CDition 
 
 WALDEN 
 
THOREAU S COVE, \YALDEN POND 
 Showing Indian Path along the Shore (pages 199, 200) 
 
.WALDEN 
 
 OR 
 
 LIFE IN THE WOODS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU 
 
 e* 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND 
 WITH NOTES BY 
 
 FRANCIS H. ALLEN 
 
 Associate Editor of Thoreau s Journal 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 <Cbe S*toer?iDe prejtf, Cambridge 
 
 1919 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1897, AND 1906, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN * CO, 
 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 

 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 NOTE TO THE VISITORS EDITION ix 
 
 V I. ECONOMY . 3 
 
 WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR . . 90 
 
 III. READING 110 
 
 X,IV. SOUNDS 123 
 
 ^. SOLITUDE 143 
 
 >VI. VISITORS 155 
 
 VII. THE BEAN-FIELD 171 
 
 ^VIII. THE VILLAGE 185 
 
 IX. THE PONDS 192 
 
 X. BAKER FARM 223 
 
 XI. HIGHER LAWS 232 
 
 vXII. BRUTE NEIGHBORS 247 
 
 XIII. HOUSE-WARMING .263 
 
 XIV. FORMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTER VISITORS . 282 
 XV. WINTER ANIMALS 299 
 
 XVI. THE POND IN WINTER 312 
 
 XVII. SPRING 330 
 
 V XVIII. CONCLUSION 352 
 
 NOTES 369 
 
 INDEX . 425 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THOREAU S COVE, WALDEN POND, SHOWING INDIAN 
 
 PATH ALONG THE SHORE Frontispiece 
 
 WALDEN POND AND MOUNT WACHUSETT .... 22 
 THE SITE OF THOREAU S HOUSE AT WALDEN FROM THE 
 
 POND .48 
 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 
 FURNITURE USED IN THOREAU S WALDEN HOUSE . . 72 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 
 THOREAU S COVE AND THE MEMORIAL CAIRN ... 96 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 
 SUMMER AT WALDEN 126 
 
 WALDEN FROM EMERSON S CLIFF 144 
 
 PlNES PLANTED BY TfiOREAU IN HIS BfiAN-FlELD . .172 
 
 THOREAU S FLUTE, SPY-GLASS, AND COPY OF WILSON S 
 
 ORNITHOLOGY 192 
 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 
 VIEW OF WALDEN SHOWING THE SAND-BAR . . . 200 
 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 WHITE POND 220 
 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 BAKER FARM 230 
 
 Photograph by Alfred W. Hosmer 
 
 BRISTER S SPRING 252 
 
 WALDEN W T OODS 288 
 
 WALDEN IN WINTER 312 
 
 WALDEN FROM THE SITE OF THE HOUSE .... 356 
 
 Except as otherwise indicated the illustrations 
 are from photographs by Herbert W. Gleason 
 
NOTE TO THE VISITORS EDITION 
 
 WITH the increasing use of the automobile, Walden 
 Pond, in Thoreau s day and for long after so out of the 
 way that only an occasional pilgrim reached its shores, 
 has now become a favorite stopping-place for tourists 
 and visitors to the historic and literary shrines of Con 
 cord and its neighborhood, and for many passing 
 through on their way to and from the military canton 
 ment of Camp Devens. Nevertheless Walden, through 
 the good fortune of its ownership, remains much as it 
 was when Thoreau had his house there in 1845-47. Its 
 waters are still pure and limpid; its shores are still 
 wooded and unspoiled. Its scenery, as Thoreau himself 
 said, "is on a humble scale," but it is none the less beau 
 tiful for that, and in addition to its natural attractions 
 it has the honor of being undoubtedly the most famous 
 body of water of its size in America. It owes its fame 
 chiefly to one book, the book that bears its name. The 
 book, of course, is much more than a description of Wal 
 den Pond and of its author s life there. It is the world as 
 Thoreau saw it and the life in it of an earnest seeker after 
 truth. No pictures, however interesting, can fully illus 
 trate such a book, but these that are here presented 
 show something of the physical surroundings that influ 
 enced the author of Walden and helped make the book 
 what it is, as well as other things of interest in connec 
 tion with Thoreau and his Walden life. 
 
 The Notes at the end of the volume were prepared 
 with a view to helping young people as well as their 
 elders, and they contain some definitions and explana 
 tions that may seem unnecessary to the mature reader. 
 It is hoped, however, that the information they furnish 
 
x NOTE TO THE VISITORS EDITION 
 
 as to the sources of some of Thoreau s obscure quota 
 tions and veiled allusions, as well as the side-lights they 
 throw on his life at Walden and on the natural history 
 of Concord, will prove to be of general interest. 
 
 F. H. A. 
 JUNE, 1919. 
 
. 
 
 WALDEN 
 

1 
 
 ECONOMY 
 
 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 so- 
 journer 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 itapertinent, 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 char 
 itable 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 7, or first per 
 son, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in re 
 spect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly 
 do not remember that it is, after all, always the first per- 
 
4 WALDEN 
 
 son that is speaking. I should not talk so much about 
 myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. 
 Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrow 
 ness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require 
 of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account 
 of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of 
 other men s lives; some such account as he would send 
 to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived 
 sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Per 
 haps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor 
 students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept 
 such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will 
 stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do 
 good service to him whom it fits. 
 
 I would fain say something, not so much concerning 
 the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read 
 these pages, who are said to live in New England; some 
 thing about your condition, especially your outward con 
 dition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what 
 it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, 
 whether it 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 ap 
 peared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remark 
 able ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting ex 
 posed 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, 
 
ECONOMY 5 
 
 chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with 
 their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast em 
 pires ; 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 wliich my neighbors have under 
 taken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but 
 I could never see that these men slew or captured any 
 monster or finished any labor. They have no friend 
 lolaus 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 pas 
 ture 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 arc 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, mow 
 ing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who strug 
 gle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, 
 
(5 WALDEN 
 
 find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic 
 feet of flesh. 
 
 But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the 
 man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a 
 seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are em 
 ployed, 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, expcriensque laborum, 
 Et documents, 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 can 
 not 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 remem 
 ber well his ignorance which his growth requires 
 
ECONOMY 7" 
 
 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 busi 
 ness 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 pro 
 mising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, and dying 
 to-day, insolvent ; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, 
 by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; 
 lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a 
 nutshell of 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 
 )mething against a sick day, something to be tucked 
 vay in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plas- 
 
8 WALDEN 
 
 tering, 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 itjs_ 
 which determines, or rather indicates, his fatej 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 be 
 tray too green an interest in their fates ! As if you could 
 kill time without injuring eternity. 
 
 \ty^The mass ojgenJ<^ad 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 
 
ECONOMY 9 
 
 muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is con 
 cealed even under what are called the games and amuse 
 ments 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 cate 
 chism, 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 K 
 say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old 
 deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. f\ Old peo 
 ple 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, 
 
10 WALDEN 
 
 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 any 
 thing 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 he religiously devotes a part of his day to supply 
 ing his system with the raw material of bones; walking 
 all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vege 
 table-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. tf According to Evelyn, " the wise Solomon prescribed 
 ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Ro 
 man 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 neigh 
 bor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should 
 cut our nails ; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, 
 
ECONOMY 11 
 
 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 ca 
 pacities 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 mis 
 takes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. 
 The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! 
 What distant and different beings in the various man 
 sions 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 pros 
 pect 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 be 
 lieve 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. 
 
12 WALDEN 
 
 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 anxi 
 ety 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, rev 
 erencing 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 will 
 at length establish their lives on that basis. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble 
 and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how 
 much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least care 
 ful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and 
 frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civiliza 
 tion, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of 
 life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; 
 
ECONOMY 13 
 
 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 neces 
 sary 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 ac 
 cidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the conse 
 quent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present neces 
 sity 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 
 
14 WALDEN 
 
 properly be said to begin ? Darwin, the naturalist, says 
 of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his 
 own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a 
 fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who 
 were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, 
 "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such 
 a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes 
 naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his 
 clothes. Is it impossible to 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 con 
 founded with fire ; but so much for analogy. It appears, 
 therefore, from the above list, that the expression, ani 
 mal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, ani 
 mal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel 
 which keeps up the fire within us, and Fuel serves 
 only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of 
 our bodies by addition from without, Shelter and 
 Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated 
 and absorbed. 
 
 The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep 
 warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we ac 
 cordingly 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 pre- 
 
ECONOMY 15 
 
 pare 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, ex 
 cept 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 de 
 vote 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 com 
 forts 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 out 
 ward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much 
 
16 WALDEN 
 
 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 pov 
 erty. 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 philoso 
 phers. 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 theo 
 retically, but practically. The success of great scholars 
 and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not 
 kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by 
 conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no 
 sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why 
 do men degenerate ever ? What makes families run out ? 
 What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and 
 destroys nations ? Are we sure that there is none of it in 
 our own lives ? The philosopher is in advance of his age 
 even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, shel 
 tered, 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 abun- 
 
ECONOMY 17 
 
 dant 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 up 
 ward also with confidence. Why has man rooted him 
 self thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the 
 same proportion into the heavens above ? for the no 
 bler 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 
 seasoli. 
 
 ^*C I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant (1C 
 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 inspira 
 tion 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 what 
 ever circumstances, and they know whether they are 
 well employed or not ; but mainly to the mass of men 
 who are discontented, an3 idly complaining of the hard- 
 
18 WALDEN 
 
 ness oftheir 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 eter 
 nities, the past and future, which is precisely the present 
 moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some ob 
 scurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in 
 most men s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but insep 
 arable 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, deseribing 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 
 
ECONOMY 19 
 
 they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had 
 lost them themselves. 
 
 To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, 
 but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, 
 summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stir 
 ring about his business, have I been about mine! No 
 doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning 
 from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the 
 twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, 
 I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, 
 doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be pre 
 sent 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 tc 
 print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too com 
 mon with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. 
 However, in this case my pains were their own reward. 
 
 For many years I was self-appointed inspector of 
 snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faith- 
 
20 WALDEN 
 
 fully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths 
 and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines 
 bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public 
 heel had testified to their utility. 
 
 I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which 
 give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leap 
 ing fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented 
 nooks and corners of the farm ; though I did not always 
 know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular 
 field to-day; that was none of my business. I have wa 
 tered 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 neighbor 
 hood. " Do you wish to buy any baskets ? " he asked. 
 " No, we do not want any," was the reply. " What ! " ex 
 claimed 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 stand 
 
ECONOMY 21 
 
 in followed, he had said to himself: I will go into 
 bi ess; I will weave Baskets; it is a thing which I can 
 d Thinking that when he had made the baskets he 
 v 1 have done his part, and then it would be the white 
 n. ,iifs to buy them. He had not discovered that it was 
 n A-( ssary 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 deli 
 cate 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 ojie 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 accom 
 plishing 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 
 
22 WALDEN 
 
 habits; they are indispensable to every man. If you* 
 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 bot 
 toms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the 
 details yourself in person ; to be at once pilot and cap 
 tain, 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 dis 
 charge of imports night and day; to be upon many 
 parts of the coast almost at the same time, often the 
 richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore; 
 to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the 
 horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; 
 to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the 
 supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to 
 keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, pros 
 pects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the 
 tendencies of trade and civilization, taking advan 
 tage 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 un 
 told fate of La Perouse ; universal science to be kept 
 4>Ace-^ith, studying the lives of all great discoverers and 
 navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from 
 
ECONOMY 23 
 
 Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, 
 account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know 
 how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a 
 man, such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of 
 tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand 
 a universal knowledge. 
 
 I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good 
 place for business, not solely on account of the railroad 
 and the ice trade ; it offers 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. 
 
 Asjthis- business "was To^Be entered into without the 
 usual capital, it may not_ be easy-io__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 im 
 portant 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 
 
24 WALDEN 
 
 hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments 
 become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the im 
 press 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; fnr^^ ppn.^i^p.rsj, nnt what; is truly 
 respectable, but what is respecte^ We know but few 
 men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scare 
 crow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who 
 would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a 
 cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a 
 stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only 
 a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. 
 I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who 
 approached his master s premises with clothes on, but 
 was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting 
 question how far men would retain their relative rank 
 
ECONOMY 25 
 
 i(J;hey were^ jibaested-oiLiheir ^clothes. Could you, in 
 suciTaTcase, tell surely of any company ofwilized 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 acci 
 dental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in 
 dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor al 
 most universal respect. But they who yield such respect, 
 numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to 
 have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes intro 
 duced sewing, a kind of work which you may call end 
 less ; a woman s dress, at least, is never done. 
 
 A man who has at length found something!; 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 indeter 
 minate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than 
 they have served his valet, if a hero ever has a valet, 
 bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them 
 do. Only they who go to soirees and legislative halls 
 must have new coats , coats to change as often as the 
 man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, 
 my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will 
 do; will they not ? W r ho 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 
 
26 WALDEN 
 
 on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could 
 do with less ? I say, beware of all enterprises that require 
 new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If 
 there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made 
 to fit ? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in 
 your old clothes. ^All men want, not something to do 
 with, but something to do, or rather something to be. 
 Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however 
 ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so 
 enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like 
 new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like 
 keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, 
 like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The 
 loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the 
 snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy 
 coat, by an internal industry and expansion ; for clothes 
 are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise 
 we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be in 
 evitably 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 integ 
 ument, 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 
 
ECONOMY 27 
 
 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^jmd 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 if 
 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 
 
28 WALDEN 
 
 ( 
 
 shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on ? We wor 
 ship 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 no 
 tions 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 shipwrecked sailors, they put 
 on what they can find on the beach, and at a little dis 
 tance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other s 
 masquerade. ** Every generation laughs ajt the old fash 
 ions, 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 trap 
 pings will have to serve that mood too. When the 
 
ECONOMY 29 
 
 soldier is hit by a cannon-ball, rags are as becoming as 
 purple. 
 
 The childish and savage taste of men and women 
 for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squint 
 ing through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the 
 particular figure which this generation requires to-day. 
 The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely 
 whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few 
 threads more or less of a particular color, the one will 
 be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it fre 
 quently happens that after the lapse of a season the lat 
 ter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tat 
 tooing 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 j^jinot-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 the corporations may be enriched. 
 In the long run men hit only what they aim at. There 
 fore, though they should fail immediately, they had bet 
 ter 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 hav 
 ing 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 
 
30 WALDEN 
 
 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 conven 
 ience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, 
 which phrase may have originally signified the satisfac 
 tions 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 plea 
 sant 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 physical 
 warmth, then the warmth of the affections. 
 
 We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the 
 human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hol 
 low in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world 
 
ECONOMY 31 
 
 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 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 dovecots. 
 
 However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, 
 it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, 
 lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth 
 without a 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 liv 
 ing 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, 
 
32 WALDEN 
 
 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 bul 
 rush, 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 
 
ECONOMY 33 
 
 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 w r hen I 
 say that, though the^ birds of the air have their nests, 
 and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wig 
 wams, in modern civilized jodetjjQotjpasrje... 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 win 
 ter, 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 cuala KU IMe, while the civil- 
 izecf man hires big 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 
 
34 WALDEN 
 
 country rates) entitles him to the benefit of the improve 
 ments of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and 
 paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian 
 blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, 
 and many other things. But how happens it that he who 
 is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civ 
 ilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich 
 as a savage ? If it is asserted that civilization is a real 
 advance in the condition of man, and I think that it 
 is, though only the wise improve their advantages, 
 i / it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings 
 jpT without making them more costly y* and ..the cost of a 
 thing is the amount of what I wilr call life which is re 
 quired to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the 
 long run./ An average house in this neighborhood costs 
 perhaps/eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum 
 will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer s life, 
 even if he is not encumbered with a family, estimat 
 ing the pecuniary value of every man s labor at one 
 dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive 
 less ; so that he must have spent more than half his 
 life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we 
 suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful 
 choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to 
 exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms ? 
 
 It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole ad 
 vantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund 
 in store against the future, so far as the individual is 
 ^ concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. 
 But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. 
 Nevertheless this points to an important distinction be- 
 
ECONOMY 36 
 
 tween the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, 
 they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the 
 life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life 
 of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order 
 to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to 
 show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present 
 obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live 
 as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of 
 the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the 
 poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have 
 eaten sour grapes, and the children s teeth are set on 
 edge? 
 
 " As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have oc 
 casion 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 Con 
 cord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I 
 find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, 
 thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real 
 owners of their farms, which commonly they have in 
 herited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired 
 money, and we may regard one third of that toil as 
 the cost of their houses, but commonly they have 
 not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances 
 sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the 
 farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a 
 man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with 
 it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am sur 
 prised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in 
 
J6 WALDEN 
 
 the town who own their farms free and clear. If you 
 would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at 
 the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has 
 actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that 
 every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are 
 three such men in Concord. What has been said of the 
 merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven 
 in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the 
 farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one 
 of them says pertinently that a great part of their fail 
 ures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely 
 failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is incon 
 venient ; that is, it is the moral character that breaks 
 down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the mat 
 ter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the 
 other three succeed in saving their souls, but are per 
 chance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail 
 honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring 
 boards from which much of our civilization vaults and 
 turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the un- 
 elastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show 
 goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of 
 the agricultural machine were suent. 
 
 The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a 
 livelihood by a formula more complicated than the 
 problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in 
 herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his 
 trap with a hair springe to catch comfort and inde 
 pendence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg 
 into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar 
 reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage 
 
ECONOMY 37 
 
 comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman 
 sings, 
 
 " The false society of men 
 
 for earthly greatness 
 All heavenly comforts rarefies to air." 
 
 And when the farmer has got his house, he may not 
 be the richer but the poorer for it, antLiJ, be the house 
 that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid 
 o^rjer^ron^n-gedlby Momus against the house which 
 Minerva made, that she " had not made it movable, by 
 which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided;" 
 and it may still be urged, for our houses are such un 
 wieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather 
 than housed in them ; and the bad neighborhood to be 
 avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two 
 Families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a gener 
 ation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the 
 outskirts and move into the village, but have not been 
 able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free. 
 
 Granted that the majority are able at last either to 
 own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. 
 While civilization has been improving our houses, it has 
 not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. 
 It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create 
 noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man s pursuits 
 are no worthier than the savage* s> if he is employed the 
 greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and 
 comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling 
 than the former ? 
 
 But how do the poor minority fare ? Perhaps it will 
 be found that just in proportion as some have been 
 
38 WALDEN 
 
 placed in outward circumstances above the savage, 
 others have been degraded below him. The luxury of 
 one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of an 
 other. On the one side is the palace, on the other are 
 the almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who 
 built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were 
 fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried 
 themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the 
 palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good 
 as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a coun 
 try where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the 
 condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may 
 not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the 
 degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To 
 know this I should not need to look farther than to the 
 shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last 
 improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily 
 walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with 
 an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, 
 often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old 
 and young are permanently contracted by the long 
 habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the devel 
 opment of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It 
 certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor 
 the works which distinguish this generation are accom 
 plished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the con 
 dition of the operatives of every denomination in Eng 
 land, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I 
 could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of 
 the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the 
 physical condition of the Irish with that of the North 
 
ECONOMY 39 
 
 American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any 
 other savage race before it was degraded by contact 
 with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that 
 people s rulers are as wise as the average of civilized 
 rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness 
 may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now 
 to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the 
 staple exports of this country, and are themselves a 
 staple production of the South. But to confine myself 
 to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances. 
 
 Most men appear never to have considered what a 
 house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all 
 their lives because they think that they must have such 
 a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear 
 any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, 
 or, gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of wood- 
 chuck skin, complain of hard times because he could 
 not afford to buy him a crown ! It is possible to invent 
 a house still more convenient and luxurious than we 
 have, which yet all would admit that man could not 
 afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain 
 more of these things, and not sometimes to be content 
 with less ? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely 
 teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the 
 young man s providing a certain number of superfluous 
 glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers 
 for empty guests, before he dies ? Why should not our 
 furniture be as simple as the Arab s or the Indian s ? 
 When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we 
 have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers 
 of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any reti- 
 
40 WALDEN 
 
 nue 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 com 
 plex than the Arab s, in proportion as we are morally 
 and intellectually his superiors ! At present our houses 
 are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife 
 would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, 
 and not leave her morning s work undone. Morning 
 work ! By the blushes of Aurora and -the music of Mem- 
 non, what should be man s morning work in this world ? 
 I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was 
 terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, 
 when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, 
 and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, 
 could I have a furnished house ? I would rather sit in 
 the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless 
 where man has broken ground. 
 
 It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions 
 which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who 
 stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, 
 for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and 
 if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would 
 soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the 
 railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury 
 than on safety and convenience, and it threatens with 
 out attaining these to become no better than a modern 
 drawing-room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun 
 shades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we 
 are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the 
 harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Em 
 pire, vvhich Jonathan should be ashamed to know the 
 
y ECONOMY 41 
 
 names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it 
 all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushiony I 
 would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free 
 circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an 
 excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way. 
 
 The very simplicity and nakedness of man s life in 
 the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that 
 they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he 
 was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his 
 journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this 
 world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing 
 the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo ! men 
 have become the tools of their tools. The man who in 
 dependently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is 
 become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for 
 shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for 
 a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten 
 heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an 
 improved method of at/n-culture,. We have built for 
 this world a family mansion, and for the next a family 
 tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man s 
 struggle to free himself from this condition, but the 
 effect of our art is merely to make this low state com 
 fortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is 
 actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, 
 if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our 
 houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. 
 There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to 
 receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider 
 how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, 
 and their internal economy managed and sustained, I 
 
42 WALDEN 
 
 wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor 
 while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantel 
 piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid 
 and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but 
 perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a 
 thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoy 
 ment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being 
 wholly occupied with the jump ; for I remember that 
 the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, 
 on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are 
 said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. 
 Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth 
 again beyond that distance. The first question which 
 I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great 
 impropriety is, Who bolsters you ? Are you one of the 
 ninety-seven who fail, or the three who succeed ? An 
 swer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look 
 at your bawbles and find them ornamental. The cart 
 before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before 
 we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the 
 walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, 
 and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid 
 for a foundation : now, a taste for the beautiful is most 
 cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no 
 housekeeper. 
 
 Old Johnson, in his " Wonder- Working Providence," 
 speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom 
 he was contemporary, tells us that "they burrow them 
 selves in the earth for their first shelter under some hill 
 side, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make 
 a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side." They 
 
ECONOMY 43 
 
 did not " provide them houses," says he, " till the earth, 
 by the Lord s blessing, brought forth bread to feed 
 them," and the first year s crop was so light that " they 
 were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long sea 
 son." The secretary of the Province of New Nether- 
 land, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of 
 those who wished to take up land there, states more 
 particularly that " those in New Netherland, and espe 
 cially in New England, who have no means to build farm 
 houses at first according to their wishes, dig a square 
 pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, 
 as long and as broad as they think proper, case the 
 earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the 
 wood with the bark of trees or something else to pre 
 vent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with 
 plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a 
 roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or 
 green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these 
 houses with their entire families for two, three, and four 
 years, it being understood that partitions are run 
 through those cellars which are adapted to the size of 
 the family. The wealthy and principal men in New 
 England, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced 
 their first dwelling-houses in this fashion for two rea 
 sons : firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and 
 not to want food the next season; secondly, in order 
 not to discourage poor laboring people whom they 
 brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the 
 course of three or four years, when the country became 
 adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome 
 houses, spending on them several thousands." 
 
44 WALDEN 
 
 In this course which our ancestors took there was a 
 show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to 
 satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the more 
 pressing wants satisfied now ? When I think of acquir 
 ing for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am de 
 terred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted 
 to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our 
 spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did 
 their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is 
 to be neglected even in the rudest periods ; but let our 
 houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in 
 contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shell 
 fish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas ! I have been 
 inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined 
 with. 
 
 Though we are not so degenerate but that we might 
 possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins to-day, 
 it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though 
 so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of 
 mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards 
 and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more 
 easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or 
 bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered 
 clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this sub 
 ject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both 
 theoretically and practically. With a little more wit we 
 might use these materials so as to become richer than 
 the richest now are, and make our civilization a bless- 
 fl ing. The civilized man is a more experienced and 
 it wiser savage. But to make haste to my own experi 
 ment. 
 
ECONOMY 45 
 
 Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and 
 went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to 
 where I intended to build my house, and began to cut 
 down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, 
 for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, 
 but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to per 
 mit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enter 
 prise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on 
 it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned 
 it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside 
 where I worked, covered with pine woods, through 
 which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field 
 in the woods where pines and hickories were springing 
 up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though 
 * fhere tsrere*i?ome open spaces, and it was all dark-colored 
 and saturated with water. There were some slight 
 flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; 
 but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, 
 on my way home, its yellow sand-heap stretched away 
 gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone 
 in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and 
 other birds already come to commence another year 
 with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the 
 winter of man s discontent was thawing as well as the 
 earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch 
 itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had 
 cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, 
 and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in 
 order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into 
 the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without 
 inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than 
 
46 WALDENT 
 
 a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet 
 fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me 
 that for a like reason men remain in their present low 
 and primitive condition ; but if they should feel the in 
 fluence of the spring of springs arousing them, they 
 would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal 
 life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty morn 
 ings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb 
 and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On 
 the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the 
 early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a 
 stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling 
 as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. 
 
