Historical E-Book: Walden
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Edition Used: Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1854.
First published: 1854

Chapter 01: 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 civilized life again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent,but, 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 narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer,first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as applyto them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your 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 travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended,with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it 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 finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres,when man is 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 woodlot! 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 issoon 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 hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,

Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, 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 dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live,for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits,trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes 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 custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.

I sometimes wonder that we can be 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 prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination — what Wilberforce 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 yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow,mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people,and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once,perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such 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 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 here ligiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased,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 presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for 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 Ihoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various 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 greater 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 sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying 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 centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.

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

By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any,whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the 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 consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is,with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at under going such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to 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 Foodor 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 prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary.At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live — that is, keep comfortably warm — and die in New England at last. The 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 positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or 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 wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence,magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity,practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men. But why do men degenerate ever?What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none ofit 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 splendid 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 alternative 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 sent 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 purpose, 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 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 complaining 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 turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud,and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.

To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter,before yet any neighbor was 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 concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall,that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that,manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun.

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.

I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and Ihave had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm;though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in aparticular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree,the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.

In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my 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 arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed — he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make 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 studying how to make it worth 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, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had 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 pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the 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 coast wise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization — taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation; — charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier — there is the untold fate of La Prouse;— universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers 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 alabor 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 advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and 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 practical 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 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 bodies. 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 prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing acorn field 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 by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case,tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where ...people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman'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 so ires and legislative balls 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 anew suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enter prised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls,must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion;for clothes are but our out most 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 fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury;our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument,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 emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular 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 character, but only the breadth of my shoulders,as it were a peg to bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces,nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap,and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a 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 dressing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like ship wrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most 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 cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad,but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they 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 extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But,probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by 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. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race,some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember 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,any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth the field is a great 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 dove cots.

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 clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead.Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased,and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting.Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was 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 warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses." He adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.

In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and 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 especially 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 buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax, the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage'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 andpaper, Rumford fire-place, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copperpump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. Buthow happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is socommonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not,is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a realadvance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, thoughonly the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that ithas produced better dwellings without making them more costly; andthe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which isrequired to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. Anaverage house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundreddollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen yearsof 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 aday, for if some receive more, others receive less; — so that hemust have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwamwill be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this isbut a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise toexchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?

It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage ofholding this superfluous property as a fund in store against thefuture, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to thedefraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required tobury himself. Nevertheless this points to an important distinctionbetween the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they havedesigns on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilizedpeople an institution, in which the life of the individual is to agreat extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of therace. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is atpresent obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as tosecure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage.What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, orthat the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teethare 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 atleast as well off as the other classes, I find that for the mostpart they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, thatthey may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly theyhave 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, theencumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that thefarm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is foundto inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. Onapplying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannotat 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 thebank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid forhis farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can pointto him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What hasbeen said of the merchants, that a very large majority, evenninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of thefarmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them sayspertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuinepecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements,because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character thatbreaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter,and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeedin saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sensethan they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are thespringboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turnsits somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank offamine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with eclatannually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine weresuent.

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihoodby a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get hisshoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skillhe has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort andindependence, 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 allpoor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded byluxuries. 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 richerbut the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As Iunderstand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against thehouse which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, bywhich means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may stillbe urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we areoften imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the badneighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one ortwo families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation,have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and moveinto the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and onlydeath will set them free.

Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hirethe modern house with all its improvements. While civilization hasbeen improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men whoare to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easyto create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuitsare no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greaterpart of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely,why should he have a better dwelling than the former?

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be foundthat just in proportion as some have been placed in outwardcircumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him.The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence ofanother. On the one side is the palace, on the other are thealmshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids tobe the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be werenot decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the corniceof the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as awigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where theusual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very largebody of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages.I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To knowthis I should not need to look farther than to the shanties whicheverywhere border our railroads, that last improvement incivilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living insties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light,without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms ofboth old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit ofshrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all theirlimbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look atthat class by whose labor the works which distinguish thisgeneration are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent,is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England,which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you toIreland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots onthe map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that ofthe North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any othersavage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilizedman. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise asthe average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves whatsqualidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer nowto the laborers in our Southern States who produce the stapleexports of this country, and are themselves a staple production ofthe South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be inmoderate circumstances.

