Soon the guest was
captivated by the delicious flavor of the primitive cuisine. On
these occasions there was one thing that Thoreau never did:
he never explained or apologized for anything that was imper-
fect or lacking. He shared exactly Avhat he had; and few
guests ever left him without feeling the charm of his enter-
tainment.
After maintaining his residence at Walden Pond for two
years and two months, Thoreau returned to his father's house
iM"oncure Conway, Fraser's Magazine, April, 1666.
IQ WALDEN
to live. He was now a man of thirty ; he was a deep student of
literature and a profound observer of nature; he was, too, a
master of prose style. He says : "I left the woods for as good
reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had
several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for
that one." Perhaps it seemed to him that he had exhausted the
possibilities of the experiment. He doubtless said to himself
as he had said earlier with reference to the manufacturing of
lead pencils : "I would not do again that I have done once."
At any rate, so far as he himself Avas concerned, his experiment
was an entire success. He had so simplified his life that with a
weekly outlay of seven-and-twent}'' cents he had an abundance
of all sorts. He was thus able to maintain himself by working
on the average six weeks a year. The remainder of his time he
had industriously spent in establishing his philosophy of life,
in developing the finest qualities of his personalitj^, and in
perfecting his style of writing. When he left Walden Pond,
his character was no longer in a plastic state ; the trend of his
life was established.
Thoreau's influence upon others has gradually grown until it
has become very marked. His writing revealed the almost un-
limited possibilities of a careful, accurate observation of the
water, the fields, and the woods. In fact it opened an entirely
new field to literature, and gave rise to a school of American
naturalists.^ His philosophy of life attracted wide attention
in England and America, and encouraged many persons to turn
from the artificial toward the natural and the real, to simplify
their mode of living. His constantly increasing popularity is
sutlicient evidence as to the success of his experiment.
What remains of Thoreau's life may be briefly related. He
again accepted an invitation to live in the Emerson home from
lAmong the writers of this school may be mentioned Thomas Went-
worth Higginson, John Burroughs, John Muir, Bradford Torrey, William
Hamilton Gibson, Frank Bolles, Charles Conrad Abbott, Harriett Mann
Miller, and Florence Merrlam Bailey.
INTRODUCTION 17
October, 1847, to July, 184S. while the master of the house was
making his second European tour. When Emerson returned,
Thoreau went back to his father's house, and, except when ab-
sent upon excursions, he lived with his family for the remainder
of his life. In 1847, through the kind offices of Horace Greeley,
Thoreau published an essay on "Carlyle" in Graham's Magazine,
and in 1848, a paper on "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods" in the
Union Magazine. For these he received his first money for his
writing, the sura of one hundred and twenty-five dollai^s.
In 1849, Thoreau published at his own expense, through a
Boston bookseller, his first book, A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers. In addition to a description of his river voy-
age, the book contained a rather miscellaneous collection of
poems, of articles which had appeared in the Dial, of passages
from his Journal, and of brief philosophical discourses. At the
end of four years but three hundred copies of the book had been
sold and given out for review. The remaining seven hundred
copies were returned to the author. Thoreau writes thus with a
dry humor concerning the incident : "The wares are sent me at
last, and I have an opportunity to examine my purchase. They
are something more substantial than fame, as my back knows,
which has borne them np two flights of stairs to a place similar
to that to which they trace their origin. ... I have now a
library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred o1:
which I wrote myself. . . . This is authorship. These are the
work of my brain. ... I can see now what I write for, and the
result of my labors. Nevertheless, in spite of this result, sitting
beside the inert mass of my works, I take up my pen tonight, to
record what thought or experience I may have had, with as much
satisfaction as ever."
In the fall of the same year, Thoreau, with a friend, took the
first of his Cape Cod tramps. In the fall of 1850, with Chaii-
ning, he spent a week in Canada. In 1853, he made his second
excursion into the Maine woods. These journeys furnished hira
18 WALDEN
with material for a number of articles in Putnam's Montlili/
Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly, and for two posthumous
hooks. He thus describes his usual method of travel: "The
cheapest way to travel is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a
spoon, and a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some
sugar. When you come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish
and cook them; or you can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's
house for fourpence, moisten it in the next brook that crosses
the road, and dip it into your sugar — this alone will last you
the whole day." He also included a supply of tea. He wore
serviceable old clothes, and carried a small bundle of necessaiy
luggage. Thus aecoutered, he traveled at the rate of thirtj'
miles per day "by the week together." When necessity de-
manded, he found entertainment at some farmhouse; otherwise,
he slept out-of-doors. People usually, at first sight, thought him
a peddler of small wares, or a tramp. This method of travel,
however, exactly suited his purpose. It gave him the first-hand
knowledge of nature which he desired; but during these years
Thoreau's writing brought him so little financial return that he
was compelled to earn most of his living by surv^eying land and
making pencils. He earned a small amount each year from
lecturing. He kept his life so simple and his wants so few,
however, that he needed to work but a few weeks during the
spring and fall. The remainder of the time he spent in the
jiursuit of his favorite interests.
During the summer of 1854 came the greatest event of Tho-
reau's literary career, — the publication of Walden, by Ticknor
and Company, of Boston. The greater portion of the book was
oiiginally set down in his diary during the time that he lived at
AValden Pond. Not a few passages, however, were written at a
later date, while he was selecting, arranging, and remodeling
Ills materials, and putting them into final form. He published
I lie book, he says, in order to satisfy his curious townsmen who
weie constantly inquiring concerning his mode of life. He also
INTRODUCTION 19
felt that he had certain not unimportant truths to contribute to
the social and intellectual life of his neighbors in Concord. The
book attracted a considerable amount of attention, and the en-
tire first edition was sold within a few years. The reputation
of the book brought Thoreau into demand as a lecturer, and
thus relieved his straitened circumstances to some extent. It
also brought him a number of new friends. Among these was
Frank B. Sanborn, who associated himself rather intimately
with the author for two years, and later became his first
biographer.
In 1856 Avhile lecturing near New York City, Thoreau visited
Walt Whitman. He wrote soon after this visit : "Whitman
is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen. Kings
and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long de-
served to." In 1857, John Brown visited Concord, and found
Thoreau one of the most friendly toward his cause. Two years
later Brown visited him again. When Brown fell into the hands
of his captors at Harper's Feriy in 1859, it was Thoreau who
most fearlessly championed his cause. The address which he
delivered at Concord, Worcester, and Boston, is by far the most
important of all Thoreau's public utterances. His indignation
at his cautious and fearful neighbors reaches almost to the
sublimity of the Hebrew Prophets. He looses his contempt for
the petty conventions and tlie hypocrisies of the commonplace
life everywhere about him, and lets his words fairly burn as
they strike home. In the address which Emerson delivered at
Thoreau's funeral, he spoke of Whitman and Brown and Joe
Polls, Thoreau's Indian guide in Maine, as the three men who
most impressed Thoreau during his later years. In this choice
one sees afresh the assertion of the contradictoiy elements of
Thoreau's personality.
During the early summer of 1858, Thoreau, in company with
his friend Blake, camped on Monadnoc. Later in the summer
he took a trip to the White Mountains with his neighbor, Ed-
20 WALDKN
ward Hoar. Late in the fall, his English friend, Cholmondelay,
tempted him with a trip to the West Indies. Thoreau, how-
e\er, was obliged to refuse because of the sickness of his father.
In the summer of 1860 he made a second visit to Monadnoc, —
this time in company with his friend, Channing. These fre-
(juent trips satisfied his incessant craving for the wild in nature
and in animal life, and supplied him with material for his writ-
ing. Whenever it became necessary, he busied himself for a
few days or weeks at one or the other of his trades in order to
earn a livelihood.
In December, 1860, through exposure while surveying land,
Thoreau contracted a severe cold, which soon developed into
tuberculosis. This disease was constitutional with him; his
brother John and his sister Helen had earlier succumbed to it.
In the spring and early summer of 1861, his friends induced
him to make an expedition to Minnesota and in company with
the son of the educator, Horace Mann, he visited St. Paul and
journeyed as far up the Minnesota Kiver as Redwood. Here
he interested himself for a time in the Sioux Indians. Soon he
became restless, and in July returned to Concord little benefited
by his excursion. During the following winter his ailment rap-
idly grew upon him. His sister Sophia wrote : "His spirits do
not fail him ; he continues in his usual serene mood." He enter-
tained numerous visitors during his last months. To one who
solicitously inquired if he had made his peace with God, he re-
plied: "I have never quarrelled with Him." To a friend he
wrote: "I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret
nothing." At another time he wrote : "For joy I could em-
brace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it. And then 1
think of those amongst men who will know I love them, though
1 tell them not." It was in this mood that he died, May 6, 1862.
As long as any strength remained in him, he revised, rewrote,
and rearranged the materials which he had collected in his Jour-
nal; he followed his individual Genius to the very end. Emer-
INTRODUCTION 21
son at the grave appropriately said: "His soul was made for
the noblest society ; he had in a short life exhausted the capabili-
ties of this world ; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there
is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home."
The posthumous fame of Thoreau is without parallel in Amer-
ican letters. During his life he studiously avoided personal ad-
vertisement. At the time of his death he was generally un-
known outside the boundaries of Concord. Of his two pub-
lished works, the first was an almost complete failure and the
second lacked much of phenomenal success. At his death he
left behind him nothing to keep alive his meager reputation.
His sister, into whose hands his manuscripts descended, did
what she could to prevent their publication. Lowell, the first
critic of renown to notice his work, scathed and belittled him
unmercifully, and seemed to leave little more to be said. His
few immediate friends mostly injured his chance for success
by exaggerating his wrong traits of character. Yet in spite
of his rejection by his own generation, a change began to come
about during the eighties, and by the end of the nineties his
fame had grown so rapidly as to beat down all opposition.
Ten volumes of his works have been published since his death.
He has found something like a dozen biographers, and the
critical articles concerning him reach into the hundreds. The
interesting fact is that the tide of favorable opinion is still
flowing in his direction.
Thoreau's genius perhaps did not lie primarily in the field
of literature. Many of his readers have sought him because of
his delightful revelations of the out-of-doors; many others,
because of the charm of his unique personality. In its com-
i::lexity, its inapproachable austerity, its delightful • surprises,
its perplexing contradictions, it furnishes much the same inex-
haustible attraction as does nature herself. His seeing eye
satisfies the searcher after fact ; his idealistic imagination floods
the vision of the lover of fancy. His fame, -however, is based
■2-2 WALDEN
most securely upon his simple philosophy of life. In an age of
increasing artificiality and extravagance, he maintained his
naturalness and freedom. He distinguished clearly between the
essentials of life and its mere external trappings. For him the
joy of living was to be found in life itself; not in its artificial
recreation. His advice is: "However mean your life is,
meet it and live it. . . . Do not trouble yourself much to get
new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn to 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. . . . 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. ... It is life
near the bone where it is sweetest. . . . Superfluous wealth can
buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one neces-
sity of the soul." When one reads such a philosopher he
feels — in spite of all the multiplied teachings in the opposite
direction — that the realities of life are secure. And so long as
they remain secure, so long the fame of Thoreau is likely to
last.
II
Walden
In Walden^ Thoreau describes the experiment which he under-
took on the shore of Walden Pond, "for convenience sake put-
ting the experience of two years into one." In a general way,
the narrative follows the order of the seasons. In chapter I,
the author discusses the slavery of modem life and shows how
one may make himself independent and happy, and then gives
a detailed account of the expense involved in building his house.
In chapter II, he describes the location of his house and the man-
ner of his life. In chapter III, he discourses upon reading.
In chapters IV to XII inclusive, he describes those of his activi-
ties that have to do primarily with summer; in chapter XIII,
INTEODUCTION 23
with autumn and the preparations for winter ; in chapters XIY
to XVI inclusive, with winter ; in chapter XVII, with spring. In
chapter XVIII, he summarizes the teaching of the entire book.
Viewed as a whole, the book lacks form. This is due in part
to the influence of Carlyle, and in part to Thoreau's manner of
writing. The material was written in his Journal at intervals
during a period of fifteen years. The entries were made inde-
pendently of one another. When Thoreau came to put them to-
gether in Walden, he found it impossible to blend the various
parts into a perfect whole. The lack of form, however, had its
advantage; it formed a receptacle into which Thoreau was able
to place unhampered each of his moods and idiosyncrasies. The
result is that Walden is one of the most intim.ate and human of
written documents. The author's style is his ready servant.
With it he can express each mood with equal felicity. The
itemized bill for the construction of his house is related with
the same fidelity and ease as are the descriptions of nature and
the statements in regard to his ideal philosophy. The epigram-
matic quality of Walden is due largely to the influence of Emer-
son; its exaggeration, to the deliberate attempt of the author
to wake his neighbors up. His style is, in fact, a sort of "celes-
tial homespun," plain and not without harshness, but inter-
woven with the golden woof of an intense, penetrative, sympa-
thetic imagination. It shares, too, with Thoreau's personality
something of the tang of the wild crab.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
List of Thoreau's Books.
Riverside Edition —
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Walden; or, Life in the Woods.
The Maine Woods.
Cape Cod.
Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journal of
Thoreau.
Summer: From the Journal of Thoreau.
Autumn : From the Journal of Thoreau.
Winter: From the Journal of Thoreau.
Excursions (including A Yankee in Canada).
Miscellanies.
Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by
F. B. Sanborn.
Walden Edition —
A twenty-volume edition. This is the only edition that
contains the Journal.
Biographies of Thoreau :
William Ellery Channing.
Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist. New edition, edited by F. B.
Sanborn, Boston, 1902.
H. A. Page.
Thoreau: His Life and Aims. Boston, 1877.
Henry S. Salt.
The Life of Henry David Thoreau. Revised edition, Lon-
24
BIBLIOGRAPHY 25
Annie Russell Marble.
Thoreau: His Home, Friends, and Books. New York,
1902.
F. B. Sanborn.
Henry D. Tlwreau. Revised edition, Boston, 1909.
Mark Van Doren. •
Henry D. Thoreau. Boston, 1916.
Bibliographies of Thoreau :
John P. Anderson.
Bibliography of Henry David Thoreau. Published as an
appendix to Mr. Salt's Life of Thoreau. Revised edi-
tion, London, 1896.
Francis H. Allen.
A Bibliography of Henry David Thoreau. Boston, 1908.
Critical Essays:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Thoreau" in Lectures and Bio-
graphical Sketches, London, 1883.
Lowell, James Russell. "Thoreau" in My Study Windows,
Boston, 1871.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. "Henry David Thoreau: His
Character," in Familiar Studies of Men and Books, Lon*
don, 1882.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. "Thoreau" in Short Studies
of American Authors, Boston, 1888.
Burroughs, John. (1) "Henry D. Thoreau" in Indoor
Studies, Boston, 1889. (2) "Thoreau's Wildness" in
Essays from the Critic, Boston, 1882.
More, Paul Elmer. (1) "A Hermit's Notes on Thoreau" in
Shelburne Essays, First Series, New York, 1904. (2)
"Thoreau's Journal" in Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series,
New York, 1908.
WALDEN
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 of Walden
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 ci\dlized 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, considering 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
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 narrow-
28 WALDEN
ness 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 dis-
tant 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 Ncav England; something about your
condition, especially your outward 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 traveled a good deal in Concord; and eveiywhere, in
shojDS, 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 look-
ing 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 impossible for them to resume
their natural position, while 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 of vast empires ; or standing 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
comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken;
for they were only twelve, and had an end ; but I could never see
that these men slew or captured any monster or flnished any
labor. They have no friend lolas to burn with a hot iron the
ECONOMY 29
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 Co labor in. Who made them serfs of the soin Why
should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat
only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their
graves as soon as they are born ? They have got to live a man's
life, 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, creeping down the road
of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its
Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land,
tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who
struggle with no such unnecessary inherited 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 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 qua 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.
30 WALDEN
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 any-
thing but a machine. How can he remember well his igno-
rance — ^which his growth requires — who has so often to use liis
knowledge 1 We should feed and clothe him gratuitously some-
times, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him.
The finest qualities of our 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 din-
ners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes
which are fast w^earing 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 w4iat mean and sneak-
ing 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 ces 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, promising to pay, tomorrow,
and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get cus-
tom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses ; lying,
flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civil-
ECONOMY 31
ity, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous gener-
osity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his
shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his gro-
ceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up
something against a sick day, something to be tiieked 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.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost
say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat 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 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 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 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 pris-
oner 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 of the fancy and imagination,
— what Wilberf orce is there to bring that about *? Think, also,
of the ladies of the 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 your-
self with the bravery of minks and mnskrats. A stereotyped but
32 WALDEN
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 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 every-
body echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out
to be falsehood tomorrow, 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 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 planet,
and I have yet to hear the first syllable 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 experiment to a great extent untried by me ; but it does not
ECONOMY 33
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 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, jerks 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, which in 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. According 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 neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall
on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor."
Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our
nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter
nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which pre-
sume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as oVd
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. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "bo
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
instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at
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
34 WALDEN"
mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the
same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our
several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers
to another? Could a gi'eater miracle take place than for us to
look through each other's 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 another's experience 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 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 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 exaggerate
the importance of what work we do ; and yet how much is not
done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant
we are ! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it ; all the
day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers
and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sin-
cerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and deny-
ing the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but
there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one
center. 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
ECONOMY ^ 35
has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his under-
standing-, I foresee that all men will at lengrth 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, ^vhat are the grossest
groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little
influence on the essential laws of man's existence ; as our skele-
tons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our
ancestors.
By the words, necessari/ of life, I mean whatever, of all that
man obtains bj^ 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 jioverty, or philosophy, ever
attempt to do without it. JTo many creatures there is in this i
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 Shelter of the forest or the mountain's
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 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 conse-
quent use of it, at first a luxurj-, arose the present necessity to
sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second
36 WALDEN
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 perspira-
tion at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the New
Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shiv-
ers in his clothes. 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 combustion, 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 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 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 Clothing, and Shelter, but with our
beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts
of birds to rrer)are 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 pliysical than social, we refer directly a great part of our
ECONOMY 37
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, and Clothing and Shelter are
wholly or half unnecessary. 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, etc., and for the studious, lamp-
light, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to neces-
saries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not
wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and un-
healthy 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 luxuriously rich
are not simply kept comfortably 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 comforts, of
life are not only not indispensable, but j^ositive hindrances to
the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and com-
forts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager 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
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 agiiculture, 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
admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have
subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wis-
dom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity,
38 WALDEN
independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of
tlie 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 contemporaries. 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 splen-
did houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous,
incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained
those things which are necessary to life, there is another alter-
native than to obtain the superfluities ; and that is, to adventure
on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.