 So I went on for some days cutting andjiewing tim- - 
 ber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, 
 not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, 
 singing to myself, 
 
 Men say they know many things; 
 
 But lo! they have taken wings, 
 
 The arts and sciences, 
 
 And a thousand appliances; 
 
 The wind that blows 
 
 Is all that anybody knows. 
 
 I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the 
 studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers 
 on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they 
 were just as straight and much stronger than sawed 
 ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by 
 its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. 
 My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I 
 usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read 
 
ECONOMY 47 
 
 the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting 
 amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to 
 my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my 
 hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before 
 I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the 
 pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having 
 become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a ram 
 bler in the wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, 
 and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had 
 made. 
 
 By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my 
 work, but rather made the most of it, my house was 
 framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought 
 the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked 
 on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins 
 shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When 
 I called to see it he was not at home. I walked about 
 the outside, at first unobserved from within, the window 
 was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with 
 a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, 
 the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a 
 compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though 
 a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Door- 
 sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens 
 under the door-board. Mrs. C. came to the door and 
 asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were 
 driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt 
 floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only 
 here a board and there a board which would not bear 
 removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of 
 the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor 
 
48 WALDEN 
 
 extended under the bed, warning me not to step into 
 the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own 
 words, they were "good boards overhead, good boards 
 all around, and a good window," of two whole 
 squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way 
 lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an 
 infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, 
 gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill 
 nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon 
 concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned. 
 I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night, 
 he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to 
 nobody else meanwhile : I to take possession at six. It 
 were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate cer 
 tain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of 
 ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the only 
 encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on 
 the road. One large bundle held their all, bed, coffee- 
 mill, looking-glass, hens, all but the cat ; she took to 
 the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned after 
 ward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became 
 a dead cat at last. 
 
 I took down this dwelling the same morning, draw 
 ing the nails, and removed it to the pond-side by small 
 cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to 
 bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early 
 thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the wood 
 land path. I was informed treacherously by a young 
 Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the inter 
 vals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, 
 and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and 
 
THE SITE OF THOREAu s HOUSE AT WALDEN FROM 
 THE POND 
 
ECONOMY 49 
 
 then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, 
 and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, 
 at the devastation ; there being a dearth of work, as he 
 said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and 
 help make this seemingly insignificant event one with 
 the removal of the gods of Troy. 
 
 I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the 
 south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his bur 
 row, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and 
 the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven 
 deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in 
 any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned ; 
 but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still 
 keeps its place. It was but two hours work. I took 
 particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in 
 almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable 
 temperature. Under the most splendid house in the 
 city is still to be found the cellar where they store their 
 roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has 
 disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. The 
 house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a 
 burrow. 
 
 At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of 
 some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good 
 an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, 
 I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more 
 honored in the character of his raisers than I. They 
 are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier 
 structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 
 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for 
 the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so 
 
50 WALDEN 
 
 that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before 
 boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, 
 bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the 
 pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing 
 in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, 
 doing my cooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the 
 ground, early in the morning: which mode I still think 
 is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than 
 the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was 
 baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under 
 them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours 
 in that way. In those days, when my hands were much 
 employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper 
 which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, 
 afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered 
 the same purpose as the Iliad. 
 
 It would be worth the while to build still more delib 
 erately than I did, considering, for instance, what foun 
 dation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the 
 nature of man, and perchance never raising any super 
 structure until we found a better reason for it than our 
 temporal necessities even. There is some of the same 
 fitness in a man s building his own house that there is in 
 a bird s building its own nest. Who knows but if men 
 constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and 
 provided food for themselves and families simply and 
 honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally 
 developed, as birds universally sing when they are so 
 engaged ? But alas ! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, 
 whidh lay their eggs in nests which other birds have 
 
ECONOMY 51 
 
 built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and 
 unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of 
 construction to the carpenter ? What does architecture 
 amount to in the experience of the mass of men ? I never 
 in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple 
 and natural an occupation as building his house. We 
 belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who 
 is the ninth part of a man ; it is as much the preacher, 
 and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this divi 
 sion of labor to end ? and what object does it finally 
 serve ? No doubt another may also think for me ; but 
 it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the 
 exclusion of my thinking for myself. 
 
 True, there are architects so called in this country, 
 and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea 
 of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, 
 a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation 
 to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, 
 but only a little better than the common dilettantism. 
 A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the 
 cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put 
 a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugar 
 plum, in fact, might have an almond or caraway seed in 
 it, though I hold that almonds are most wholesome 
 without the sugar, and not how the inhabitant, the 
 indweller, might build truly within and without, and let 
 the ornaments take care of themselves. What reason 
 able man ever supposed that ornaments were something 
 outward and in the skin merely, that the tortoise got 
 his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-o -pearl 
 tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broad- 
 
52 WALDEN 
 
 way their Trinity Church ? But a man has no more to do 
 with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise 
 with that of its shell : nor need the soldier be so idle as 
 to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his stand 
 ard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale 
 when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean 
 over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to 
 the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. 
 What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has 
 gradually grown from within outw r ard, out of the ne 
 cessities and character of the indweller, who is the only 
 builder, out of some unconscious truthfulness, and 
 nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance, 
 and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined 
 to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious 
 beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this 
 country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretend 
 ing, humble log huts and cottages of the poor com 
 monly ; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they 
 are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, 
 which makes them picturesque ; and equally interesting 
 will be the citizen s suburban box, when his life shall be 
 as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there 
 is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwell 
 ing. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are 
 literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them 
 off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the sub- 
 stantials. They can do without architecture who have 
 no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado 
 were made about the ornaments of style in literature, 
 and the architects of our bibles spent as much time 
 
ECONOMY 53 
 
 about their cornices as the architects of our churches 
 do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts 
 and their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, 
 how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and 
 what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify 
 somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and 
 daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the 
 tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin, 
 the architecture of the grave, and "carpenter" is 
 but another name for "coffin-maker." One man says, 
 in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful 
 of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that 
 color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house ? Toss 
 up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure 
 he must have ! Why do you take up a handful of dirt ? 
 Better paint your house your own complexion; let it 
 turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise to improve 
 the style of cottage architecture! When you have got 
 my ornaments ready, I will wear them. 
 
 Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the 
 sides of my house, which were already impervious to 
 rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the 
 first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to 
 straighten with a plane. 
 
 I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten 
 feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a 
 garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two 
 trap-doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace 
 opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual 
 price for such materials as I used, but not counting the 
 work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; 
 
WALDEN 
 
 and I give the details because very few are able to tell 
 exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, 
 the separate cost of the various materials which com 
 pose them : 
 
 Boards $8 03J, mostly shanty boards. 
 
 Refuse shingles for roof and 
 
 sides 
 
 Laths 
 
 Two second-hand windows 
 
 with glass 
 
 One thousand old brick 
 Two casks of lime . . . 
 
 Hair 
 
 Mantle-tree iron .... 
 
 Nails 
 
 Hinges and screws . . . 
 
 Latch 
 
 Chalk 
 
 Transportation 
 
 4 00 
 
 1 25 
 
 2 43 
 4 00 
 
 2 40 
 31 
 15 
 
 3 90 
 14 
 10 
 
 01 
 
 1 40 
 
 That was high. 
 More than I needed 
 
 I carried a good part 
 on my back. 
 
 In all $28 
 
 These are all the materials, excepting the timber, 
 stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter s right. 
 I have also a small woodshed adjoining, made chiefly 
 of the stuff which was left after building the house. 
 
 I intend to build me a house which will surpass any 
 on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, 
 as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no 
 more than my present one. 
 
 I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter 
 can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater 
 
ECONOMY 55 
 
 than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to 
 boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag 
 for humanity rather than for myself; and my short 
 comings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of 
 my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypoc 
 risy, chaff which I find it difficult to separate from 
 my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man, 
 I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, 
 it is such a relief to both the moral and physical sys 
 tem ; and I am resolved that I will not through humility 
 become the devil s attorney. I will endeavor to speak 
 a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College the 
 mere rent of a student s room, which is only a little 
 larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though 
 the corporation had the advantage of building thirty- 
 two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant 
 suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, 
 and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. . I cannot 
 but think that if we had more true wisdom in these 
 respects, not only less education would be needed, be 
 cause, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, 
 but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would 
 in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which 
 the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost 
 him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of 
 life as they would with proper management on both 
 sides. Those things for which the most money is de 
 manded are never the things which the student most 
 wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in 
 the term bill, while for the far more valuable education 
 which he gets by associating with the most cultivated 
 
56 WALDEN 
 
 of his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of 
 founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscrip 
 tion of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly 
 the principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a 
 principle which should never be followed but with cir 
 cumspection, to call in a contractor who makes this a 
 subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other 
 operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the 
 students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves 
 for it; and for these oversights successive generations 
 have to pay. I think that it would be better than this, 
 for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by 
 it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The student 
 who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by sys 
 tematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains 
 but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding 
 himself of the experience which alone can make leisure 
 fruitful. " But," says one, " you do not mean that the 
 students should go to work with their hands instead of 
 their heads ? " I do not mean that exactly, but I mean 
 something which he might think a good deal like that; 
 I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, 
 while the community supports them at this expensive 
 game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How 
 could youths better learn to live than by at once trying 
 the experiment of living ? Methinks this would exercise 
 their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy 
 to know something about the arts and sciences, for in 
 stance, I would not pursue the common course, which 
 is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some 
 professor, where anything is professed and practised 
 
ECONOMY 57 
 
 but the art of life; to survey the world through a 
 telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural 
 eye ; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is 
 made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to 
 discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the 
 motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite: 
 himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm 
 all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a 
 drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most 
 at the end of a month, the boy who had made his 
 own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and 
 smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for 
 this or the boy who had attended the lectures on 
 metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had 
 received a Rodgers penknife from his father ? Which 
 would be most likely to cut his fingers? . . . To my 
 astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I 
 had studied navigation ! why, if I had taken one turn 
 down the harbor I should have known more about it. 
 Even the poor student studies and is taught only political 
 economy, while that economy of living which is synony 
 mous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed 
 in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is j 
 reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his 
 father in debt irretrievably. 
 
 As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern 
 improvements;" there is an illusion about them; there 
 is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on 
 exacting compound interest to the last for his early share 
 and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our 
 inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract 
 
58 WALDEN 
 
 our attention from serious things. They are but in> 
 proved means to^jan-j^improvej^nd, an end which 
 it was already but too easy to arrive at ; as railroads lead 
 to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to con 
 struct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas ; but 
 Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important 
 to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the 
 man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished 
 deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end 
 of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing 
 to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not 
 to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the At 
 lantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the 
 New ; but perchance the first news that will leak through 
 into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the 
 Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the 
 man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry 
 the most important messages; he is not an evangelist, 
 nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey. 
 I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn 
 to mill. 
 
 One says to me, " I wonder that you do not lay up 
 money ; you love to travel ; you might take the cars and 
 go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country." But I am 
 wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller 
 is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try 
 who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles ; the 
 fare ninety cents. That is almost a day s wages. I re 
 member when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers 
 on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get 
 there before night ; I have travelled at that rate by the 
 
ECONOMY 59 
 
 week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned 
 your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, or 
 possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a 
 job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will 
 be working here the greater part of the day. And so, 
 if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I 
 should keep ahead of you ; and as for seeing the country 
 and getting experience of that kind, I should have to 
 cut your acquaintance altogether. 
 
 Such is the universal law, which no man can ever out 
 wit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say 
 it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the 
 world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading 
 the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct 
 notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks 
 and spades long enough all will at length ride some 
 where, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though 
 a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts 
 " All aboard ! " when the smoke is blown away and the 
 vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are 
 riding, but the rest are run over, and it will be called, 
 and will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they 
 can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that 
 is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have 
 lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. 
 This spending of the best part of one s life earning 
 money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during 
 the least valuable part of it reminds me of the English 
 man who went to India to make a fortune first, in order 
 that he might return to England and live the life of a 
 poet. He should have gone up garret at once. " What !" 
 
60 WALDEN 
 
 exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the 
 shanties in the land," is not this railroad which we have 
 built a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively 
 good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, 
 as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent 
 your time better than digging in this dirt. 
 
 Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or 
 twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, 
 in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about 
 two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it 
 chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, 
 corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven 
 acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and 
 was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight 
 cents an acre. One farmer said that it was "good for 
 nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no 
 manure whatever on this land, not being the owner, but 
 merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so 
 much again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got 
 out several cords of stumps in plowing, which sup 
 plied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles 
 of virgin mould, easily distinguishable through the sum 
 mer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. The 
 dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood be 
 hind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have 
 supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire 
 a team and a man for the plowing, though I held the 
 plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season 
 were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72j. The 
 seed corn was given me. This never costs anything to 
 
ECONOMY 61 
 
 speak of, unless you plant more than enough. I got 
 twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, 
 beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and 
 turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole 
 income from the farm was 
 
 $23 44 
 Deducting the outgoes . . . .14 72 J 
 
 There are left . $8 71 J, 
 
 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 to-day, notwith 
 standing 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 insuffi 
 cient 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 
 
62 WALDEN 
 
 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 eco 
 nomical and social arrangements. I was more inde 
 pendent 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 mo 
 ment. 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 com 
 mit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. 
 True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a na 
 tion 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 horse 
 man or a herds-man 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 
 
ECONOMY 63 
 
 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 as 
 sistance, 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 here 
 abouts, 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 hammer 
 ing stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambi 
 tion to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the 
 amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal 
 pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners ? 
 
64 WALDEN 
 
 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 
 
ECONOMY 65 
 
 that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole 
 which he made. Many are concerned about the monu 
 ments 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 count 
 ing potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which 
 I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on 
 hand at the last date, was 
 
 Rice $1 7Sf 
 
 Molasses . . . . 1 73 Cheapest form of the saccharine. 
 
 Rye meal .... 1 04f 
 
 Indian meal ... 99J Cheaper than rye. 
 
 Pork 22 
 
 {Costs more than Indian > 
 meal, both money and 
 trouble. 
 
 Sugar 80 
 
 Lard 65 
 
 Apples 25 
 
 Dried apple . . . 22 
 Sweet potatoes . . 10 
 One pumpkin ... 6 
 One watermelon ..02 
 Salt . 3 
 
66 WALDEN 
 
 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 transmigra 
 tion, 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 wood- 
 chucks ready dressed by the village butcher. 
 
 Clothing and some incidental expenses within the 
 same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, 
 amounted to 
 
 $8 40} 
 Oil and some household utensils . . 2 00 
 
 So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing 
 and mending, which for the most part were done out 
 of the house, and their bills have not yet been received, 
 and these are all and more than all the ways by 
 which money necessarily goes out in this part of the 
 world, were 
 
 House $28 12J 
 
 Farm one year 14 72-J 
 
 Food eight months 8 74 
 
 Clothing, etc., eight months ... 8 40f 
 
 Oil, etc., eight months 2 00 
 
 In all , 1 . $61 99} 
 
ECONOMY 67 
 
 I address myself now to those of my readers who have a 
 living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce 
 
 sold 
 
 $23 44 
 Earned by day-labor 13 34 
 
 In all $36 78, 
 
 which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a 
 balance of $25.2lJ 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 w r hich I have not rendered some account. 
 It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone 
 cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. 
 It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian 
 meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, 
 molasses, and salt ; and my drink, water. It was fit that 
 I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the 
 philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some 
 inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined 
 out occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall 
 have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the 
 detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the din 
 ing out, being, as I have stated, a constant element, 
 does not in the least affect a comparative statement like 
 this. 
 
68 WALDEN 
 
 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 sev 
 eral 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 drink 
 ing water only. 
 
 The reader will perceive that I am treating the sub 
 ject rather from an economic than a dietetic point oi 
 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 con 
 venient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little 
 amusement to bake several small loaves of this in suc 
 cession, tending and turning them as carefully as an 
 
ECONOMY 69 
 
 Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal 
 fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fra 
 grance 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 pro 
 phesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it 
 not to be an essential ingredient, and after going with 
 out it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I 
 
70 WALDEN 
 
 am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle- 
 ful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and dis 
 charge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and 
 more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who 
 more than any other can adapt himself to all climates 
 and circumstances. Neither did I put any 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, co- 
 quitoque 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 
 breadstuff s 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 
 
ECONOMY 71 
 
 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 grow 
 ing 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 panta 
 loons 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 opera 
 tive as great and memorable as that from the man to the 
 farmer ; and in a new country, fuel is an encum 
 brance. 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. 
 
72 WALDEN 
 
 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 accus 
 tomed 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 hear 
 of experiments of this kind being tried ; as that a young 
 man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on 
 the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe 
 tried the same and succeeded. The human race is in 
 terested 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 ac 
 count, 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 ware 
 house. What man but a philosopher would not be 
 ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and go 
 ing up country exposed to the light of heaven and the 
 eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes ? That 
 
ECONOMY 73 
 
 is Spaulding s furniture. I could never tell from in 
 specting 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 con 
 tained 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 exuviae; 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!yNo 
 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 gate 
 way 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, 
 
74 WALDEN 
 
 if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some 
 stored in somebody s barn. I look upon England to 
 day as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great 
 deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from 
 long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to 
 burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. 
 Throw away the first three at least. It would surpass 
 the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed 
 and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to 
 lay down his bed and run. When I have met an immi 
 grant 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. 
 
ECONOMY 75 
 
 Not long since I was present at the auction of a dea 
 con 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 de 
 struction of them, there ^as 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, per 
 chance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least 
 go through the semblance of casting their slough an 
 nually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they 
 have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were 
 to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first fruits," 
 as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the 
 Mucclasse Indians ? " When a town celebrates the 
 busk," says he, "having previously provided them 
 selves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other 
 household utensils and furniture, they collect all their 
 worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep 
 and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, 
 of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and 
 other old provisions they cast together into one com 
 mon heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken 
 
76 WALDEN 
 
 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 male 
 factors 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 pro- 
 
% ECONOMY 77 
 
 portion, 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 ex 
 perience 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 capi 
 tal it required, so little distraction from my wonted 
 moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances 
 went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I con 
 templated 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 
 villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even 
 to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned 
 that trade curses everything it handles ; and though you 
 trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade 
 attaches to the business. 
 
 As I preferred some things to others, and especially 
 valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed 
 well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich 
 
78 tfii^- WALDEN 
 
 ^% carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a 
 house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If 
 * Uhere are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire 
 \ these things, and who know how to use them when ac- 
 i|uired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are " in 
 dustrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, 
 or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; 
 to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who 
 would not know what to do with more leisure than they 
 now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they 
 do, work till they pay for themselves, and get their 
 free papers. For myself I found that the occupation 
 of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, es 
 pecially as it required only thirty or forty days in a 
 year to support one. The laborer s day ends with the 
 going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote 
 himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; 
 but his employer, who speculates from month to month, 
 has no respite from one end of the year to the other. 
 
 In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experi 
 ence, that to maintain one s self on this earth .is not a 
 hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; 
 as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports 
 of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man 
 should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless 
 he sweats easier than I do. 
 
 One young man of my acquaintance, who has in 
 herited some acres, told me that he thought he should 
 i live as I did, if he had the means. \L would not have any 
 "V* one adopt my mode of living on any account ; for, beside 
 \ that before he has fairly learned it I may have found 
 
ECONOMY 79 
 
 out another for myself, I desire that there may be as 
 many different persons in the world as possible; but I 
 would have each one be very careful to find out and 
 pursue his own way, and not his father s or his mother s 
 or his neighbor s instead. The youth may build or plant 
 or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that 
 which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathe 
 matical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the 
 fugitive slave keeps the p^lestar in his eye; but that is 
 sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive 
 at our port within a calculable period, but we would 
 preserve the true course. 
 
 Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer 
 still for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally 
 more expensive than a small one, since one roof may 
 cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several 
 apartments. But for my part, I preferred the solitary 
 dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to 
 build the whole yourself than to convince another of the 
 advantage of the common wall; and when you have 
 done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, 
 must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad 
 neighbor, and also not keep his side in repair. The only 
 cooperation which is commonly possible is exceedingly 
 partial and superficial ; and what little true cooperation 
 there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible 
 to men. If a man has faith, he will cooperate with equal 
 faith everywhere ; if he has not faith, he will continue to 
 live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is 
 joined to. To cooperate in the highest as well as the 
 lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard it 
 
80 WALDEN 
 
 proposed lately that two young men should travel to 
 gether over the world, the one without money, earn 
 ing his means as he went, before the mast and behind 
 the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his 
 pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be 
 companions or cooperate, since one would not operate 
 at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in 
 their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man ^ 
 who goes alone can start totday; but he who travels^ 
 with another must wait till that other is ready, and it _ 
 may be a long time before they get off, 
 
 >j But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my 
 my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged 
 r* A verv l^tle in philanthropic enterprises. I have made 
 ( |/\s me sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have 
 sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have 
 used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the sup 
 port of|Some poor family in the town ; and if I had no 
 thing to do for the devil finds employment for the idle 
 I might try my hand at some such pastime as that. 
 However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this 
 respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by 
 maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as com 
 fortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured 
 so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all 
 unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my 
 townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to 
 the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be 
 spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must 
 have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As 
 
ECONOMY SI 
 
 for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are 
 full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it 
 may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my 
 constitution. Probably I should not consciously and 
 deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good 
 which society demands of me, to save the universe from 
 annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely 
 greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves 
 it. But I would not stand between any man and his 
 genius ; and to him who does this work, which I decline, 
 with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say, 
 Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is 
 most likely mey will. 
 
 I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar 
 one ; no doubt many of my readers would make a simi 
 lar defence. At doing something, I will not engage 
 that my neighbors shall pronounce it good, I do not 
 hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; 
 but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What 
 good I do, in the common sense of that word, must be 
 aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly 
 unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are 
 and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become 
 of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about 
 doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I 
 should say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun 
 should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splen 
 dor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go 
 about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every cot 
 tage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and 
 making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his 
 
8fc WALDEN 
 
 genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness 
 that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and 
 in the meanwhile too, going about the world in his own 
 orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has 
 discovered, the world going about him getting good. 
 When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth by 
 his beneficence, had the sun s chariot but one day, and 
 drove out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks 
 of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the 
 surface of the earth, and dried up every spring, and made 
 the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled 
 him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the 
 sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year. 
 There is no odor so bad as that which arises from good 
 ness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew 
 for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with 
 the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for 
 my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the Afri 
 can deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and 
 nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, 
 for fear that I should get some of his good done to me, 
 some of its virus mingled with my blood. No, in 
 this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A 
 man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if 
 I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, 
 or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I 
 can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much. 
 Philanthropy is not love for one s fellow-man in the 
 broadest sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly 
 kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward; 
 but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred How- 
 
ECONOMY 83 
 
 ards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our 
 best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped ? I 
 never heard of a philanthropic meeting in which it was 
 sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like 
 of me. 
 
 The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, 
 being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of tor 
 ture to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suf 
 fering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to 
 any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and 
 the law to do as you would be done by fell with less per 
 suasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did 
 not care how they were done by, who loved their ene 
 mies after a new fashion, and came very near freely 
 forgiving them all they did. 
 
 Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, 
 though it be your example which leaves them far behind. 
 If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not 
 merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes 
 sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hun 
 gry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his 
 taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him 
 money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was 
 wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the 
 pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered 
 in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable gar 
 ments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into 
 the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw 
 him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stock 
 ings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty 
 and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford 
 
84 WALDEN 
 
 to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had 
 so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he 
 needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it 
 would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel 
 shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thou 
 sand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is strik 
 ing at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the 
 largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing 
 the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which 
 he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder 
 devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sun 
 day s liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to 
 the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would 
 they not be kinder if they employed themselves there ? 
 You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in 
 charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, 
 and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of 
 the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him 
 in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of 
 the officers of justice ? 
 
 Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is suf- 
 ficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly 
 overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. 
 A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, 
 praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, 
 he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind 
 uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than 
 its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a 
 reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and 
 intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, 
 and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Crom- 
 
ECONOMY S^ 
 
 well, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her 
 Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it 
 of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as 
 the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, 
 and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and 
 cant of this. The last were not England s best men and 
 women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists. 
 