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, andare actually though needlessly poor all their lives because theythink that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As ifone were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out forhim, or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuckskin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy hima crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient andluxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could notafford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of thesethings, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall therespectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, thenecessity of the young man's providing a certain number ofsuperfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers forempty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be assimple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of thebenefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengersfrom heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mindany retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture.Or what if I were to allow — would it not be a singular allowance?— that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab's, inproportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! Atpresent our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a goodhousewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, andnot leave her morning's work undone. Morning work! By the blushesof Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning workin this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but Iwas terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, whenthe furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them outthe window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house?I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on thegrass, unless where man has broken ground.

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions whichthe herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the besthouses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presumehim to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tendermercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think that inthe railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than onsafety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these tobecome no better than a modern drawing-room, with its divans, andottomans, and sun-shades, and a hundred other oriental things, whichwe are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem andthe effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathanshould be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on apumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvetcushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a freecirculation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursiontrain and breathe a malaria all the way.

The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitiveages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but asojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, hecontemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent inthis world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing theplains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo! men have become thetools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruitswhen he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a treefor shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night,but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We haveadopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture.We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next afamily tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man'sstruggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of ourart is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higherstate to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this villagefor a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, forour lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal forit. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf toreceive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how ourhouses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internaleconomy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not giveway under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon themantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid andhonest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that thisso-called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do notget on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, myattention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember thatthe greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, isthat of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have clearedtwenty-five feet on level ground. Without factitious support, manis sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. The firstquestion which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such greatimpropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-sevenwho fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, andthen perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental.The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Beforewe can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeepingand beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for thebeautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no houseand no housekeeper.

Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," speaking of thefirst settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells usthat "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelterunder some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, theymake a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side." They didnot "provide them houses," says he, "till the earth, by the Lord'sblessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and the first year'scrop was so light that "they were forced to cut their bread verythin for a long season." The secretary of the Province of NewNetherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of thosewho wished to take up land there, states more particularly that"those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have nomeans to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig asquare pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, aslong and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside withwood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees orsomething else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor thiscellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise aroof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods,so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entirefamilies for two, three, and four years, it being understood thatpartitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to thesize of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England,in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their firstdwelling-houses in this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in ordernot to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season;secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom theybrought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three orfour years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, theybuilt themselves handsome houses, spending on them severalthousands."

In this course which our ancestors took there was a show ofprudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the morepressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfiednow? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxuriousdwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yetadapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut ourspiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten.Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in therudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, wherethey come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of theshellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been insideone or two of them, and know what they are lined with.

Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly livein a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better toaccept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the inventionand industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this,boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easilyobtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficientquantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speakunderstandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquaintedwith it both theoretically and practically. With a little more witwe might use these materials so as to become richer than the richestnow are, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized man isa more experienced and wiser savage. But to make haste to my ownexperiment.

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down tothe woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build myhouse, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still intheir youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin withoutborrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permityour fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The ownerof the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was theapple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. Itwas a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods,through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field inthe woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice inthe pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces,and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. There weresome 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 wayhome, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazyatmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard thelark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another yearwith us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter ofman's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life thathad lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe hadcome off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it witha stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order toswell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he layon the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayedthere, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had notyet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that fora like reason men remain in their present low and primitivecondition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring ofsprings arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher andmore ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frostymornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb andinflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of Aprilit rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day,which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over thepond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.

So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and alsostuds and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having manycommunicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, —

Men say they know many things;

But lo! they have taken wings —

The arts and sciences,

And a thousand appliances;

The wind that blows

Is all that any body knows.