The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has >ent its
radicle downward, 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 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 perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this
])urpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering
season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures,
who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and
ECONOMY 39
perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly
than the richest, without 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 enthusiasm 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 complain-
ing of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might
improve them. There are some who complain most energetically
and inconsolably 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 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 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 pardon 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 turtledove, and am
still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken con-
cerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they
40 WALDEN
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 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 in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It
is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, 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, running in the face of it. If it had con-
cerned 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 cliif or tree,
to telegTaph 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 i:>rint 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 faithfully ; survej'or, 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 sive a
ECONOMY 41
faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences ; and
I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the
farm ; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon
worked in a particular field today; that was none of my busi-
ness. 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 townsmen would not after all admit
me into the list of town 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 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 argu-
ments, 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 buj'- 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 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 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
42 WALDEN
studying bow to make it Avorth men's while to buy my baskets,
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 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, T turned my face more exclu-
sively 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 already 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 obstacles; 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 julot and captain, and owner
and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep uhe accounts; to read
every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to
superintend 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 dis-
patch 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
ECONOMY 43
the tendencies of trade and civilization, — taking advantage of
the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and
all improvements in navigation ; — charts to be studied, the posi-
tion 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, study-
ing the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adven-
turers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians 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 problems 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 advantage 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 Clothing, to come at once to the prac-
tical part of the question, 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 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
44 WALDEN
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 assimilated 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 bo*dies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation
for having 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 ; — ^who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only,
over the knee ? Most behave as if they believed that their pros-
pects 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 gentle-
man's legs, they can be mended ; but if a similar accident hap-
pens 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 gTeat 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 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 hy 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,
ECONOMY 45
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 traveling dress, when she
went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized
country, where . . . people are judged of by their clothes."
Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental pos-
session of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage
alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. 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 soirees 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 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 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
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 keeo-
46 WALDEN
ing" new wine in old bottles. Our moulting- season, like that of
the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to soli-
tary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and
the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and
expan^^ion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal
coil. Otherwise 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 fan-
ciful 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 cellular
integiTment, or cortex ; but our shirts are our liber or true bark,
which cannot 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 can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and
that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if
an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk
out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick
garment is, for most purposes, as good 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 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 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 earning, 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 empha-
sizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as imper-
sonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want,
ECONOMY 47
simply because she cannot 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 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 make them so recently, but they do now." Of
what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my char-
acter, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to
hang the coat on ? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae,
but Fashion . She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority.
The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the
monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of get-
ting 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 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.
Nevertheless 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 dress-
ing 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 fash-
ions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at behold-
ing 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
48 WALDEN
serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it,
which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any
people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of colic and his trap-
pings 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 squinting through kalei-
doscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this
generation requires toda}^ 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 fre-
quently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter
becomes the most fashionable. 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 condition of the operatives
is becoming every day more like that of the English ; and it can-
not be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed^
the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and hon-
estly clad, but, unquestionably, that the 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 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 after
night on the snow ... in a degree of cold which would extin-
guish the life of one exposed to it in any woolen clothing." He
has seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier
ECONOMY 49
than other people." But, probably, man did not live long on the
earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a
house, the domestic comforts, which pln-ase may have originally
signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family;
though these must be extremely partial and occasional in tiiose
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 w^as at first
bare and out of doors ; but though this was pleasant enough in
serene and warm weather, by daylight, 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
himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according
to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. IVIan 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 rook for
shelter. Every child begins the 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 remem-
ber 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 sur-
vived 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
50 WALDEN
are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth to
the field is a g:i'eat distance. It would be well perhaps if we were
to spend more of our days and nights without 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 workhouse, a labyrinth without a clew,
a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum
instead. Consider first how^ slight a shelter is absolutely nec-
essary. 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 unfor-
tunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box
by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers
locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every
man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar,
and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at
least, ^et 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 alter-
native. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever
you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dog-
ging 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 comfortable house for a rude
aiul hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made
ECONOMY 51
here almost entirely 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 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 Avarm, 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 wig-
wams, and found them as warm as the best English houses."
He adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within
with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with
various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regu-
late 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 simpler 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 wigwams, in modern civilized society not more
than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns
and cities, where civilization especiallj'^ prevails, the number of
those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole.
The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all,
become indispensable summer and winter, which would buj^ 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 disad-
vantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that
the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the
52 WALDEN
civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to
own it; nor can he, in the loug run, any better afford to hire.
But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized
man secures an abode which is a j^alace compared with the sav-
age's. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars,
these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the
improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and
paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, cop-
per jDump, 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, thoiigh 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 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 individual is concerned, mainly to the
defraying of funeral 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
ECONOMY 53
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 we
may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suf-
fering any of the disadvantage. 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
commonly 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 gi'eat
encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well
acquainted with it, as he says. On applying 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 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
54 WALDEN
engagements, because it is inconvenient ; 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. Bank-
ruptcy 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 eclat 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 con-
summate skill he has set his trap with a hairspring to catch
comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his
own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor ; and for 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 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"; ^nd it may still be urged, for our houses are such
unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than
lioused 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.
ECONOMY 55
Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or
hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civ-
ilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally im-
proved 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 worthiei 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 f
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 counterbalanced by the
indigence 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 to a hut not so good as a wig-wam. It is a mistake to
suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civiliza-
tion exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants
may not be as degi-aded 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 civ-
ilization; 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 permanently contracted 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 generation are accomplished. Such, too, to a greater or less
extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination
56 WALDEN
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 condi-
tion 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 i3roves 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.
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 woodchuek skin, comjDlain of hard times because he
could not afford to buy him a crown ! It is possible to invent a
house still more convenient 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 some-,
times to be content with less? Shall the resjDectable 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 mes-
sengers 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 allowance? — that our furniture should be more
ECONOMY 57
complex than the Arab's, in proportion as we are morally and
intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are clut-
tered and defiled with it, and a good housewife 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 required 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
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 traveler 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
tender 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 attain-
ing 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, invented for
the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celes-
tial 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
lide 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 primi-
tive 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
58 WALDEN
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 man who
independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become
a farmer: and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a house-
keeper. 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 internal
economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does
not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gew-
gaws upon the mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar,
to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot
but jDcrceive 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 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 come to
earth again beyond that distance. The first question which I am
tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is.
Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail,
or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then
perhaps I may look at your baubles and find them ornamental.
ECONOMY 59
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before
we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must
be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful
housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation:
now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors,
where there is no house and no housekeeper.
Old Johnson, in his "Wonder- Working Providence," speak-
ing of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was con-
temporary, 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 blessing, brought forth bread
to feed them," and the first j^ear's 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 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 w^ood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark
of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth ;
floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceil-
ing, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the sjDars with
bark 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 discour-
60 WALDEN
age 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 w^ants satisfied
now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxu-
rious 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 forefathers 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 tene-
ment 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 today, it certainly is
better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which
the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a neigh-
borhood 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 practi-
cally. 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, nearest to where I intended
to build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy
ECONOMY 61
white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to
begin without 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 atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I
heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to com-
mence another year with us. They were plea3ant 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
itself. 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, apparently without inconvenience, as long as ]
stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps be-
cause 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 sjDrings arousing them, they would
of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had pre-
viously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with
portions 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,
52 WALDEN
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 hav-
ing many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to
myself, —
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences.
And a thousand appliances ;
The wind that 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 I had cut off, and to my
bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were
covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was
more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut
down some of them, having becoming better acquainted with it.
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 Collins' shanty was considered an uncom-
monly fine one. When T called to see it he was not at home.
ECONOMY 63
I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the
window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with
a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt
being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap.
The roof was the soundest 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 of the 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 a good window," — of two whole
squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately.
There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the
house where it was born, a silk parasol, a gilt-framed looking-
glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all
told. The bargain was soon completed, for James had in the
meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five
cents tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling
to nobody else meanwhile : I to take possession at six. It were
well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct
but wholly unjust claims, on the score of ground rent and fuel.
This he assured me was the onlj^ 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 woodehucks, and so became a
dead cat at last.
I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the
nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cartloads,
64 WALDEN
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 treacher-
ously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman,
in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable,
straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket,
and then stood when I came 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 represent spectatordom, and help make this
seemingly insignificant 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 burrow, doAvn through
sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegeta-
tion, 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 gi^ound, for in almost
all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temjDerature.
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 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,
ECONOMY 65
so tliat it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before board-
ing I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing
two cart-loads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms.
I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a lire
became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean-
while 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 em-
ployed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which
lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as
much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose, as the
Iliad.
It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately
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 Avith their own hands, and
provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly
enough, the poetic faculty would 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 traveler with their
chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the
pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does archi-
tecture amount to in the experience 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
66 WALDEN
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 archi-
tectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence
a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well per-
haps from his point of view, but only a little better than the
common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture,
he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only
how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every
sugar plum in fact might have an almond or caraway seed in
it, — though I hold that almonds are most 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 supposed that orna-
ments were something outward and in the skin merely, — that
the tortoise got his spotted 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 liis 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 }>ale 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 grad-
ually 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 appearance ; and whatever additional beauty of
ECONOMY 67
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 pecu-
liarity 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
dwelling, A great proportion of architectural ornaments are
literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like
borrowed 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 their cornices as the architects of our churches do?
So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their pro-
fessors. Much as 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 gTave, and "carpenter" is
but another name for "coffin-maker." One man says, in his
despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at
your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of
his last and narrow 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
5 my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imper-
■63 WALDEN
feet and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, Avhose
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 fireplace 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 fewer still, if any,
the separate cost of the various materials which compose them :
"{
»".* «■«■[ ""it""
Refuse shingles for roof and sides 4.00
Laths 1.25
Two second-hand windows with glass. . . . 2.43
One thousand old brick 4.00
Two casks of lime 2.40 That was high.
Hair 31 J ^^'^ f^^ ^
[ needed.
Mantel-tree iron 15
Nails 3.90
Hinges and screws 14
Latch 10
Chalk 01 ^■
j I carried a good
Transportation ^-^0 jpart on my back.
In all $28,121/0
These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones, and
sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small
woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left
after building the house.
I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on
the main street in Concord in gi-andeur and luxury, as soon
ECONOMY 69'
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 shortcomings and inconsistencies do
not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much
cant and hypocrisy, — chaff which I find it difficult to 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 deviPs
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 advantage 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 educa-
tion 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 subscription of dollars and
cents, and then following blindly the principles of a division
70 WALDEN
of labor to its extreme, a principle which should never be fol-
lowed but with circumspection, — to call in a contractor who
makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen
or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, 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
themselves. The student who secures his coveted leisure and
retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to
man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable 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 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 pro-
fessed and practiced 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 contemplat-
ing the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have
advanred the most at the end of a month, — the boy who had
made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and
ECONOMY 71
smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this,
the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the
Institution in the meanwhile, and had received a Rogers' pen-
knife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his
fingers'? ... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving
college that I had studied navigation ! — 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 philos-
ophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The conse-
quence is that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and
Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.
As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improve-
ments" : there is an illusion about them ; there is not ahvays a
positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest
to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding invest-
ments 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 to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston
or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic
telegrai3h 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 trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to
say. As if the main object Avere to talk fast and not to talk
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, flapi^ing Ameri-
can 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 messages ; he is not an evan-
gelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honev.
72 WALDEN
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 ears and go to Fitchburg-
today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have
learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot. I say
to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The dis-
tance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a
day's wages. I remember when wages Avere sixty cents a day
for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and
get there before night ; I have traveled at that rate by the week
together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare,
and arrive there sometime tomorrow, 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 Ave may say it is as broad as it
is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all
mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet.
Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activitj^
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 bloAvn away and the vapor con-
densed, 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
ECONOMY 73
to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part
of it, reminds me of the Englishman 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 starting 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 digging 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 i3otatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot
contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories,
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 plowing, which
supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of
virgin mold, easily distinguishable through the summer by the
greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for the
most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the drift-
wood from the pond, have supiDlied the remainder of my fuel.
I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing, though
I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season
were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14,721/2. 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
74 WALDEN
corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come t(
anything. My wliole income from the farm was
$23.44
Deducting the outgoes * 14.721/^
There are left $ 8.71%
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 today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by
my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient char-
acter, I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in
Concord did that year.
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 simplj^ 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 plow 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 summer; and
thus he Avould not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as
at present. I desire to speak impartially on this point, and as
one not interested in the success or failure of the present eco-
nomical 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
ECONOMY 75
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 philosophers, 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. However, 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 constructed 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 of
himself in that case ? When men begin to do, not merely unnec-
essary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assist-
ance, 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 pros-
perity 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
76 WALDEN
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 admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta
than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the
luxuiy of princes. A simple and independent mind does not
toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to
any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble,
except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone
hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any
hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambi-
tion to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount
of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken
to smooth and polish their manners? One jDiece 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 vulgar 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 manj^
men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives con-
structing a tomb for some ambitious 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 Banks. It costs more than it comes to. The
mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread
and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs
it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and
ECONOMY 77
the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the
thirty centuries begin 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 admire 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 statistic*.
By surveying, carj^entry, 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 $1,731/2
Molasses 1.73 Cheapest form of the saccharine.
Rye meal 1.04%
Indian meal 99% Cheaper than rye.
Pork 22
f Costs more than Indian meal/
1 both money and trouble.
Flour 88
Sugar .80
Lard 65
Apples 25
Dried apple . 22
Sweet potatoes 10
One pumpkin 06
One watermelon 02
Salt 03 J t-
Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told ; but I should not thus unblush-
ingiy publish my gaiilt, if I did not know that most of my
78 WALDEN
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 woodchuck which ravaged my beanfield, — effect his
transmigration, as a Tartar would say, — and devour him, partly
for experiment's sake ; but though it afforded me a momentary
enjoyment, nothwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the
longest use would not make that a good practice, however it
might seem to have your woodchueks 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
$8.40%
Oil and some household utensils 2.00
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and
mending, which for the most part were done out of 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 of the world, — were
House $28,121/2
Farm one year 14.72% .
Food eight months 8.74
Clothing, etc., eight months 8.40%
Oil, etc., eight months 2.00
In all 1 . .$61.99%
I address myself now to those of my readers who have 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
ECONOMY 79
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 in-
curred, — 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 uninstruct-
ive 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, mo-
lasses, 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 fre-
quently 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 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 gathered 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 neces-
80 WALDEN
saries, 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 subject rather
from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not
venture to put my abstemiousness 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 rj-e and Indian
meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no
little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succes-
sion, 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 ancient and indispensable art of
bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back
to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind,
when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the
mildness and refinement of this diet, and traveling 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 spiritm which fills its cellular tissue, which
is religiously preserved like the vestal fire, — some precious
bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the Maj^ower, did
the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swell-
ing, spreadino-. in cerealian billows over the land. — this seed I
regularly and faithfully procured from the \dllage, till at length
one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast ; by which
ECONOMY 81
accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable, —
for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic proc-
ess, — 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 x:)rophesied 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 discharge 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 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 mortariumque
bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aquae 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, mold 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 bread-
stuffs 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 independence 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.
82 WALDEN
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 concentrated 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 were
growing I could use various substitutes besides those which I
have named. "For," as the Forefathers sang, —
we can make liquor to sweeten our lips
Of i)umpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.
Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this
might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did
without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water.
I do not learn that the Indians 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 alread}^, 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 permitted still to squat, T might
purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I culti-
vated was sold — namely, eight dollars and eis-ht cents. But as
it was. I considered that T enhanced the value of the land by
squatting on it.
There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me
such mi potions as. if T think that I can live on vearetable food
alonp- and to strike at the root of the matter at once, — for the
root i« faith, — T am accustomed to answer such, that I can live
ECONOMY 83
on board nails. If 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 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 experi-
ments, though a few old women who are incapacitated 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, tln^ee chairs, a looking-glass three
inches in diameter, a i^air 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 jDOor 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. Furniture ! 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 account of empty boxes? That
is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from ins^Decting
such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a jDOor
one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the
more you have of such things the jDOorer 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 exuvics; at
last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave
this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were
buckled to a man^s belt, and he could not move over the rough
country where our lines are cast without dragging them, — drag-
84 WALDEN
ging 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 ! "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 follow him. I cannot but feel com-
passion 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 today as an old gentleman who is
traveling 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 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 perchance
it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it.
I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for cur-
tains, 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
ECONOMY 85
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 cur-
tain 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 transported them to their
garrets and dustholes, to lie there till their estates are settled,
when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.
The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be
profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the
semblance of casting their slough annually ; 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 "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 themselves 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 pro-
36 WALDEN
visions they cast together into one common 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 rubbing dry
wood together, jDroduces 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 following days they receive
visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns
who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves."
The Mexicans also practiced 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, 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 alj 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 proportion, 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
ECONOMY 87
under way in that, and that then I should probably be on ray
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 contem-
plated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all
summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and there-
after carelessly 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 succeed 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 inter-
ruption 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 leisure than they now enjoy, I might
advise to work twice as hard as they do, — ^work till they pay
for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found
that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent
88 WALDEN
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 experience, that
to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pas-
time, 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 inherited 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 neigh-
bor'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 proportionally 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 preferred 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
ECONOMY 89
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 cooperation which
is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial;
and what little true cooperation there is, is as if it were not,
being a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith he will
cooperate with equal faith every^vhere ; if he has not faith, he
will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever com-
pany he is joined to. To cooperate, 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, earning his means as he
went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying
a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they
could not long be companions or cooperate, since one would not
operate at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in
their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man who
goes alone can start today; 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 verj^ selfish, I have heard some of my towns-
men say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in
jDhilanthropic 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 supi3ort of some jooor 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 cer-
tain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain
myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer,
they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor.