 I would not subtract anything from the praise that 
 is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for 
 all who by their lives and works are a blessing to man 
 kind. I do not value chiefly a man s uprightness and 
 benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. 
 Those plants of whose greenness withered we make 
 herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are 
 most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit 
 of a man ; that some fragrance be wafted over from him 
 to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His 
 goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but 
 a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of 
 which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a 
 multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often sur 
 rounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- 
 off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We 
 should impart our courage, and not our despair, our 
 health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that 
 this does not spread by^contagion. From what southern 
 plains comes up the voice of wailing ? Under what lati 
 tudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light ? 
 Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would 
 redeem ? If anything ail a man, so that he does not per 
 form his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even, 
 
S4 WALDEN 
 
 for that is the seat of sympathy, he forthwith sets 
 about reforming the world. Being a microcosm him 
 self, he discovers and it is a true discovery, and he 
 is the man to make it that the world has been eat 
 ing green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is 
 a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think 
 of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe ; 
 and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the 
 Esquimau and the Patagonian, and embraces the popu 
 lous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few 
 years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the mean 
 while using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures 
 himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush 
 on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to 
 be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet 
 and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enor 
 mity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and 
 never shall know, a worse man than myself. UJL/a ; 
 
 I believe that what so saddens the reformer is nofhis 
 sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be 
 the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be 
 righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise 
 over his couch, and he will forsake his generous com 
 panions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing 
 against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, 
 that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have 
 to pay; though there are thingsTpough I have chewed 
 which I could lecture against. If you should ever be 
 betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your 
 left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not 
 worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe- 
 
ECONOMY 87 
 
 strings. Take your time, and set about some free 
 labor. 
 
 Our manners have been corrupted by communication 
 with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a me 
 lodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever. One 
 would say that even the prophets and redeemers had 
 rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of 
 man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressi 
 ble satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable 
 praise of God. All health and success does me good, 
 however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all dis 
 ease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, 
 however much sympathy it may have with me or I with 
 it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly 
 Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first 
 be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the 
 clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a 
 little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer 
 of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies 
 of the world. 
 
 I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik 
 Sadi of Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying: 
 Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God 
 has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none jizad, 
 or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; 
 what mystery is there in this ? He replied : Each has 
 its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during 
 the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and 
 during their absence dry and withered; to neither of 
 which states is the cypress exposed, being always flour 
 ishing ; and of this nature are the azads, or religious 
 
88 WALDEN 
 
 independents. Fix not thy heart on that which is tran 
 sitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow 
 through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct : if 
 thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree ; but if it 
 affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, 
 like the cypress." 
 
COMPLEMENTAL VERSES 
 
 THE PRETENSIONS OF POVERTY 
 
 Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, 
 
 To claim a station in the firmament 
 
 Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, 
 
 Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue 
 
 In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, 
 
 With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand, 
 
 Tearing those humane passions from the mind, 
 
 Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, 
 
 Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, 
 
 And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. 
 
 We not require the dull society 
 
 Of your necessitated temperance, 
 
 Or that unnatural stupidity 
 
 That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc d 
 
 Falsely exalted passive fortitude 
 
 Above the active. This low abject brood, 
 
 That fix their seats in mediocrity, 
 
 Become your servile minds; but we advance 
 
 Such virtues only as admit excess, 
 
 Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, 
 
 All-seeing prudence, magnanimity 
 
 That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue 
 
 For which antiquity hath left no name, 
 
 But patterns only, such as Hercules, 
 
 Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath d cell; 
 
 And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, 
 
 Study to know but what those worthies were. 
 
 T. CABEW 
 
II 
 
 WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED 
 FOR 
 
 AT a certain season of our life we are accustomed to 
 consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I 
 have thus surveyed the country on every side within a 
 dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought 
 all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and 
 I knew their price. I walked over each farmer s prem 
 ises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry 
 with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mort 
 gaging it to him in my mind ; even put a higher price on 
 it, took everything but a jleed of it, took his word 
 for his deed, for I dearly love to talk, cultivated it, 
 and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when 
 I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. 
 This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of 
 real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there 
 I might live, and the landscape radiated from me ac 
 cordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat ? better 
 if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house 
 not likely to be soon improved, which some might have 
 thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the vil 
 lage was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said ; 
 and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter 
 life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the 
 
WHERE I LIVED 91 
 
 winter through, and see the spring come in. The future 
 inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place 
 their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. 
 An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, 
 wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or 
 pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence 
 each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; 
 and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, If or a man is 
 rich in proportion to the number of things which he can 
 afford to let aloneT] a *ttv*t^-L4~ "/ 
 
 My imagination carried me so far that I even had the 
 refusal of several farms, the refusal was all I wanted, 
 but I never got my fingers burned by actual posses 
 sion. The nearest that I came to actual possession was 
 when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to 
 sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to 
 make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but be 
 fore the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife every 
 man has such a wife changed her mind and wished 
 to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. 
 Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, 
 and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man 
 who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or 
 all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and 
 the farm too, for I had carried it far enough ; or rather, 
 to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave 
 for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a pre 
 sent of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, 
 and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that 
 I had been a rich man without any damage to my pov 
 erty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since 
 
92 WALDEN 
 
 annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbar 
 row. With respect to landscapes, 
 
 "I am monarch of all I survey, 
 My right there is none to dispute." 
 
 I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having en 
 joyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty 
 farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. 
 Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a 
 poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind 
 of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, 
 skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer 
 only the skimmed milk. 
 
 The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, 
 were: its complete retirement, being about two miles 
 from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, 
 and separated from the highway by a broad field; its 
 bounding on the river, which the owner said protected 
 it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was 
 nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the 
 house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put 
 such an interval between me and the last occupant; the 
 hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rab 
 bits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have ; but 
 above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest 
 voyages up the river, when the house was concealed be 
 hind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard 
 the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the 
 proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down 
 the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young 
 birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, 
 had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy 
 
WHERE I LIVED 95 
 
 these advantages I was ready to carry it on ; like Atlas, 
 to take the world on my shoulders, I never heard 
 what compensation he received for that, and do all 
 those things which hajl no other motive or excuse but 
 that I might pay for it and be unmolested^ in my pos 
 session of it ; for I knew all the while that it would yield 
 the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could 
 only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have 
 said. 
 
 All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on 
 a large scale I have always cultivated a garden was, 
 that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds 
 improve with age. I have no doubt that time discrimi 
 nates between the good and the bad ; and when at last I 
 shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I 
 would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible 
 live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference 
 whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. 
 
 Old Cato, whose " De Re Rustica " is my " Cultivator," 
 says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer 
 nonsense of the passage, " When you think of getting 
 a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; 
 nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think 
 it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there 
 the more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall 
 not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I 
 live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the 
 more at last. 
 
 The present was my next experiment of this kind, 
 which I purpose to describe more at length, for con- 
 
2 WALDEN 
 
 venience putting the experience of two years into one. 
 As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to 
 dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the 
 morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my 
 neighbors up. 
 
 When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, 
 began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, 
 by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth 
 of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but 
 was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering 
 or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained 
 boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. 
 The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door 
 and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, es 
 pecially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated 
 with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum 
 would exude from them. To my imagination it retained 
 throughout the day more or less of this auroral charac 
 ter, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain 
 which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and 
 unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and 
 where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds 
 which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over 
 the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or 
 celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning 
 wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninter 
 rupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is 
 but the outside of the earth everywhere. 
 
 The only house I had been the owner of before, if I 
 except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally 
 when making excursions in the summer, and this is still 
 
WHERE I LIVED 95 
 
 rolled up in my garret ; but the boat, after passing from 
 hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With 
 this more substantial shelter about me, I had made 
 some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, 
 so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, 
 and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive some 
 what as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go out 
 doors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost 
 none of its freshness. It was not so much within -doors 
 as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. 
 The Harivansa says, " An abode without birds is like a 
 meat without seasoning." Such was not my abode, for 
 I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds ; not by 
 having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near 
 them. I was not only nearer to some of those which 
 commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to 
 those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest 
 which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, the wood 
 thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, 
 the whip-poor-will, and many others. 
 
 I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a 
 mile and a half south of the village of Concord and 
 somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive 
 wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two 
 miles south of that our only field known to fame, Con 
 cord Battle Ground ; but I was so low in the woods that 
 the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered 
 with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first 
 week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed 
 me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its 
 bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the 
 
96 WALDEN 
 
 sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of 
 mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or 
 its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the 
 mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every 
 direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some 
 nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang 
 upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the 
 sides of mountains. 
 
 This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in 
 the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in August, when, 
 both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky over 
 cast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and 
 the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore 
 to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such 
 a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being 
 shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light 
 and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much 
 the more important. From a hill-top near by, where the 
 wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing 
 vista southward across the pond, through a wide inden 
 tation in the hills which form the shore there, where 
 their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested 
 a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded 
 valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked 1 "* 
 between and over the near green hills to some distant 
 and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. In 
 deed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse 
 of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more dis 
 tant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue 
 coins from heaven s own mint, and also of some portion 
 of the village. But in other directions, even from this 
 
WHER3 I LIVED 97 
 
 point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which 
 surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your 
 neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. 
 One value even of the smallest well is, that when you 
 look into it you see that earth is not continent but in 
 sular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. 
 When I looked across the pond from this peak toward 
 the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I dis- 
 
 tinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seeth 
 ing valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond 
 the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated 
 even by this small sheet of intervening water, and I was 
 reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land. 
 
 Though the view from my door was still more con 
 tracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. 
 
 | There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low 
 shrub oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose 
 stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the 
 steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the 
 roving families of men. " There are none happy in the 
 world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon," 
 said Damodara, when his herds required new and 
 larger pastures. 
 
 Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer 
 to those parts of the universe and to those eras in his 
 tory which had most attracted me. Whore I lived was 
 as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astro 
 nomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable 
 places in some remote and more celestial corner of the 
 system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia s Chair, 
 far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my 
 
08 WALDEN 
 
 house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but for 
 ever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it 
 were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the 
 Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then 
 I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the 
 life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with 
 as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only 
 in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of crea 
 tion where I had squatted ; 
 
 "There was a shepherd that did live, 
 
 And held his thoughts as high 
 As were the mounts whereon his flocks 
 Did hourly feed him by." 
 
 What should we think of the shepherd s life if his flocks 
 always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts ? 
 Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make 
 my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, 
 with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper 
 of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in 
 the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the 
 best things which I did. They say that characters were 
 engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to 
 this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do 
 it again, and again, and forever again." I can under 
 stand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was 
 as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito mak 
 ing its invisible and unimaginable tour through my 
 apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door 
 and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that 
 ever sang of fame. It was Homer s requiem; itself an 
 Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and 
 

 WHAT I LIVED FOR 99 
 
 wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; 
 a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlast 
 ing vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, 
 which is the most memorable season of the day, is the 
 awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us ; 
 and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which 
 slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to 
 be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to 
 which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the 
 mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened 
 by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from 
 within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial 
 music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling 
 the air to a higher life than we fell asleep from ; and 
 thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be 
 good, no less than the light. That man who does not 
 believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, 
 and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has de 
 spaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and dark 
 ening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous 
 life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvig- 
 orated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble 
 life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, 
 transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. 
 The Vedas say, " All intelligences awake with the morn 
 ing." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most mem 
 orable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. 
 All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of 
 Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose 
 elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, 
 the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the 
 
WALDEN 
 
 clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning 
 is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral 
 reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that 
 men give so poor an account of their day if they have 
 not been slumbering ? They are not such poor calcula 
 tors. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, 
 they would have performed something. The millions 
 are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a 
 million is awake enough for effective intellectual exer 
 tion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine 
 life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a 
 man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him 
 in the face ? 
 
 We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves 
 awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite ex 
 pectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our 
 soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact 
 than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his 
 life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able 
 to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and 
 so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more 
 glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and 
 medium through which we look, which morally we can 
 do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest 
 of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its 
 details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated 
 and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, 
 such paltry information as we get, the oracles would 
 jf distinctly inform us how this might be done. 
 if t I went to the woods because I wished to live delib- 
 I erately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see 
 
 v 
 
WHAT I LIVED FOR/ 
 
 if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when 
 I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not] 
 wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did\ 
 I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite neces- I 
 sary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow 1 
 of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to 
 rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave 
 close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its 
 lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then 
 to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and pub 
 lish its meanness to the world ; or if it were sublime, to 
 know it by experience, and be able to give a true ac 
 count of it in my next excursion. For most men, it ap 
 pears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, 
 whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat 
 hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here 
 to "glorify God and enjoy him forever." 
 
 Still we live meanly, like ants ; though the fable tells 
 us that we were long ago changed into men; like pyg 
 mies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and 
 clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion 
 a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is 
 frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly 
 need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme 
 cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. _Sim=- 
 plioity^simplicitY^ simpliqjy! I say, let your affairs be 
 as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand ; in 
 stead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your 
 accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chop 
 ping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms 
 and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be al- 
 
WALDEN 
 
 lowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder 
 and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by 
 dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed 
 succeeds. ^jPplifyn s"nplify. Instead of three 
 meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one ; instead of a 
 hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in pro 
 portion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made 
 up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, 
 so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded 
 at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called 
 internal improvements, which, by the way are all ex 
 ternal and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and 
 overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and 
 tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heed 
 less expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, 
 as the million households in the land ; and the only cure 
 for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more 
 than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. 
 It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the 
 Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through 
 a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a 
 doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should 
 live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we 
 do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days 
 and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our 
 lives to improve them, who will build railroads ? And 
 if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in 
 season ? But if we stay at home and mind our business, 
 who will want railroads ? We do not ride on the railroad ; 
 it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers 
 are that underlie the railroad ? Each one is a man, an 
 
WHAT I LIVED FOR 
 
 
 Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on tem^ 
 and they are covered with sand, and the cars rua~ 
 smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure 
 you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and 
 run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding 
 on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. 
 And when they run over a man that is walking in his 
 sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, 
 and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and 
 make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an excep 
 tion. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for 
 every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in 
 their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may some 
 time get up again. 
 
 Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life ? 
 We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. 
 Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they 
 take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. 
 As for work, we have n t any of any consequence. We 
 have the Saint Vitus dance, and cannot possibly keep 
 our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the 
 parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the 
 bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts 
 of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements, 
 which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor 
 a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would for 
 sake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save pro 
 perty from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, 
 much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, 
 be it known, did not set it on fire, or to see it put out, 
 and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; 
 
>\ . WALDEN 
 
 yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a 
 man takes a half -hour s nap after dinner, but when he 
 wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What s the 
 news ? " as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. 
 Some give directions to be waked every half -hour, doubt 
 less for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they 
 tell what they have dreamed. After a night s sleep the 
 news is as indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell 
 me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere 
 on this globe," and he reads it over his coffee and 
 rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morn 
 ing on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while 
 that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of 
 this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself. 
 For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. 
 I think that there are very few important communica 
 tions made through it. To speak critically, I never re 
 ceived more than one or two letters in my life I wrote 
 this some years ago that were worth the postage. 
 The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through 
 which you seriously offer a man that penny for his 
 thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I 
 am sure that I never read any memorable news in a 
 newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, 
 or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one ves 
 sel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow 
 run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog 
 killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, we 
 never need read of another. One is enough. If you are 
 acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a 
 myriad instances and applications ? To a philosopher all 
 
WHAT I LIVED FOR 105 
 
 
 
 news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and 
 read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are 
 greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I 
 hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the 
 foreign news by the last arrival, that several large 
 squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment 
 were broken by the pressure, news which I seriously 
 think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth, or twelve 
 years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for 
 Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don 
 Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and 
 Granada, from time to time in the right proportions, 
 they may have changed the names a little since I 
 saw the papers, and serve up a bull-fight when other 
 entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give 
 us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in 
 Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this 
 head in the newspapers : and as for England, almost the 
 last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the 
 revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history 
 of her crops for an average year, you never need attend 
 to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a 
 merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who 
 rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does 
 ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not 
 excepted. 
 
 What news ! how much more important to know what 
 that is which was never old ! " Kieou-he-yu (great dig 
 nitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to 
 know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to 
 be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: 
 
106 WALDEN 
 
 What is your master doing ? The messenger answered 
 with respect: My master desires to diminish the num 
 ber of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. 
 The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: 
 What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messen 
 ger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of 
 drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the 
 week, for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent 
 week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new 
 one, with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, 
 should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! 
 Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow ? " 
 
 Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest 
 truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily 
 observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be 
 deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we 
 know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights 
 Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevi 
 table and has a right to be, music and poetry would re 
 sound along the streets. When we are unhurried and 
 wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things 
 have any permanent and absolute existence, that 
 petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of 
 the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. 
 By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to 
 be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm theii 
 daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still 
 is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who 
 play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly 
 than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think 
 that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I 
 
have read in a Hindoo book, that "there was a king s 
 son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native 
 city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to 
 maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to 
 the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his 
 father s ministers having discovered him, revealed to 
 him what he was, and the misconception of his character 
 was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So 
 soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the 
 circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its 
 character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy 
 teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme." I per- 
 ceive that we inhabitants of New England live_ 
 mean life *hat w^ d^ b^ qi T CA ir vin^n H^OT n o t pne- 
 trate the surface of things^. We thinkjhat that is which- 
 appears to be. Jf a man should walk through this town 
 and see only the reality, where, think you, would the 
 " Mill-dam " go to ? If he should give us an account of 
 the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize 
 the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or 
 a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, 
 and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and 
 they would all go to pieces in your account of them. 
 Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the sys 
 tem, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after 
 the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true 
 and sublime. But all these times and places and occa 
 sions are now and here. God himself culminates in the 
 present moment, and will never be more divine in the 
 lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend 
 at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual 
 
108 }f 
 
 instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds 
 us. The universe constantly and obediently answers 
 to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the 
 track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives irf conceiving 
 then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and 
 noble a design* but some of his posterity at least could 
 accomplish it. 
 
 Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and 
 not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mos 
 quito s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early 
 and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation ; 
 let company come and let company go, let the bells ring 
 and the children cry, determined to make a day of 
 it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream ? 
 Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible 
 rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the 
 meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are 
 safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unre- 
 laxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking an 
 other way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine 
 whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If 
 the bell rings, why should we run ? We will consider 
 what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, 
 and work and wedge our feet downward through the 
 mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, 
 and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which 
 covers the globe, through Paris and London, through 
 New York and Boston and Concord, through Church 
 and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, 
 till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which 
 we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake ; and 
 
WHAT I LIVEI},FO. (jOl 
 
 then begin, having a point d appui, below freshet and 
 frost and fire, a place where you might found a w r all 
 or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, 
 not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages 
 might know how deep a freshet of shams and appear 
 ances had gathered from time to time. If you stand 
 right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see 
 the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a 
 cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through 
 the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude 
 your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave o^ly^ 
 reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in 
 our throats and feel cold in the extremities ; if we are 
 
 ive, let us go about our business. 
 
 J]i|ae jsjmt the stream^goj^fishiag in. I drink at it"N 
 but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect/ 
 how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but( 
 eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the\ 
 sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot coujitX 
 one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have 
 always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day 
 I was born^ The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and 
 rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to 
 be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My 
 head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties con 
 centrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an 
 organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout 
 and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow 
 my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein 
 is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and 
 thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine. 
 
Ill 
 
 READING 
 
 WITH a little more deliberation in the choice of their 
 pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially 
 students and observers, for certainly their nature and 
 destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating 
 property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a 
 family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal ; 
 but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need 
 fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or 
 Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the 
 statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe re 
 mains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he 
 did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it 
 is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has 
 settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that 
 divinity was revealed. That time which we really im 
 prove, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, 
 nor future. 
 
 My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, 
 but to serious reading, than a university ; and though I 
 was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, 
 I had more than ever come within the influence of those 
 books which circulate round the world, whose sentences 
 were first written on bark, and are now merely copied 
 from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mir 
 
READING 111 
 
 Camar Uddin Mast, "Being seated, to run through the 
 region of the spiritual world ; I have had this advantage 
 in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine ; I 
 have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the 
 liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer s Iliad 
 on my table through the summer, though I looked at 
 his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my 
 hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my 
 beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impos 
 sible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such 
 reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of 
 travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment 
 made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was 
 then that / lived. 
 
 The student may read Homer or JSschylus in the 
 Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, 
 for it implies that he in some measure emulate their 
 heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. 
 The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our 
 mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to 
 degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the 
 meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger 
 sense than common use permits out of what wisdom 
 and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap~"\ 
 and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little / 
 to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity*- 
 They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are 
 printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the 
 expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn 
 only some words of an ancient language, which are 
 raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual 
 
WALDEN 
 
 suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the 
 farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words 
 which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the 
 study of the classics would at length make way for more 
 modern and practical studies; but the adventurous 
 student will always study classics, in whatever language 
 they may be written and however ancient they may be. 
 Fjor_w]iai_jy-e_JJ^ jecordexL 
 
 thoughts joLmau^ They are the only oracles which are 
 not decayed, and there are such answers to the most 
 modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never 
 gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because 
 she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in 
 a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task 
 the reader more than any exercise which the customs of 
 the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes 
 underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life 
 to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and 
 reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even 
 to be able to speak the language of that nation by which 
 they are written, for there is a memorable interval be 
 tween the spoken and the written language, the lan 
 guage heard and the language read. The one is com 
 monly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, 
 almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the 
 brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and 
 Experience of that ; if that is our mother tongue, this is 
 our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too 
 significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be 
 born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who 
 merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Mid- 
 
READING 113 
 
 die Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to 
 read the works of genius written in those languages; 
 for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which 
 they knew, but in the select language of literature. They 
 had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, 
 but the very materials on which they were written were 
 waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap 
 contemporary literature. But when the several nations 
 of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written 
 languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of 
 their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and 
 scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness 
 the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian 
 multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few 
 scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it. 
 However much we may admire the orator s occasional 
 bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are com 
 monly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken lan 
 guage as the firmament with its stars is behind the 
 clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read 
 them. The astronomers forever comment on and ob 
 serve them. They are not exhalations like our daily 
 colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called elo 
 quence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric 
 in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a 
 transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, 
 to those who can hear him ; but the writer, whose more 
 equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted 
 by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, 
 speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in 
 any age who can understand him. 
 
114 WALDEN 
 
 No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him 
 on his expeditions in a precious casket .^A written word 
 is the choicest of relics.^ It is something at once more 
 intimate with us and more universal than any other 
 work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It 
 may be translated into every language, and not only be 
 read but actually breathed from all human lips ; not 
 be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be 
 
 /"carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an! 
 
 \_ancient man s thought becomes a modern man s speech. 
 Two thousand summers have imparted to the monu 
 ments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a 
 maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have car 
 ried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all 
 lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. 
 Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit 
 inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the old 
 est and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the 
 shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their 
 own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the 
 reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their 
 authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in 
 every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert 
 an influence on mankindj When the illiterate and per 
 haps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and in 
 dustry his coveted leisure and independence, and is 
 admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns 
 inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessi 
 ble circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of 
 the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and in 
 sufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good 
 
READING 115 
 
 sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his chil 
 dren that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly 
 feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a 
 family. 
 
 Those who have not learned to read the ancient 
 classics in the language in which they were written must 
 have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the 
 human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of 
 them has ever been made into any modern tongue, 
 unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a 
 transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in Eng 
 lish, nor ^schylus, nor Virgil even, works as refined, 
 as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning 
 itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, 
 have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and 
 finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the 
 ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never 
 knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when 
 we have the learning and the genius which will enable 
 us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be 
 rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, 
 and the still older and more than classic but even less 
 known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further 
 accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with 
 Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and 
 Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come 
 shall have successively deposited their trophies in the 
 forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to 
 scale heaven at last. 
 
 The works of the great poets have never yet been 
 read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. 
 
116 WALDEN 
 
 They have only been read as the multitude read the 
 stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most 
 men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, 
 as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts 
 and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble 
 intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet 
 this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls 
 us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep 
 the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read 
 and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to. 
 
 I think that having learned our letters we should read 
 the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeat 
 ing our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth 
 or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form 
 all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear 
 read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom 
 of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their 
 lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is 
 called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes 
 in our Circulating Library entitled " Little Reading," 
 which I thought referred to a town of that name which 
 I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants 
 and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the 
 fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer 
 nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to 
 provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. 
 They read the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and 
 Sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved 
 before, and neither did the course of their true love run 
 smooth, at any rate, how it did run and stumble, 
 and get up again and go on ! how some poor unfortunate 
 
READING 117 
 
 got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone 
 up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got 
 him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the 
 world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did 
 get down again ! For my part, I think that they had bet 
 ter metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal 
 noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put 
 heroes among the constellations, and let them swing 
 round there till they are rusty, and not come down at 
 all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next 
 time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the 
 meeting-house burn down. " The Skip of the Tip-Toe- 
 Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated 
 author of Tittle-Tol-Tan, to appear in monthly parts; 
 a great rush; don t all come together." All this they 
 read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, 
 and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even 
 yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old 
 bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella, 
 without any improvement, that I can see, in the pro 
 nunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill 
 in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dul- 
 ness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and 
 a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intel 
 lectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked 
 daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and- 
 Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market, v 
 
 The best books are not read even by those who are 
 called good readers. What does our Concord culture < 
 amount to ? There is in this town, with a very few ex- v. 
 ceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books 
 
118 WALDEN 
 
 even in English literature, whose words all can read and 
 spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberally 
 educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no 
 acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the 
 recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and 
 Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of 
 them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to 
 become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, 
 of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news 
 as he says, for he is above that, but to " keep himself in 
 practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I 
 ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in 
 this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to 
 his English. This is about as much as the college-bred 
 generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English 
 paper for the purpose. One who has just come from 
 reading perhaps one of the best English books will find 
 how many with whom he can converse about it ? Or 
 suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic 
 in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the 
 so-called illiterate ; he will find nobody at all to speak to, 
 but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly 
 the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered 
 the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mas 
 tered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek 
 poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and 
 heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or 
 Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even 
 their titles ? Most men do not know that any nation but 
 the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, 
 will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver 
 
READING 119 
 
 dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men 
 of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of 
 every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we 
 learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers 
 and class-books, and when we leave school, the " Little 
 Reading," and story-books, which are for boys and be 
 ginners; and our reading, our conversation and think 
 ing, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies 
 and manikins. 
 