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs ontwo sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side,leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straightand much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefullymortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools bythis time. My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet Iusually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read thenewspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the greenpine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted someof their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat ofpitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of thepine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become betteracquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attractedby the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chipswhich I had made.

By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, butrather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for theraising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, anIrishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. JamesCollins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When Icalled to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, atfirst unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. Itwas of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not muchelse to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if itwere a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a gooddeal warped and made brittle by the sun. Doorsill 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 henswere driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floorfor the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board andthere a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp toshow me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that theboard floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into thecellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, theywere "good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a goodwindow" — of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passedout 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,gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to anoak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for Jameshad in the meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars andtwenty-five cents tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning,selling to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. Itwere well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certainindistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent andfuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At six I passedhim and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all —bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens — all but the cat; she tookto the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward,trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.

I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails,and removed it to the pond-side by small cartloads, spreading theboards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun.One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodlandpath. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighborSeeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferredthe still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, andspikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass thetime of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts,at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. Hewas there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seeminglyinsignificant 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, down through sumachand blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feetsquare by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freezein any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; butthe sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place.It was but two hours' work. I took particular pleasure in thisbreaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into theearth for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid house inthe city is still to be found the cellar where they store theirroots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappearedposterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but asort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of myacquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion forneighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of myhouse. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisersthan I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising ofloftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4thof July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards werecarefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectlyimpervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of achimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hillfrom the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing inthe fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing mycooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in themorning: which mode I still think is in some respects moreconvenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed beforemy bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and satunder them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in thatway. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read butlittle, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, myholder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in factanswered the same purpose as the Iliad.

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberatelythan I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, awindow, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchancenever raising any superstructure until we found a better reason forit than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the samefitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird'sbuilding its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed theirdwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves andfamilies simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would beuniversally developed, as birds universally sing when they are soengaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay theireggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no travellerwith their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resignthe pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What doesarchitecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? Inever in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple andnatural an occupation as building his house. We belong to thecommunity. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of aman; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer.Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does itfinally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it isnot therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of mythinking for myself.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I haveheard of one at least possessed with the idea of makingarchitectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hencea beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhapsfrom his point of view, but only a little better than the commondilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began atthe cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a coreof truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, mighthave an almond or caraway seed in it — though I hold that almondsare most wholesome without the sugar — and not how the inhabitant,the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let theornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man eversupposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skinmerely — that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fishits mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants ofBroadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with thestyle of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of itsshell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint theprecise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find itout. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to meto lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to therude occupants who really knew it better than he. What ofarchitectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown fromwithin outward, out of the necessities and character of theindweller, who is the only builder — out of some unconscioustruthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for theappearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destinedto be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty oflife. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as thepainter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts andcottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitantswhose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfacesmerely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting willbe the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple andas agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little strainingafter effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion ofarchitectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September galewould strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to thesubstantials. They can do without architecture who have no olivesnor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about theornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our biblesspent as much time about their cornices as the architects of ourchurches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts andtheir professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a fewsticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubedupon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense,he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out ofthe tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin — thearchitecture of the grave — and "carpenter" is but another name for"coffin-maker." One man says, in his despair or indifference tolife, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint yourhouse that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house?Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure bemust have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint yourhouse your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. Anenterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When youhave got my ornaments ready, I will wear them.

Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of myhouse, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect andsappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I wasobliged to straighten with a plane.

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wideby fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, alarge window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, anda brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying theusual 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 thedetails because very few are able to tell exactly what their housescost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the variousmaterials which compose them:—

These are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, andsand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a smallwoodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left afterbuilding the house.