90 WALDEN
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 purs\iits. 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 constitution. Probably I should
not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling
to do the good which society demands of me, to save the uni-
verse 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 defense. 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 fellow 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, practically, Begin where you are and
such as you are, without 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 stop when he has kin-
dled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixtli
magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in
at every cottage window, inspiring' lunatics, and tainting meats,
and making darkness visible, in=:tend of steadilv increasing his
geni*^! heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no
mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the mean-
while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good,
ECONOMY 91
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 beneficence, 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 sur-
face 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 cer-
tainty 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 a New-
foundland dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love
for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense. Howard was no
doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and has
his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred
Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not heljD 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 torment to their
tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes
chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the
missionaries could offer ; and the law to do as you would be done
92 WALDEN
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 for-
giving 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 iDity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the
pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my
more tidy and somewhat 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 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 relieve. It is the j^ious slave-breeder
devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to bu}^ 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 themselves there f 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
ECONOMY 93
him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the
officers of justice?
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently
appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated ; and it
is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one
sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me,
because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself.
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 scientific, literary, and political worthies,
Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others,
speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession
required it of him, he elevated to a place 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 ripe-
ness 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 i^hilanthropist too often sur-
rounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs
as an atmosphere, 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.
94 WALDEN
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 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 discovery, 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 danger 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 Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and
Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of jDhilanthropic
activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own
ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe
acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were
beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more
sweet and wholesome 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 sym-
pathy 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 morning rise over his couch, and he will for-
sake his generous 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 philanthropies, 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.
ECONOMY 95
Our manners have been corrupted by communication 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 con-
firmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple
and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memor-
able praise of God. All health and success does me good, how-
ever 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 mankind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or
natural means, let us first be as simple and well as Nature our-
selves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and
take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an over-
seer 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 cele-
brated 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 approi:>riate produce, and appointed sea-
son, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming,
and during their absence dry and withered ; to neither of which
states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of
this nature are the azads, or religious independents. — Fix not
thy 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,"
96 WALDEN
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 f orc'd
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood.
That fix their seats in mediocrity.
Become your servile minds; but w^e 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.
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 experience 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 accordingly. 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 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 antici-
pated. 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
97
98 WALDEN
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
l^lace, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials
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 Avished 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 together. 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 without any damage to my property.
But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried
off what 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 vsdld apples only. Why, the owner does
not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in
rime, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly
impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and
left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 99
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 neighbor, 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 si3ring,
though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous
state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, Avhich
put such an interv^al between me and the last occupant; the
hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, g-nawed by rabbits, show-
ing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the
recollection 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 ; like Atlas, to take the
world on my shoulders, — I never heard what compensation he
received for that, — and do all those things w^hich had no other
motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested
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 uncommitted. It makes but
little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the
county jail.
Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "cultivator," says,
IQQ WALDEN
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
]nirpose to describe more at length; for convenience, 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 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 defense
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 casings 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 character, reminding me of
a certain house on a mountain which I had visited the year
])efore. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to enter-
lain a traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her gar-
ments. 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 morn-
ing wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted ;
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR IQl
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 excur-
sions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret;
but the boat, after passing 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 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 outdoors 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 Harivansa 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 degrees,
its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface were revealed,
102 ^Xr-^ . WALDEN
while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing m every
€lireetion into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal
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 inter-
^•als of a gentle rainstorm in August, when, both air and water
being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had
all the serenity of evening, and the wood-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, becomes a lower heaven itself so much
the more imjDortant. From a hilltop nearby, where the wood
had recently been cut off, theie was a pleasing vista southward
across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which
form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward
each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction
through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That
Avay 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
]:)eaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges" in
the northwest, 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
Avhich 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. When I looked across
the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which
in time of flood I distinguished 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
WHEKE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 103
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 contracted, I
did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture
enough for my imagination. The low shrub-oak plateau to
which the opposite 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 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
104 WALDEN
■ equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
I have been as sincere a worshiper 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 forever 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 unimaginable tour through my 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 wanderings. 'There was something cosmical about
it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting
vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the
most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then
there is least somnolence in us ; and for an hour, at least, some
part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day 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,
accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of
factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air — to a higher
life than we fell asleeiD 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 mem-
orable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a
WHEKE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 105
monung atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences 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 morn-
ing. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and
labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a
dawn in me. Moral reform 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 phys-
ical labor; 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 expectation 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 glo-
rious to carve and paint the very atmosphere 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
contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we
refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get,
the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
106 WALDEN
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 practice 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 genuine
meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it
were sublime, to know it by experience, 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 enjoA^
him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us
that we were long ago changed into men ; like pyg-mies 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 hardlj^ 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 hundred 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 reckoning, 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 proportion. Our life is
like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 107
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, by the way, are
all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and over-
grown establishment, cluttered 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 households
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 comnaerce, and export ice, and
talk through a telegraiDh, 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 tliem,
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 railroads'? 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 misfortune
to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is
walking in his sleep, a supernumera7-y 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 keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for
this is a sign that they may some time get up again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life ? We
108 WALDEN
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 today to save nine tomorrow. 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 out-
skirts of Concord, notwithstanding 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 hand-
somely ; 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 half hour, doubtless for no other purpose;
and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After
a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast.
"Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man any-
where 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
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 postoffice. I think
that there are very few important communications 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 institu-
tion through which you seriously offer a man that penny for
his thought which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 109
sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.
If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by acci-
dent, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steam-
boat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad,
or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers 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 aiTival, 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 beforehand with
sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know
how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro
and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right propor-
tions, — they may have changed the names a little since I saw
the papers, — and serve up a bull-fight when other entertain-
ments 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 jDecuniary character. If one may judge who
I rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen
I in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.
What news! how much more important to know what that
is which was never old! "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
110 WALDEN
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 being gone, the i^hilosopher
remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy mes-
senger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy
farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week, — for Sunday
is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent Aveek, and not the fresh and
brave beginning of a new one, — with this one other draggle-
tail 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 steadily observe realities
only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare
it with such things as we 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 unhurried and wise,
we perceive that only gi^eat and worthy things have any per-
manent and absolute existence, — that petty fears and petty
pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always
exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering,
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 experience, 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,
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOK m
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 inhabitants of New England live
this mean life that we do because our vision does not j^enetrate
the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to
be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the
reality, where, think you, would be the "Mill-dam" go to? If
he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there,
we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at
a meeting-house, or a courthouse, 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 system, 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
Himself culminates 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 perturbation; let company come and let
company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, — deter-
mined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and
go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in
112 WALDEN
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 downhill. With unrelaxed nerves,,
with morning' vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the
mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till
it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we
run ? We will consider what kind of music they are alike. Let
us settle ourselves, and w^ork and wedge our feet downward
through the mud and slush of opinion, and jjrejudice, 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 philosojDhy 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 Avail 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 appearances 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 conclude
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 one. 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
WHEEE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR II3
its way into the secret of things. I 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 crea-
tures 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 by the divining rod and thin
rising vapors I judge j and here I will begin to mine,
Ill
READING
"With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits,
all men would perhaps become essentially students and observ-
ers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting' to all
alike. In accumulating jiroperty 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 immortal, and need
fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo
philoso]^her raised a corner 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 reviews 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 improvable, 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, "Being seated to run
through the region of the spiritual world ; I have had this advan-
tage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I
have experienced 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
114
READING 115
then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my
house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more
study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by tiie 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 /
lived.
The student may read Homer or yEsehylus in the Greek with-
out danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that
he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morn-
ing hours to their jDages. 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 gen-
erosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all
its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic
writers of antiquity. 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 Avords 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
make way for more modern and practical studies; but the
adventurous student will always study classics, 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
lie WALDEN
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
ohjeet. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as
tliey 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 tong-ue, 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,
]3ut in the select language of literature. They had not learned
the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials
on which they were written were waste paper to them, and
they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. 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
Avere 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, aiid a few
scholars only are still reading it.
However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts
of eloquence, the noblest Avritten 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-
KEADING 117
meut on and observe them. They are not exhalations like
our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called elo-
quence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the
study. The orator yields to the inspiration 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 occa-
sion, 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 written word is the choic-
est 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
human lips; — not be represented on canvas or in marble only,
but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of
an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two
thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian
literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal
tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmos-
phere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of
time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit
inheritance of generations 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 society, and, more than kings or emperors,
exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps
scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his cov-
eted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of
wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still
higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and
118 WALDEN
is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity
and insufficiency of all 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 transcript of them has ever been made
into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be
regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been
printed in English, nor ^^sehylus, nor Virgil even, — works as
refined, as solidly done, find as beautiful almost as the morn-
ing itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius,
have rarely, if ever, equaled 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 learning 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 Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accu-
mulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and
Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shake-
speares, 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 convenience, 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 little or nothing; yet
READING 119
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.
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 jjerchance have been
convicted 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
digest 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 Sephronia, and how they loved as none had ever
loved before, and neither did the course of their true love rim
smooth, — at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up
again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a
jteeple, 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 dow^n again ! For my jDart, I think that
they had better metamorjDhose all such aspiring heroes of uni-
versal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put
heroes among the constellations, 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 down. "The
Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by
120 WALDEN
the celebrated author of 'Tittle-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 Cinderella, — without any improve-
ment, that I can see, the j^ronunciation, or accent, or emphasis,
or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The
result is dullness of sight, as 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 exceptions, 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 liberally 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 classics 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 this, to keep up and add
to his English. This is about as much as the college-bred gen-
ora]lv do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for
lliG purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps
ono of the best English books will find how many with whom
^ can converse about it. Or suppose he comes from reading
Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are
READING 121
familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody
at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed,
there is hardly the professor in our colleges who, if he has
mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionately
mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet,
and has any sympathy to impart the alert and heroic reader;
and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who
in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not
know that any nation but the Hebrews 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 antiquitj'- 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 conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level,
worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Con-
cord 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 townsman and I never saw him, — my next
neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wis-
dom of 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 underbred and low-lived
and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any
very broad distinction between the illiterateness of -my towns-
man who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who
has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intel-.
lects. 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.
122 WALDEN
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 asi^ect 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 j^erchance 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
tlie wise men ; not one has been omitted ; and each has answered
them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. More-
over, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired
man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his
second birth and x^eculiar religious experience, and is driven
as he believes into silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith,
may tliink it is not true ; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago,
traveled the same road and had the same experience; 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 compara-
tively decent system of common schools, schools for infants
only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter,
and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the
state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any
READING 123
article of bodily aliment or ailment than on onr 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 pursue 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.
It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It
wants only the magnanimit}^ and refinement. 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 far more worth. This
town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a townhouse,
thank fortune or politics, but jirobably 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 annu-
ally subscribed for a Lyceum 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 advantages which
the nineteenth century offers? Why should our life be in any
respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skijD
the gossip of Boston 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 & Company to select our reading? As
the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with what-
124 WALDEN
ever conduces to his culture, — genius — learning — wit — books —
paintings — 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 cir-
cumstances are more flourishing, our means are 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 provincial 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
isiiorance which surrounds us.
IV
SOUNDS
But while we are confined to books, though the most select
and classic, and read only particular written languages, which
are themselves but dialects and provincial, w^e are in danger
of forgetting the language which all things and events speak
without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much
is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through
the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is
wholly removed. No method nor discipline 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, com-
pared 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 noiseless through the house, until by the
sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some trav-
eler's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the
lapse of time. I grcAV in those seasons like corn in the night,
125
126 WALDEK
and they were far better than any work of the hands 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 mean 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 fortune. 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, today, and tomorrow they
have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning
by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for tomorrow,
and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness
to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt ; 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 theater, that my life itself was become my amusement and
never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and
without an end. If we were always indeed getting our living,
and resrulating our lives according to the last and best mode
we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follo>^^
your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a
fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime.
When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my
furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making
SOUNDS 127
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 uninter-
rupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out
on the gTass, 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
outdoors 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, chestnut 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.
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
strawberry, 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
128 ' WALDEN
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, developed themselves as
by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in
diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heed-
lessly 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
th.eir bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again
bent down and broke the tender limbs.
As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are cir-
cling about mj' clearing; the tantivy of wikl 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
travelers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so
out of the world as that bo}^ who, as I hear, w^as put out to a
farmer in the east part of the town, but ere long 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, yon 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.
SOUNDS 129
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 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 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 adven-
turous country traders from the other side. As they come
under one horizon, 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,
countiymen! Nor is there any man so independent 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 weaiy 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 cotton,
down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the
woolen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that
writes them.
When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off
with planetary motion, — or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder
knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it wilt
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
130 WALDEN
which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to
the light, — as if this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller,
would ere long 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 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 serv-
ants 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 elements 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 plow plow 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 awakened by
his trauip and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote
glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and
snow ; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to
SOUNDS 131
start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or per-
chance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the
superfluous 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 commanding 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 stopping at some brilliant station-
house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the
next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The start-
ings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village
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 regu-
lates 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 miracles it has wrought ;
that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once
for all, would never go 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 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 edu-
cated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts.
132 WALDEN
Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your
own track, then.
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise 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-
plow 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 plowmen covered with
snow and rime, their heads peering above the mold-board which
is turning down other than daisies and the nests of fieldmice,
like bouldei-s of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place
in the universe.
Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adven-
turous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal,
far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental
experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed
and expanded 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, reminding 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
SOUNDS 133
flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp
and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gninny bags, scrap iron, and
rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is more legible and inter-
esting now than if they should be wrought into paper and
printed books. Who can Avrite so graphically the history of
the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They
are proof-sheets which need no correction. 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 caribou. 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
lowest 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, etc., gathered
from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, going to become
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
commercial 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 perse-
verance 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 snow-
flake, 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,
134 WALDEN
with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of eleva-
tion they had when the oxen that wore them Avere careering
over the pampas of the Spanish main, — a type of all obstinacy,
and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all consti-
tutional vices. I confess that, practically speaking, when I
have learned a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of chang-
ing 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 hogs-
head of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttings-
ville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who
imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance
stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the
coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his custom-
ers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before this
morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality.
It is advertised in the Cutting-sville 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 ammiraJ.
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
SOUNDS • 135
leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The
air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hus-
tling 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 carload
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 badges of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a
stampede to them; 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 pastoral
life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get
off the track and let the cars go by : —
Wliat '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 m}^ ears si:)oiled by its smoke and steam and
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 meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle
of a carriage or team along the distant highway.
Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton,
136 WALDEN
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 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 inter-
vening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting 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 modulated
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 melodious, and at first I
would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom
I was sometimes serenaded, 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 express 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 articu-
lation of Nature.
Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer,
after the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills 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 precision as a clock, within five minutes
of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every
evening. T had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with
SOUNDS 137
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 1 distinguished not only the cluck after each note,
but often that singuhir buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's
Aveb, only jDroportionally 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 musi-
cal 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 tlie pangs and delights of supernal love in
the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their dole-
ful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me some-
times 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 fore-
bodings, 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
tlieir transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety
and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling.
Oh-o-o-o-o 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 jDerch on the gray oaks. Then — that I never d been
hor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side Avith tremulous
sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lin-
coln 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
138 WALDEN
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 g-urgling melodiousness, — I find myself begin-
ning with the letters gi when I try to imitate it, — expressive of
a mind which has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in the
mortification of all healthy arid courageous thought. It reminded
me of ghouls and idiots and insane bowlings. But now one
answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by
distance, — Hoo hoo hoo hoorer lioo ; 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 represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which
all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some
savage SAvamp, 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 be-
neath; but now a more dismal .and fitting day dawns, and a
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 mean-
while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdj^
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 comparison, for though there are
almost no weeds, there are frogs there, — who would fain keep
up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their
SOUNDS 139
voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly gi-ave, mocking at mirth,
and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquid to dis-
tend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to
drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and water-
loggedness 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 pass-
word repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped
down to his mark ; and when this observance has made the cir-
cuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of the 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
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 with-
out 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 lord's clarion 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 morn-
ing 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 resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes
of other birds, — think of it ! It would put nations on the alert.
140 WALDEN
Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier
every successive day of liis life, till he became unspeakably
healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird's note is cele-
brated 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 domestic sounds ; neither the churn, nor the
spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hiss-
ing 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 unf enced Nature reaching up to your
very sills. A young forest growing up under your windows,
and wild sumach 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 !
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
attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The
bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-
poorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water.
Sympathy with the fluttering 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 evening wind
are as remote from storm as the smooth * reflecting 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 daj^s 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 yelloAv walnut leaf or
chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece
of the forest 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
141
142 WALDEN
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 railroad, half
a mile distant, or bj^ the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe.
Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveler 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 somewhat is always clearing, familiar
and worn by ns, appropriated and fenced in some way, and
reclaimed from Nature. For what reason liave I this vast range
and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for mj''
privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a"
mile distant, and no house is ^dsible from any place but the
hill tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon
bounded by woods all to myfeelf ; a distant vieAV 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 traveler passed my house, or knocked
at my door, more than if I were the first or last 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 wdth
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.
SOLITUDE 143
Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender,
the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any
natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melan-
choly 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 JEolian 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 today 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 gTass on the uplands, 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 their hands
which my fellows have not, and were especially 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
b}^ a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after
I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near
neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy
life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the
same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed
to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle 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.
144 WALDEN
Eveiy little pine needle exj^anded and swelled with sympathy
and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the pres-
ence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are
accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of
blood to me and humanest was not 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 Tosear.
Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain
storms in the spring or fall, whioh confined me to the house
for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their
ceaseless roar and pelting ; when an early twilight ushered in a
long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and
unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried
the village houses so, when the maid stood ready with mop and
])ail in front of 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 light-
ning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very
conspicuous 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 distinct than ever, where a terrific and resist-
less bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago.
Men frequently say to me, ^'I should think you would feel lone-
some 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 appre-
ciated by our instruments'? Why should I feel lonely? is not
SOLITUDE 145
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
solitary? 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-
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 hand-
some proi^erty," — 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
passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my
bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the
mud to Brighton, — or Bright-town, — Avhich place he would reach
some time in the morning.