 I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this 
 our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly 
 known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and 
 never read his book ? As if Plato were my townsman 
 and I never saw him, my next neighbor and I never 
 heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. 
 But how actually is it ? His Dialogues, which contain 
 what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and 
 yet I never read them. We are underbred and low 
 lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do 
 not make any very broad distinction between the illiter- 
 ateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the 
 illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what 
 is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as 
 good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first ! , 
 knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, 
 and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than 
 the columns of the daily paper. 
 
 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers) 
 There are probably words addressed to our condition 
 exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, 
 would be more salutary than the morning or the spring 
 
 \ 
 
120 WALDEN 
 
 to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face 
 of things for us. How many a man has dated a new 
 era in his life from the reading of a book! The book 
 exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles 
 and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things 
 we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions 
 that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their 
 turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been 
 omitted; and each has answered them, according to his 
 ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wis 
 dom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired man 
 on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his 
 second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is 
 driven as he believes into silent gravity and exclusive- 
 ness by his faith, may think it is not true ; but Zoroaster, 
 thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and 
 had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it 
 to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, 
 and is even said to have invented and established wor 
 ship among men. Let him humbly commune with 
 Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence 
 of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let 
 " our church " go by the board. 
 
 We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century 
 and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. 
 But consider how little this village does for its own cul 
 ture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be 
 flattered by them, for that will not advance either of 
 us. We need to be provoked, goaded like oxen, as 
 we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent 
 system of common schools, schools for infants only; but 
 
READING 121 
 
 excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and 
 latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by 
 the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on 
 almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on 
 our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon 
 schools, that we did not leave off our education when 
 we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages 
 were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows 
 of universities, with leisure if they are, indeed, so well 
 off to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. 
 Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford 
 forever? Cannot students jjJ^boarded here and get a 
 liberal education under the sides of Concord ? Can we 
 not hire some Abelard to lecture to us ? Alas ! what with 
 foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept 
 from school too long, and our education is sadly neg 
 lected. In this country, the village should in some re 
 spects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It 
 should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. 
 It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can 
 spend money enough on such things as farmers and 
 traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spend 
 ing money for things which more intelligent men know 
 to be of far more worth.; This town has spent seventeen 
 thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or 
 politics, but probably it will not spend so much on liv 
 ing wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred 
 years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars an 
 nually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better 
 spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we 
 live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy 
 
122 WALDEN 
 
 the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers ? 
 Why should our life be in any respect provincial ? If we 
 will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston 
 and take the best newspaper in the world at once ? not 
 be sucking the pap of " neutral family " papers, or brows 
 ing "Olive-Branches" here in New England. Let^the 
 reports of all the learned societies come to us, ana we 
 will see if they know anything. Why should we leave 
 it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select 
 our reading ? As the nobleman of cultivated taste sur 
 rounds himself with what^er conduces to his culture, 
 genius learning w^ books paintings stat 
 uary music philosophical instruments, and the like; 
 so let the village do, not stop short at a pedagogue, 
 a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three select 
 men, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold 
 winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act col 
 lectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; 
 and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more 
 flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman s. 
 New England can hire all the wise men in the world to 
 come and teach her, and board them round the while, 
 and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon 
 school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble 
 villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over 
 the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch 
 at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which sur 
 rounds us. 
 
IV 
 SOUNDS 
 
 Bur while we are confined to books, though the most 
 select and classic, and read only particular written lan 
 guages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, 
 we are in danger of forgetting the language which all 
 things and events speak without metaphor, which alone 
 is copious and standard. Much is published, but little 
 printed. The rays which stream through the shutter 
 will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly 
 removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the 
 necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course 
 of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well 
 selected, or the best society, or the most admirable 
 routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking 
 always at what is to be seen ? Will you be a reader, 
 a student merely, or a seer ? Read your fate, see what is 
 before you, and walk on into futurity. 
 
 I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. 
 Nay, I often did better than this. There were times 
 when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the 
 present moment to any work, whether of the head or 
 hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, 
 in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed 
 bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, 
 rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and 
 
124 WALDEN 
 
 sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while 
 the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the 
 house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, 
 or the noise of some traveller s wagon on the distant 
 highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew 
 in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were 
 far better than any work of the hands would have been. 
 They were not time subtracted from my life, but so 
 much over and above my usual allowance. I realized 
 what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the 
 forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not 
 how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light 
 some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is 
 evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. 
 Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my 
 incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, 
 sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my 
 chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out 
 of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bear 
 ing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they 
 minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; 
 for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that 
 "for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only 
 one word, and they express the variety of meaning by 
 pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-mor 
 row, and overhead for the passing day." This was 
 sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but 
 if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, 
 I should not have been found wanting. A man must 
 find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day 
 is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. 
 
SOUNDS 125 
 
 I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, 
 over those who were obliged to look abroad for amuse 
 ment, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was 
 become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. 
 It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If 
 we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulat 
 ing our lives according to the last and best mode we 
 had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. 
 Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail 
 to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework 
 was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose 
 early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the 
 grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed 
 water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the 
 pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean 
 and white;" and by the time the villagers had broken 
 their fast the morning sun had dried my house suffi 
 ciently to allow me to move in again, and my medita 
 tions were almost uninterrupted. It was pleasant to see 
 my whole household effects out on the grass, making a 
 little pile like a gypsy s pack, and my three-legged table, 
 from which I did not remove the books and pen and 
 ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They 
 seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling 
 to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch 
 an awning over them and take my seat there. It was 
 worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and 
 hear the free wind blow on them ; so much more inter 
 esting most familiar objects look out of doors than in 
 the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting 
 grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round 
 
126 WALDEN 
 
 its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry 
 leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the 
 way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, 
 to tables, chairs, and bedsteads, because they once 
 stood in their midst. 
 
 My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on 
 the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young 
 forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen 
 rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led 
 down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, 
 blackberry, and life-everlasting, Johns wort and golden- 
 rod, shrub oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and ground 
 nut. Near the end of May, the sand cherry (Cerasus 
 pumila) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate 
 flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short 
 stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good- 
 sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like 
 rays on every side. I tasted them out of compliment 
 to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The 
 sumach (Rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the 
 house, pushing up through the embankment which I 
 had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. 
 Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though 
 strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing 
 out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed 
 to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into 
 graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; 
 and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly 
 did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh 
 and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, 
 when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off 
 
SOUNDS 127 
 
 by its own weight. In August, the large masses of ber 
 ries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild 
 bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson 
 hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the 
 tender limbs. 
 
 As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks 
 are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild 
 pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my view, or 
 perching restless on the white pine boughs behind my 
 house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk dimples the 
 glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish ; a mink 
 steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog 
 by the shore ; the sedge is bending under the weight of 
 the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the 
 last half -hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, 
 now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a 
 partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the coun 
 try. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy 
 who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part 
 of the town, but ere long ran away and came home 
 again, quite down at the heel and homesick. He had 
 never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the 
 folks were all gone off; why, you could n t even hear 
 the whistle ! I doubt if there is such a place in Massa 
 chusetts now : 
 
 "In truth, ^our village has become a butt 
 For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o er 
 Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is Concord." 
 
 The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a 
 hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the 
 
128 WALDEN 
 
 village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to 
 society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who 
 go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an 
 old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently 
 they take me for an employee ; and so I am. I too would 
 fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the 
 earth. 
 
 The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods 
 summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk 
 sailing over some farmer s yard, informing me that many 
 restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of 
 the town, or adventurous country traders from the other 
 side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their 
 warning to get off the track to the other, heard some 
 times through the circles of two towns. Here come your 
 groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is 
 there any man so independent on his farm that he can 
 say them nay. And here 5 s your pay for them ! screams 
 the countryman s whistle; timber like long battering- 
 rams going twenty miles an hour against the city s walls, 
 and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden 
 that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering 
 civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the In 
 dian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry 
 meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, 
 down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down 
 goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes 
 the wit that writes them. 
 
 When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving 
 off with planetary motion, or, rather, like a comet, for 
 the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that 
 
SOUNDS 129 
 
 direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit 
 does not look like a returning curve, with its steam 
 cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and 
 silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have 
 seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the 
 light, as if this travelling demigod, this cloud-com 
 peller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery 
 of his train ; when I hear the iron horse make the hills 
 echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with 
 his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils 
 (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put 
 into the new Mythology I don t know), it seems as if 
 the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all 
 were as it seems, and men made the elements their 
 servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over 
 the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as 
 beneficent as that which floats over the farmer s fields, 
 then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully 
 accompany men on their errands and be their escort. 
 
 I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same 
 feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly 
 more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far be 
 hind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while 
 the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a 
 minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a ce 
 lestial train beside which the petty train of cars which 
 hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler 
 of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the 
 light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and har 
 ness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to 
 put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the enter- 
 
130 WALDEN 
 
 prise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow lies 
 deep, they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant 
 plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the sea 
 board, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, 
 sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise 
 in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over 
 the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and 
 I am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at mid 
 night, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts 
 the elements incased in ice and snow ; and he will reach 
 his stall only with the morning star, to start once more 
 on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at 
 evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the super 
 fluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves 
 and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slum 
 ber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding 
 as it is protracted and unwearied! 
 
 Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of 
 towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, 
 in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without 
 the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stop 
 ping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, 
 where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal 
 Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and ar 
 rivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. 
 They go and come with such regularity and precision, 
 and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers 
 set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted 
 institution regulates a whole country. Have not men 
 improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad 
 was invented ? Do they not talk and think faster in the 
 

 SOUNDS 131 
 
 depot than they did in the stage-office ? There is some 
 thing electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. 
 I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; 
 that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophe 
 sied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt 
 a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do 
 things " railroad fashion " is now the byword ; and it is 
 worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely 
 by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping 
 to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, 
 in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, 
 that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your 
 engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and 
 minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points 
 of the compass ; yet it interferes with no man s business, 
 and the children go to school on the other track. We live 
 the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons 
 of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but 
 your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, 
 then. 
 
 What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise 
 and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to 
 Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their busi 
 ness with more or less courage and content, doing more 
 even than they suspect, and perchance better employed 
 than they could have consciously devised. I am less 
 affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour 
 in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and 
 cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow 
 for their winter quarters; who have not merely the 
 three-o -clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte 
 
132 WALDEN 
 
 thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go 
 to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm 
 sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On 
 this morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is 
 still raging and chilling men s blood, I hear the muffled 
 tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their 
 chilled breath, which announces that the cars are com 
 ing, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a 
 New England northeast snow-storm, and I behold the 
 plowmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peer 
 ing above the mould-board which is turning down other 
 than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders 
 of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in 
 the universe. 
 
 Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, 
 adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its 
 methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enter 
 prises and sentimental experiments, and hence its sin 
 gular success. I am refreshed and expanded when the 
 freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which 
 go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf 
 to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of 
 coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and 
 the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the 
 world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so 
 many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the 
 Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny 
 bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn 
 sails is more legible and interesting now than if they 
 should be wrought into paper and printed books. Who 
 can write so graphically the history of the storms they 
 
SOUNDS 133 
 
 have weathered as these rents have done? They are 
 proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lum 
 ber from the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea 
 in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand be 
 cause of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, 
 cedar, first, second, third, and fourth qualities, so 
 lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and 
 moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a 
 prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it 
 gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and quali 
 ties, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen de 
 scend, the final result of dress, of patterns which are 
 now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukee, as 
 those splendid articles, English, French, or American 
 prints, ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quar 
 ters both of fashion and poverty, going to become paper 
 of one color or a few shades only, on which, forsooth, will 
 be written tales of real life, high and low, and founded 
 on fact! This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong 
 New England and commercial scent, reminding me of 
 the Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen 
 a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that no 
 thing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the 
 saints to the blush ? with which you may sweep or pave 
 the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster 
 shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and 
 rain behind it, and the trader, as a Concord trader 
 once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he com 
 mences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot 
 tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, 
 and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be 
 
134 WALDEN 
 
 put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun- 
 fish for a Saturday s dinner. Next Spanish hides, with 
 the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of ele 
 vation they had when the oxen that wore them were 
 careering over the pampas of the Spanish Main, a type 
 of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and 
 incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess, that 
 practically speaking, when I have learned a man s real 
 disposition, I" have no hopes of changing it for the better 
 or worse in this state of existence. As the Orientals say, 
 "A cur s tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound 
 round with ligatures, and after a twelve years labor be 
 stowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form." The 
 only effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails 
 exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe is what is 
 usually done with them, and then they will stay put and 
 stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy di 
 rected to John Smith, Cuttings ville, Vermont, some trader 
 among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers 
 near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his 
 bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how 
 they may affect the price for him, telling his customers 
 this moment, as he has told them twenty times before 
 this morning, that he expects some by the next train of 
 prime quality. It is advertised in the Cuttingsville 
 Times. 
 
 While these things go up other things come down. 
 Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book 
 and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which 
 has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the 
 Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township 
 
SOUNDS 135 
 
 within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it; 
 
 going 
 
 "to be the mast 
 Of some great ammiral." 
 
 And hark ! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle 
 of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in 
 the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in 
 the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, 
 whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by 
 the September gales. The air is filled with the bleating 
 of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pas 
 toral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at 
 the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip 
 like rams and the little hills like lambs. A carload of 
 drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves 
 now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their use 
 less sticks as their badge of office. But their dogs, where 
 are they? It is a stampede to them; they are quite 
 thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear 
 them barking behind the Peterboro Hills, or panting up 
 the western slope of the Green Mountains. They will not 
 be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone. Their 
 fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will slink 
 back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild 
 and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is 
 your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell 
 rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go 
 by;- 
 
 What s the railroad to me? 
 I never go to see 
 Where it ends. 
 
136 WALDEN 
 
 It fills a few hollows, 
 
 And makes banks for the swallows, 
 
 It sets the sand a-blowing, 
 
 And the blackberries a-growing, 
 
 but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not 
 have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke 
 and steam and hissing. 
 
 Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless 
 world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer 
 feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the 
 rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are 
 interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team 
 along the distant highway. 
 
 Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, 
 Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was 
 favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, 
 worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient dis 
 tance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vi 
 bratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were 
 the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard 
 at the greatest possible distance produces one and the 
 same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as 
 the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of 
 earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts 
 to it. There came to me in this case a melody which 
 the air had strained, and which had conversed with 
 every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the 
 sound which the elements had taken up and modulated 
 and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some 
 extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and 
 
SOUNDS 137 
 
 charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was 
 worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the 
 wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a 
 wood-nymph. 
 
 At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the ho 
 rizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, 
 and at first I would mistake it for the voices of certain 
 minstrels by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who 
 might be straying over hill and dale ; but soon I was not 
 unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into 
 the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do not mean 
 to be satirical, but to express my appreciation of those 
 youths singing, when I state that I perceived clearly that 
 it was akin to the music of the cow, and they were at 
 length one articulation of Nature. 
 
 Regularly at half -past seven, in one part of the summer, 
 after the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills 
 chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump 
 by my door, or upon the ridge-pole of the house. They 
 would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a 
 clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred 
 to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare op 
 portunity to become acquainted with their habits. Some 
 times I heard four or five at once in different parts of the 
 wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near 
 me that I distinguished not only the cluck after each note, 
 but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a 
 spider s web, only proportionally louder. Sometimes 
 one would circle round and round me in the woods a few 
 feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I 
 was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the 
 
138 WALDEN 
 
 night, and were again as musical as ever just before and 
 about dawn. 
 
 When other birds are still, the screech owls take up 
 *he strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. 
 Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise mid 
 night hags ! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of 
 the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard 
 ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remember 
 ing the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the in 
 fernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their dole 
 ful responses, trilled along the woodside ; reminding me 
 sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the 
 dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that 
 would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits 
 and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in 
 human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds 
 of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing 
 hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. 
 They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of 
 that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o 
 that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n ! sighs one on this side 
 of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair 
 to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then that I 
 never had been bor-r-r-r-n ! echoes another on the farther 
 side with tremulous sincerity, and bor-r-r-r-n I comes 
 faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. 
 
 I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand 
 you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, 
 as if she meant by this to stereotype and make perma 
 nent in her choir the dying moans of a human being, 
 some poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope be- 
 
SOUNDS 139 
 
 hind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, 
 on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a cer 
 tain gurgling melodiousness, I find myself beginning 
 with the letters gl when I try to imitate it, expressive 
 of a mind which has reached the gelatinous, mildew) 
 stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageous 
 thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane 
 bowlings. But now one answers from far woods in a 
 strain made really melodious by distance, H oo hoo 
 hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part it sug 
 gested only pleasing associations.whether heard by day 
 or night, summer or winter. *5,Vv^ 
 
 I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic 
 and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably 
 suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day il 
 lustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature 
 which men have not recognized. They represent the 
 stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. 
 All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage 
 swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea 
 lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chick 
 adee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and 
 rabbit skulk beneath ; but now a more dismal and fitting 
 day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to 
 express the meaning of Nature there. 
 
 Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of 
 wagons over bridges, a sound heard farther than al 
 most any other at night, the baying of dogs, and 
 sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow 
 in a distant barn-yard. In the meanwhile all the shore 
 rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of 
 
140 WALDEN 
 
 ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, 
 trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake, if the 
 Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for 
 though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there, 
 who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their 
 old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse 
 and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine 
 has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend 
 their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to 
 drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and 
 waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, 
 with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a nap 
 kin to his drooling chaps, under this northern shore 
 quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and 
 passes round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, 
 tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk ! and straightway comes over the 
 water from some distant cove the same password re 
 peated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped 
 down to his mark; and when this observance has made 
 the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of 
 ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk ! and each in 
 his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, 
 leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no mis 
 take; and then the bowl goes round again and again, 
 until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only the 
 patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing 
 troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply. 
 
 I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock- 
 crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be 
 worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, 
 as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian 
 
SOUNDS 141 
 
 pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird s, 
 and if they could be naturalized without being domesti 
 cated, it would soon become the most famous sound in 
 our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the 
 hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of 
 the hens to fill the pauses when their lords clarions 
 rested ! No wonder that man added this bird to his tame 
 stock, to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. 
 To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds 
 abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cock 
 erels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over 
 the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of 
 other birds, think of it! It would put nations on the 
 alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier 
 and earlier every successive day of his life, till he be 
 came unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This 
 foreign bird s note is celebrated by the poets of all coun 
 tries along with the notes of their native songsters. All 
 climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more in 
 digenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, 
 his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the 
 sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his 
 voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my 
 slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so 
 that you would have said there was a deficiency of do 
 mestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning- 
 wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing 
 of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An old- 
 fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of 
 ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they 
 were starved out, or rather were never baited in, only 
 
142 WALDEN 
 
 squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whip-poor- 
 will on the ridge-pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the 
 window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech 
 owl or a cat owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a 
 laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the 
 night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild planta 
 tion birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow 
 nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced 
 nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest 
 growing up under your windows, and wild sumachs 
 and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; 
 sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the 
 shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite 
 under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown 
 off in the gale, a pine tree snapped off or torn up by 
 the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path 
 to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow, no gate 
 no front-yard, and no path to the civilized world. 
 
SOLITUDE 
 
 J.HIS is a delicious evening, when the whole body is 
 one sense, and^mbibes delight through every pore. I 
 go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of 
 herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in 
 my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and 
 windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the 
 elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs 
 trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip- 
 poor-will is borne on the rippling wind from over the 
 water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar 
 leaves almost takes away my breath ; yet, like the lake, 
 my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves 
 raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm 
 as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, 
 the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves 
 still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their 
 notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest ani 
 mals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, 
 and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods 
 without fear. They are Nature s watchmen, links 
 which connect the days of animated life. 
 
 When I return to my house I find that visitors have 
 been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, 
 or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yel- 
 
144 WALDEN 
 
 low walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the 
 woods take some little piece of the forest into their 
 hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either 
 intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow 
 wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. 
 I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, 
 either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their 
 shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they 
 were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a 
 bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off 
 as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering 
 odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified 
 of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty 
 rods off by the scent of his pipe. 
 
 There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our 
 horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is 
 not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is al 
 ways clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated 
 and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. 
 For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some 
 square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, 
 abandoned to me by men ? My nearest neighbor is a 
 mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but 
 the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my 
 horizon bounded by woods all to myself ; a distant view 
 of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one 
 hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road 
 on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where 
 I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as 
 New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon 
 and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there 
 
SOLITUDE 145 
 
 was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at 
 my door, more than if I were the first or last man; un 
 less it were in the spring, when at long intervals some 
 came from the village to fish for pouts, they plainly 
 fished much more in the Walden Pond of their own 
 natures, and baited their hooks with darkness, but 
 they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left 
 "the world to darkness and to me," and the black -ker_- 
 jiel of the night was never profaned by any human 
 neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a 
 little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, 
 and Christianity and candles have been introduced. 
 
 Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and 
 tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may 
 be found in any natural object, even for the poor mis- I 
 anthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no 
 very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of 
 nature and has his senses still. There was never yet 
 such a storm but it was JSolian music to a healthy andi 
 innocent ear. ^Nothing can rightly compel a simple 
 and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the I 
 friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make \ 
 life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my 
 beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and 
 melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents 
 my Boeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. 
 If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot 
 in the ground and destroy the potatoes in th^ low lands, 
 it would still be good for the grass on the upfinds, and, 
 being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Some 
 times, when I compare myself with other men, it seems 
 
146 WALDEN 
 
 as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond 
 any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a war 
 rant and surety at their hands which my fellows have 
 not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not 
 flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. 1 
 have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a 
 sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks 
 after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted 
 if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a 
 serene and healthy life. To be alone was something un 
 pleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a 
 slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my 
 recovery. In the Amidst _of a gentle rain while these 
 thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such 
 sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pat 
 tering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around 
 my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all 
 at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the 
 fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignifi 
 cant, and I have never thought of them since. Every 
 little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy 
 and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the 
 presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes 
 which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and 
 also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was 
 not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could 
 ever be strange to me again. 
 
 "Mourning untimely consumes the sad; 
 |?ew are their days in the land of the living, 
 Beautiful daughter of Tosear." 
 
 Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long 
 
SOLITUDE 147 
 
 rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to 
 the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, 
 _jfoot]ied by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an 
 early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many 
 thoughts had time to take root and juniold themselves. 
 In those driving northeast rains which tried the village 
 houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and 
 pail in front entries to keep the ^deluge out, I sat behind 
 my door in my little house, which was all entry, and 
 thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder- 
 shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the 
 pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular 
 spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, 
 and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a 
 walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was 
 struck with aw^on looking up and beholding that mark, 
 now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resist 
 less bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years 
 ago. Men frequently say to me, " I should think you 
 would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer 
 to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." 
 I am tempted to reply to such, This whole earth 
 which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, 
 think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yon 
 der star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appre 
 ciated by our instruments ? Why should I feel lonely ? 
 is not our planet in the Milky Way ? This which you 
 put seems to me not to be the most important question. 
 What sort, of space is that which separates a man from 
 his fellows and makes him solitary ? I have found that 
 no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer 
 
148 WALDEN 
 
 to one another. What do we want most to dwell near 
 to ? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, 
 the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the 
 grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men 
 most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, 
 whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, 
 as the willow stands near the water and sends out its 
 roots in that direction. This will vary with different 
 natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig 
 his cellar. ... I one evening overtook one of my towns 
 men, who has accumulated what is called " a handsome 
 property," though I never got a fair view of it, on 
 the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who 
 inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up 
 so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was 
 very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. 
 And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his 
 way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton, 
 or Bright-town, which place he would reach some 
 time in the morning. 
 
 Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a 
 dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The 
 place where that may occur is always the same, and in 
 describably pleasant to all our senses. For the most 
 part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances 
 to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause 
 of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power 
 which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest 
 laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not 
 the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love 
 so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are. 
 
SOLITUDE 149 
 
 " How vast and profound is the influence of thejmb- 
 tile : powers of Heaven and of Earth!" 
 
 "We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; 
 we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identi 
 fied with the substance of things, they cannot be sepa 
 rated from them." 
 
 " They cause that in all the universe men purify and 
 sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their 
 holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to 
 their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. 
 They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our 
 right; they environ us on all sides." 
 
 We are the subjects of an experiment which is not 
 a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the 
 society of our gossips a little while under these circum 
 stances, have our own thoughts to cheer us ? Con 
 fucius says truly, " Virtue does not remain as an aban 
 doned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors." 
 