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the mainstreet in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases meas much and will cost me no more than my present one.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter canobtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rentwhich he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than isbecoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than formyself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect thetruth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy —chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but forwhich I am as sorry as any man — I will breathe freely and stretchmyself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral andphysical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humilitybecome the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good wordfor the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student'sroom, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollarseach year, though the corporation had the advantage of buildingthirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffersthe inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps aresidence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we hadmore true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would beneeded, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired,but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a greatmeasure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires atCambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as greata sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on bothsides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are neverthe things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, isan important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuableeducation which he gets by associating with the most cultivated ofhis contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding acollege is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor toits extreme — a principle which should never be followed but withcircumspection — to call in a contractor who makes this a subjectof speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actuallyto lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are saidto be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successivegenerations 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 tolay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his covetedleisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labornecessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure,defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisurefruitful. "But," says one, "you do not mean that the studentsshould go to work with their hands instead of their heads?" I donot mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think agood deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or studyit merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game,but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youthsbetter learn to live than by at once trying the experiment ofliving? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much asmathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts andsciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, whichis merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, whereanything is professed and practised but the art of life; — tosurvey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never withhis natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread ismade, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover newsatellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or towhat vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by themonsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monstersin a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the endof a month — the boy who had made his own jackknife from the orewhich he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessaryfor this — or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgyat the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers'penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut hisfingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving collegethat I had studied navigation! — why, if I had taken one turn downthe harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor studentstudies and is taught only political economy, while that economy ofliving which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerelyprofessed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he isreading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debtirretrievably.

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positiveadvance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the lastfor his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract ourattention from serious things. They are but improved means to anunimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arriveat; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great hasteto construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine andTexas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either isin such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced toa distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one endof her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As ifthe main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We areeager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World someweeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leakthrough into the broad, flapping American ear will be that thePrincess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whosehorse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most importantmessages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eatinglocusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried apeck of corn to mill.

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; you loveto travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and seethe country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that theswiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend,Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirtymiles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. Iremember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this veryroad. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I havetravelled at that rate by the week together. You will in themeanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some timetomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get ajob in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be workinghere the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reachedround the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as forseeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I shouldhave to cut your acquaintance altogether.

Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, andwith regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it islong. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankindis equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men havean indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of jointstocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, innext to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to thedepot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke isblown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a feware riding, but the rest are run over — and it will be called, andwill be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at lastwho shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long,but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire totravel by that time. This spending of the best part of one's lifeearning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during theleast valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went toIndia to make a fortune first, in order that he might return toEngland and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garretat once. "What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from allthe shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have builta good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, youmight have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, thatyou could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.

Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelvedollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet myunusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light andsandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part withpotatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains elevenacres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold thepreceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. Onefarmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise cheepingsquirrels on." I put no manure whatever on this land, not being theowner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so muchagain, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out several cordsof stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time,and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishablethrough the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there.The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house,and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of myfuel. 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 seasonwere, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72+. The seed corn wasgiven me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plantmore than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteenbushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellowcorn and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income from the farm was

beside 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 character, 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 simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to 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 would 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 economical and social arrangements. I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been nearly as well off as before.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy's play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of 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 unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury 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 ambition 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 piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a 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 many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing 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 Bank. 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 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 the East — to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them — who were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.

By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years — not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last date — was

Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my 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 bean-field — effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say — and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.

Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to

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

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

which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25.21 3/4 on the one side — this being very nearly the means with which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred — and on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.

These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt; and my drink, water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who love so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement like this.

I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may 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 necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.

The reader will perceive that I am treating the 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 rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the 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 travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire — some precious bottleful, I suppose, first brought over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land — this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable — for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process — and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottleful 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, mould it, and bake it under a cover," that is, in a baking kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month.

Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and 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, 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 beside those which I have named. "For," as the Forefathers sang,—

"we can make liquor to sweeten our lips

Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips."

Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to 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 already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer's family — thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer; — and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold — namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.

There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once — for the root is faith — I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to bear 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 experiments, 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, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. 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 inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvioe: 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 — dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! "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 compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I do with my furniture?" — My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody's barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. Throw away the first three at least. It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all — looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck — I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will 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 curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet; and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:—

"The evil that men do lives after them."

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

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 provisions 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, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame."

They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days, "and the four 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 practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end.

I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no Biblical record of the revelation.

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in 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 under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice — for my greatest skill has been to want but little — so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villager