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man
makes indifferent all times and i:)laces. 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 tran-
sient circumstances 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 subtile })owers
of Heaven and of Earth !"
146 WALDEN
"We seek to perceive tliem, and we do not see them ; we seek
to hear them, and we do not hear them ; identified with the sub-
stance of things, they cannot be separated from them."
"They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify
their hearts, and clothe themselves in their 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
interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our
gossips a little while under these circumstances, — have our own
thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not
remain as an abandoned 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 looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhi-
bition; on the other hand, I may not he 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. However
intense my experience, I. am conscious of the presence of any
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 neigh-
bors and friends sometimes.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
SOLITUDE 147
To be in eompauy, even with the best, is soon wearisome and
dissij^ating'. I love to be alone. 1 never found the companion
that was so companionable 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 between a man and his fellows.
The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cam-
bridge 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 emploj^ed;
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
"see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, him-
self for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the stu-
dent 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 recreation 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 inter-
vals, 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 postoffice, 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. Con-
sider the girls in a factory, — never alone, hardly in their dreams.
It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square .
148 WALDEN
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 exliaustion 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; especially in
the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few com-
parisons, 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 sometimes 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 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.
T have occasional Adsits 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 be-
tween 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
SOLITUDE 149
he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An
elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most
l^ersons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll some-
times, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she
has a genius of unequaled 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 occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old
dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likelj^ 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 giieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am
I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself?
What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented?
Not my or thy gTeat-grandfather's, but our gi-eat-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
150 WALDEN
and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshiper
of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doetor ^seu-
lajnus, 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,
Avho 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.
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
hermitj but might possibly 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 societj^. 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
surprising 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 innu-
merable 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.
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
151
152 WALDEN
of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet
motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it
reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow 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 comi:)anion 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 togetlier,
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. Referred 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 and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther
apart till they touched the Avail in oj^posite 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, Avhen
distingTiished 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-
VISITORS 153
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
ray 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 practiced abstinence; and this
was never felt to be an offense against hospitality, but the most
]n-oper and considerate 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 gTound. 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 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 :
Arrived 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 Plj^mouth 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 himself and his
wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only
154 WALDEN
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 might get home Avhile they had strength
to travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were
but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconve-
nience 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 nothing 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 circumstances than I could anywhere else. But
fcAver came to see me upon trivial business. In this respect, my
comjDany 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 concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited
around me. Besides, there were wafted to me e\ddences of
unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side.
Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true
VISITORS 155
Homeric or Paphlagoiiian 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 had
caug'ht. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, "if it were not for
books," would "not know what to do rainy days," though per-
haps 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. — "Why
are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?" —
Or have you alone heard some news from Phtliia?
They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor,
And Peleus lives, sou of -^acus, among the Myrmidons,
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve.
He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of w^hite-oak
bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morn-
ing. "I suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing
today," 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 somber 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 mold ; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried,
with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy
blue eyes, which were occasionally 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
156 WALDEN"
house, — for he chopped all summer, — in a tin pail ; cold meats,
often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dan-
gled by a string from his belt ; and sometimes he offered me a
drink. He came along early, crossing my beanfield, though with-
out 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 night-
fall, — 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 ray trade, I could get all the
meat I should want by hunting, — pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits,
partridges, — 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 solitary and so
happy withal: a well of good humor and contentment which
overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Some-
times 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.
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 exubernnce
VISITORS 157
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 himself 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 chicka-
dees 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 intellectual 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 Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and con-
tentment for his portion, and propped him on every 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 introduced 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 iand
naturally humble — if he can be called humble who never aspires
— that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he
158 WALDEN
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 remarkably 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 i^assed. 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 itime !
I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked
him if he did not want the world to be changed ; but heanswered
with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian 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 phi-
losopher 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 jiot seen before, and I did not know
whether he was as wise as Shakspeare or as simply ignorant as
a child, whether to susjDect him of a fine poetic consciousness or
of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him saun-
tering 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 cyelo-
pasdia 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
VISITORS 159
iiQver 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 Ver-
mont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense with
tea and coffee? Did this country aftord 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 con-
venience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with
the most j^hiiosophical accounts of the origin of this institution,
and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were
his i3roperty, and he wished to get needles and thread at the
store, he thought it would be inconvenient, and 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 specula-
tion had not suggested to him any other. At another time, hear-
ing 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; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and
some with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough.
I
160 WALDEN
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 maneuver-
ing, could get him to take the spiritual view of things; the
highest that he appeared to conceive of was a simple expe-
diency^, such as you might expect an animal to appreciate ; and
this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested any im-
provement in his mode of life, he merely answered, without
expressing any regTet, that it was too late. Yet 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 observed that he was
thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phe-
nomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe
it, and it amounted to the reorigination of many of the institu-
tions of society. Though he hesitated, and perhaps 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 permanently 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 traveler 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 dijDper. 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 alms-
house and elsewhere came to see me ; but I endeavored to make
VISITOES 161
them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions
to me ; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation ;
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 differ-
ence between the half and the whole. One daj^, in particular, an
inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with others T 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
simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to any-
thing that is called humility, that he was "deficient in intellect."
These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he sup-
posed 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 frank-
ness as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse
might go forward to something better than the intercourse of
sages.
I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly 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 Jiospitalality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and
preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved,
for one thing, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor
that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very
162 WALDEN
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 plantation 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 backf
One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to for-
ward 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 hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them
lost in every morning's dew, — and become frizzled and mang>'
in consequence ; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort 'of intellec-
tual 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 j^oung women generally seemed glad to be
in the woods. They looked in the i)ond and at the flowers, and
imjiroved 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 occasionally, it was
obvious that they did not. Restless committed men, whose time
was all taken up in getting 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
VISITORS 163
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 conchided that it was safest to follow the beaten track of
the professions, — 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 Avhatever age or sex,
thought most of sickness, and sudden 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 defense, and you
would suppose that they would not go a-huekleberrying without
a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there
is always danger 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 forever singing, —
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. Children 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 free-
dom's sake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to
greet with, — "Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!'*
for I had had communication with that race.
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 considerably 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 Antaeus. But why should I
raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor
all summer, — to make this portion of the earth's surface, which
had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the
like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce
instead this pulse. What shall 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 jDart
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 Avill 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
164
THE BEANFIELD 165
on my memory. And now tonight my flute has waked the echoes
over that very water. The pines still stand here older tlian I ;
or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their
stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing an-
other 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 presence and influ-
ence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines.
I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and it was
only about fifteen years since tlie land was cleared, and I m.yself
had got out two or three cords of stumps, I did not give it any
manure; but in the course of the summer it aj^peared by the
aiTow-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 morning I worked bare-
footed, dabbling like a plastic artist 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 for-
ward 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
IQQ WALDEN
millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, — this
Avas my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle,
or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, 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 j^erhaps 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 lahoriosus was
I to travelers 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 laborious 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 travelers' gossip and comment than
was meant for his ears: "Beans so late! peas so late!" — for I
continued to plant when others had begun to hoe, — the minis-
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 chij:) 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 ho.rses, — and chip dirt far* away. Fellow-travelers 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 agi'icul-
tural world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman's report.
And, by the way, who estimates 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
THE BEANFIELD 16?
holes in the woods and pastures and swamps gi'ows 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 barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-
cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their
wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe plaj^ed
the Bans 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 seed, he cries, — "Droj) 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
accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and im-
measurable 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 overhead
in the sunny afternoons — for I sometimes made a day of it —
168 WALDEN
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 re-
mained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the
ground in 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 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 ansAvering to the elemental unfledged
pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-
hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descend-
ing, approaching and leaving one another, as if they were the
embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the
passage 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 salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile,
yet our contemporary. 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 occa-
sionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there in my bean-
field 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 scar-
latina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff
of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road,
brought me information of the "trainers." It seemed by the
distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the
neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnab-
THE BEANFIELD 169
uliim upon the most sonorous of their domestic 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 favorable 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 Massachusetts 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 horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of
the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. This was one
of the great days; thougfi 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 har-
vesting, 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 growing, I
used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and com-
monly sjDent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider
the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes Avith various
kinds of weeds, — it will bear some iteration in the account, for
irjQ WALDEN
there was no little iteration in the labor, — disturbing their deli-
cate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious dis-
tinctions with his hoe, leveling 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 fiber 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 Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowd-
ing comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.
Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted
to the fine arts in Boston and Rome, and others to contempla-
tion in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I
thus, with the other farmers of New England, devoted to hus-
bandry. 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 exchanged 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, continued 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 Isetation what-
soever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and
turning of the mold with the spade." "The earth," he adds
elsewhere, "especially 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 tem-
THE BEANFIELD 171
perings being but the vicars suceedaneous 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. Cole-
man has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen
farmers, my outgoes were, —
For a hoe $ 0.54
Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing ' 7.50 Too much
Beans for seed 3.12i^
Potatoes for seed '. 1.33
Peas for seed 40
Turnip seed 06
White line for crow fence 02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours 1.00
Horse and cart to get crop 75
In all $14.72i/>
My income was (patrem familias vendacem, nou emacem esse
oportet), from
Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold $16.94
Five bushels large potatoes 2.50
Nine bushels small potatoes 2.25
Grass 1.00
Stalks 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 vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for wood-
chucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the
172 WALDEN
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 sum-
mer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth,
simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not
grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain
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 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 astonish-
ment, 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 ourselves 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 w^e were sure to see that some of the quali-
ties which I have named, Avhich 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,
THE BEANFIELD 173
along the road. Our ambassadors should be instructed to send
home such seeds as these, and Congress 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 risen out
of the earth, something more than erect, like swallows alighted
and walking on the ground : —
And as he spake, his Avings would now and then
Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again,
so that we should suspect that we might be conversing 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 recog-
nize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and
heroic joy.
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that hus-
bandry Avas 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 pro-
cession, 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 reminded of its sacred origin.
It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacri-
fices not to Ceres and the terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal
Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling 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 degraded with us, and the farmer leads
174 WALDEN
the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato
says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just
{maximeque plus qucestus), and according to Varro, the old
Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and thought
that they who cultivated 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 jDrairies and forests without 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 woodchucks 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 anxiety, 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,
VIII
THE VILLAGE
After lioeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the fore-
noon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one
Df 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
E strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is
incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to
QQouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in
homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the
rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the
w^oods 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 direction from my house there
was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows ; under the grove
of elms and buttonwoods in the other 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
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 groceries. 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 inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensi-
175
I
176 WALDEN
bility to pain, — otherwise it would be often painful to hear,
without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed, wl^
I rambled through the village, to see a row of such worthier,
either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodi-
inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this -u
and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression,
else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pocket-,
like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly out
of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coar-
est mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or crackel
up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppf-
within doors. I observed that the vitals of the village w
the grocery, the bar-room, the postoffiee, and the bank ; and, ; -
a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gin.
and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were ^ )
arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting,'
one another, so that every traveler had to run the gantlet, aul
every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. Of coursi^,
those who were stationed nearest t^ the head of the line, wbeie
they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at hin,
paid the highest prices for their places; and the few straggling'
inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line beganj
to occur, and the traveler 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 victualing cellar;!
some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweler's ; audi
others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, tliej
shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more ter-j
rible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses,!
and company 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 recom-
mended to those who run the gantlet, or by keeping my thoughts'
THE VILLAGE 177
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 grace-
fulness, and never hesitated at a gap in the fence. I was even
accustomed to make an irruption 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 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,
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 helm when
it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin
r fire "as I sailed." I was never cast away nor distressed in any
1^ weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker
in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I fre-
quently 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. Sometimes, 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 perhaps my body would find its way
.X78 WALDEN
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 jDond. 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 jDremises,
and did not get home till toward morning, 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 outskirts, having come to town
a-shopping in tlieir wagons, 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 mem-
orable, as well as valuable experience, 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 traveled
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, steering 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 bear-
ing of some neighboring 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 appre-
THE VILLAGE 179
ciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man lias
to learn the points of compass 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.
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went
to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and
put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay
a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the 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 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 j:* referred 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 huckleberries 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 pajiers, 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 prospect 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 of Homer, which per-
180 WALDEN
haps 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. —
Nee bella fiierunt,
Faginus astabat diim 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 west-
ward 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 huckle-
berries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches
Boston ; they have not been known there since they grew on her
three hills. The ambrosial and essential i^art of the fruit is lost
with the bloom which is rubbed oft in the market cart, and they
become mere jDrovender. 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 practicing various kinds of philosophy, had con-
cluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the
ancient sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an excel-
lent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased
to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience
181
182 WALDEN
of fishermen ; and I was equally pleased when be sat in my door-
way to arrange his lines. Onee in a while we sat together on
the jDond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not
many words passed between us, for he had gTOwn deaf in his
later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which har-
monized well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse 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 playing the
flute, and saw the jDcrch, which I seemed to have charmed, hover-
ing around me, and the moon traveling 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
l^outs 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 suddenly groping ii\
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 i^arlor 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 fish-
ing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and
hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown
])ird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable and
valuable to me, — anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or
THE PONDS 183
thirty rods from the shore, surrounded 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 purpose 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 east 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 scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very
beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much con-
cern one who has not long frequented it, or lived by its shore;
yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to
merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well,
half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference,
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 sur-
rounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of
forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east tliey attain
to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respect-
ively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclu-
sivel}^ 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
184 WALDEN
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 jDerceptible 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 gi-ass. 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 gi-een 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 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 transmitted
through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow 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 ^vith divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I
have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such
as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more
cerulean tha i the sky itself, alternating with the original dark
green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared
THE PONDS 185
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 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 distorted
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,
r 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
cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neigh-
186 WALDEN
borhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached
to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob
of the handle, and drew 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 l6ap 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 bot-
tomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would
say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable
plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, 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
Avater-target or two ; all which however a bather might not per-
ceive; 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 succes-
sive 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 westerly ; but, though
I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of
this center, I do not know a third of this pure and well-like
character. Successive nations perchance have drunk at, ad-
mired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is
green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Per-
haps on that spring morning when Adam 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
THE PONDS 187
and a southerly 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 commenced to rise and fall, and
had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now
wear, and obtained 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 surprised 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, alternately 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, appearing as
a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs,
and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places whert
in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow
reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The
ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here
may still preserve some trace of this.
The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or 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 chow-
188 WALDEN
der, 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 accustomed 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 con-
verted 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 differ-
ence of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the
water shed by the surrounding 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 accomplish-
ment. 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 east-
ward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and
outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize
with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the
same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my obser-
vation 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 around 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
])onds, 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
THE PONDS 189
their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years
have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctu-
ation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is
shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. 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 several 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 blue-
berry 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 became so reg-
ularly 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 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 surrounding 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 rail-
190 WALDEN
road 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 locality, — 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 tempera-
ture of the 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 j^artly to the sun on the roof, was
42°, or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest
wells in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling
Spring the same day was 45°, or 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 by
the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet
deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the 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
THE PONDS 191
each weighing over two pounds, shiners, ehivins 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 recol-
lection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides
and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which
I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless,
this i^ond 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 shal-
low one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the river; a
bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably
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 guttatus 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 distinguished from
them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties
of some of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tor-
toises, and a few mussels in it ; muskrats and minks leave their
traces about it, and occasionally a traveling mud-turtle visits it.
Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I dis-
turbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted 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 fish-
hawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it
1^2 WALDEN
is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At
most, it tolerates one annual 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 jDarts 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 eog in size, where all around is bare
sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed
them on the ice for anj^ 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 Avhat fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the
nests of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery' to the
bottom.
The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have
in my mind's eye the western indented with deep bays, the
bolder northern, and the beautiful scalloped southern shore,
where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unex-
plored coves between. 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 imperfec-
tion 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 vigor-
ous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a natural
selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the lowj
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.
THE PONDS 193
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive
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 undeceived. 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, except
'^M^here the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its
i'whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest
^imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself,
I or, as I have said, a swallow 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,
and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole
I silvery are is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, 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 con-
gealed, 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
.;[94 WALDEN
top you can see a fish leap in almost any part ; for not a pickerel
or sinner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it mani-
festly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonder-
ful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised, —
this piscine murder will out, — and from my distant perch I dis-
tinguish 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 quarter of a
mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicu-
ous 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 apparently, in calm daj^s, they leave their havens and adven-
turously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they
completely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of
those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully
a;ipreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlook-
ing the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are inces-
santly inscribed 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 is jarred, the trembling
circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. iSTot 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
heaving 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 cobweb 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 ])erfect
THE PONDS 195
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, perchance, 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 con-
tinually 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 surface, and be reflected
in its bosom still.
A field of w^ater betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is con-
tinually receiving new life and motion from above. It is inter-
mediate 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
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 somber November colors of
the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as gently as pos-
sible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended
almost as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance 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
196 WALDEN
wliieli had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, per-
chance, 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 surrounded by myriads
of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in
the green water, sporting 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 hover-
ing, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just be-
neath my level on the 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
instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wand 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 immedi-
ately, 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 produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had
scared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly disap-
pearing; 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
THE PONDS ^ 197
in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other
Wiiter 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 log's 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 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. Sometimes 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 remem-
ber that when I first looked into these depths there were many
large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which
I had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the
jilast cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly
I disappeared.
j 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. This hills'
'which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on thenl were
i then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had
! the appearance of an amphitheater for some kind of sylvan
[spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was younger,
j 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
298 WALDEN
the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my
fates had impelled me to; days when idleness Avas 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, instead of going to the pond to
bathe or drink, are thinking to bnng 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 throughout the town, has
muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has
browsed off all 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 laid bare first this shore and then that,
and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has
infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once,
it is itself unchanged, the same water which mv vouthful eves
THE PONDS 199
fell on; '»») Uie change is in me. It has not acquired one per-
manent wriijkle 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 tonight,
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 sj"^ ringing up by its shore as lustily as ever ; the
same thought is welling uji 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, deep-
ened 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 j^ause to look at it ; yet I fancy that the engi-
neers and firemen and brakemen, and those 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
200 WALDEN
is on the one hand distantly and indirectly 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 wonder-
ful 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 remem-
ber 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 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
moldering 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 mold and undistinguishable pond shore,
through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to
admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end
uf 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,
i"». waving lines, corresponding to these marks, rank behind
THE PONDS 201
rank, as if the waves had planted them. There also I have
found, in considerable quantities, curious balls, composed
apparently 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
j:)ebble; 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 con-
struct as wear down a material which has already acquired con-
sistency. They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite
l)eriod.
Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature.
What right had the unclean and stupid 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 reflecting 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
v;ord 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 frequent 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 legisla-
ture gave him, — him who thought only of its money value;
Avhose presence perchance cursed all the shore; who exhausted
the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters
202 WALDEN
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 every-
thing has its price; who would cany 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 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 pro-
portion 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 con-
tiguous to one another. Stocked with men! A great gTease-
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 church-
yard! 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 southwest; 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 giind
such grist as T carry to them.
Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and I myself have
THE PONDS 203
profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, 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 remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its
sands. In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser 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 proj^oses
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 forests 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 Collec-
tions 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
shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was
204 WALDEN
in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon,
and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neigh-
bors, he would take out the old yellow pine. He sawed a chan-
nel 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 butt. 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 become water-logged, while
the butt-end was still dry and light, had drifted out and sunk
wrong end up. His father, eighty years old, could not remem-
ber when it was not there. Several pretty large logs may still
be seen Ijdng 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 hum-
ming birds in June, and the color both of its bluish blades and
its flowers, and especially their reflections, are in singular har-
mony with the glaucous water.
White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface
of the earth. Lakes of Light. If they were permanently con-
gealed, 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 marke^/
THE PONDS 205
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 inhab-
itant 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 disgrace earth.
BAKER FARM
Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples,
or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rip-
pling 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 before 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, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood
gTow, 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 jDasture, 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
beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted,
perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered speci-
mens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the
206
BAKER FARM 207
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 occidentalis, 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 rain-
bow'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 crystal. 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 wonder
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 before 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 appeared 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 phe-
nomenon 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 commonly noticed, and, in the
case of an excitable imagination 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
208 WALDEN
the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led
throug'h Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that
retreat of which a poet has since sung-, beginning, —
Thy entry is a pleasant field,
Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook,
By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout,
Darting about.
I thought of living there before I went 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, piling boughs
over my head, and wearing my handkerchief 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.
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 unin-
habited : —
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 bov who assisted his father at his work, and
BAKER FARM 209
now came riinniiig by bis side from tbe bog to escape tbe rain,
to tbe 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 jDart 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 successive 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 visible anywhere. The chickens, which had
also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room
like 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 bargain the latter had made. T
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 him-
self ; 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 ^id not have
to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not
210 WALDEN
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 sys- I
tem, — and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was !
broader than it was long, for he was discontented 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 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 gentle-
man (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
amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with
arms akimbo, and both appeared to be wondering 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
BAKER FARM 211
suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to
face, giving it tooth and nail, not having" skill to split its mas-
sive 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.
"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 hoj^eful 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 culinary
vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, 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 concerned.
As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending
my steps again to the pond, my hasto 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
toward 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 daj^, —
farther and wider, — and rest thee by many brooks ?nr' hearth-
212 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 everywhere 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.
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, and their life })ines
because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows
morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We
BAKER FARM 213
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
wdth 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 woodehuck 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 abandonment, seeking some kind of veni-
son which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too
savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably
familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a
higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and
another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence
them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wild-
ness 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 em-
plovment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaint-
ance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in
scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little
acquaintance. Fishermen. Ininters, wood-choppers, and others,
spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense
a ]^art 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 traveler on
214
HIGHER LAWS 215
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 traveler learns things at second-
hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most
interested 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 tlie Yankee has few amusements,
because he has not so many public holidays, 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 animals 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 against it was all factitious, and concerned
my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only
now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, 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 1 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
216 WALDEN
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 possible, mighty hunters at
last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in
this or any vegetable 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 salth 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 neg-
lected. 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 thoughtless age of boyhood, will
wantonly murder any creature which ho'lds 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 always 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
naturalist 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
HIGHER LAWS ^ 217
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 sedi-
ment 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 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, empaling 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
T 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 unquestionably
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,
218 . WALDEN
there is something essentially unclean about this diet, and all
flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and
whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and
respectable 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 ease
was its uneleanness; and, besides, when I had caught and
cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have
fed me essentially. It was insignificant 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
w^hich I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable
to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the
effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beau-
tiful 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 par-
ticularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much
food of any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by entomolo-
gists, 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
larvae. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a but-
terfly," . . . "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;
HIGHER LAWS 219
and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without
fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.
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 tem-
perately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor inter-
rupt the worthiest i:)ursuits. But put an extra condiment into
your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to
live by rich cooker3\ Most men would feel shame if caught pre-
])aring 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 cer-
tainly 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
carnivorous 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 snaring rabbits, or slaughter-
ing lambs, may learn, — and he will be regarded as a benefactor
of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more
innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may
be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human
race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as
surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when
they came in contact with the more civilized.
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions 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 and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured
objection 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
220 WALDEN
bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the conse-
quences were to be regretted, 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 astound-
ing and most real are never communicated by man to man. The
true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and inde-
scribable 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 drunk-
enness. 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 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, how-
ever much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more
coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained
HIGHER LAWS 221
only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is "no-
where," 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 Omnipres-
ent 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 com-
monly 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 never
be a glutton ; he w^ho 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 moutb defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is
eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devo-
tion 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 in-
stant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only
investment that never fails. In the music of 'the harp which
222 WALDEN
trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills
us. The harp is the traveling patterer for the Universe's Insur-
ance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness
is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last
.grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent,
but are forever on the side of the mpst sensitive. Listen to
every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is
unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or
move a stop but the charming moral transfixes 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 awakens in pro-
portion 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 attained 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 external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by
the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation 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 in-
HIGHER LAWS 223
spires us. Chastity is th^ flowering of man ; and what are called
Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits
which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel
of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impur-
ity easts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal
is dying out in him day by day, and 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 disaf ©rested 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 j^ui'ity
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
sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with
purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his bur-
row, 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 stu-
dent sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person
ris universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the
224 WALDEN
snn shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued.
If YOU would avoid uncleanliness, and all the sins, work ear-
nestly, though it be at cleaning 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 religious'? 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 sub-
ject, — I care not how obscene my words are, — but because I
cannot speak of them without betraying mj^ impurity. We dis-
course 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 offensive 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 paint-
ers, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.
Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any
meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, 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 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
HIGHER LAWS 225
work; but the burden of his thought was that though this kept
running in his head, and he found himself planning and con-
triving 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 migrate
thither? All that he could think of was to practice 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
tlirough the village to my house from the other side of the
town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exer-
cise as the eating of it.
Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not
lieard 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 morning calls and dinner-parties!
Only a wood-pecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is too
Avarm there: they are born too far into life for me. I have
water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. —
Hark ! 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, w^hose tracks I saw after the
rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers trem-
ble. — Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world
today?
226
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 227
Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the greatest
thing I have seen today. There's nothing like it in old paint-
ings, nothing like it in foreign lands, — unless when we were oif
the coast of Spain. That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought,
as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, 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 seri-
ous 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 meanwiiile. 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
today. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder
among the ground-nuts, where j^ou 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? Methinks I Avas
nearly in this frame of mind ; the world lay about at this angle.
Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bring this
meditation to an end, 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 vers^
hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Con-f ut-see ;
228 WALDEN
iliey may fetch that state about again. I know not whetlier it
Avas the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but
one opportunity of a kind.
Poet. How noF, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just
thirteen whole ones, besides several which are imperfect 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.
AVhy 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 w^hich haunted my house were not the common ones,
which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a
Avild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a dis-
tinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was
building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and
before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings,
Avould 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
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 229
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 protection in
a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge
{Tetrao umhellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past
my windows, from the w^oods to the rear to the front of my
house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her
behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young sud-
denly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother,
as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly
resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler 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 sus-
pecting their neighborhood. 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 under a
leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a dis-
tance, 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, obedi-
ent 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 intelli-
gence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the
purity of infancy, but a w^isdom clarified by experience. Such
an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the
230 WALDEN
sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such gem. The
traveler does not often look into such a limpid well. The igno-
rant 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
lieii 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 re-
tired the otter manages to 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 de-
scending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines, into a larger
wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded
s))ot, 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 gi'ay water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling
it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in mid-
summer, 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 thej^ ran in a troo}")
beneath; 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
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 231
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 inquisi-
tive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive
spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves
to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less jieaceful 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 far-
ther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with
such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a helium, a war
between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the
black, and frequently 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 raging; 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 em-
braces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday
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;
232 WALDEN
while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and,
as I saw on looking nearer, 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 dis-
patched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle ; prob-
ably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs ; whose mother
had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or per-
chance 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 war-
rior, 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 attrac-
tion had been invented w^iich 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 emi-
nent 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 Concord 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 for carnage it was
an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight ! Two killed on the
patriots' side, and Luther Blanehard wounded ! Wliy, here
every ant was a Buttrick, — "Fire! for God's sake fire!" — and
thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was
BKUTE NEIGHBOES 233
not one hireling there. I have no doiibt that it was a principle
they fought for, as much ?3 our ancestors, and not to avoid a
three-penny tax on their tea ; and the results of this battle will
be as important 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 particularly
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, Jhis own
breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to
the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-jilate was appa-
rently 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 struggled 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 trophies 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 crippled state. Whether he
finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his
days in some Hotel 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 witnessing 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
234 WALDEN
that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have
witnessed them. "^ILneas Sylvius/' say they, "after giving a
very circumstantial account of one contested with great obsti-
nacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,"
adds that " ^This action w^as fought in the pontificate of Eu-
genius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an
eminent lawyer, who related 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-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 behind 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 member 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 surprise 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
BEUTE NEIGHBOKS 235
was called a "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-hunting 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 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 hj'brids 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 {Colymhus 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 omnipresent; 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
236 WALDEN
generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-
fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop
and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. 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 maneuver, he would dive and be completely lost, so
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, having 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 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 maneuvered 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 apparently 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 surprising
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
BJIUTE NEIGHBORS 237
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%
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
appeared 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 surface, just put his head
out to reconnoiter, and instantly dived again. I found that it
was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing
as to endeavor 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 displaying 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
beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet
somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he
had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off,
he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like
238 WALDEN
that of a wolf than any bird ; as when a beast puts his muzzle
to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, —
perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the
woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in
derision of my efforts, confident 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 smooth-
ness 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 disappearing far away on the
tumultuous surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack
and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sports-
man; tricks which they will have less need to practice in
Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would some-
times circle round and round and over the pond at a consider-
able 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 admired, 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 bar-
berry'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 travelers 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 some-
times stole, for the burrs which they had selected were sure
to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the
trees. They grew also behind my house, and one large tree
which almost overshadowed it was, when in flower, a bouquet
which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and
239
240 WALDEN
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 fishworms I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuherosa)
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 crimpled red velvety blossom supported
by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same.
Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish
taste, much like that of a frostbitten potato, and I found it
better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint
]>romise 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 exterminated
ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in 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 Minerva 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
HOUSE-WARMING 241
the white stems of three aspens diverged, 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 October, as to
winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on
the 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 seriously,
though they bedded with me ; and they gradually disappeared,
into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeak-
able cold.
Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in
November, I used to resort to the northeast side of Walden,
w^hich the sun, reflected from the pitch-pine woods and the
stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much
pleasanter and wholesomer 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 masonry. 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 sayings 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
242 WALDEN
to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of
Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a ver}^ 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
Avhich bore so many violent blows without being worn out.
As my bricks had been in a chimney before, though I did not
read the name of Nebuchadnezzar 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
wdth 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 morning, 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 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 inde-
pendent 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
HOUSE-WARMING 243
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 overhead. 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 apartment
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 w^armth as well as shelter. 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 satisfaction 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 concentrated in one room;
it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and what-
ever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive
from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master
of a family (paterfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam
oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare,
et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae 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 materials, and without
gingerbread-work, which shall still consist of only one room,
a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or
244 WALDEN
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 caver-
nous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole
to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, come 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 traveler 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 essen-
tials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping, where you
can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and every-
thing 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 resjDects to the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven
that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils
are the chief ornaments; 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 can-
not 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 jd resented
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. Now-
adays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the
HOUSE-WARMING 245
mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his 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 w^ay; 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, ou.r lives
pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors
and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and
dumb-waiters, as it were; in other w^ords, 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 Ter-
ritory 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 it
would shake the house to its foundations. Nevertheless, it
stood through a great m'any 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 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 hammer, and
246 WALDEN
it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to
the wall neatly and rajjidly. I remembered 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 substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized
a plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel without mis-
lia]), with a complacent look toward the lathing 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 plas-
terer is liable. I was suri)rised 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 of the 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
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 neces-
sarily always smooth then. There are many furrows in the
sand where some creature has traveled 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
HOUSE-WARMING 247
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 improve
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
the 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
east 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 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 regu-
larity ; 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.
248 * WALDEN
Being curious to know what position my great bubbles 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 between the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice,
but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps 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 regu-
larity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five-
eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there
between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch
thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition
had burst out downward, 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 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 jDlastering, and the wdnd 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 w^ith a
clangor and a whistling 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
HOUSE-WARMING 249
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 Novem-
ber, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter.
I Avithdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep
a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My
employment 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 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 j)artly on the shore. After soaking two years
and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though
waterlogged past .drying. I amused myself one winter day
vvith sliding this piecemeal 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
250 WALDEN
that they burned better for the soaking, 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 trespassers, and the houses
and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," were
"considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were
severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending
ad terrorem fcrarum — ad nocumentum forestce, etc.,'' to the
frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest. But
I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the
vert more tlian the hunters 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 ])roprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when
they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old
Romans did when they camo 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, etc.
It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even
in this age and in this new country, a value more j^ermanent
and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and
inventions no man will go by a jiile 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. Miehaux,
more than thirty years ago, says that the j^rice of wood for
fuel in New York and Philadelphia "nearly equals, and some-
times exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this
immense capital annually requires more than three hundred
thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three
HOUSE-WARMING • 251
hundred miles by cultivated j^lains." In this town the price
of wood 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
liigh price for the privilege 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 Englander 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 require 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 plowing, 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 inter-
esting 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 some bare hill side, where
a i)iteh-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 mold, as appears by
252 WALDEN
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 sjDlit makes the wood-
chopper's kindlings, 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 gTeen 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, 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 remember to have been particularly anxious on
this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my
HOUSE-WARMING 253
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 i^urpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a bed,
w^hich he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man,
having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apart-
ment, 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
whole body began to gi'ow torpid, when I reached the genial
atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and
prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously housed has little
to boast of in this respect, nor need Ave 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 iDcriod to man's existence 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. Cooking was then, for the most part,
no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic, process. It will soon
254 wAlden
be forgotten, 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
^ecurred 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 ?
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 cheer-
ful winter evenings by my fireside, wkile the snow whirled
wildly without, and even the hooting 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 humaji 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 children
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 humble route to neighboring villages, or
for the Avoodman^s team, it once amused the traveler 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
255
25G WALDEX
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, gentleman of Concord
village; who built his slave a house, and gave him permission
to live in Walden Woods; — Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordi-
ensis. 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 narrow house at present. Cato's
half-obliterated cellar hole still remains, though known to
few, being concealed from the traveler 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 covner 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 soldiers, prisoners on j^arole, 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 old frequenter
of these woods remembers that as he passed her house one noon
he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling joot, — "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 ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his
epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 257
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 emphasis, 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
of the 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 Stratton 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 prominent and astounding part
in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mytho-
logical character, 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 England Rum. But
history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time
intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tinjt
to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says
that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered
the traveler'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
258 WALDEN
I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and
iiad just lost myself over Davenant's Gondibert, that winter
that I labored with a lethargy, — which, by the way, I never
knevi^ whether to regard as a family complaint, having an
nncle 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' collection of English poetry without skip-
l^ing. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my
head on this when the bells rang fire, and in hot haste the
engines 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, shoj), or dwelling-house, or all
together. "It's Baker's barn," cried one. "It is the Codman
Place," affirmed 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 Company, 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 had witnessed, including Bascom's shop, and, between
ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 259
"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, — i-eturned 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." i
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 Adces, who alone Avas interested in this
burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall
at the still smoldering cinders 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, alw^ays lying down to it, as if there was some
treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones,
where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and
ashes. The house being gone, he looked at what there was left.
He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence
implied, 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-sw^eep 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.
260 WALDEN
Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road
approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter 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 being nothing else that he could lay his hands
on. One day in midsummer, when I w^as 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-
ticed in my neighborhood.
The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irish-
man, 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 Avore a great coat in midsummer,
being affected with the trembling delirium, 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 remembered 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
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 261
use, as if they were himself, ui^on 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 to me that, though he had heard of
Brister's Spring, he had never seen it ; and soiled cards, kings
of diamonds, 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 Rey-
nard, 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 received 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 woodchuck 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, wave^
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. AVhat a sorrowful act must that be, — the covering
up of wells ! coincident with the opening of wells of tears.
These cellar dents, like deserted 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 dialect 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 edifying as the history
of more famous schools of philosophy.
262 WALDEN
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 traveler;
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
survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think
that the puny slip Avith its two eyes only, w^hich 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 faint Ij^ to the lone wanderer a half centuiy
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 j^rivileges, forsooth? 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, Nature will tiy, 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
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 263
that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. With
such reminiscences 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 comjiletely 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 snow^s, the path Avhich I used from the high-
way 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, 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 tramjied eight or ten miles
through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a
l)eech tree, or a j^ellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among
the pines ; when the ice and^ snow, causing their limbs to droop,
264
WALDEN
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 creej^ing
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 nehulosa) 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 crouched 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
half an 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 preserved 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
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
neighborhood 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, T 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
FOKMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 265
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 traveler.
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 rabbit'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 returned 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 w^ith the odor of his pipe. Or on
a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the
crouching 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
"men on their farms"; who donned a frock instead of a pro-
fessor'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 maiiy 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
266 WALDEN
business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.
AVe 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 forthcoming jest. We
made many a "bran new" theory of life over a thin dish of
gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the
clearheadedness which philosophy requires.