 With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane 
 sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand 
 aloof from actions and their consequences; and all 
 things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not 
 wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the drift 
 wood, in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down 
 on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on 
 the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event 
 which appears to concern me much more. I only know 
 myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of 
 thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain 
 doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself 
 as from another. However intense my experience, I am 
 
150 WALDEN 
 
 conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, 
 which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, shar 
 ing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is 
 no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be 
 the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It 
 was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so 
 far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily 
 make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. 
 
 I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the 
 time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon 
 wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never 
 found the companion that was so conapanio^able as 
 solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when 
 we go abroad among men than when we stay in our 
 chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, 
 let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by 
 the miles of space that intervene between a man and his 
 fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded 
 hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a deryis in 
 the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or 
 the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel 
 lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes 
 home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at 
 the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can 
 " see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remune 
 rate himself for his day s solitude; and henqg he won 
 ders how the student can sit alone in the house all night 
 and most of the day without ennui and "the blues;" 
 but he does not realize that the student, though in the 
 house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his 
 woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same 
 
SOLITUDE 151 
 
 recreation and society that the latter does, though it 
 may be a more_condensed form of it. 
 
 Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very 
 short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new 
 value for each other. We meet at meals three times a 
 day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty 
 cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set 
 of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this 
 frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come 
 to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the 
 sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live 
 thick and are in each other s way, and shimble over one 
 another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for 
 one another. Certainly less frequency would uffice for 
 all important and hearty communications. Consider 
 the girls in a factory, never alone, hardly in their 
 dreams. It would be better if there were but one in 
 habitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of 
 a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. 
 
 I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of 
 famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose lone 
 liness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, 
 owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination 
 surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So 
 also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, 
 we may be continually cheered by a like but more nor 
 mal and natural society, and come to know that we are 
 never alone. 
 
 I have a great deal of company in my house ; espe 
 cially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest 
 a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea 
 
152 WALDEN 
 
 of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in 
 the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond 
 itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? 
 And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels 
 in it, in the jajzjue tint of its waters. The sun is alone, 
 except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear 
 to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone, but 
 the devil, he is far fromnbeing alone; he sees a great 
 deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely 
 than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean 
 leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no 
 more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, 
 or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, 
 or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. 
 
 I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, 
 when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the 
 wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who 
 is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, 
 and fringed it with pine woods ; who tells me stories of 
 old time and of new eternity ; and between us we man 
 age to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and 
 pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, 
 a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, 
 who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or 
 Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none 
 can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, 
 dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, 
 in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll some 
 times, gathering simples and listening to her fables; 
 for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her 
 memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can 
 
SOLITUDE 153 
 
 tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact 
 every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when 
 she was young. Ajruddy and lusty old dame, who de 
 lights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to out 
 live all her children yet. 
 
 The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Na 
 ture, of sun and wind and rain, of summer and win 
 ter, such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and 
 such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all 
 Nature would be affected, and the sun s brightness fade, 
 and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain 
 tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourn 
 ing in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just 
 cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the 
 earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould 
 myself ? 
 
 What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, con 
 tented? Not my or thy great-grandfather s, but our 
 great-grandmother Nature s universal, vegetable, bo 
 tanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young 
 always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her 
 health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, 
 instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped 
 from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of 
 those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons whicl 
 we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have ^ 
 draught of undiluted morning air. / Morning air! If men 
 will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, 
 why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the 
 shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their sub 
 scription ticket to morning time in this world. But re- 
 
154 WALDEN 
 
 member, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the 
 coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that 
 and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no wor 
 shipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old 
 herb-doctor ^Esculapius, and who is represented on 
 monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the 
 other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks ; 
 but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was the 
 daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the 
 power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. 
 She was probably the only thoroughly sound-condi 
 tioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked 
 the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. 
 
VI 
 
 VISITORS 
 
 J_ THINK that I love society as much as most, and am 
 ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for 
 the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. 
 I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the 
 sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business 
 called me thither. 
 
 I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two 
 for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in 
 larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third 
 chair for them all, but they generally economized the 
 room by standing up. It is surprising how many great 
 men and women a small house will contain. I have had 
 twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once un 
 der my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware 
 that we had come very near to one another. Many of 
 our houses, both public and private, with their almost 
 innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their 
 cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of 
 peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their in 
 habitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the 
 latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am 
 surprised when the herald blows his summons before 
 some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see 
 come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a 
 
156 WALDEN 
 
 ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some 
 hole in the pavement. 
 
 One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so 
 3mall a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient dis- 
 iance from my guest when we began to utter the big 
 thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts 
 to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before 
 they make their port. The bullet of your thought must 
 have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen 
 into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of 
 the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side 
 of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold 
 and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like 
 nations, must have suitable broad and natural bounda 
 ries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. 
 I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond 
 to a companion on the opposite side. In my house we 
 were so near that we could not begin to hear, we 
 could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you 
 throw two stones into calm water so near that they break 
 each other s undulations. If we are merely loquacious 
 and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near 
 together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other s breath; 
 but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to 
 be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may 
 have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most 
 intimate society with that in each of us which is without, 
 or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, 
 but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot pos 
 sibly hear each other s voice in any case. Referred to this 
 standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are 
 
VISITORS 157 
 
 hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which 
 we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation 
 began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually 
 shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall 
 in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not 
 room enough. 
 
 My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, 
 always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun 
 rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither 
 in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I 
 took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and 
 dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. 
 
 If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal 
 meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be 
 stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and ma 
 turing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. 
 But if twenty came and sat in my house there was no 
 thing said about dinner, though there might be bread 
 enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken 
 habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this 
 was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but 
 the most proper and considerate course. The waste and 
 decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, 
 seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the 
 vital vigor stood its ground. I could entertain thus a 
 thousand as well as twenty ; and if any ever went away 
 disappointed or hungry from my house when they found 
 me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized 
 with them at least. So easy is it, though many house 
 keepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs 
 in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputa- 
 
158 WALDEN 
 
 tion on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was 
 never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man s 
 house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the pa 
 rade one made about dining me, which I toek to be a 
 very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so 
 again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should 
 be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines 
 of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yel 
 low walnut leaf for a card : 
 
 "Arrived there, the little house they fill, 
 
 Ne looke for entertainment where none was; 
 Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: 
 The noblest mind the best contentment has." 
 
 When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth 
 Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony 
 to Massasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived 
 tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received 
 by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. 
 When the night arrived, to quote their own words, 
 " He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they 
 at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks 
 laid a foot from the ground and a thin mat upon them. 
 Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed 
 by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our 
 lodging than of our journey." At one o clock the next 
 day Massasoit "brought two fishes that he had shot," 
 about thrice as big as a bream. "These being boiled, 
 there were at least forty looked for a share in them ; the 
 most eat of them. This meal only we had in two nights 
 and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, 
 we had taken our journey fasting." Fearing that they 
 
VISITORS 159 
 
 would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep, 
 owing to "the savages barbarous singing, (for they 
 use to sing themselves asleep,) " and that they might 
 get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. 
 As for lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, 
 though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt 
 intended for an honor; but as far as eating was con 
 cerned, I do not see how the Indians could have done 
 better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they 
 were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the 
 place of food to their guests; so they drew their belts 
 tighter and said nothing about it. Another time when 
 Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with 
 them, there was no deficiency in this respect. 
 
 As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had 
 more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other 
 period of my life ; I mean that I had some. I met several 
 there under more favorable circumstances than I could 
 anywhere else. But fewer came to see me on trivial busi 
 ness. In this respect, my company was winnowed by my 
 mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far within 
 the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of so 
 ciety empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs 
 were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited 
 around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences 
 of unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other 
 side. 
 
 Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true 
 Homeric or Paphlagonian man, he had so suitable 
 and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here, 
 a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who 
 
160 WALDEN 
 
 can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper 
 on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has 
 heard of Homer, and, " if it were not for books," would 
 " not know what to do rainy days," though perhaps he 
 has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. 
 Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught 
 him to read his verse in the Testament in his native par 
 ish far away; and now I must translate to him, while 
 he holds the book, Achilles reproof to Patroclus for his 
 sad countenance. " Why are you in tears, Patroclus, 
 like a young girl ? " 
 
 "Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia? 
 They say that Mencetius lives yet, son of Actor, 
 And Peleus lives, son of vEacus, among the Myrmidons, 
 Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve." 
 
 He says, " That s good," He has a great bundle of white 
 oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this 
 Sunday morning. " I suppose there s no harm in going 
 after such a thing to-day," says he. To him Homer was 
 a great writer, though what his writing was about he did 
 not know. A more simple and natural man it would be 
 hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a som 
 bre moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly 
 any existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years 
 old, and had left Canada and his father s house a dozen 
 years before to work in the States, and earn money to 
 buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. 
 He was cast in the coarsest mould ; a stout but sluggish 
 body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, 
 dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were 
 occasionally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray 
 
VISITORS 161 
 
 cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cow 
 hide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually 
 carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past 
 my house, for he chopped all summer, in a tin 
 pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in 
 a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; 
 and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along 
 early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety 
 or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He 
 was n t a-going to hurt himself. He did n t care if he 
 only earned his board. Frequently he would leave his 
 dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a wood- 
 chuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress 
 it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, 
 after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could 
 not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall, loving to 
 dwell long upon these themes. He would say, as he went 
 by in the morning, " How thick the pigeons are ! If work 
 ing every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat 
 I should want by hunting, pigeons, woodchucks, rab 
 bits, partridges, by gosh! I could get all I should 
 want for a week in one day." 
 
 He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flour 
 ishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level 
 and close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up 
 afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might 
 slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole 
 tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it away 
 to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off 
 with your hand at last. 
 
 He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary 
 
162 WALDEN 
 
 and so happy withal; a well of good humor and con 
 tentment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was 
 without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the 
 woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh 
 of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Cana 
 dian French, though he spoke English as well. When I 
 approached him he would suspend his work, and with 
 half -suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which 
 he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up 
 into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. 
 Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he 
 sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with 
 laughter at anything which made him think and tickled 
 him. Looking round upon the trees he would exclaim, 
 " By George ! I can enjoy myself well enough here 
 chopping; I want no better sport." Sometimes, when 
 at leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with 
 a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular inter 
 vals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire by which 
 at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle ; and as he sat 
 on a log to eat his dinner the chickadees would some 
 times come round and alight on his arm and peck at 
 the potato in his fingers ; and he said that he " liked to 
 have the little fellers about him." 
 
 In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In 
 physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to 
 the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was not 
 sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he 
 answered, with a sincere and serious look, " Gorrappit, I 
 never was tired in my life." But the intellectual and what 
 is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an 
 
VISITORS 163 
 
 infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and 
 ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the 
 aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the 
 legree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust 
 and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a 
 child. When Nature made him, she gave him a strong 
 body and contentment for his portion, and propped him 
 on every side with reverence and reliance, that he might 
 live out his threescore years and ten a child. He was so 
 genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would 
 serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a 
 woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him 
 out as you did. He would not play any part. Men paid 
 him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe 
 him; but he never exchanged opinions with them. He 
 was so simply and naturally humble if he can be 
 called humble who never aspires that humility was 
 no distinct quality in him, nor could foe Conceive of it. 
 Wiser men were demigods to him. If you told him that 
 such a one was coming, he did as if he thought that any 
 thing so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take 
 all the responsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten 
 still. He never heard the sound of praise. He particu 
 larly reverenced the writer and the preacher. Their per 
 formances were miracles. When I told him that I wrote 
 considerably, he thought for a long time that it was 
 merely the handwriting which I meant, for he could 
 write a remarkably good hand himself. I sometimes 
 found the name of his native parish handsomely written 
 in the snow by the highway, with the proper French ac 
 cent, and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he 
 
164 WALDEN 
 
 ever wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had 
 read and written letters for those who could not, but he 
 never tried to write thoughts, no, he could not, he 
 could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, and 
 then there was spelling to be attended to at the same 
 time! 
 
 I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer 
 asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; 
 but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Cana 
 dian accent, not knowing that the question had ever 
 been entertained before, "No, I like it well enough." 
 It would have suggested many things to a philosopher 
 to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared 
 to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes 
 saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I 
 did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or 
 as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him 
 of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A towns 
 man told me that when he met him sauntering through 
 the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to 
 himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise. 
 
 His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, 
 in which last he was considerably expert. The former 
 was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to 
 contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it 
 does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on 
 the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to 
 look at them in the most simple and practical light. He 
 had never heard of such things before. Could he do 
 without factories? I asked. He had worn the home 
 made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could 
 
VISITORS 165 
 
 he dispense with tea and coffee ? Did this country afford 
 any beverage beside water? He had soaked hemlock 
 leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was bet 
 ter than water in warm weather. When I asked him if 
 he could do without money, he showed the convenience 
 of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with 
 the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this 
 institution, and the very derivation of the word pecunia. 
 If an ox were his property, and he wished to get needles 
 and thread at the store, he thought it would be incon 
 venient and impossible soon to go on mortgaging some 
 portion of the creature each time to that amount. He 
 could defend many institutions better than any philoso 
 pher, because, in describing them as they concerned 
 him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and 
 speculation had not suggested to him any other. At 
 another time, hearing Plato s definition of a man, a 
 biped without feathers, and that one exhibited a cock 
 plucked and called it Plato s man, he thought it an im 
 portant difference that the knees bent the wrong way. 
 He would sometimes exclaim, " How I love to talk! By 
 George, I could talk all day ! " I asked him once, when I 
 had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new 
 idea this summer. " Good Lord," said he, " a man that 
 has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has 
 had, he will do well. May be the man you hoe with is 
 inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be 
 there; you think of weeds." He would sometimes ask me 
 first on such occasions, if I had made any improvement. 
 One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied 
 with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him 
 
166 WALDEN 
 
 fyr the priest without, and some higher motive for liv 
 ing. " Satisfied ! " said he; " some men are satisfied with 
 one thing, and some with another. One man, perhaps, 
 if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day 
 with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, by 
 George ! " Yet I never, by any manoeuvring, could get 
 him to take the spiritual view of things ; the highest that 
 he appeared to conceive of was a simple expediency, 
 such as you might expect an animal to appreciate ; and 
 this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested 
 any improvement in his mode of life, he merely an 
 swered, without expressing any regret, that it was too 
 late. Yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and the 
 like virtues. 
 
 There was a certain positive originality, however 
 slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally ob 
 served that he was thinking for himself and expressing 
 his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any 
 day walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted to the 
 re-origination of many of the institutions of society. 
 Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express him 
 self distinctly, he always had a presentable thought be 
 hind. Yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed 
 in his animal life, that, though more promising than a 
 merely learned man s, it rarely ripened to anything 
 which can be reported. He suggested that there might 
 be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however 
 permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own 
 view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are 
 as bottom Jess even as Walden Pond was thought to be, 
 though they may be dark and muddy. 
 
VISITORS 167 
 
 Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and 
 the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, 
 asked for a glass of water. I told them that I drank at 
 the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them 
 a dipper. Far off as 1 lived, I was not exempted from 
 that annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about 
 the first of April, when everybody is on the move; and 
 I had my share of good luck, though there were some 
 curious specimens among my visitors. Half-witted men 
 from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me ; but 
 I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they 
 had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases 
 making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was 
 compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be 
 wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor and select 
 men of the town, and thought it was time that the 
 tables were turned. With respect to wit, I learned that 
 there was not much difference between the half and the 
 whole. One day, in particular, an inoffensive, simple- 
 minded pauper, whom with others I had often seen 
 used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in 
 the fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, 
 visited me, and expressed a wish to live as I did. He 
 told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite 
 superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called 
 humility, that he was "deficient in intellect. * These 
 were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he 
 supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for an 
 other. " I have always been so," said he, " from my child 
 hood; I never had much mind; I was not like other 
 children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord s 
 
168 WALDEN 
 
 will, I suppose." And there he was to prove the truth 
 of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I 
 have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising ground, 
 it was so simple and sincere and so true all that he 
 said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared 
 to humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at 
 first but it was the result of a wise policy. It seemed that 
 from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor 
 weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might 
 go forward to something better than the intercourse of 
 sages. 
 
 I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly 
 among the town s poor, but who should be; who are 
 among the world s poor, at any rate; guests who ap 
 peal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitalality ; 
 who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their ap 
 peal with the information that they are resolved, for one 
 thing, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor 
 that he be not actually starving, though he may have 
 the very best appetite in the world, however he got it. 
 Objects of charity are not guests. Men who did not 
 know when their visit had terminated, though I went 
 about my business again, answering them from greater 
 and greater remoteness. Men of almost every degree 
 of wit called on me in the migrating season. Some who 
 had more wits than they knew what to do with; run 
 away slaves with plantation manners, who listened 
 from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they 
 heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked 
 at me beseechingly, as much as to say, 
 
 " O Christian, will you send me back ? " 
 
VISITORS 169 
 
 One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped 
 to forward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like 
 a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a 
 thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens 
 which are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, 
 all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every 
 morning s dew, and become frizzled and mangy in 
 consequence ; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of in 
 tellectual centipede that made you crawl all over. One 
 man proposed a book in which visitors should write their 
 names, as at the White Mountains; but, alas! I have 
 too good a memory to make that necessary. 
 
 I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my 
 visitors. Girls and boys and young women generally 
 seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the 
 pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men 
 of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and 
 employment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt 
 from something or other; and though they said that 
 they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was 
 obvious that they did not. Restless committed men, 
 whose time was all taken up in getting a living or keep 
 ing it; ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed^ 
 a monopoly of the subject, who could not bear all kinds 
 of opinion^; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers 
 who pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out, 
 
 how came Mrs. to know that my sheets were 
 
 not as clean as hers ? young men who had ceased to 
 be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow 
 the beaten track of the professions, all these generally 
 said that it was not possible to do so much good in my 
 
170 WALDEN 
 
 position. Ay ! there was the rub. The old and infirm 
 and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of 
 sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life 
 seemed full of danger, what danger is there if you 
 don t think of any ? and they thought that a prudent 
 man would carefully select the safest position, where 
 Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment s warning. To 
 them the village was literally a com-munity, a league for 
 mutual defence, and you would suppose that they would 
 not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The 
 amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger 
 that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to 
 be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin 
 with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Finally, there 
 were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, 
 who thought that I was forever singing, 
 
 This is the house that I built; 
 
 This is the man that lives in the house that I built; 
 
 but they did not know that the third line was, 
 
 These are the folks that worry the man 
 That lives in the house that I built. 
 
 I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; 
 
 but I feared the men-harriers rather. 
 
 
 
 I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children 
 come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morn 
 ing walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets 
 and philosophers; in short, all honest pilgrims, who 
 came out to the woods for freedom s sake, and really 
 left the village behind, I was ready to greet with, 
 "Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!" for I 
 had had communication with that race. 
 
VII 
 THE BEAN-FIELD 
 
 J\1.EANWHILE my beans, the length of whose rows, 
 added together, was seven miles already planted, were 
 impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown con 
 siderably before the latest were in the ground; indeed 
 they were not easily to be put off. What was the mean 
 ing of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Her 
 culean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my 
 beans, though so many more than I wanted. They 
 attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like 
 Antaeus. But why should I raise them ? Only Heaven 
 knows. This was my curious labor all summer, to 
 make this portion of the earth s surface, which had 
 yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and 
 the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, 
 produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans 
 or beans of me ? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and 
 late I have an eye to them ; and this is my day s work. 
 It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the 
 dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what 
 fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is 
 lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and 
 most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me 
 a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to 
 oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient 
 
172 WALDEN 
 
 herb garden ? Soon, however, the remaining beans will 
 be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes. 
 
 When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was 
 brought from Boston to this my native town, through 
 these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of 
 the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And now 
 to-night my flute has waked the echoes over that very 
 water. The pines still stand here older than I; or, if 
 some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their 
 stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, prepar 
 ing another aspect for new infant eyes. Almost the 
 same johnswort springs from the same perennial root 
 in this pasture, and even I have at length helped to 
 clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, 
 and one of the results of my presence and influence is 
 seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines. 
 
 I planted about two acres and a half of upland ; and 
 as it was only about fifteen years since the land was 
 cleared, and I myself had got out two or three cords of 
 stumps, I did not give it any manure; but in the course 
 of the summer it appeared by the arrowheads which I 
 turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation had anciently 
 dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men 
 came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had ex 
 hausted the soil for this very crop. 
 
 Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across 
 the road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while 
 all the dew was on, though the farmers warned me 
 against it, I would advise you to do all your work if 
 possible while the dew is on, I began to level the 
 ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw 
 
THE BEAN-FIELD 173 
 
 dust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked 
 barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy 
 and crumbling sand, but later in the day the sun blis 
 tered my feet. There the sun lighted me to hoe beans, 
 pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellow 
 gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen 
 rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse 
 where I could rest in the shade, the other in a black 
 berry field where the green berries deepened their tints 
 by the time I had made another bout. Removing the 
 weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and 
 encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the 
 yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves 
 and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and 
 millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of 
 grass, this was my daily work. As I had little aid 
 from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved 
 implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and be 
 came much more intimate with my beans than usual. 
 But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge 
 of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. 
 It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the 
 scholar it yields a classic result. A very agricola labori- 
 osus was I to travellers bound westward through Lin 
 coln and Wayland to nobody knows where ; they sitting 
 at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins 
 loosely hanging in festoons ; I the home-staying, labori 
 ous native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out 
 of their sight and thought. It was the only open and 
 cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the 
 road, so they made the most of it; and sometimes the 
 
174 WALDEN 
 
 man in the field heard more of travellers gossip and 
 comment than was meant for his ear: "Beans so late! 
 peas so late ! " for I continued to plant when others 
 had begun to hoe, the ministerial husbandman had 
 not suspected it. "Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for 
 fodder." " Does he live there ? " asks the black bonnet 
 of the gray coat ; and the hard-featured farmer reins up 
 his grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing where 
 he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little 
 chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes 
 or plaster. But here were two acres and a half of fur 
 rows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw it, 
 there being an aversion to other carts and horses, 
 and chip dirt far away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled 
 by compared it aloud with the fields which they had 
 passed, so that I came to know how I stood in the agri 
 cultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Colman s 
 report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the 
 crop which nature yields, in the still wilder fields unim 
 proved by man ? The crop of English hay is carefully 
 weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the 
 potash ; but in all dells and pond-holes in the woods and 
 pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop 
 only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the con 
 necting link between wild and cultivated fields; as 
 some states are civilized, and others half -civilized, and 
 others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not 
 in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans 
 cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state 
 that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des 
 V aches for them. 
 
THE BEAN-FIELD 175 
 
 Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, 
 sings the brown thrasher or red mavis, as some love 
 to call him all the morning, glad of your society, 
 that would find out another farmer s field if yours were 
 not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries, 
 " Drop it, drop it, cover it up, cover it up, pull it 
 up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so 
 it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder 
 what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances 
 on one string or on twenty, have to do with your plant 
 ing, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was 
 a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith. 
 
 As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my 
 hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who 
 in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their 
 small implements of war and hunting were brought to 
 the light of this modern day. They lay mingled with 
 other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of 
 having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the 
 sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither 
 by the recent cultivators of the soil. When my hoe 
 tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the 
 woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my 
 labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. 
 It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed 
 beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, 
 if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone 
 to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk 
 circled overhead in the sunny afternoons for I some 
 times made a day of it like a mote in the eye, or in 
 heaven s eye, falling from time to time with a swoop 
 
176 WALDEN 
 
 and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to 
 very rags and tattersi and yet a seamless cope remained; 
 small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the 
 ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where 
 few have found them ; graceful and slender like ripples 
 caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the 
 wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in 
 nature. The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which 
 he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated 
 wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of 
 the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks 
 circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and de 
 scending, approaching and leaving one another, as if 
 they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I 
 was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this 
 wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound 
 and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my 
 hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish 
 spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet 
 our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, 
 these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in 
 the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which 
 the country offers. 
 
 On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo 
 like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial 
 music occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away 
 there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the 
 big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when 
 there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I 
 have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some 
 sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some 
 
THE BEAN-FIELD 177 
 
 eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or 
 canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff 
 of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Way- 
 land road, brought me information of the "trainers." 
 It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody s bees had 
 swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Virgil s 
 advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous 
 of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them 
 down into the hive again. And when the sound died 
 quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most fa 
 vorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got 
 the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex 
 hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey 
 with which it was smeared. 
 
 I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts 
 and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping ; and as 
 I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an inex 
 pressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully 
 with a calm trust in the future. 
 
 When there were several bands of musicians, it 
 sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows, and all 
 the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with 
 a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspir 
 ing strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet 
 that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican 
 with a good relish, for why should we always stand 
 for trifles ? and looked round for a woodchuck or a 
 skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. These martial 
 strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded 
 me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight 
 tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops which 
 
178 WALDEN 
 
 overhang the village. This was one of the great days; 
 though the sky had from my clearing only the same 
 everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw 
 no difference in it. 
 