I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond
there was another welcome visitor, who at 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 present. 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 making plain the image engTaven
in men's bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and
leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces
FORMER INHABITA>^TS AND WINTER VISITORS 267
children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains 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 philosophers of all nations might j^ut
up, and on his sign should be printed : "Entertainment for
man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and
a quiet miqd, who earnestly seek the right road." He is
perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any
I chance to know ; the same yesterday and tomorrow. 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 reflects 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 pumjikin jiine. We waded so gently
and reverently, or we i:>ulled togetlier so smoothly, that the
fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared
any angler on the bank, but came and went gi'andly, like the
clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'-
pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There
we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and
there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered
no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to
converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment.
Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, 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
])Ounds' 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
268 WALDEN
leak; — but I had enough of that kind of oakum ah'eady
picked.
There was one other with whom I had "solid seasons," 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 tlie
man approaching from the town.
XV
WINTER ANIMALS
Wlien 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 unex-
pectedly 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 Esquimos, or in misty weather
loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether
they were giants or i^ygTiiies. I took this course when I went
to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, traveling in no road and
]iassing 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 inter-
rupted 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, 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.
■ 269
270 WALDEN
For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I-^
heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefi-
nitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if
struck with a suitable plectrum, 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 Jioo Jioo, Jioorer hoo,
sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented some-
what like how der do; or sometimes hoo hoo only. One night
in the beginning of w^inter, before tlie 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 determined to expose and
disgTace this intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a
greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and hoo-hoo
him out of Concord horizon. "VYhat 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,
hoo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the most thrilling discords
T ever heard. And yet, if you had a discrimin-ating 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 "I^he cracking of the ground
by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door.
WINTER ANIMALS 271
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 demoniacally like forest dogs, as
i*f laboring with some anxiety, 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 defense, awaiting their transformation. 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 made a hearty meal.
x\ll day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me
much entertainment by their maneuvers. 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 suddenly 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
272 WALDEN
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 chiding
all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking 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 topmost stick
of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the
face, and there sit for hours, supplying 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 and fell to the ground, when he
would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncer-
tainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made
ujD whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now think-
ing of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So
the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a fore-
noon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, con-
siderably 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, scratching
along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the
while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and
horizontal, being determined 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
]iine 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
WINTER ANIMALS 273
they tlit 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.
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 sufficiently 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 lisp-
ing 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 famil-
iar 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 dis-
tinguished 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
274 WALDEN
brave bird is not to be seared by winter. It is frequently cov-
ei-ed 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 land also, where they
liad 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 si:)ortsman lies in wait for them, and
the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. 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 afternoons, 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 Actseon. And perhaps at evening I see
the hunters returning with a single brush trailing 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 behind, 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 w^ill run upon a wall manj^ 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
Avas 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 them-
selves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp
and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of
madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit.
WINTER ANIMALS 275
Thus tliey circle until tliey fall upon the recent trail of a fox,
for a wise hound will forsake everything 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 weelv
by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told
him, for every time I attempted to answ^er his questions, he
interrupted me by asking, "What do you do heref 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 pur-
suit, 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 sound-
ing 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 sympathetic rustle of the
leaves, swift and still, keeping 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 com-
passion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a short-lived
mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was
leveled, and whang! — the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on
the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the
276 WALDEN
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 snap-
ping the air as if possessed, 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 forward 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 declined 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 Sam Nut-
ting, who used to hunt bears on Fair-Haven Ledges, and ex-
change 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 Burgoyne, — he pronounced it Bugine, — which
my informant 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 Gray Fox 0—2—3" ; they are not found
here; and in his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has
credit "by Yz a Catt skin — 1 — 4V2" ; of course a wild-cat, for
Stratton 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 pre-
WINTER ANIMALS 277
serves 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
hunting horn.
At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with
liounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk
out of my w^ay, 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 jntch-pines around my house, from one to four
inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous
winter,- — a Norwegian 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 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 x-)ine tree for
its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but per-
haps 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 vay house all wmter, separated from me only by
the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty
departure when I began to stir, — thump, thump, thump, strik-
ing 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 liardly be distinguished when still.
Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight
of one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my
278 WALDEN
door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a
bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening
one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with
fear, yet unwilling to move ; a poor wee thing, lean and bony,
with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender 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 jDut the forest between me and itself, — the wild free veni-
son, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without
reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus,
levipeSf lightfoot, some think.)
What is a country without rabbits and partridges'? They
are among the most simple and indigenous animal 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 nat-
ural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. The iiar-
tridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of
the soil, whatever revolutions 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
jiartridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-
hair snares, which some cowboy tends.
XVI
THE POND IN WINTER
After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that
some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavor-
ing in vain to answer in my sleep, as what — how — when —
where? But there was dawning 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 ques-
tion, to Nature and daylight. The snow hdng 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. "0 Prince, our eyes contemplate 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 creation ; 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 win-
ter the liquid and trembling surface 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 support the heaviest teams, and perchance the
snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished
from anj' level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills,
279
280 WALDEN"
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 twi-
light sky, corresponding 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 instinctively follow other fashions and
trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings
and comings 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 practice are said not yet to be known.
Here is one- fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait.
You look into his pail with w^onder 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 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 swal-
THE POND IN WINTER 281
lows the gTiib-worm, the pickert 1 swallows the perch, and the
fisherman swallows the pickerel; 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 perhaps 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
Avalked 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 Con-
cord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent
beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the
cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumjieted 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 pos-
sible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if
they were the pearls, and animalized nuclei or crystals of the
Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all
through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal 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 cynosure of all eyes
there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their
282 AVALDEN
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 themselves.
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness
of ?. pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited
two such Bottomless 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 fiat on the ice for
a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, per-
chance Avith watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty
conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have
seen vast 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 bot-
tom ; for while the "fifty-six" was resting by the w^ay, they w^ere
paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly
immeasurable capacity for marvelousness. 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 hal f,
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 exactly 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 remark-
able depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be
spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow?
THE POND IN WINTER 283
Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that
this i)ond 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
Avith dajns, 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 vei'tical
section through its center not deeper than a shallow plate.
Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow
than we frequently 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,
observes, "If Ave could haA^e seen it immediately after the
diluvian crash, or Avhatever convulsion of Nature occasioned it,
before the Avaters 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, Ave apply
these proportions to Walden, Avhich, as we have seen, appears
already in a vertical section only like a shalloAV plate, it will
appear four times as shallow. So much for the increased hor-
rors 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
284 WALDEN
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
l^uddles after a shower. The amount of it is, the imagination,
give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than
Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be
found to be very inconsiderable compared 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 plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily 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 inequali-
ties. The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the
shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect
that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite
across the pond, and its direction could be determined by
obser\-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 indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the
center 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
THE POND IN WINTER 285
point of greatest G3ptli, notwithstanding that the middle is so
nearly level, the 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 hscy tended to be an expansion of
water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and
to form a basin or independent 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 Avider 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 char-
acter 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 jioint in a pond, by observing the outlines of its
surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of
\Mnte 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 opjDosite 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 jv.
within one hundred 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 island
in the pond, would make the problem much more complicated.
286 WALDEN
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one
fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all
the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few
laws, and our result is vitiated, 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 commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but
the harmony which results from a far greater number of seem-
ingly 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 traveler, 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 particular 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 country or circum-
stances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is sur-
rounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore,
whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they
suggest a corresponding 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 corresponding depth
of thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every
cove, or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season,
in which we are detained anS partially land-locked. These
inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and
direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the
ancient axes of elevation. Wlien this bar is gradually increased
THE POND IN WINTER 287
by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the
waters, so that it reaches to tlie surface, that which was at first
but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was har-
bored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean,
wherein the thought secures its own conditions, changes, per-
haps, 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 navigators that our thoughts, for
the most part, stand off and 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 indi\d dualize them.
As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered
any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, Avith a
thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where
the Avater 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
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 jDond
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 con-
nection with the meadow, if any existed, might be proved by
conveying some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the
hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow,
288 WALDEN
which would catch some of the particles 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 at-
tached 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 sev-
eral 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 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 essentially, if not mainly, to dry the sur-
face 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 internally 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 center. 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 village to get ice to
THE POND IN WINTER 289
cool his summer drink ; impressively, even pathetically wise, to
foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January, — wearing
a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not pro-
vided 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 favoring winter air, to wintry cellars,
to underlie the summer 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 w^ont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I
standing underneath.
In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of Hyper-
borean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning,
with many car-loads of ungainly-looking farming tools, sleds,
plows, drill-borrows, 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 Cultivator.
I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter
rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Ice-
land. 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, plowing, 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 mold
itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather
290 WALDEN
the water, — for it was a very springy soil, — indeed, all the
lerra firma there was, — and haul it away on sleds, and then I
^,a8ssed 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 gi'ound 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 plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and
had to be cut out.
To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee over-
seers, 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 cavi-
ties, leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and
finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort
THE POND IN WINTER 291
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 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 destination, 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
was 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 thou-
sand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards ; and though
it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off,
the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that sum-
mer 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 green-
ish 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 hol-
lows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled
with a greenish 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 trans-
parent is the bluest. Ice is an interesting subject for contem-
plation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at
Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is
292 WALDEN
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 intellect.
Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred
men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and
apparently all the implements of farming, 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, reflect-
ing the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in
solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood
there. Perhaps 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 stupen-
dous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since
whose composition 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 sub-
limity 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 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 Avell. The joure 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 Atlantis and
THE POND IN WINTER 293
the Hesperides, makes the peripkis 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 Alexander only heard the names.
XVII
SPRING
The opening of large tracts by the iee-cutters commonly
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 Avinter, 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. A thermometer
thrust into the middle 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 32i/2° ; at a dozen rods
from the shore, in shallow water, nnder ice a foot thick, at 36°.
This difference of three and a half degrees between the tem-
l)erature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond,
and the fact that a great })roportion of it is comparatively
shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than
294
SPRING 295
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 temperature 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 melt-
ing it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the
air bubbles which it contains 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 frequently
quite dissolved by this reflected heat ; and I have been told that
in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow
wooden jDond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so
had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bot-
tom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a Avarm
rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from
Walden, and leaves a hard, dark, or transjDarent 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 i>ond
on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shal-
296 WALDEN
low water is being warmed more rapidly than the d^ep, 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 tem-
perature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February
"^Ith, 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 increas-
ing 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
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 jxpeet its thundering; but though I may perceive no differ-
ence 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 papillae. 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.
SPRING 297
The ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and 1
can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer
suns are gradually melting the snow ; the days have grown sen-
sibly longer ; and I see how I shall get through the winter with-
out adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer neces-
sary. 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 wood-
chuck 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 and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely
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
5ays 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 inter-
esting 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 Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise
in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the
298 WALDEN
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 was all gone out of
the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sud-
bury, where he lived, to Fair-Haven Pond, which he found,
unexpectedly, covered 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 bottom,
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 tlie 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 considerable 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
SPRING 299
of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the
traveler picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music
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 observe the
forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the
sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on
my way to the village, 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 overlaj^ and interlace 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 reminded of coral, of
leopards' paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels,
and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vege-
tation, whose forms and color we see imitated in 'bronze, a
sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than
acanthus, chicory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined
perhaps, 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 the light. The various
shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing
the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish.
Wh^n the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the
300 WALDEN
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 vege-
tation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted
into hanks, like those formed ofl" 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 luxuriant 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 expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with
the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned 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 (Act^co, labor, lapsus, to flow
or slip downward, a lapsing; Xopo^, globus, lobe, globe; also
lap, flap, and many other words), externally a dry thin leaf,
even as the / and v are a pressed and dried h. The radicals
of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the h (single lobed, or B, double
SPRING 301
lobed), with a liquid I behind it pressing it forward. In globe,
gib, 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 fluttering 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 molds 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 portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the
most 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 material 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 fiber
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
302 WALDEN
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, umhilicaria, 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 principle
of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but
patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hiero-
glyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last?
This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than tl o luxuriance
and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excremen-
titious 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 Siting. It precedes the green and
flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know-
of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestionsM
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
SPEING 303
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; comj^ared with whose great central life all
animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will
heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals
and cast them into the most beautiful molds you can"; they will
never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows
out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are
plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.
Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain
and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a
dormant quadruj^ed from its burrow, and seeks the sea with
music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his
gentle persuasion 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, pin-
weeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting
frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty w^as not
ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cattails, mulleins, Johnswort,
hardback, 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
l^articularly attracted b^' the arching and sheaf-like top of
the wool-gTass; it brings back the summer to our winter mem-
ories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and
which, in the vegetable kingdom, 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 inexpressible
304 WALDEN
tenderness and fragile delicacy. AYe are accustomed 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 tlie red squirrels got under my
house, two at a time, directly under my feet 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
humanity to stop them. No you don't — chickaree — chickaree.
They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive
their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irre-
sistible.
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, chro-
nologies, 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 dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass
flames up on the hill sides like a spring fire, — "et i3rimitus
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
])erpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long gi-een ribbon,
streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the
frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's
hay 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
SPRING 305
drink at this perennial green 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, oUt, olit, — chip, chip, chip, che, char, — che tuiss,
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 eastward 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 sjDring 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 j^roclaim. 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 drij^ping with
sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo ! where yesterday
was cold gray ice there lay the transparent 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
306 WALDEN
thousand years, methouglit, whose note I shall not forget for
many a thousand more, — the same sweet and powerful song
as of yore. 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
migratorius. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my house,
which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed 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
travelers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging
at last in unrestrained comjDlaint and mutual consolation.
Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings;
when, driving toward my house, they suddenh'' 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
]iond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore
they at once rose up with a gi^eat flapping of wings at the
signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank,
cii'cled 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
SPRING 307
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-Wmd withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathasan kingdom,
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays.
******
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 jDrospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and
took advantage of every accident 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
308 WALDEN
vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner
may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern
the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your
neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist,
and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world ;
})ut the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning,
recreating the world, and you meet him 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 gnarled rind and
try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant.
P'ven 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 accei>t 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 interval 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 prevented 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,
SPEING 309
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 Avere 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
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 obsei-ved
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 reminded 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
recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its
foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the
310 WALDEN
universe, siDorting 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 whieh 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 crag; — or
was its native i>est made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the
rainbow's trimmings and the sunset 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 willow root, w^hen 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. Death,
w^iere was thy sting? Grave, where was thy victory, then?
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unex-
plored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the
tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the
bittern and the meado^v-hen lurk, and hear the booming of
the snipe ; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wulder
and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls
with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that wo
are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that
all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and cea
be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because
unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. W^e
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 thundercloud, and
SPRING 311
the rain which lasts three weeks and produces 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 disheartens 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 Avas heavy,
but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and
inviolable health of Nature was my compensation 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 organizations can be so serenely squashed out of
existence like pulp, — tadpoles which herons gobble up, and
tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes
it has rained flesh and blood ! With the liability to accident,
we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impres-
sion made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison
is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Com-
passion 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 j^hoebe had
already come once more and 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 sulphur-
312
WALDEN
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 completed; and
the second year was similar to it. I finally left Waldeii
September 6th, 1847.
I
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 groAv in New England, 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 Colorado only till a greener and
sweeter grass aAvaits 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 voyage 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 doctors 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? Snipes and woodcocks also
may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game to
shoot one's self. —
313
314 WALDEN
Direct your eye right inward, and you '11 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 discovered. 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 Clark and Frobisher, of your own streams
and oceans ; explore your own higher latitudes, — with shiploads
of jDreserved meats to support you, if thej^ 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
channels, 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 seZ/-respect, and sacrifice the greater
to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but
have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their
clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the
meaning of that South-Sea ExjDloring Expedition, with all
its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition 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
hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the
private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being,
alone. —
CONCLUSION 315
Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hie vitae, plus habet ille viae.
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
eats 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 travelers, 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.
It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascer-
tain 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-
considered and a firm resolve." This was manly, as the world
goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man
Avould 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
316 WALDEN ^
resolution without 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 opposi-
tion to a just government, if he should chance to meet with|
such. I
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. I
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 remark- ■
able how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, i
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 conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin
passage, but 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 them-
selves 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 appear
less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty
poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in
CONCLUSION 317
the air, your work need not be lost ; that is where they should
be. Now put the foundations under them.
It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make,
that you shall speak so that they can understand you.' Neither
men nor toadstools gTow 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 under-
stand, were the best English. As if there were safety in
stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression 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 depends 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
cannot 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
I undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side;
I as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the
• sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray
ithe inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is
i instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The
•words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet
I they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior
' natures.
Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and
i praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the
318 WALDEN
sense of men asleep, -wbicli the}' express by snoring. Some-
times 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 doctrine of the
Yedas" ; 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 England endeavors to cure the potato-
rot, will not any 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 compared 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 succeed, 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
CONCLUSION 319
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?
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 reso-
lution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowl-
edge, 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 j^eel 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 ferrule 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 old cities and
320 WALDEN
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 i
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, j
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 i
the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what j
you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom
Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he I
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 I
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 I
may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, i
even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the i
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 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 mis-
giving. Most think that they are above being supported by the
town ; but it oftener happens that they are not above support-
CONCLUSION 321
ing themselves by dishonest means, which should be more dis-
reputable. 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
johilosopher 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 influences to be jilayed on ; it is all dissipation. Humil-
ity 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. 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 composition
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 contents of the
322 WALDEN
Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about cos-
tume 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 read)
to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight
to come to my bearings,— not walk in procession with pomp and
parade, in a conspicuous 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 somebody. God is only the president of the day,
and Webster is His orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravi-
tate toward that which most stronglj^ and rightfully 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
me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have
got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittlybenders. There
is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveler asked
the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy
replied that it had. But presently the traveler'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 coincidence 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
CONCLUSION 323
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 universe, 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 sincerity and truth were not; and I
went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospital-
ity 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
"entertainment," 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 practicing idle and
musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? 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 practice
Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!
Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of
mankind. This generation reclines a little to congratulate itself
on being the last of an illustrious line ; and in Boston and Lon-
don and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks
of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfac-
tion. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and
the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam eon-"
templating 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
324 WALDEN
experimentalists we are I There is not one of my readers who
has yet lived a whole human 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 sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem our-
selves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly,
we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits ! As I stand over
the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor,
and endeavoring 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 benefactor and impart to
its race some cheering information, 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 dullness. 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 ordinary 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
government 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 eventful year, which will drown
\
il
CONCLUSION 325
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 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 resui-rection and immortality strengthened by
hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life,
whose egg has been buried for ages under man concentric layers
of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at the
first in the alburnum of the green and Kving 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 of time
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.
NOTES
Page 27. Two years and three months. Beginning July 4, 1845. Thoreau
did not publish Walden, however, until 1854.
28. Traveled a good deal in Concord. Thoreau believed in Emerson's
maxim: "Traveling is the fool's paradise." Alcott said: "Thoreau
thought he lived in the center of the Universe and would annex the rest
of the planet to Concord."
28. Brahmins. The religious i:pper caste of the Hindoos. The reference
here is to the various tortures which they underwent in order to gain
favor with their gods.
28. Twelve labors of Hercules. A succession of desperate undertakings
enjoined by Eurystheus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths (revised edition),
pp. 216-221.
29. Augean Stables. The cleansing of these was one of the. twelve
labors of Hercules.
29. Deucalion and Pyrrha. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 16.
29. Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552? -1618). The passage is from Ovid. Thoreau
enjoyed the vigor of Raleigh's style.
'31. Wilberforce, William (1759-1833). An English anti-slavery leader,
33. Evelyn, John (1620-1706). Famous principally as a diarist. He was
also the author of a learned work on trees entitled Sylva.
33. Hippocrates. Considered "the father of medicine" by the ancient
world.
34. Confucius (550-478 b. c). A celebrated Chinese philosopher. The
founder of the chief Chinese religion.
36. Liebig, Baron Justus von (1803-1873). A famous German chemist.
37. Elysian. In Greek mythology, Elysium was the abode of the blessed
after death. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 51, 52.
39. I long ago lost a hound, etc. This is perhaps Thoreau's best state-
ment of his transcendental search for the unfindable, for the ideal.
42. To transact some private business. Thoreau desired to study books
and nature, and to learn to write.
42. Celestial Empire. China; used here figuratively for the spiritual
world. The reference is to the extensive trade which was being carried on
between China and the United States through the port at Salem, Massa-
chusetts.
43. La Perouse. A famous French navigator who made discoveries in
the Far East. He was supposedly lost at sea in 1788.
327
328 WALDEN
43. Hanno. A Carthaginian navigator of the fifth century B. c. who
explored the west coast of Africa.
43. Neva. A river at whose mouth Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg)
is situated.
44. If they were divested of their clothes. Thoreau in this passage is
influenced by Carlyle. Read "The World out of Clqthes," Chapter 8,
Book I of Sartor Resartus.
44. Madam Pfeiffer (1797-1858). A celebrated Viennese traveler who
journeyed twice around the world. She published in 1850, A Woman's
Journey Round the World.
46. New wine in old bottles. The allusion is to Matthew, ix, 17.
46. The old philosopher. Bias, who was one of the Seven Wise Men of
Greece.
46. Fates. According to Greek mythology the three Fates, Clotho,
Lachesis, and Atropos, spun, measured, and cut the thread of human
destiny, Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 38.
47. Egyptian wheat. Reference to stories — now discredited — of the
germination of wheat which had lain thousands of years in the tombs of
Egypt.
48. Harlequin. The conventional clown of Italian comedies and puppet
shows.
48. Samuel Laing (1/80-1868). A Scottish traveler; publisher of several
works on Xorway and Sweden.
49. Domestic. See origin of the word. From the Latin, domus, house.
51. Goodkin, Daniel (1612-1678). The quotation is from Historical Collec-
tions of the Indians of Massachusetts.
52. Rumford fireplace. An improved fireplace, the principles of which
were first discovered by Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814).
53. The fathers have eaten sour grapes. This and the two following
verses are taken from Esekicl, xviii, 2-4.
54. Suent. A dialectal word; here used in the sense of working smoothly.
54. Chapman, George. Elizabethan dramatist. The quotation is from
his tragedy, Caesar and Pompey, Act V, scene ii.
54. Momus. The Greek god of censure and faultfinding.
57. Aurora. The goddess of dawn.
57. Memnon. The son of Aurora. The "column of Memnon," which was
a colossal statue at Thebes, Egypt, was supposed to give forth music
when the rays of the rising sun fell upon it.
57. Sardanapalus (668-626 B. c). A king of Assyria whose reign was
celebrated for its material prosperity. Cf. Byron's Sardanapalus.
57. Jonathan. "Brother Jonathan," the American people as a whole.
57. Malaria. Italian, mal' aria, bad air.
58. Agri-culture. Latin, agri cultura, the tilling of a field.
59. Old Johnson. Edward Johnson (1599-1672). The author of a History
of New England entitled The Wonder-Working Providence of Zion's
Saviour in New England.
NOTEJS 329
60. I borrowed an axe. Of his friend, A. Bronson Alcptt, one of the
leaders of the Brook Farm experiment and the father of Louisa May
Alcott.
62. Singing to myself. Thoreau here quotes from his own verses.
64. The removal of the gods of Troy. Cf. ^neidj Book ii.
64. The character of his raisers. Among these "raisers" were Ralph
Waldo Emerson, George William Curtis, William Ellery Channing, and
A. Bronson Alcott. Cf. Homes of American Authors.
66. The ninth part of a man. The allusion is to the familiar saying, "It
takes nine tailors to make a man."
66. Trinity Church. The reference is to the church which stands oppo-
site the head of Wall Street, New York City.
68. Squatter's right. "Thoreau delighted to call himself a 'squatter'
on Emerson's land, for this nomadic term well suited his mood." — Marble.
69. Cambridge College. Harvard College. Thoreau lived in Hollis Hall
during his undergraduate days, where he had "many and noisy neighbors,
and a residence in the fourth story." Cf. F. B. Sanborn's Henry D.
Thoreau, p. 55.
71. Rogers. Joseph Rogers and Sons, cutlers of Shefifield, England.
71. Adam Smith (1723-1790), Ricardo, David (1772-1823), and Say, Jean
Baptiste (1767-1823) were leading economists.
72. Flying Childers. A famous English race horse of the eighteenth
century that was never beaten.
72. Fitchburg. A town thirty miles west from Concord; at the time,
the terminus of the Fitchburg Railroad.
74. Arthur Young (1741-1820). An Englishman, the author of many
books dealing with scientific agriculture.
76. Bhagvat-Geeta. A sacred book of the Hindoos, supposed to date
from the first or second century of our era.
76. Thebes. This reference is to the Egyptian Thebes. Cf. Iliad, Book
ix, line 383, "the hundred gated."
76. Vitruvius. Marcus Vitruvius Pollia, a Roman architect of the age
of Augustus.
77. Thirty centuries. Perhaps an inexact reference to the words of
Napoleon to his soldiers when in Egypt: "From the summit of those
monuments forty centuries look down upon you."
77. As many trades as fingers. In 1847, Thoreau wrote to the secretary
of his Harvard class: "I am a Schoolmaster, a private Tutor, a Surveyor,
a Gardener, a Farmer, a Painter (I mean House Painter), a Carpenter, a
Mason, a Day-laborer, a Pencil-maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer,
and sometimes a Poetaster."
78. Their bills have not yet been received. The washing and mending
were done at his home. Channing writes: "Some have fancied because
he moved to Walden he left his family. He bivouacked there, and really
lived at home, where he went every day."
81. Cato. The quotation is from De Agri Cultura, chap. 74.
330 WALDEN
82. Forefathers sang. The quotation is from "New England Annoy-
ances," one of the earliest pieces of verse produced in America,
82. Indicms. Burroughs writes: "Doubtless the wildest man New Eng-
land has turned out since the red aborigines vacated her territory was
Henry Thoreau, — a man in whom the Indian re-appeared on the plane of
taste and morals. . . . His whole life was a search for the wild, not
only in nature, but in literature, in life, in morals. ... He, for the
most part, despised the white man; but his enthusiasm kindled at the
mention of the Indian; he coveted his knowledge, his arts, his wood-
craft. He credited him with a more 'practical and vital science' than
was contained in the books," Read also Arthur Rickett on this point in
The Vagabond in Literature.
83. Experiments. Thoreau lived in an age of experimentation. In
1840 Emerson wrote to Carlyle: "We are all a little wild with numberless
projects of social reform; not a reading-man but has a draft of a new
community in his waistcoat pocket."
85. The evil that men do. The quotation is from Julius Caesar, III, ii, 80.
85. Bartram, William (1739-1823). An early American botanist. The
Mucclasse Indians are described in Part III, chap. 8, of his Travels through
North and South Carolina, Georgia, etc.
86. Mexicans. Cf. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Book I, chap. iv.
87. Keep the flocks of Admetus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 104, 105.
88. Each one ... his own way. In another place, Thoreau says:
"But I say that I have no scheme about it, — no designs on man at all."
90. Robin Goodfellow. "Puck." Cf. Shakspere's Midsummer-Night's
Dream. II, i, 32-57.
91. Phaeton. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 94-98.
91. Howard, John. A famous prison reformer of the latter part of the
eighteenth century. He published in 1777 his work, State of the Prisons.
91. Jesuits. "The Society of Jesus." The Jesuits were zealous mission-
aries among the Indians.
93. Penn, William (1644-1718) and Fry, Elizabeth (1780-1845), were promi-
nent Quakers.
95. Our manners have been corrupted. The allusion is to 1 Corinthians,
XV, 33.
95. Cursing of God and enduring him forever. A sarcastic reference to
the article in the Westminster Catechism, which, in answer to the ques-
tion, "What is the chief end of man?" reads, "To glorify God and to
enjoy him forever."
95. Sheik Sadi of Shiraz (1190-1291). A famous Persian poet.
96. Thomas Carew (1598-1639). An English poet; the earliest of the
Cavalier singers.
98. I bought the Hollowell place. It is reported that Thoreau was some-
what disappointed when the owner changed his mind about the bargain.
Thoreau had intended at that time to use this farm for a place of retreat.
Later, when this failed, he chose Walden Pond,
II
NOTES 331
98. I am monarch of all I survey. Quoted from Cowper's Verses sup-
posed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
99. Atlas. According to Greek mythology, Atlas held the pillars of the
sky on his shoulders. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 57.
99. Old Cato. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 b. c). Author of De Re
Riistica (Concerning Agriculture).
99. "Cultivator." The Boston Cultivator, an agricultural journal.
100. Experiment. Thoreau regards his life at Walden an experimcn
He had no intention of becoming permanently a hermit. See note, 83.
100. Ode to dejection. An allusion to Coleridge's Ode to Dejection.
Thoreau here explains why he consciously exaggerates his experience.
101. A boat. The boat which Thoreau and his brother John built and
which they used during their journey which is recorded in A Week on
the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The boat was later owned by Haw-
thorne.
101. The Harivansa. A Sanskrit poem.
103. Damodara. A name for Krishna, a divine hero of Hindoo mythol-
ogy.
103. Pleiades or the Hyades. These are constellations.
103. Aldebaran or Altair. These are fixed stars of the first magni-
tude.
104. Aurora. The Greek Goddess of Dawn. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths.
pp. 39, 95.
105. The Vedas. The early religious books of India.
105. Memnon. See note, p. 57.
105. I went to the woods, etc. "The writer in this surely ranges himself
with the prophets, — with Ruskin and Emerson and Carlyle; in the very
essence of the matter with Goethe, the clearest sighted of all modern
men." — Payne.
106. Spartan-like. The Spartans trained themselves in hardy simplicity
for the service of the State.
106. Next excursion. The next or future life.
106. Glorify God and enjoy him forever. See note, p. 95.
106. Let your affairs be as two or three. The entire passage is broadly
parallel to The Sermon on the Mount.
108. Setting the bell. Ringing a bell so hard that it balances in an in-
verted position.
108. Wachito River. Rises in Arkansas and empties into the Red River
in Louisiana.
108. Rudiment of an eye. The fishes in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky
are blind.
111. Mill-dam. "The center of Concord village, where the postoffice
and shops are — so called from an old mill-dam where now is a street." —
F. B. Sanborn.
112. Tied to the mast like Ulysses. In passing the Sirens, Ulysses had
332 WALDEN
the ears of the sailors stopped with wax, and had himself tied to the
mast. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 328, 329.
112. Point d* appui. French, meaning "basis, support."
112. Nilometer. An instrument for gauging the height of the water in
the Nile River. Thoreau here makes a pun on the word as though it
were derived from the Latin nil, and in this meaning, sets the word in
contrast with Rezdometer, a word of his own coining.
lis. Noblest recorded thoughts of man. Matthew^ Arnold called the
classics "the best that has been thought and said in the world."
115. Delphi and Dodona. The oracle of Apollo was at Delphi; the oracle
of Zeus, at Dodona.
117. Alexander. Alexander the Great. There is a tradition that he
slept nightly with his sword and with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow.
118. Vedas. See note, p. 105.
118. Zendavestas. The bible of Zoroastrianism, the ancient national
religion of Persia.
119. Referred to a town. Reading and North Reading are towns in
Massachusetts, not far from Concord.
120. A woodchopper. Alek Therien. He is described at length in chap-
ter VI.
121. Tit-men. Small men, pygmies.
122. Zoroaster. The founder of Zoroastrianism. See note above.
123. Abelard (1079-1142). A learned French scholar.
123. Utopian. Ideal but impracticable. An adjective from Utopia, a
book by Sir Thomas More.
123. "Olive Branches." The Olive Branch was a Methodist weekly
magazine which was published in Boston.
123. Redding and Co. Of Boston. Publishers of popular fiction.
126. Puri Indians. A Brazilian tribe. See previous note on Indians,
I.. 82.
128. Partridge. The ruffed grouse, commonly called a partridge in
America.
128. In truth, our village has become a butt. The quotation is from
William Ellery Channing's poem entitled IValden Spring.
131. Atropos. The Fate whose business it was to cut the thread of
man's life.
132. Buena Vista. A battle fought February 22 and 23, 1847, in which
the Americans had a great victory over the Mexicans.
132. Daisies and the nests of fieldmice. The reference is to Robert
IJurns's poems, To a Mountain Daisy and To a Mouse.
132. Long Wharf. In Boston.
133. Thomaston lime. Lime from Thomaston, Maine.
134. To be the mast. Quoted from Milton's Paradise Lost, Bk. i, 293, 294.
134. Cattle of a thousand hills. The allusion is to Psalms, 1, 10.
135. Mountains do indeed skip like rams. The allusion is to Psalms,
cxiv, 4.
NOTES 333
135. Peterboro* Hills. These are visible on the northwestern horizon,
from Concord.
137. Ben Jonsonism. Thoreau perhaps had in mind the witches' scene
in Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens.
138. Illustrates. Illuminates.
138. Stygian. Of the lower world. From the River Styx.
139. Aldermanic. The conventional alderman is noticeably corpulent.
139. DoMm to his mark. The reference is to the peg- tankard. A series
of marks was placed on the inside of the cup in order to gauge the
draughts, as it was passed from hand to hand.
142. Pouts. Hornpouts, bullheads.
142. "The world to darkness and to me." Quoted from Gray's Elegy in
A Country Churchyard.
143. /Eolian. Wind music. From .^Eolus, god of the winds. Cf. Gayley's
Classic Myths, p. 39.
144. Mourning untimely consumes the sad. Quoted from Macpherson's
alleged translation of Ossian's Gaelic poem, Croma.
145. Beacon Hill. In Boston. The State House now occupies the sum-
mit of this hill.
145. The Five Points. In New York City. Named because of the
peculiar intersection of the streets.
145. Brighton. Now a part of Boston. In Thoreau's day it was the
center of the local cattle market. Concord was situated on the direct
trade route between New Hampshire and Boston.
146. Indra. In Hindoo Mythology, Indra was the chief of the gods of
the air.
148. Blue devils. Apparitions supposed to be seen by persons suffering
with delirium tremens; hence, very low spirits.
148. Mock sun. Sun-dog.
148. Legion. The allusion is to Mark v, 9.
148. Mill Brook. A brook which flowed through Concord.
148. Go£fe or Whalley. These Englishmen were members of the Court
which condemned King Charles I. They escaped to Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts, and from there fled to New Haven, Connecticut, and later to
Hadley, Massachusetts, in both of which places they lived in concealment.
See Hawthorne's The Gray Champion.
149. Simples. Medicinal herbs.
149. Old Pau-rs. Thomas Parr. At his death in 1635, he was reputed to
be one hundred and fifty-two years of age.
149. Acheron. A river in Hades. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 47.
149. Dead Sea. In Palestine. This is one of the saltiest bodies of water
in the world.
150. Wild lettuce. The reference is to the myth that the birth of Hebe
was due to the fact that Juno, her mother, at a banquet given by Jupiter,
ate heartily of wild lettuce. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX.
334 WALDEN
151. Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House. The Tremont House was in
Boston; the Astor, in New York City; the Middlesex, in Concord.
152. Ricochet motion. The motion such as a skipping stone makes over
the surface of the water.
153. Cerberus. The three-headed, serpent-tailed watch dog that stood
guard at the entrance to Hades. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 47.
153. Arrived there, etc. The quotation is from the Faerie Queen, I, 1, o:.
153. Winslow, Edward (1595-1655). One of the settlers who came in the
Mayflower. The quotation is from Alexander Young's Chronicles of the
Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth.
153. Visit of ceremony. This visit was made in 1621.
155. Paphlagonian man. Paphlagonia was an ancient mountainous dis-
trict of Asia Minor, incorporated into the Roman Empire in 65 B.C. The
rulers of the country bore the name Pylaemenes to show that they claimed
descent from the chieftain of that name who figures in Homer's Iliad as
the leader of the Paphlagonians.
155. Wood-chopper. In his Journal Thoreau writes: "Who should come
to my lodge but a true Homeric boor, one of those Paphlagonian men.
Alek Therien, he called himself." (Vol. I, p. 365.)
155. Why are you in tears. Iliad, opening verse of Book XVI.
159. Pecunia. From the Latin pecus, cattle.
162. Proposed a book. In his Jourtial (Vol. Ill, pp. 215, 216), Thoreau
writes: "As if it were any use, when a man failed to make any memorable
impression on you, for him to leave his name No! I kept a
book to keep their fames in."