 It was a singular experience that long acquaintance 
 which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and 
 hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking 
 over and selling them, the last was the hardest of all, 
 I might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined 
 to know beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe 
 from five o clock in the morning till noon, and com 
 monly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Con 
 sider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makea 
 with various kinds of weeds, it will bear some itera 
 tion in the account, for there was no little iteration in the 
 labor, disturbing their delicate organizations so ruth 
 lessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his 
 hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously 
 cultivating another. That s Roman wormwood, that s 
 pigweed, that s sorrel, that s piper-grass, have 
 at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the 
 sun, don t let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do 
 he 11 turn himself t other side up and be as green as a 
 leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with 
 weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews 
 on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their 
 rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their 
 enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many 
 a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot 
 above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon 
 and rolled in the dust. 
 
THE BEAN-FIELD 179 
 
 Those summer days which some of my contempo 
 raries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and 
 others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in 
 London or New York, I thus, with the other farmers 
 of New England, devoted to husbandry. Not that I 
 wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, 
 so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean por 
 ridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, per 
 chance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake 
 of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one 
 day. It was on the whole a rare amusemeut, which, con 
 tinued too long, might have become a dissipation. 
 Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe them 
 all once, I hoed them unusually well as far as I went, and 
 was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as 
 Evelyn says, " no compost or Isetation whatsoever com 
 parable to this continual motion, repastiriation, and turn 
 ing of the mould with the spade." " The earth," he adds 
 elsewhere, " especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism 
 in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call 
 it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the la 
 bor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings 
 and other sordid temperings being but the vicars suc- 
 cedaneous to this improvement." Moreover, this being 
 one of those " worn-out and exhausted lay fields which 
 enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as Sir Kenelm 
 Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the 
 air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans. 
 
 But to be more particular, for it is complained that 
 Mr. Colman has reported chiefly the expensive experi 
 ments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were, - 
 
180 WALDEN 
 
 For a hoe .......... $0 54 
 
 Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing . 7 50 Too much. 
 
 Beans for seed ........ 3 12 
 
 Potatoes " ......... 1 33 
 
 Peas " ........ , 40 
 
 Turnip seed ......... 06 
 
 White line for crow fence .... 02 
 
 Horse cultivator and boy three hours . 1 00 
 
 Horse and cart to get crop .... 75 
 
 In all ......... 14 72 
 
 My income was (patremfamilias vendacem, non ema- 
 cem esse oportet), from 
 
 Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold . $16 94 
 
 Five " large potatoes ........ 2 50 
 
 Nine " small ... ....... 2 25 
 
 Grass ............... 1 00 
 
 Stalks ............... 75 
 
 In all ............. $23 44 
 
 Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere 
 
 said, of ............. $8 71i 
 
 This is the result of my experience in raising beans : 
 Plant the common small white bush bean about the first 
 of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, be 
 ing careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed. First 
 look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting 
 anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed 
 place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves 
 almost clean as they go; and again, when the young 
 tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, 
 
THE BEAN-FIELD 181 
 
 and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, 
 sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all harvest as 
 early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have a 
 fair and salable crop; you may save much loss by this 
 means. 
 
 This further experience also I gained : I said to my 
 self, I will not plant beans and corn with so much in 
 dustry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not 
 lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and 
 the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even 
 with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely 
 it has not been exhausted for these crops. Alas! I said 
 this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and 
 another, and another, and I am obliged to say to you, 
 Reader, that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they 
 were the seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had 
 lost their vitality, and so did not come up. Commonly 
 men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or 
 timid. This generation is very sure to plant corn and 
 beans each new year precisely as the Indians did cen 
 turies ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there 
 were a fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to my 
 astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the seven 
 tieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down in! 
 But why should not the New Englander try new ad 
 ventures, and not lay so much stress on his grain, his 
 potato and grass crop, and his orchards, raise other 
 crops than these ? Why concern ourselves so much about 
 our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about 
 a new generation of men ? We should really be fed and 
 cheered if when we met a man we were sure to see that 
 
182 WALDEN 
 
 some of the qualities which I have named, which we all 
 prize more than those other productions, but which are 
 for the most part broadcast and floating in the air, had 
 taken root and grown in him. Here comes such a subtile 
 and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice, 
 though the slightest amount or new variety of it, along 
 the road. Our ambassadors should be instructed to 
 send home such seeds as these, and Congress help to dis 
 tribute them over all the land. We should never stand 
 upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat 
 and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if 
 there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. 
 We should not meet thus in haste. Most men I do not 
 meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are 
 busy about their beans. We would not deal with a man 
 thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff 
 between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially 
 risen out of the earth, something more than erect, like 
 swallows alighted and walking on the ground : 
 
 "And as he spake, his wings would now and then 
 Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again, " 
 
 so that we should suspect that we might be conversing 
 with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but 
 it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our 
 joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we 
 knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in 
 man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. 
 
 Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that 
 husbandry was once a sacred art ; but it is pursued with 
 irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being 
 
THE BEAN-FIELD 183 
 
 to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no 
 festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting 
 our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which 
 the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his call 
 ing, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the pre 
 mium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not 
 to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal 
 Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovel 
 ling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding 
 the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property 
 chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is de 
 graded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of 
 lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says that 
 the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just 
 (maximeque pius quaestus), and according to Varro the 
 old Romans " called the same earth Mother and Ceres, 
 and thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and 
 useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of 
 King Saturn." 
 
 We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our culti 
 vated fields and on the prairies and forests without dis 
 tinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and 
 the former make but a small part of the glorious picture 
 which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the 
 earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore 
 we should receive the benefit of his light and heat with 
 a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though 
 I value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the 
 fall of the year ? This broad field which I have looked at 
 so long looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but 
 away from me to influences more genial to it, which 
 
184 WALDEN 
 
 water and make it green. These beans have results which 
 are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for wood- 
 chucks partly ? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica, ob- 
 soletely speca, from spe, hope) should not be the only 
 hope of the husbandman; its kernel or grain (granum^ 
 from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. How, 
 then, can our harvest fail ? Shall I not rejoice also at the 
 abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of 
 the birds ? It matters little comparatively whether the 
 fields fill the farmer s barns. The true husbandman will 
 cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no con 
 cern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or 
 not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all 
 claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his 
 mind not only his first but his last fruits also. 
 
VIII 
 THE VILLAGE 
 
 AFTER hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in 
 the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swim 
 ming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the 
 dust of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last 
 wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon 
 was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the 
 village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly 
 going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, 
 or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in 
 homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as 
 the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked 
 in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked 
 in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the 
 wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one 
 direction from my house there was a colony of musk- 
 rats in the river meadows ; under the grove of elms and 
 buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy 
 men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie-dogs, 
 each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over 
 to a neighbor s to gossip. I went there frequently to ob 
 serve their habits. The village appeared to me a great 
 news room; and on one side, to support it, as once at 
 Redding & Company s on State Street, they kept nuts 
 and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some 
 
186 WALDEN 
 
 have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, 
 that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that 
 they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, 
 and let it simmer and whisper through them like the 
 Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producing 
 numbness and insensibility to pain, otherwise it 
 would often be painful to hear, without affecting the 
 consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled 
 through the village, to see a row of such worthies, either 
 sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodies 
 inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line 
 this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous 
 expression, or else leaning against a barn with their 
 hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. 
 They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever 
 was in the wind. These are the coarsest mills, in which 
 all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it 
 is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within 
 doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the 
 grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; 
 and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a 
 bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; 
 and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of 
 mankind, in lanes and fronting one another, so that 
 every traveller had to run the gauntlet, and every man, 
 woman, and child might get a lick at him. Of course, 
 those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line, 
 where they could most see and be seen, and have the first 
 blow at him, paid the highest prices for their places; 
 and the few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where 
 Vong gaps in the line began to occur, and the traveller 
 
THE VILLAGE 187 
 
 could get over walls or turn aside into cow-paths, and so 
 escape, paid a very slight ground or window tax. Signs 
 were hung out on all sides to allure him ; some to catch 
 him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; 
 some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jewel 
 ler s ; and others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as 
 the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor." Besides, there 
 was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at 
 every one of these houses, and company expected about 
 these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully 
 from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly 
 and without deliberation to the goal, as is recommended 
 to those who run the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts 
 on high things, like Orpheus, who, " loudly singing the 
 praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the 
 Sirens, and kept out of danger." Sometimes I bolted 
 suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I 
 did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesi 
 tated at a gap in a fence. I was even accustomed to 
 make an irruption into some houses, where I was well 
 entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last 
 sieveful of news, what had subsided, the prospects of 
 war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold 
 together much longer, I was let out through the rear 
 avenues, and so escaped to the woods again. 
 
 It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to 
 launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark 
 and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village 
 parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal 
 upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, 
 having made all tight without and withdrawn under 
 
188 WALDEN 
 
 hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my 
 outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when 
 it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the 
 cabin fire "as I sailed." I was never cast away nor dis 
 tressed in any weather, though I encountered some se 
 vere storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common 
 nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up 
 at the opening between the trees above the path in 
 order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart- 
 path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had 
 worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees 
 which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines 
 for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the 
 midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night. 
 Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and 
 muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes 
 could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, 
 until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the 
 latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my 
 walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would 
 find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the 
 hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. 
 Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into even 
 ing, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct 
 him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then 
 point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in 
 keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet 
 than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on 
 their way two young men who had been fishing in the 
 pond. They lived about a mile off through the woods, 
 and were quite used to the route. A day or two after one 
 
THE VILLAGE 189 
 
 of them told me that they wandered about the greater 
 part of the night, close by their own premises, and did 
 not get home till toward morning, by which time, as 
 there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, 
 and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to 
 their skins. I have heard of many going astray even in 
 the village streets, when the darkness was so thick that 
 you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. Some who 
 live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping 
 in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the 
 night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have 
 gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk 
 only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. 
 It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable ex 
 perience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a 
 snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well- 
 known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way 
 leads to the village. Though he knows that he has trav 
 elled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature 
 in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in 
 Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely 
 greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, 
 though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain 
 well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go be 
 yond our usual course we still carry in our minds the 
 bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are 
 completely lost, or turned round, for a man needs 
 only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this 
 world to be lost, do we appreciate the vastness and 
 strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the 
 points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether 
 
190 WALDEN 
 
 from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in 
 other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin 
 to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the in 
 finite extent of our relations. 
 
 One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when 
 I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler s, I 
 was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere 
 related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority 
 of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and chil- 
 drjen, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house. I had 
 gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wher 
 ever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with 
 their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him 
 to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is 
 true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less 
 effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I 
 preferred that society should run " amok " against me, it 
 being the desperate party. However, I was released the 
 next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the 
 woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on 
 Fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person 
 but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor 
 bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a 
 nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened 
 my door night or day, though I was to be absent several 
 days ; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in 
 the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more re 
 spected than if it had been surrounded by a file of sol 
 diers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by 
 my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on 
 my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see 
 
THE VILLAGE 191 
 
 what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a 
 supper. Yet, though many people of every class came 
 this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience 
 from these sources, and I never missed anything but one 
 small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was im 
 properly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp 
 has found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men 
 were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery 
 would be unknown. These take place only in com 
 munities where some have got more than is sufficient 
 while others have not enough. The Pope s Homers 
 would soon get properly distributed. 
 
 " Nee bella fuerunt, 
 Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes." 
 
 "Nor wars did men molest, 
 When only beechen bowls were in request." 
 
 " You who govern public affairs, what need have you to 
 employ punishments ? Love virtue, and the people will 
 be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the 
 wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; 
 the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends." 
 
IX 
 
 THE PONDS 
 
 SOMETIMES, having had a surfeit of human society 
 and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I ram 
 bled still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into 
 yet more unfrequented parts of the town, "to fresh 
 woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was setting, 
 made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on 
 Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. 
 The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser 
 of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. 
 There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. 
 If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the 
 cow-boy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose 
 that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked 
 them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have 
 not been known there since they grew on her three hills. 
 The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with 
 the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and 
 they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Jus 
 tice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be trans 
 ported thither from the country s hills. 
 
 Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, 
 I joined some impatient companion who had been fish 
 ing on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless 
 as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various 
 
THE PONDS 193 
 
 kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the 
 time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of 
 Coenobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher 
 and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to 
 look upon my house as a building erected for the con 
 venience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when 
 he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a 
 while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the 
 boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed 
 between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, 
 but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized 
 well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was 
 thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more 
 pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by 
 speech. When, as was commonly the case, I had none 
 to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking 
 with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the sur 
 rounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stir 
 ring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild 
 beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale 
 and hillside. 
 
 In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing 
 the flute, and saw the perch, which I seem to have 
 charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling 
 over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the 
 wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond 
 adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer 
 nights, with a companion, and, making a fire close to the 
 water s edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we 
 caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread, 
 and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burn- 
 
194 WALDEN 
 
 ing brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, com 
 ing down into the pond, were quenched with a loud 
 hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total dark 
 ness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way 
 to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my 
 home by the shore. 
 
 Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the 
 family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, 
 and, partly with a view to the next day s dinner, spent 
 the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, 
 serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to 
 time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at 
 hand. These experiences were very memorable and 
 valuable to me, anchored in forty feet of water, and 
 twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded some 
 times by thousands of small perch and shiners, dim 
 pling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and 
 communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious 
 nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet be 
 low, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the 
 pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and 
 then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of 
 some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain 
 blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its 
 mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over 
 hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to 
 the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark 
 nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and 
 cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint 
 jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link 
 you to Nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast 
 
THE PONDS 195 
 
 my line upward into the air, as well as downward into 
 this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I 
 caught two fishes as it were with one hook. 
 
 The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, 
 though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, 
 nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented / 
 it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable 
 for its depth and purity as to merit a particular descrip 
 tion. It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long 
 and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and 
 contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial 
 spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any 
 visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evapora 
 tion. The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the 
 water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the 
 southeast and east they attain to about one hundred 
 and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a 
 quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively 
 woodland. All our Concord waters have two colors at 
 least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more 
 proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the 
 light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, 
 they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, 
 and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy 
 weather they are sometimes of a dark slate-color. The 
 sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green an 
 other without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. 
 I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered 
 with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as 
 grass. Some consider blue "to be the color of pure 
 
196 WALDEN 
 
 water, whether liquid or solid." But, looking directly 
 down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be 
 of very different colors. Walden is blue at one time and 
 green at another, even from the same point of view. 
 Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of 
 the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the 
 color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish 
 tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a 
 ] :ght green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark 
 green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed 
 even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. 
 Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure ; 
 but it is equally green there against the railroad sand 
 bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, 
 and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue 
 mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of 
 its iris. This is that portion, also, where in the spring, 
 the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun reflected 
 from the bottom, and also transmitted through the 
 earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the 
 still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when 
 much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of 
 the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or be 
 cause there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a 
 little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself ; and 
 at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with 
 divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have dis 
 cerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as 
 watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, 
 more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the ori 
 ginal dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which 
 
THE PONDS 197 
 
 last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous 
 greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of 
 the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west 
 before sundown. Yet a single glass of its water held up 
 to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. 
 It is well known that a large plate of glass will have a 
 green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its " body," but 
 a small piece of the same will be colorless. How large 
 a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a 
 green tint I have never proved. The water of our river 
 is black or a very dark brown to one looking directly 
 down on it, and, like that of most ponds, imparts to the 
 body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this 
 water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the 
 bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more 
 unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and dis 
 torted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit 
 studies for a Michael Angelo. 
 
 The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily 
 be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. 
 Paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the 
 surface, the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only 
 an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by 
 their transverse bars, and you think that they must be 
 ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the 
 winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes 
 through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped 
 ashore I tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if 
 some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods 
 directly into one of the holes, where the water was 
 twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on 
 
198 WALDEN 
 
 the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe 
 a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve 
 erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the 
 pond ; and there it might have stood erect and swaying 
 till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had 
 not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it 
 with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the 
 longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood 
 with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to 
 its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the 
 knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the 
 birch, and so pulled the axe out again. 
 
 The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded 
 white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two 
 short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places 
 a single leap will carry you into water over your head; 
 and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that 
 would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on 
 the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is 
 nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that 
 there were no weeds at all in it ; and of noticeable plants, 
 except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which 
 do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not 
 detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or 
 white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamo- 
 getons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which 
 however a bather might not perceive; and these plants 
 are clean and bright like the element they grow in. The 
 stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the 
 bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where 
 there is usually a little sediment, probably from the de- 
 
THE PONDS 199 
 
 cay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so 
 many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought 
 up on anchors even in midwinter. 
 
 We have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in 
 Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly ; 
 but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds 
 within a dozen miles of this centre, I do not know a 
 third of this pure and well-like character. Successive 
 nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fath 
 omed it, and passed away, and still its water is green 
 and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring ! Per 
 haps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were 
 driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in exist 
 ence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring 
 rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and 
 covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had 
 not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed 
 them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, 
 and had clarified its waters and colored them of the 
 hue they now wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven 
 to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of 
 celestial dews. Who knows in how many unremembered 
 nations literatures this has been the Castalian Foun 
 tain ? or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden 
 Age ? It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears 
 in her coronet. 
 
 Yet perchance the first who came to this well have 
 left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised 
 to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood 
 has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like 
 path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, 
 
200 WALDEN 
 
 approaching and receding from the water s edge, as old 
 probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of 
 aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwit 
 tingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. 
 This is particularly distinct to one standing on the 
 middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow 
 has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, 
 unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a 
 quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer 
 it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow 
 reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. 
 The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day 
 be built here may still preserve some trace of this. 
 
 The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or 
 not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as 
 usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher 
 in the winter and lower in the summer, though not cor 
 responding to the general wet and dryness. I can re 
 member when it was a foot or two lower, and also when 
 it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. 
 There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very 
 deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle 
 of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about 
 the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for 
 twenty-five years; and, on the other hand, my friends 
 used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that 
 a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat 
 in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the 
 only shore they knew, which place was long since con 
 verted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily 
 for two years, and now, in the summer of 52, is just 
 
THE PONDS 201 
 
 five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it 
 was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the 
 meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the out 
 side, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the 
 surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this 
 overflow must be referred to causes which affect the 
 deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun 
 to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, 
 whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many 
 years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise 
 and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or 
 fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I 
 have ever known it. Flint s Pond, a mile eastward, 
 allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and 
 outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sym 
 pathize with Walden, and recently attained their great 
 est height at the same time with the latter. The same 
 is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond. 
 
 This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves 
 this use at least ; the water standing at this great height 
 for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk 
 round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung 
 up about its edge since the last rise, pitch pines, 
 birches, alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again, 
 leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds 
 and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore 
 is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the 
 pond next my house a row of pitch pines, fifteen feet 
 high, has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, 
 and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their 
 size indicates how many years have elapsed since the 
 
202 WALDEN 
 
 last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond 
 asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, 
 and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. 
 These are the lips of the lake, on which no beard grows. 
 It licks its chaps from time to time. When the water 
 is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send 
 forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from 
 all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height 
 of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to 
 maintain themselves ; and I have known the high blue 
 berry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce 
 no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circum 
 stances. 
 
 Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became 
 so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the 
 tradition the oldest people tell me that they heard it 
 in their youth that anciently the Indians were holding 
 a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the 
 heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and 
 they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this 
 vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and 
 while they were thus engaged the hill shook and sud 
 denly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, 
 escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been 
 conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled 
 down its side and became the present shore. It is very 
 certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, 
 and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not 
 in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient 
 settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well 
 when he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a 
 
THE PONDS 203 
 
 thin vapor rising from the sward, and the nazel pointed 
 steadily downward, and he concluded to fiig a well here. 
 As for the stones, many still think that thoy are hardly to 
 be accounted for by the action of the waves on these 
 hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are re 
 markably full of the same kind of stones, so that they 
 have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides 
 of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, 
 there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; 
 so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I 
 detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that 
 of some English locality, Saffron Walden, for in 
 stance, one might suppose that it was called originally 
 Walled-in Pond. 
 
 The pond was my well ready dug. For four months 
 in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times ; 
 and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, 
 in the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed 
 to the air is colder than springs and wells which are 
 protected from it. The temperature of the pond water 
 which had stood in the room where I sat from five 
 o clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth 
 of March, 1846, the thermometer having been up to 
 65 or 70 some of the time, owing partly to the sun on 
 the roof, was 42, or one degree colder than the water of 
 one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn. The 
 temperature of the Boiling Spring the same day was 
 45, or the warmest of any water tried, though it is the 
 coldest that I know of in summer, when, beside, shallow 
 and stagnant surface water is not mingled with it. More 
 over, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as 
 
204 WALDEN 
 
 most water w uch is exposed to the sun, on account of its 
 depth. In the warmest weather I usually placed a pail 
 ful in my cellar, where it became cool in the night, and 
 remained so during the day; though I also resorted to 
 a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a 
 week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of 
 the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by 
 the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a 
 few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent 
 of the luxury of ice. 
 
 There have been caught in Walden pickerel, one 
 weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of another 
 which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the 
 fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he 
 did not see him, perch and pouts, some of each 
 weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach 
 (Leuciscus pulchellus) , a very few breams, and a couple 
 of eels, one weighing four pounds, I am thus particular 
 because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to 
 fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of here ; 
 also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some 
 five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, 
 somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention 
 here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, 
 this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though 
 not abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one 
 time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different 
 kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like 
 those caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with 
 greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is the 
 most common here; and another, golden-colored, and 
 
THE PONDS 205 
 
 shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with 
 small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a 
 few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The 
 specific name reticulatus would not apply to this; it 
 jhould be guttatus rather. These are all very firm fish, 
 and weigh more than their size promises. The shiners, 
 pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the fishes which 
 inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and 
 firmer-fleshed than those in the river and most other 
 ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be dis 
 tinguished from them. Probably many ichthyologists 
 would make new varieties of some of them. There are 
 also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few mus 
 sels in it ; muskrats and minks leave their traces about 
 it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. 
 Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, 
 I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted him 
 self under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese 
 frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swal 
 lows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets 
 (Totanus macularius) "teeter" along its stony shores all 
 summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting 
 on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever 
 profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair Haven. At 
 most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the 
 animals of consequence which frequent it now. 
 
 You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the 
 sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten 
 feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, 
 some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a 
 foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a 
 
*06 WALDEN 
 
 hen s egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At 
 first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them 
 on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, 
 they sank to the bottom; but they are too regular and 
 some of them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar 
 to those found in rivers ; but as there are no suckers nor 
 lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could be 
 made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These 
 lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom. 
 
 The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. 
 I have in my mind s eye the western, indented with deep 
 bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped 
 southern shore, where successive capes overlap each 
 other and suggest unexplored coves between. The 
 forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly 
 beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake 
 amid hills which rise from the water s edge; for the 
 water in which it is reflected not only makes the best 
 foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, 
 the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There 
 is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as 
 where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field 
 abuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on 
 the water side, and each sends forth its most vigorous 
 branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a 
 natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations 
 from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. 
 There are few traces of man s hand to be seen. The 
 water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. 
 
 A lake is the landscape s most beautiful and expressive 
 feature. It is earth s eye; looking into which the be- 
 
THE PONDS 207 
 
 holder measures the depth of his own nature. The 
 fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes 
 which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around 
 are its overhanging brows. 
 
 Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end 
 of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a 
 slight haze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, I 
 have seen whence came the expression, " the glassy sur 
 face of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks 
 like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the 
 valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, 
 separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. 
 You would think that you could walk dry under it to the 
 opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over 
 might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below 
 the line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As 
 you look over the pond westward you are obliged to 
 employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the 
 reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally 
 bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface 
 critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where 
 the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its 
 whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the 
 finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck 
 plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low 
 as to touch it. It may be that in the distance a fish de 
 scribes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there 
 is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where 
 it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is 
 revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down 
 floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so 
 
208 WALDEN 
 
 dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not 
 congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful 
 like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a 
 yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest 
 as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, 
 resting on it. From a hilltop you can see a fish leap in 
 almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an 
 insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly dis 
 turbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful 
 with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised, 
 this piscine murder will out, and from my distant 
 perch I distinguish the circling undulations when they 
 are half a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect 
 a water-bug (Gyrlnus) ceaselessly progressing over the 
 smooth surface a quarter of a mile off ; for they furrow 
 the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded 
 by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it 
 without rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is 
 considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water- 
 bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their 
 havens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by 
 short impulses till they completely cover it. It is a 
 soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the 
 fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, 
 to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking 
 the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are 
 incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface 
 amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great ex 
 panse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently 
 smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water 
 is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is 
 

 THE PONDS 209 
 
 smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on 
 the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in 
 lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of 
 its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of 
 its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are 
 undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the 
 lake ! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. 
 Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles 
 now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a 
 spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect 
 produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet 
 the echo ! 
 
 In such a day, in September or October, Walden is 
 a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious 
 to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, 
 and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, 
 lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs 
 no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is 
 a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver 
 will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually 
 repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever 
 fresh ; a mirror in which all impurity presented to 
 it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun s hazy brush, 
 this the light dust-cloth, which retains no breath 
 that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as 
 clouds high above its surface, and be reflected "in its 
 bosom still. 
 