163. Com-munity. Thoreau infers that the origin of the word is from
the Latin munire, to fortify.
163. "Welcome Englishmen." These words were uttered by the Indian
Chief, Samoset, when he entered Plymouth, March 16, 1621.
164. Antaeus. Antaeus received his strength from contact with the
Earth. For Hercules's contest with him cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 220.
164. Brought from Boston. Thoreau's father moved from Boston to
Concord in 1823. See Sanborn's Henry D. Thoreau, p. 4.
165. My flute. Thoreau played skilfully on the flute. Cf. Louisa M.
Alcott's poem, Thoreau's Flute.
166. Agricola laboriosus. Hardworking farmer.
166. Lincoln and Wayland. Small towns within five or ten miles of
Concord.
166. Mr. Coleman's report. The Reverend Henry Coleman (1785-1849), was
State Commissioner for the Agricultural Survey of Massachusetts. He
published four reports.
167. Rans des Vaches. Literally, "chime of the cows." A Swiss air
played by herdsmen to call the cattle.
167. Paganini, Nicolo (1784-1840). A celebrated Italian violinist. Espe-
cially famous for making music on a single string.
NOTES 335
168. Tintinnabulum. Virgil's word is tinnitus, jingling. Cf. Georgia.
Book IV.
169. Spit a Mexican. Impale a Mexican soldier. Thoreau was living
at Walden during the timfe the Mexican War w^s in progress (1846-1847).
170. Not with cranes. An allusion to the annual struggle between the
pygmies and the cranes. See Classical Dictionary.
170. A Pythagorean. Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher of the sixth
century B.C., who prohibited his followers from eating meat and fish and
beans.
170. Evelyn, John. See note p. Zi.
171. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-166S), was the first to observe the im-
portance of atmospheric oxygen to the growth of plants. His work. Con-
cerning the Vegetation of Plants, was published in 1661.
171. Patrem familias ... esse oportet. A householder must be a
seller, not a buyer. The quotation is from Cato's De Re Rustica, chap. 2.
171. Plant the common small white bush bean. This paragraph is a
half-playful imitation of the kind of advice that was given in farm
journals.
173. Ceres. The goddess of agriculture. Cf. Gzyl&y's Classic Myths, -^.AZ.
173. Terrestrial Jove. Thus designated to distinguish him from Pluto,
the Infernal Jove.
173. Plutus. God of wealth.
174. Varro. Marcus Terentius (116-28 B.C.), wrote Rerum Rusticarum.
175. State Street. In Boston.
175. Etesian winds. The regular northerly summer winds. The refer-
ence is from ancient Greek and Latin literature.
176. The vitals of the village were the grocery, etc. *'A11 this does not
mean that Thoreau was a shy and faun-like creature; still less that he
was a victim of misanthropy; it means only that often he found himself
his own best companion, and was determined to resist those social im-
portunities which, if a man submit to them, leave him no time for the
development of the inner life and for quiet intellectual growth." — Payne.
177. Orpheus. This incident occurred while Orpheus was sailing home
with the Argonauts from capturing the golden fleece. Cf. The Life and
Death of Jason by Morris.
179. Elsewhere related. In "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849).
179. Amok. Amuck. , ^
• 180. Nee bella fuerunt. Quoted from the elegies of Tribullus, I, x 7.
181. To fresh woods and pastures new. Quoted from Milton's Lycidas.
181. Coenobites. Members of religious orders living in conrents or
communities. A pun.
185. Michael Angelo. Referring to the characteristic over-develoiaaent
of the muscles in this artist's figures.
187. Castalian Fountain. A spring sacred to Apollo and the Muses.
189. Divining-rod. A forked stick which was used to discover the
presence of an underground vein of water.
336 WALDEN
Wt. The paver. The glacier which deposited the rocks.
192. Fair-Haven. Fairhaven Pond, which is a widening of the Sudbury
Kivcr in GDncord.
19S. Invert your head. Thoreau was fond of this method of viewing
landscape.
198. Moore of Moore Hall. According to the old ballad, the knight who
slew the Dragon of Wantley.
202. Icarian Sea. Named from the flight of Icarus. Cf. Gayley's
Classic Myths, p. 246.
204. Kohinoor. A large diamond belonging to the British Crown.
208. Vadhalla. The hall of Odin the abode of the Norse gods.
207. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571). A celebrated Italian goldsmith and
sculptor.
208. Thy entry is a pleasant field, etc. Quoted from William Ellery
Channing's poem, Baker Farm.
208. Musquash. Muskrat.
208. And here a poet builded, etc. This quotation is also from Chan-
ning's Baker Farm.
212. Landscape where, etc. The quotation is again from Channing's
Baker Farm.
213. Talaria. Wings.
214. Except for that wildness. For a discussion of this side of Thoreau's
nature, read John Burrough's essay, Thoreau's Wildness.
215. A finer way of studying ornithology. Read in this connection
Emerson's Forbearance.
216. Chaucer's nun. Should be Chaucer's monk. The quotation is from
the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, lines 177, 178.
216. Algonquins. A number of tribes of Indians that roved over the
country north of the St. Lawrence River.
216. Philzmthropic. Characterized by love of mankind. Thoreau here
TQcang to indicate that he does not distinguish between his love for man
and his lov'e for animals.
218. Kirby and Spence. William Kirby and William Spence. Authors
of an Introdxiction to Entomology, which was published 1826
221. Ved. Veda. Cf. note, p. 105.
221. Vedant, or Vedanta. The philosophy founded on the Veda.
221. Thseng-tseu. A follower of Confucius.
221. Not that food . . . defileth. An inexact quotation from Matthew
\v, 11.
222. Mencius. Latinized from Meng-Tse. A Chinese philosopher of
the third century B.C. He was a leading teacher of Confucianism.
223. How happy *s he, etc. Quoted from Dr. John Donne's Epistle
To Sir Edward Herbert, since Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
Z2S. A companion. William Ellery Channing, the poet, an intimate
friend of Thoreau.
226. Hermit. Thoreau himself.
NOTES 337
226. Bose. The farm dog.
227. Con-fut-see. Confucius.
228. Mem. Memorandum.
228. Pilpajr & Co. Pilpay and other makers of fables. Pilpay (or Bidpai)
is not a proper name but a title applied to a scholar and teller of tales in
an Indian court.
228. A wild native kind. White- footed or deer mouse.
231. Not a duellum but a bellum. Not a duel but a war.
231. Myrmidons. The followers of Achilles.
232. Achilles . . . Patroclus. Because of a quarrel with Agamemnon,
Achilles sulked in his tent. When he heard that Patroclus was killed,
however, he hastened into the thick of the battle to avenge him.
232. Austerlitz. In this battle, which was fought December 2, 1805,
Napoleon defeated the forces of Russia and Austria.
232. Dresden. In this battle, which was fought August 26, 27, 1813,
Napoleon defeated the combined forces of Russia, Austria, and Prussia.
233. Hotel des Invalides. A home for disabled soldiers, which is main-
tained by the government of France.
233. Kirby and Spence. See note, p. 218.
234. Huber, Francois (1750-1831). A Swiss naturalist who was cele-
brated for his observations on the honey bee.
234. /EneeiS Sylvius (1405-1464). Occupied the Papal throne as Pius II.
234. Olaus Magnus (1490-1558). A Swedish historian.
234. Christiern the Second (1481-1559). King of Denmark and Norway,
Often called Christian the Cruel.
234. Fugitive-Slave Bill. Was made a law as a part of Clay's "Com-
promise Bill" in 1850. This Bill had the support of Daniel Webster, to
the great disgust of his friends.
235. Horse. Pegasus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 214, 215.
240. Totem. Each Indian tribe had its distinguishing symbolical natural
objects and animals. These the tribe carved on its totem poles.
240. Ceres. The Roman goddess of agriculture.
240. Minerva. The Greeks received through this Goddess the olive tree
and the plow.
242. A poet to board for a fortnight. Channing. Cf. note, p. 226.
243. Keeping-room. Sitting-room.
245. Parlaver. Flattery, deception.
246. Unio fluviatilis. A variety of fresh-water clam.
24i9. Vulcan. The god of fire, especially of terrestrial fire, Cf. Gayley's
Classic Myths, p. 24-26,
249. Terminus. The god of boundaries. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 89.
250. Gilpin, William (1724-1804), An English clergyman who wrote ex-
tensively on the natural scenery of England,
250. Vert- "woods, lawns," etc,
250. Michaux, Andre (1746-1802). A French botanist who traveled in
America and wrote a work on forest trees of the United States.
338 WALDEN
251. Goody Blake and Harry Gill. The reference is to the characters
of Wordsworth's poem of the same name.
251. Jump it. Hammer out the blade to a sharper edge.
252. Light-winged Smoke. This is one of Thoreau's best poems. It was
first published in the Dial for April, 1843.
254. Never, bright flame. Quoted from Ellen II. Hooper's poem.
The Wood-Fire.
257. Scipio Africanus (237-183 B.C.). One ot Rome's greatest generals.
After his defeat of Hannibal, the surname Africanus was bestowed upon
him by the Roman people.
258. Gond.bert. A long, tedious, epic poem, published in 1651.
258. An uncle who goes to sleep shaving. See description in Chan-
ning's Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, pp. 22, 23.
258. Chsdmers' collection. An enlarged edition of Johnson's Collection
of the English Poets, with some additional lives, 21 vols., published in
1810. Thoreau mastered this collection of poetry while in college.
258. Nervii. The warlike inhabitants of Ancient Belgic Gaul conquered
by Caesar.
261. Bowl broken at the fountain. An allusion to Ecclesiastes, xii, 6.
261. Reynard. The fox; the hero of the beast epics.
261. Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute. Quoted from Milton's
Paradise Lost, Bk. ii, line 560.
265. Woodchopper. Alek Therien. Cf. note, p. 120.
265. Lon._ -headed farmer. Edmond Hosmer of Concord, a good friend
of both Thoreau and Emerson. A descendant of one of the oldest families
of Concord.
265. Crack. A cozy, comfortable chat.
265. Tried our teeth on many a nut. Tried to find a solution for some of
the unsolved problems of the world.
265. A poet. The reference is still to Channing.
266. Last of the philosophers. Amos Bronson Alcott. See note, p. 60.
267. Ingenuus. Latin, ' .e-born, candid, ingenuous.
267. Pumpkin pine. Used in Maine to designate a certain quality of
white pine which is clear and soft and destitute of resin.
267. Flocks. Of wool.
267. The old settler. Dame Nature.
268. One other. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
268. The Visitor who never comes. A vague, mystical, ideal person
for whom Thoreau was ev r senrching.
268. Vishnu Purana. The best known of the later writings of the
Hindoos. An illuminating manual of sectarian Brahmanism.
269. Moose-yard. When the snow is deep the moose come together in
herds, and trample the snow down so that they may the easier feed.
270. Lingua vernacula. The language of the common people.
276. Alarming the citadel. An allusion to the cackling of the geese,
when the Gauls captured Rome in 390 B.C.
NOTES 339
274. Actseon. An allusion to the Greek myth of how a hunter sur-
prised Diana at her bath, and of how he was changed into a stag by the
injured goddess, and pursued and killed by his own hounds.
276. Wast (Waste) Book. Day Book. The book was used by Ephraim
Jones during the year 1742. Thoreau describes at length in his Journal
many of the quaint entries which he found in this day book. Cf. Journal,
Vol. VI., pp. 77-80, 94-96.
276. 0-2-3. The figures indicate the price paid in pounds, shillings, pence.
278. Lepus, levipes. A fanciful etymology.
279. Nature puts no question. Cf. Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.
279. Marmots. Woodchucks.
281. Trumpeted. The fish vender commonly blew a horn to call the
attention of his customers to his approach.
282. Two such Bottomless Ponds. White Pond and Tratt's Pond.
282. A fifty-six. A fifty-six pound weight. The half of the olden
"hundredweight."
283. William Gilpin. See note, p. 250.
283. So high as heaved, etc. Quoted from Milton's Paradise Lost,
Bk. vii, 288-290.
289. Hyperborean. Far northern.
289. New England Farmer. The New England Farmer and Gardener's
Journal, founded in 1821.
289. The Cultivator. See note, p. 99.
289. Sow a crop of winter rye. A little far fetched. Thoreau knew
that winter rye was planted in the fall of the year.
290. Tartarus. The lowest of the underworlds wherein were held the
fallen Titans. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 5, 6.
290. Cambridge. Fifteen miles east of Walden Pond,
291. Valhalla. See note, p. 206.
291. Estivate. Pass the summer.
291. Fresh Pond. Situated in the outskirts of Cambridge.
292. Bhagvat Geeta. See note, p. 76.
292. Brahma and Vishnu and Indra. Three important gods of Hinduism.
292. Atlantis. A mythical, fortunate island of the Blessed. See Plato's
Timaeus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 52.
293. Hesperides. A mythical island in the Far West where were
guarded the Golden Apples. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 57.
293. The periplus of Hanno. His voyage along the west coast of Africa.
Cf. note, p. 43.
293. Ternate and Tidore. Islands of the Melanesian Archipelago.
296. Stunned by a blow on it. The reference is to the common practice
of stunning fish by striking the ice a hard blow immediately above them.
298. Methuselah. Lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old.
Cf. Genesis, v. 27.
300. Lobe. This passage is characteristic of Thoreau. He is ever fond
of speculating as to the origin of words.
340 WALDEN
302. ChatnpolHon, Jean Francois. In 1822 by means of the Rosetta
Stone, he discovered the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
303. Thor, In Scandinavian mythology, Thor is the God of Thunder.
Our Thursday is named for this God.
304. Et primitus orbitur, etc. "And for the first time the grass springs
up, called forth by the early rains." The quotation is from Varro.
Return Rusticarum, 2, 2, 14.
305. Leuciscus. Dace.
306. I mean he; I mean the twig. The individual robin; the particn
lar twig.
306. Turdus migratorius. The American Robin. Now classified as
Planesticus migratorius.
306. First spring night in the woods. March 26, 1846.
307. Eurus ad Auroram. The quotation is from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Bk. i, 61, 62, 78-81.
308. While such a sun, etc. The quotation is from Isaac Watts's Hymn
88, Book i, in Hymns and Spiritual Songs.
"And while the lamp holds out to burn.
The vilest sinner may return."
308. Entered into the joy of his Lord. The quotation is from Matthew
XXV, 21, 23.
309. The Golden Age, etc. Translated from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Bk. i, 89-96, 107, 108.
309. Sticks which boys play with their fingers. Clappers or "bones."
309. Merlin. In falconry, the sparrow-hawk. The bird which Thoreau
is describing is the marsh hawk, Thoreau said that the sight of this
bird in the Concord meadows was of more interest to him than the entry
of the allies into Paris.
310. Cupreous. Copper-colored.
310. O Death, where is thy sting? etc. The quotation is from 1
Corinthians, xv, 55.
310. We need the tonic of wildness. See note, p. 82.
312. Calidasa's drama of Sacontala. An ancient Sanskrit play.
313. Terra del Fuego. Literally, land of fire. So named by the dis-
coverer because he sighted Indian fires on the coast.
313. Picking oakum. Preparing old rope ends for use in calking the
seams of vessels. A good description of this work is found in Dana's
Two Years Before the Mast, Chap. iii.
313. Only great-circle sailing. We skim but the surface of things.
■J14. Franklin, Sir John (1786-1847). Discoverer of the Northwest Pas-
sage. He was lost in the Arctic Ocean. Before definite news of his fate
had been received, as many as fifteen expeditions were sent out in search
of him.
314. Grinnell, Henry (1800-1874). An American merchant who fitted
out two diflferent relief expeditions to search for Franklin.
NOTES 341
314. Mungo Park, A Scottish explorer who lost his life in 1806 whik
discoveriiJg the source of the Niger River.
314. Lewis and Clark made an exploring expedition through thr
Northwest to the mouth of the Columbia River in 1804-1806.
314. Frobisher, Sir Martin. An English explorer who tried to k>cati
the Northwest Passage in 1576.
314. South-Sea Exploring Expedition. An expedition fitted out by tht
United States Government in 1838. During the four years that followed,
this expedition explored the Pacific Ocean and its islands.
315. Erret, et extremes, etc. The quotation is from Claudian's, On c«
Old Man of Verona.
315. Symmes* Hole. This hole was alleged by Symmes to be found
at the North Pole. It was supposed to open into the concentric spheres
of which the earth was thought to be composed.
315. Explore thyself. "Know thyself." This is an old Greek maxim.
It has been the battle cry of humanism ever since the Renaissance.
See Babbitt's Literature and the American College, Chap. i.
315. Mirabeau, Gabriel Riquetti (1749-1791). The greatest orator of the
period of the French Revolution.
316. My experiment. See notes, pp. 83 and 100.
317. Bright. A common name for an ox.
317. Extra-vagant. Literally, "wandering beyond."
317. Translated. Literally, "carried across."
318. Kabir. A Hindoo religious reformer. He lived at Benares between
1488 and 1512, and attempted to construct a creed that would unite the
Hindoos and the Mussulmans.
319. Kalpa. A day of Brahma, equal to 4,320,000,000 of our years.
319. Brahma had awoke and slumbered. Many Kalpas had passed.
321. Creation widens. The quotation is from Blanco White's sonnet,
"Night and Death."
321. Crcesus. A King of Lydia in the sixth century B.C. He was so
wealthy that his name has passed into proverb.
321. In the repose ... a confused tintinnabulum. In this connection,
one should remember that Thoreau also wrote: "I would not run round
the corner to see the world blow up." However, when a powder-mill in
the next town did blow up, he heard it, ran downstairs, jumped into a
wagon, and drove post-haste to the scene of the disaster.
322. Mameluke bey. The reference is to the single bey or officer of the
warlike Mamelukes who escaped death by forcing his horse to leap the
parapet when Mohamet AH massacred his comrades. The event occurred
at Cairo, Egypt, in 1811,
323. China pride. Thoreau means to say that mankind in general is as
self-satisfied and as unprogressive t.s are the Chinese.
325. John or Jonathan. John Bull or Brother Jonathan; the English
or the American people.
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