 A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. 
 It is continually receiving new life and motion from 
 above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and 
 sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the 
 
210 WALDEN 
 
 water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the 
 breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. 
 It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. 
 We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of ail 
 at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps 
 over it. 
 
 The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the 
 latter part of October, when the severe frosts have 
 come; and then and in November, usually, in a calm 
 day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. 
 One November afternoon, in the calm at the end of a 
 rain-storm of several days duration, when the sky was 
 still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I 
 observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so 
 that it was difficult to distinguish its surface; though 
 it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but 
 the sombre November colors of the surrounding hills. 
 Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight 
 undulations produced by my boat extended almost as 
 far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the 
 reflections. But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw 
 here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some 
 skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be 
 collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so 
 smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the 
 bottom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was 
 surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small 
 perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in 
 the green water, sporting there, and constantly rising to 
 the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles 
 on it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless 
 
THE PONDS 211 
 
 water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating 
 through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming 
 impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they 
 were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my 
 level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all 
 around them. There were many such schools in the 
 pond, apparently improving the short season before 
 winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad sky 
 light, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as 
 if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. 
 When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they 
 made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if 
 one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and in 
 stantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind 
 rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, 
 and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out 
 of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at 
 once above the surface. Even as late as the fifth of 
 December, one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, 
 and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, 
 the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place 
 at the oars and row homeward ; already the rain seemed 
 rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and 
 I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the 
 dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, 
 which the noise of my oars had scared into the depths, 
 and I saw their schools dimly disappearing ; so I spent 
 a dry afternoon after all. 
 
 An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly 
 sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding 
 forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it 
 
WALDEN 
 
 all alive with ducks and other water-fowl, and that there 
 were many eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and 
 used an old log canoe which he found on the shore. It 
 was made of two white pine logs dug out and pinned 
 together, and was cut off square at the ends. It was 
 very clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it 
 became water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. 
 He did not know whose it was ; it belonged to the pond. 
 He used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of 
 hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, who 
 lived by the pond before the Revolution, told him once 
 that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that he 
 had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the 
 shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back 
 into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear 
 of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian 
 one of the same material but more graceful construc 
 tion, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, 
 and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there 
 for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. 
 I remember that when I first looked into these depths 
 there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly 
 lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over 
 formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when 
 wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disap 
 peared. 
 
 When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was com 
 pletely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak 
 woods, and in some of its coves grape-vines had run 
 over the trees next the water and formed bowers under 
 which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores 
 
THE PONDS 213 
 
 are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, 
 that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the 
 appearance of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan 
 spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was 
 younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, 
 having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my 
 back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming 
 awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the 
 sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had im 
 pelled me to; days when idleness was the most attrac 
 tive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I 
 stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued 
 part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny 
 hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor 
 do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the 
 workshop or the teacher s desk. But since I left those 
 shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them 
 waste, and now for many a year there will be no more 
 rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional 
 vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may 
 be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you 
 expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut 
 down? 
 
 Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old 
 log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and 
 the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of 
 going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to 
 bring its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges 
 at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes 
 with ! to earn their Walden by the turning of a cock 
 or drawing of a plug ! That devilish Iron Horse, whose 
 
214 WALDEN 
 
 ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has 
 muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is 
 that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, 
 that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, 
 introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the coun 
 try s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him 
 at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between 
 the ribs of the bloated pest ? 
 
 Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, 
 perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its 
 purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few de 
 serve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid 
 bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have 
 built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on 
 its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is 
 itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful 
 eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has riot acquired 
 one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is peren 
 nially young, and I may stand and see a swallow dip 
 apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of yore. 
 It struck me again to-night, as if I had not seen it almost 
 daily for more than twenty years, Why, here is Wal 
 den, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many 
 years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter 
 another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; 
 the same thought is welling up to its surface that was 
 then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself 
 and its Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work 
 of a brave man surely, in whom there was no guile ! He 
 rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified 
 it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Con- 
 
THE PONDS 215 
 
 cord. I see by its face that it is visited by the same re 
 flection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you ? 
 
 It is no dream of mine, 
 
 To ornament a line; 
 
 I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven 
 
 Than I live to Walden even. 
 
 I am its stony shore, 
 
 And the breeze that passes o er; 
 
 In the hollow of my hand 
 
 Are its water and its sand, 
 
 And its deepest resort 
 
 Lies high in my thought. 
 
 The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that 
 the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those 
 passengers who have a season ticket and see it often, 
 are better men for the sight. The engineer does not for 
 get at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld 
 this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the 
 day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State 
 Street and the engine s soot. One proposes that it be 
 called "God s Drop." 
 
 I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, 
 but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related 
 to Flint s Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of 
 small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other 
 directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is 
 lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in 
 some other geological period it may have flowed, and 
 by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to 
 flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, 
 like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such 
 
216 WALDEN 
 
 wonderful purity, who would not regret that the com 
 paratively impure waters of Flint s Pond should be 
 mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its 
 sweetness in the ocean wave? 
 
 Flint s, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake 
 and inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is 
 much larger, being said to contain one hundred and 
 ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is 
 comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. A 
 walk through the woods thither was often my recrea 
 tion. It was worth the while, if only to feel the wind 
 blow on your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and 
 remember the life of mariners. I went a-chestnutting 
 there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts were 
 dropping into the water and were washed to my feet; 
 and one day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh 
 spray blowing in my face, I came upon the mouldering 
 wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more than 
 the impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes; 
 yet its model was sharply defined, as if it were a large 
 decayed pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a wreck 
 as one could imagine on the seashore, and had as 
 good a moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould 
 and undistinguishable pond shore, through which 
 rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to admire the 
 ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of 
 this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader 
 by the pressure of the water, and the rushes which 
 grew in Indian file, in waving lines, corresponding to 
 these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had 
 
THE PONDS 217 
 
 planted them. There also I have found, in considerable 
 quantities, curious balls, composed apparently of fine 
 grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch 
 to four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. These 
 wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bot 
 tom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are 
 either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At 
 first you would say that they were formed by the action 
 of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made 
 of equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and they 
 are produced only at one season of the year. Moreover, 
 the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear 
 down a material which has already acquired consistency. 
 They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite 
 period. 
 
 Flint s Pond ! Such is the poverty of our nomencla 
 ture. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, 
 whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he 
 has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it ? Some 
 skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dol 
 lar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen 
 face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled 
 in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and 
 horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like; 
 so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him 
 nor to hear of him ; who never saw it, who never bathed 
 in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who 
 never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that 
 He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes 
 that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which fre 
 quent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or 
 
218 WALDEN 
 
 some wild man or child the thread of whose history is in 
 terwoven with its own; not from him who could show 
 no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor 
 or legislature gave him, him who thought only of its 
 money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the 
 shores ; who exhausted the land around it, and would fain 
 have exhausted the waters within it ; who regretted only 
 that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow, 
 there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes, 
 and would have drained and sold it for the mud at 
 its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privi 
 lege to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his 
 farm where everything has its price, who would carry 
 the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if 
 he could get anything for him ; who goes to market for 
 his god as it is ; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose 
 fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose 
 trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of 
 his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are 
 turned to dollars. Givejoaejthe poverty that enjoys true 
 wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me 
 in proportion as they are poor, poor farmers. A model 
 farm ! where the house stands like a fungus in a muck- 
 heap, chambers for men, horses, oxen, and swine, 
 cleansed and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another! 
 Stocked with men! A great grease-spot, redolent of 
 manures and buttermilk ! Under a high state of cultiva 
 tion, being manured with the hearts and brains of men ! 
 As if you were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard ! 
 Such is a model farm. 
 
 No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to 
 
THE PONDS 219 
 
 be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthi 
 est men alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at 
 least as the Icarian Sea, where " still the shore " a " brave 
 attempt resounds." 
 
 Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint s; 
 Fair Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to con 
 tain some seventy acres, is a mile southwest ; and White 
 Pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond 
 Fair Haven. This is my lake country. These, with Con 
 cord River, are my water privileges ; and night and day, 
 year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry to them. 
 
 Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and I my 
 self have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, 
 if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the 
 woods, is White Pond ; a poor name from its common 
 ness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its 
 waters or the color of its sands. In these as in other re 
 spects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are 
 so much alike that you would say they must be connected 
 under ground. It has the same stony shore, and its 
 waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog- 
 day weather, looking down through the woods on some 
 of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection 
 from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty 
 bluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used 
 to go there to collect the sand by cartloads, to make 
 sandpaper with, and I have continued to visit it ever 
 since. One who frequents it proposes to call it Virid 
 Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow Pine Lake, 
 from the following circumstance. About fifteen years 
 
220 WALDEN 
 
 ago you could see the top of a pitch pine, of the kind 
 called yellow pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct 
 species, projecting above the surface in deep water, 
 many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by 
 some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the 
 primitive forest that formerly stood there. I find that 
 even so long ago as 1792, in a "Topographical Descrip 
 tion of the Town of Concord," by one of its citizens, 
 in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical So 
 ciety, the author, after speaking of Walden and White 
 Ponds, adds, " In the middle of the latter may be seen, 
 when the water is very low, a tree which appears as if it 
 grew in the place where it now stands, although the roots 
 are fifty feet below the surface of the water; the top of 
 this tree is broken off, and at that place measures four 
 teen inches in diameter." In the spring of 49 I talked 
 with the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, 
 who told me that it was he who got out this tree ten or 
 fifteen years before. As near as he could remember, it 
 stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the 
 water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the winter, 
 and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had 
 resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neigh 
 bors, he would take out the old yellow pine. He sawed a 
 channel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over 
 and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before 
 he had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that 
 it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the branches 
 pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened in the 
 sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the 
 big end, and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but 
 
THE PONDS 221 
 
 it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. He 
 had some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an 
 axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it 
 might have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally 
 blown over into the pond, and after the top had become 
 water-logged, while the butt-end was still dry and light, 
 had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, 
 eighty years old, could not remember when it was not 
 there. Several pretty large logs may still be seen lying 
 on the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the 
 surface, they look like huge water snakes in motion. 
 
 This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for 
 there is little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the 
 white lily, which requires mud, or the common sweet 
 flag, the blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the 
 pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the 
 shore, where it is visited by hummingbirds in June ; and 
 the color both of its bluish blades and its flowers and 
 especially their reflections, is in singular harmony with 
 the glaucous water. 
 
 White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the sur 
 face of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were perma 
 nently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they 
 would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious 
 stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, 
 and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, 
 we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohi- 
 noor. They are too pure to have a market value; they 
 contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our 
 lives, how much more transparent than our characters, 
 are they! We never learned meanness of them. How 
 
222 WALDEN 
 
 much fairer than the pool before the fanner s door, in 
 which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks 
 come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates 
 her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are 
 in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden 
 conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? 
 She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they 
 reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. 
 
X 
 
 BAKER FARM 
 
 SOMETIMES I rambled to pine groves, standing like 
 temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy 
 boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and 
 shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks 
 to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond Flint s 
 Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, 
 spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, 
 and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths 
 full of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs 
 in festoons from the white spruce trees, and toadstools, 
 round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and 
 more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies 
 or shells, vegetable winkles ; where the swamp-pink and 
 dogwood grow, the red alder berry glows like eyes^ of 
 imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest 
 woods in its folds, and the wild holly berries make the 
 beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is 
 dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden 
 fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on 
 some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of 
 kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far 
 away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of 
 a wood or swamp, or on a hilltop; such as the black 
 birch, of which we have some handsome specimens two 
 
224 WALDEN 
 
 feet in diameter; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its 
 loose golden vest, perfumed like the first; the beech, 
 which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, 
 perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered 
 specimens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees 
 left in the township, supposed by some to have been 
 planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beech 
 nuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain 
 sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the horn 
 beam; the Celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we 
 have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a 
 shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, stand 
 ing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods ; and many 
 others I could mention. These were the shrines I visited 
 both summer and winter. 
 
 Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of 
 a rainbow s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the 
 atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and 
 dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It 
 was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, 
 I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might 
 have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on 
 the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of 
 light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself 
 one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the 
 shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about 
 them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished. 
 Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a 
 certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his 
 confinement in the castle of St. Angelo a resplendent 
 light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning 
 
BAKER FARM 225 
 
 and evening, whether he was in Italy or France, and it 
 was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist 
 with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to 
 which I have referred, which is especially observed in 
 the morning, but also at other times, and even by moon 
 light. Though a constant one, it is not commonly no 
 ticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like 
 Cellini s, it would be basis enough for superstition. Be 
 side, he tells us that he showed it to very few. But are 
 they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that 
 they are regarded at all ? 
 
 I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair Haven, 
 through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vege 
 tables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an ad 
 junct of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet 
 has since sung, beginning, 
 
 " Thy entry is a pleasant field, 
 Which some mossy fruit trees yield 
 Partly to a ruddy brook, 
 By gliding musquash undertook, 
 And mercurial trout, 
 Darting about." 
 
 I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I 
 " hooked " the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the 
 musquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons 
 which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many 
 events may happen, a large portion of our natural life, 
 though it was already half spent when I started. By the 
 way there came up a shower, which compelled me to 
 stand half an hoar under a pine, piling boughs over my 
 
226 WALDEN 
 
 head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed; and 
 when at length I had made one cast over the pickerel- 
 weed, standing up to my middle in water, I found my 
 self suddenly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder 
 began to rumble with such emphasis that I could do no 
 more than listen to it. The gods must be proud, thought 
 I, with such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisher 
 man. So I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut, 
 which stood half a mile from any road, but so much the 
 nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited : 
 
 "And here a poet builded, 
 In the completed years, 
 For behold trivial cabin 
 That to destruction steers." 
 
 So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt nott 
 John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several chil 
 dren, from the broad -faced boy who assisted his father 
 at his work, and now came running by his side from the 
 bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone- 
 headed infant that sat upon its father s knee as in the 
 palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the 
 midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, 
 with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the 
 last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the 
 world, instead of John Field s poor starveling brat. 
 There we sat together under that part of the roof which 
 leaked the least, while it showered and thundered with 
 out. I had sat there many times of old before the ship 
 was built that floated this family to America. An hon 
 est, hard-working, but shiftless man plainly was John 
 Field ; and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many 
 

 BAKER FARM 227 
 
 successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; 
 with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to 
 improve her condition one day; with the never absent 
 mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible any 
 where. The chickens, which had also taken shelter here 
 from the rain, stalked about the room like members of 
 the family, too humanized, methought, to roast well. 
 They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe 
 significantly. Meanwhile my host told me his story, how 
 hard he worked "bogging" for a neighboring farmer, 
 turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate 
 of ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with manure 
 for one year, and his little broad-faced son worked cheer 
 fully at his father s side the while, not knowing how poor 
 a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with 
 my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest 
 neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and 
 looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; 
 that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which 
 hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as 
 his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he 
 might in a month or two build himself a palace of his 
 own ; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor 
 milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get 
 them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to 
 eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as 
 he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and 
 beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he 
 had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the 
 waste of his system, and so it was as broad as it was 
 long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was 
 
228 WALDEN 
 
 discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and 
 yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that 
 here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. 
 But the only true America is that country where you are 
 at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable 
 you to do without these, and where the state does not 
 endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war 
 and other superfluous expenses which directly or in 
 directly result from the use of such things. For I pur 
 posely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, or 
 desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows 
 on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the con 
 sequence of men s beginning to redeem themselves. A 
 man will not need to study history to find out what is 
 best for his own culture. But alas! the culture of an 
 Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort 
 of moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard 
 at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, 
 which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore 
 light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so 
 much, though he might think that I was dressed like a 
 gentleman (which, however, was not the case), and in 
 an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I 
 could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should want 
 for two days, or earn enough money to support me a 
 week. If he and his family would live simply, they might 
 all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amuse 
 ment. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared 
 with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering 
 if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, 
 or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was sailing 
 
BAKER FARM 229 
 
 by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how 
 to make their port so ; therefore I suppose they still take 
 life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it 
 tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive col 
 umns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail ; 
 thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle 
 a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvan 
 tage, living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, 
 and failing so. 
 
 " Do you ever fish ? " I asked. " Oh yes, I catch a mess 
 now and then when I am lying by; good perch I catch." 
 " What s your bait ? " "I catch shiners with fishworms, 
 and bait the perch with them." " You d better go now, 
 John," said his wife, with glistening and hopeful face; 
 but John demurred. 
 
 The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the 
 eastern woods promised a fair evening; so I took my 
 departure. When I had got without I asked for a drink, 
 hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my 
 survey of the premises; but there, alas! are shallows 
 and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket 
 irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was 
 selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after con 
 sultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty one, 
 not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel 
 sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and 
 excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, 
 I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I 
 could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners 
 are concerned. "l^ ^ -w, &~rj+J[ +9+*9** 
 
 As I was leaving the Irishman s roof after the rain, 
 
230 WALDEN 
 
 bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch 
 pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog- 
 holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an 
 instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and 
 college ; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening 
 west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint 
 tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed 
 air, from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius 
 seemed to say, Go fish and hunt far and wide day by 
 day, farther and wider, and rest thee by many 
 brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember 
 thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care 
 before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find 
 thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee every 
 where at home. There are no larger fields than these, no 
 worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild 
 according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, 
 which will never become English hay. Let the thunder 
 rumble ; what if it threaten ruin to farmers crops ? that 
 is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, 
 while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living 
 be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it 
 not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are 
 where they are, buying and selling, and spending their 
 lives like serfs. 
 O Baker Farm! 
 
 " Landscape where the richest element 
 Is a little sunshine innocent." . . . 
 
 " No one runs to revel 
 On thy rail-fenced lea." . . . 
 
BAKER FARM 231 
 
 ."* Debate with no man hast thou, 
 
 With questions art never perplexed, 
 As tame at the first sight as now. 
 
 In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.* . . . 
 
 44 Come ye who love, 
 
 And ye who hate. 
 Children of the Holy Dove, 
 
 And Guy Faux of the state, 
 And hang conspiracies 
 From the tough rafters of the trees !** 
 
 Men come tamely home at night only from the next 
 field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and 
 their life pines because it breathes its own breath over 
 again; their shadows, morning and evening, reach far 
 ther than their daily steps. We should come home from 
 far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every 
 day, with new experience and character. 
 
 Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse 
 had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting 
 go "bogging" ere this sunset. But he, poor man, dis 
 turbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair 
 string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed 
 seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John 
 Field! I trust he does not read this, unless he will 
 improve by it, thinking to live by some derivative old- 
 country mode in this primitive new country, to catch 
 perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. 
 With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born 
 to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, 
 his Adam s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in 
 this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed 
 bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels. 
 
XI 
 HIGHER LAWS 
 
 As I came home through the woods with my string 
 of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I 
 caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my 
 path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was 
 strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw ; not that 
 I was hungry then, except for that wild ness which he 
 represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at 
 the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half- 
 starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seek 
 ing some kind of venison which I might devour, and 
 no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wild 
 est scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found 
 in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, 
 or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and 
 another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and 
 I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the 
 good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing 
 still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take 
 rank hold on life and spend my day more as the ani 
 mals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and 
 to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance 
 with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us 
 in scenery with which otherwise, at -that age, we should 
 have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, wood- 
 
HIGHER LAWS 233 
 
 choppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields^ 
 and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature them 
 selves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing 
 her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers 
 or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She 
 is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller 
 on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters 
 of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the 
 Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller 
 learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is 
 poor authority. We are most interested when science 
 reports what those men already know practically or 
 instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or ac 
 count of human experience. 
 
 They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few 
 amusements, because he has not so many public holi 
 days, and men and boys do not play so many games as 
 they do in England, for here the more primitive but 
 solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like 
 have not yet given place to the former. Almost every 
 New England boy among my contemporaries shouldered 
 a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; 
 and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, 
 like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were 
 more boundless even than those of a savage. No won 
 der, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the 
 common. But already a change is taking place, owing, 
 not to an increased humanity, but to an increased 
 scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the great 
 est friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the 
 Humane Society, 
 
234 WALDEN 
 
 Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to 
 add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fished 
 from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers 
 did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it 
 was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more 
 than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had 
 long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun 
 before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane 
 than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were 
 much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. 
 This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that 
 I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying 
 ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But 
 I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a 
 finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires 
 so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, 
 if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the 
 gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of 
 humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable 
 sports are ever substituted for these; and when some 
 of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, 
 whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, 
 yes, remembering that it was one of the best parts of 
 my education, make them hunters, though sports 
 men only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, 
 so that they shall not find game large enough for them 
 in this or any vegetable wilderness, hunters as well 
 as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of 
 x ^ Chaucer s nun, who 
 
 "yave not of the text a pulled hen 
 That saith that hunters ben not holy men." 
 
HIGHER LAWS 235 
 
 There is a period in the history of the individual, as of 
 the race, when the hunters are the "best men," as the 
 Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy 
 who has never fired a gun ; he is no more humane, while 
 his education has been sadly neglected. This was my 
 answer with respect to those youths who were bent on 
 this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. 
 No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, 
 will wantonly murder any creature which holds its 
 life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its 
 extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, 
 that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil- 
 anthropic distinctions. 
 
 Such is oftenest the young man s introduction to the 
 forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes 
 thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he 
 has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his 
 proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and 
 leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men 
 are still and always young in this respect. In some 
 countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such 
 a one might make a good shepherd s dog, but is far 
 from being the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised 
 to consider that the only obvious employment, except 
 wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which 
 ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a 
 whole half -day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fa 
 thers or children of the town, with just one exception, 
 was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they 
 were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got 
 a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity 
 
236 WALDEN 
 
 of seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a 
 thousand times before the sediment of fishing would 
 sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure ; but 
 no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all 
 the while. The Governor and his Council faintly re 
 member the pond, for they went a-fishing there when 
 they were boys ; but now they are too old and dignified 
 to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. 
 Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the 
 legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the num 
 ber of hooks to be used there ; but they know nothing 
 about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the 
 pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, 
 even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes 
 through the hunter stage of development. 
 
 I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot 
 fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried 
 it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many 
 of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives 
 from time to time, but always when I have done I feel 
 that it would have been better if I had not fished. I 
 think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet 
 so are the first streaks of morning. There is unques 
 tionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower 
 orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a 
 fisherman, though without more humanity or even 
 wisdom; at present I am no fisherman at all. But I 
 see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should again 
 be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. 
 Beside, there is something essentially unclean about 
 this diet and all flesh, and I began to see where house- 
 

 HIGHER LAWS 237 
 
 work commences, and whence the endeavor, which 
 costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appear 
 ance each day, to keep the house sweet and free from 
 all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher 
 and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for 
 whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an 
 unusually complete experience. The practical objection 
 to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and 
 besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and 
 eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. 
 It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than 
 it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have 
 done as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many of 
 my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used 
 animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc. ; not so much because 
 of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because 
 they were not agreeable to my imagination. The re 
 pugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, 
 but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live 
 low and fare hard in many respects ; and though I never 
 did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I 
 believe that every man who has ever been earnest to 
 preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best con 
 dition has been particularly inclined to abstain from 
 animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a 
 significant fact, stated by entomologists, I find it in 
 Kirby and Spence, that " some insects in their perfect 
 state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make 
 no use of them;" and they lay it down as "a general 
 rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less 
 than in that of larvae. The voracious caterpillar when 
 
238 WALDEN 
 
 transformed into a butterfly . . . and the gluttonous 
 maggot when become a fly " content themselves with 
 a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid. 
 The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still 
 represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts 
 his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in 
 the larva state; and there are whole nations in that 
 condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose 
 vast abdomens betray them. 
 
 It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a 
 diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, 
 is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both 
 sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be 
 done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us 
 ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest 
 pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and 
 it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by 
 rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught 
 preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, 
 whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day 
 prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise 
 we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are 
 not true men and women. This certainly suggests what 
 change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the 
 imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I 
 am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man 
 is a carnivorous animal ? True, he can and does live, 
 in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but 
 this is a miserable way, as any one who will go to 
 snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn, 
 and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who 
 
HIGHER LAWS 239 
 
 shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent 
 and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may 
 be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the 
 human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off 
 eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left 
 off eating each other when they came in contact with 
 the more civilized. 
 
 If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions 
 of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to 
 what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and 
 yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, 
 his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one 
 healthy man feels will at length prevail over the argu 
 ments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed 
 his genius till it misled him. Though the result were 
 bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the 
 consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life 
 in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the 
 night are such that you greet them with joy, and life 
 emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, 
 is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, that is 
 your success. All nature is your congratulation, and 
 you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The 
 greatest gains and values are farthest from being ap 
 preciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We 
 soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Per 
 haps the facts most astounding and most real are never 
 communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my 
 daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable 
 as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust 
 caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. 
 
240 WALDEN 
 
 Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; 
 I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if 
 it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so 
 long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky 
 to an opium-eater s heaven. I would fain keep sober 
 always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. 
 I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; 
 wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the 
 hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an 
 evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I 
 am tempted by them ! Even music may be intoxicating. 
 Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and 
 Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all 
 ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the 
 air he breathes ? I have found it to be the most serious 
 objection to coarse labors long continued, that they 
 compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell 
 the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less par 
 ticular in these respects. I carry less religion to the 
 table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser than I 
 was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, however 
 much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown 
 more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions 
 are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. 
 My practice is " nowhere," my opinion is here. Never 
 theless I am far from regarding myself as one of those 
 privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, 
 that " he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme 
 Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to 
 inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even 
 in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commen- 
 
HIGHER LAWS 241 
 
 tator has remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege 
 to "the time of distress." 
 
 Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible 
 satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no 
 share ? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a men 
 tal perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that 
 I have been inspired through the palate, that some 
 berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my 
 genius. "The soul not being mistress of herself," says 
 Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one 
 listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does 
 not know the savor of food." He who distinguishes the 
 true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who 
 does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his 
 brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever 
 an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth 
 into the mouth defileth a man/ but the appetite with 
 which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the 
 quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when 
 that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, 
 or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that 
 possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, 
 muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady 
 indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf s foot, or for 
 sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes 
 to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder 
 is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy, beastly 
 life, eating and drinking. 
 
 Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never 
 an instant s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness 
 is the only investment that never fails. In the music 
 
42 WALDEN 
 
 of the harp which trembles round the world it is the in 
 sisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling 
 patterer for the Universe s Insurance Company, re 
 commending its laws, and our little goodness is all the 
 assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows 
 indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, 
 but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen 
 to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, 
 and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot 
 touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral 
 transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way 
 off, is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the mean 
 ness of our lives. 
 
 We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens 
 in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is 
 reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly ex 
 pelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, 
 occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, 
 but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a 
 certain health of its own ; that we may be well, yet not 
 pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, 
 with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested 
 that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from 
 the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means 
 than temperance and purity. "That in which men 
 differ from brute beasts," says Mencius, " is a thing very 
 inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; 
 superior men preserve it carefully." Who knows what 
 sort of life would result if we had attained to purity ? 
 If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I 
 would go to seek him forthwith. " A command over our 
 
HIGHER LAWS 243 
 
 passions, and over the external senses of the body, and 
 good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable 
 in the mind s approximation to God." Yet the spirit 
 can for the time pervade and control every member 
 and function of the body, and transmute what in form 
 is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The 
 generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates 
 and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigor 
 ates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; 
 and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and 
 the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man 
 flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. 
 By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us 
 down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal 
 is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being 
 established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for 
 shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature 
 to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or 
 demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied 
 to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some 
 extent, our very life is our disgrace. 
 
 "How happy s he who hath due place assigned <*- 
 To his beasts and disafforested his mind! 
 
 Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev ry beast, ~^~ 
 
 And is not ass himself to all the rest! G. 
 
 Else man not only is the herd of swine, 
 
 But he s those devils too which did incline 
 
 Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse." f-- 
 
 All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; 
 all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or 
 drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one 
 
244 WALDEN 
 
 appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one 
 of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. 
 The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When 
 the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he 
 shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you 
 must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a 
 man know if he is chaste ? He shall not know it. We 
 have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. 
 We speak conformably to the rumor which we have 
 heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from 
 sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality 
 is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is uni 
 versally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom 
 the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being 
 fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the 
 sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. 
 Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be over 
 come. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are 
 not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no 
 more, if you are not more religious ? I know of many 
 systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts 
 fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new 
 endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites 
 merely. 
 
 I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of 
 the subject, I care not how obscene my words are, 
 but because I cannot speak of them without betraying 
 my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one 
 form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We 
 are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the 
 necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, 
 
HIGHER LAWS 245 
 
 in some countries, every function was reverently spoken 
 of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for 
 the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to 
 modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, 
 void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what 
 is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling 
 these things trifles. 
 
 Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, 
 to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, 
 nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We 
 are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our 
 own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins 
 at once to refine a man s features, any meanness or 
 sensuality to imbrute them. 
 
 John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, 
 after a hard day s work, his mind still running on his 
 labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to 
 re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool even 
 ing, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a 
 frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts 
 long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and 
 that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought 
 of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that 
 though this kept running in his head, and he found 
 himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet 
 it concerned him very little. It was no more than the 
 scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But 
 the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a 
 different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested 
 work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They 
 gently did away with the street, and the village, and the 
 
246 WALDEN 
 
 state in which he lived. A voice said to him, Why do 
 you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a 
 glorious existence is possible for you? Those same 
 stars twinkle over other fields than these. But how 
 to come out of this condition and actually migrate 
 thither ? All that he could think of was to practise some 
 new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and 
 redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect. 
 
XII 
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS 
 
 SOMETIMES I had a companion in my fishing, who 
 came through the village to my house from the other 
 side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as 
 much a social exercise as the eating of it. 
 
 Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I 
 have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet -fern 
 these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their 
 roosts, no flutter from them. Was that a farmer s 
 noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just 
 now ? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and 
 cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry them 
 selves so ? He that does not eat need not work. I won 
 der how much they have reaped. Who would live there 
 where a body can never think for the barking of Bose ? 
 And oh, the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil s 
 door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! Better 
 not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for 
 morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker 
 tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; 
 they are born too far into life for me. I have water from 
 the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. 
 Hark ! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed 
 village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase ? or 
 the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose 
 
248 WALDEN 
 
 tracks I saw after the rain ? It comes on apace ; my 
 sumachs and sweetbriers tremble. Eh, Mr. Poet, is 
 it you ? How do you like the world to-day ? 
 VA Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That s the 
 greatest thing I have seen to-day. There s nothing like 
 it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands, 
 unless when we were off the coast of Spain. That s a 
 true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living 
 to get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fish- 
 ing. That s the true industry for poets. It is the only 
 trade I have learned. Come, let s along. 
 
 Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon 
 be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just 
 concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near 
 the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But 
 that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the 
 bait meanwhile. Angleworms are rarely to be met with 
 in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with 
 manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of dig 
 ging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, 
 when one s appetite is not too keen ; and this you may 
 have all to yourself to-day. I would advise you to set in 
 the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, where 
 you see the johnswort waving. I think that I may war 
 rant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if 
 you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you 
 were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will 
 not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait 
 to be very nearly as the squares of the distances. 
 
 Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I? Methinks 
 I was nearly in this frame of mind ; the world lay about 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 249 
 
 at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing ? If I 
 should soon bring this meditation to an end, would 
 another so sweet occasion be likely to offer ? I was as 
 near being resolved into the essence of things as ever I 
 was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come back 
 to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for 
 them. When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, 
 We will think of it ? My thoughts have left no track, 
 and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I 
 was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just 
 try these three sentences of Conf ut-see ; they may fetch 
 that state about again. I know not whether it was the 
 dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is 
 but one opportunity of a kind. 
 
 Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon ? I have got 
 just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are im 
 perfect or undersized; but they will do for the smaller 
 fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those 
 village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make 
 a meal off one without finding the skewer. 
 
 Hermit. Well, then, let s be off. Shall we to the Con 
 cord ? There s good sport there if the water be not too 
 high. 
 
 Why do precisely these objects which we behold 
 make a world ? Why has man just these species of ani 
 mals for his neighbors ; as if nothing but a mouse could 
 have filled this crevice ? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. 
 have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts 
 of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our 
 thoughts. 
 
250 WALDEN 
 
 The mice which haunted my house were not the 
 common ones, which are said to have been introduced 
 into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the 
 village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it in 
 terested him much. When I was building, one of these 
 had its nest underneath the house, and before I had 
 laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would 
 come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs 
 at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; 
 and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over 
 my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend 
 the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, 
 which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned 
 with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my 
 clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the 
 paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter 
 close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and 
 when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my 
 thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my 
 hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a 
 fly, and walked away. 
 
 A phcebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for pro 
 tection in a pine which grew against the house. In June 
 the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, 
 led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the 
 rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to 
 hem like a hen, and in all her behavior proving her 
 self the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse 
 on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a 
 whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly 
 resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a travel- 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 251 
 
 ler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard 
 the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious 
 calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract 
 his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. 
 The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before 
 you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few 
 moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The 
 young squat still and flat, often running their heads 
 under a leaf, and mind only their mother s directions 
 given from a distance, nor will your approach make 
 them run again and betray themselves. You may even 
 tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, 
 without discovering them. I have held them in my 
 open hand at such a time, and still their only care, 
 obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat 
 there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this in 
 stinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves 
 again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found 
 with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes 
 afterward. They are not callow like the young of most 
 birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious 
 even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet inno 
 cent expression of their open and serene eyes is very 
 memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. 
 They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a 
 wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not 
 born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it 
 reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. 
 The traveller does not often look into such a limpid 
 well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots 
 tbe parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to 
 
252 WALDEN 
 
 fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually 
 mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much 
 resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will 
 directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they 
 never hear the mother s call which gathers them again. 
 These were my hens and chickens. 
 
 It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and 
 free though secret in the woods, and still sustain them 
 selves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunt 
 ers only. How retired the otter manages to live here! 
 He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, per 
 haps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. 
 I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where 
 my house is built, and probably still heard their whin- 
 nering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in 
 the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and 
 read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp 
 and of a brook, oozing from under Brister s Hill, half a 
 mile from my field. The approach to this was through a 
 succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young 
 pitch pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, 
 in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading 
 white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. 
 I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray 
 water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, 
 and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in 
 midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, 
 the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, 
 flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they 
 ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would 
 leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 253 
 
 and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken 
 wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her 
 young, who would already have taken up their march, 
 with faint, wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as 
 she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I 
 could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle doves 
 sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough 
 of the soft white pines over my head ; or the red squir 
 rel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly 
 familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long 
 enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its 
 inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. ^ 
 I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. 
 One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my 
 pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, 
 the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and 
 black, fiercely contending with one another. Having 
 once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wres 
 tled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking far 
 ther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered 
 with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a 
 bellnm, a war between two races of ants, the red always 
 pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to 
 one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all 
 the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was 
 already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and 
 black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, 
 the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was 
 raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one 
 hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every 
 side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without 
 
254 WALDEN 
 
 any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never 
 fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast 
 locked in each other s embraces, in a little sunny valley 
 amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till 
 the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red 
 champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adver 
 sary s front, and through all the tumblings on that field 
 never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers 
 near the root, having already caused the other to go 
 by the board ; while the stronger black one dashed him 
 from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had 
 already divested him of several of his members. They 
 fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither 
 manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evi 
 dent that their battle-cry was " Conquer or die." In 
 the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the 
 hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who 
 either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part 
 in the battle ; probably the latter, for he had lost none of 
 his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return 
 with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some 
 Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had 
 now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this 
 unequal combat from afar, for the blacks were nearly 
 twice the size of the red, he drew near with rapid 
 pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the 
 combatants ; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang 
 upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations 
 near the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to se 
 lect among his own members; and so there were three 
 united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 255 
 
 invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. 
 I should not have wondered by this time to find that they 
 had their respective musical bands stationed on some 
 eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, 
 to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I 
 was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been 
 men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. 
 And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord 
 history, at least, if in the history of America, that will 
 bear a moment s comparison with this, whether for the 
 numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and hero 
 ism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an 
 Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on 
 the patriots side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! 
 Why here every ant was a Buttrick, " Fire ! for God s 
 sake fire ! " and thousands shared the fate of Davis 
 and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have 
 no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much 
 as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on 
 their tea; and the results of this battle will be as impor 
 tant and memorable to those whom it concerns as those 
 of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. 
 
 I took up the chip on which the three I have particu 
 larly described were struggling, carried it into my house, 
 and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in 
 order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first- 
 mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assidu 
 ously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, having 
 severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn 
 away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws 
 of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently 
 
256 WALDEN 
 
 too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of 
 the sufferer s eyes shone with ferocity such as war only 
 could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under 
 the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier 
 had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and 
 the still living heads were hanging on either side of him 
 like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently 
 as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with 
 feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the 
 remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, 
 to divest himself of them ; which at length, after half an 
 hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he 
 went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. 
 Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the 
 remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides,J[ do 
 not know ; but I thought that his industry would not be 
 worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was 
 victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the 
 rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and 
 harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and 
 carnage, of a human battle before my door. 
 
 Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have 
 long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, 
 though they say that Huber is the only modern author 
 who appears to have witnessed them. " ^Eneas Sylvius," 
 say they, " after giving a very circumstantial account of 
 one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small 
 species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that " this 
 action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the 
 Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, .an 
 eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 257 
 
 battle with the greatest fidelity. A similar engagement 
 between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus 
 Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are 
 said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but 
 left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This 
 event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant 
 Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle which 
 I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five 
 years before the passage of Webster s Fugitive-Slave 
 Bill. 
 
 Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle 
 in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the 
 woods, without the knowledge of his master, and in 
 effectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks* 
 holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly 
 threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural ter 
 ror in its denizens; now far behind his guide, barking 
 like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had 
 treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the 
 bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the track 
 of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was 
 surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the 
 pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. The sur 
 prise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, 
 which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at 
 home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy be 
 havior, proves herself more native there than the regular 
 inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with 
 young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like 
 their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spit 
 ting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there 
 
258 WALDEN 
 
 was what was called a " winged cat " in one of the farm 
 houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker s. 
 When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone 
 a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure 
 whether it was a male or female, and so use the more 
 common pronoun), but her mistress told me that she 
 came into the neighborhood a little more than a year 
 before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; 
 that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white 
 spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy 
 tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and 
 flatted out along her sides, forming strips ten or twelve 
 inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin 
 like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like 
 felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. 
 They gave me a pair of her " wings," which I keep still. 
 There is no appearance of a membrane about them. 
 Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other 
 wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to 
 naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the 
 union of the marten and domestic cat. This would have 
 been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept 
 any; for why should not a ptfet s cat be winged as well 
 as his horse? 
 
 In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, 
 to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring 
 with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of 
 his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, 
 in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with 
 patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They 
 come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at 
 

 BRUTE NEIGHBORS 259 
 
 least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on 
 this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird 
 cannot be omnipresent ; if he dive here he must come up 
 there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling 
 the leaves and rippling the surface of the. water, so that 
 no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the 
 pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with 
 their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash 
 angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sports 
 men must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished 
 jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went 
 to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently 
 saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few 
 rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order 
 to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be 
 completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, 
 sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was 
 more than a match for him on the surface. He com 
 monly went off in a rain. 
 
 As I was paddling along the north shore one very 
 calm October afternoon, for such days especially they 
 settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having 
 looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, 
 sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods 
 in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed him 
 self. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when 
 he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, 
 but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we 
 were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this 
 time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again 
 he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than 
 
260 WALDEN 
 
 before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not 
 get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he 
 came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, 
 he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently 
 chose his course so that he might come up where there 
 was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest dis 
 tance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he 
 made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. 
 He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and 
 could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one 
 thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought 
 in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth 
 surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly 
 your adversary s checker disappears beneath the board, 
 and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his 
 will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unex 
 pectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently 
 passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he 
 and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he 
 would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then 
 no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the 
 smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, 
 for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the 
 pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been 
 caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the 
 surface, with hooks set for trout, though Walden is 
 deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to 
 see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding 
 his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know 
 his course as surely under water as on the surface, and 
 swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple 
 

 BRUTE NEIGHBORS 261 
 
 where he approached the surface, just put his head out 
 to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found 
 that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his 
 reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would 
 rise ; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes 
 over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled 
 by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after 
 displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray 
 himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh ? 
 Did not his white breast enough betray him ? He was 
 indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear 
 the plash of the water when he came up, and so also 
 detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as 
 ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at 
 first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off 
 with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, do 
 ing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual 
 note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that 
 of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked 
 me most successfully and come up a long way off, he 
 uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more 
 like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts 
 his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This 
 was his looning, perhaps the wildest sound that is 
 ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. 
 I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, 
 confident of his own resources. Though the sky was 
 by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I 
 could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear 
 him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the 
 smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, 
 
262 WALDEN 
 
 having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those 
 prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid 
 him, and immediately there came a wind from the east 
 and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with 
 misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer 
 of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; 
 and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultu 
 ous surface. 
 
 For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly 
 tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from 
 the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to 
 practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise 
 they would sometimes circle round and round and over 
 the pond at a considerable height, from which they could 
 easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes 
 in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off 
 thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting 
 flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which 
 was left free ; but what beside safety they got by sailing 
 in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love 
 its water for the same reason that I do. 
 
XIII 
 HOUSE-WARMING 
 
 IN October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and 
 loaded myself with clusters more precious for their 
 beauty and fragrance than for food. There, too, I ad 
 mired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small 
 waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and 
 red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving 
 the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring 
 them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the 
 spoils of the meads to Boston and New York ; destined 
 to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature 
 there. So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the 
 prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. 
 The barberry s brilliant fruit was likewise food for my 
 eyes merely; but I collected a small store of wild apples 
 for coddling, which the proprietor and travellers had 
 overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half 
 a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that season 
 to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln, 
 they now sleep their long sleep under the railroad, 
 with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burs 
 with in my hand, for I did not always wait for the frost, 
 amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the 
 red squirrels and the jays, whose half -consumed nuts I 
 sometimes stole, for the burs which they had selected 
 
264 WALDEN 
 
 were sure to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed 
 and shook the trees. They grew also behind my house, 
 and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, 
 when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole 
 neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most 
 I of its fruit ; the last coming in flocks early in the morn 
 ing and picking the nuts out of the burs before they fell. 
 1 1 relinquished these trees to them and visited the more 
 distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. These 
 nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for 
 bread. Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. 
 Digging one day for fishworms, I discovered the ground 
 nut (Apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the abo 
 rigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to 
 doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had 
 told, and had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its 
 crimpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of 
 other plants without knowing it to be the same. Culti 
 vation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish 
 taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and I found 
 it better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a 
 faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and 
 feed them simply here at some future period. In these 
 days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble 
 root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is 
 quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine ; but 
 let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and 
 luxurious English grains will probably disappear before 
 a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow 
 may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great 
 cornfield of the Indian s God in the southwest, whence 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 265 
 
 he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exter 
 minated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in 
 spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and 
 resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of 
 the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva must 
 have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when 
 the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string 
 of nuts may be represented on our works of art. 
 / Already, by the first of September, I had seen two 
 or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, 
 beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, 
 at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many 
 a tale their color told! And gradually from week to 
 week the character of each tree came out, and it ad 
 mired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. 
 Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted 
 some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or 
 harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls. 
 
 The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in Octo 
 ber, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows 
 within and on the walls overhead, sometimes deterring 
 visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were 
 numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did 
 not trouble myself much to get rid of them ; I even felt 
 complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable 
 shelter. They never molested me seriously, though they 
 bedded .with me; and they gradually disappeared, into 
 what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and un 
 speakable cold. 
 
 Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter 
 quarters in November, I used to resort to the north- 
 
266 WALDEN 
 
 east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the 
 pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside 
 of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer 
 to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an 
 artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing 
 embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had 
 left. 
 
 When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. 
 My bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be 
 cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than 
 usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar 
 on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still 
 growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which 
 men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such 
 sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more 
 firmly with age, and it would take many blows with 
 a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of 
 the villages of Mesopotamia are built of second-hand 
 bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of 
 Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably 
 harder still. However that may be, I was struck by 
 the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so many 
 violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks 
 had been in a chimney before, though I did not read 
 the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out 
 as many fireplace bricks as I could find, to save work 
 and waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks 
 about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, aiid 
 also made my mortar with the white sand from the 
 same place. I lingered most about the fireplace, as the 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 267 
 
 most vital part of the house. Indeed, I worked so de 
 liberately, that though I commenced at the ground in the 
 morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches above 
 the floor served for my pillow at night ; yet I did not get 
 a stiff neck for it that I remember; my stiff neck is of 
 older date. I took a poet to board for a fortnight about 
 those times, which caused me to be put to it for room. 
 He brought his own knife, though I had two, and we 
 used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth. He 
 shared with me the labors of cooking. I was pleased to 
 see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, and 
 \ reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated 
 to endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent 
 an independent structure, standing on the ground, and 
 rising through the house to the heavens ; even after the 
 house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its im 
 portance and independence are apparent. This was 
 toward the end of summer. It was now November. 
 
 The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, 
 though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accom 
 plish it, it is so deep. When I began to have a fire at 
 evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney car 
 ried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous 
 chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful 
 evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded 
 by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters 
 with the bark on high overhead. My house never pleased 
 my eye so much after it was plastered, though I was 
 obliged to confess that it was more comfortable. Should 
 not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty 
 
268 WALDEN 
 
 enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flick 
 ering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? 
 These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagi 
 nation than fresco paintings or other the most expensive 
 furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may 
 say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. 
 I had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood 
 from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot 
 form on the back of the chimney which I had built, and 
 I poked the fire with more right and more satisfaction 
 than usual. My dwelling was small, and I could hardly 
 entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being 
 a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All 
 the attractions of a house were concentrated in one 
 room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping- 
 room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, mas 
 ter or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed 
 it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfa- 
 milias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, 
 vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, 
 et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and 
 wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to 
 expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and 
 virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, 
 about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and 
 on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye 
 and Indian meal a peck each. 
 
 I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous 
 house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, 
 and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist 
 of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 269 
 
 hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and 
 purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one s 
 head, useful to keep off rain and snow, where the 
 king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, 
 when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn 
 of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill ; a cavern 
 ous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a 
 pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fire 
 place, some in the recess of a window, and some on set 
 tles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and 
 some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; 
 a house which you have got into when you have opened 
 the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the 
 weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and 
 sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you 
 would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, con 
 taining all the essentials of a house, and nothing for 
 house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of 
 the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its 
 peg that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, 
 parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you 
 can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so 
 convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot 
 boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your 
 dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the 
 necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments ; 
 where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the 
 mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested 
 to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would 
 descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground 
 is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A 
 
270 WALDEN 
 
 house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird s 
 nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out 
 at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants ; where 
 to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the 
 house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven 
 eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make 
 yourself at home there, in solitary confinement. 
 Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, 
 but has got the mason to build one for yourself some 
 where in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping 
 you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy 
 about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. 
 I am aware that I have been on many a man s premises, 
 and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not 
 aware that I have been in many men s houses. I might 
 visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived sim 
 ply in such a house as I have described, if I were going 
 their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be 
 all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one. 
 It would seem as if the very language of our parlors 
 would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver 
 wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its sym 
 bols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so 
 far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; 
 in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and 
 workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a 
 dinner, commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near 
 enough to Nature and Truth to borrow a trope from 
 them. How can the scholar, who dwells away in the 
 North West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is 
 parliamentary in the kitchen ? 
 

 HOUSE-WARMING 271 
 
 However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold 
 enough to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but 
 when they saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty 
 retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its foun 
 dations. Nevertheless, it stood through a great many 
 hasty-puddings . 
 
 I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought 
 over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from 
 the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of con 
 veyance which would have tempted me to go much far 
 ther if necessary. My house had in the meanwhile been 
 shingled down to the ground on every side. In lathing I 
 was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a 
 single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to 
 transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and 
 rapidly. I remembered the story of a conceited fellow, 
 who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village 
 once, giving advice to workmen. Venturing one day to 
 substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized 
 a plasterer s board, and having loaded his trowel with 
 out mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing 
 overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward ; and straight 
 way, to his complete discomfiture, received the whole 
 contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired anew the econ 
 omy and convenience of plastering, which so effectually 
 shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish, and I 
 learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is 
 liable. I was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were 
 which drank up all the moisture in my plaster before I 
 had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water it takes 
 to christen a new hearth. I had the previous winter made 
 
272 WALDEN 
 
 a small quantity of lime by burning the shells of the 
 Unio fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of 
 the experiment; so that I knew where my materials 
 came from. I might have got good limestone within a 
 mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared to 
 do so. 
 
 The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the 
 shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks 
 before the general freezing. The first ice is especially 
 interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and trans 
 parent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers 
 for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you 
 can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a 
 skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the 
 bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, 
 like a picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily 
 always smooth then. There are many furrows in the sand 
 where some creature has travelled about and doubled 
 on its tracks ; and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases 
 of caddis-worms made of minute grains of white quartz. 
 Perhaps these have creased it, for you find some of their 
 cases in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for 
 them to make. But the ice itself is the object of most in 
 terest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity 
 to study it. If you examine it closely the morning after 
 it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, 
 which at first appeared to be within it, are against its 
 under surface, and that more are continually rising from 
 the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid 
 and dark, that is, you see the water through it. These 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 273 
 
 bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in 
 diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face 
 reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty 
 or forty of them to a square inch. There are also already 
 within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles 
 about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex up 
 ward ; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spher 
 ical bubbles one directly above another, like a string of 
 beads. But these within the ice are not so numerous nor 
 obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on 
 stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which 
 broke through carried in air with them, which formed 
 very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. One 
 day when I came to the same place forty-eight hours 
 afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still 
 perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed, as I 
 could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. 
 But as the last two days had been very warm, like an 
 Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, show 
 ing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, 
 but opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as 
 thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles 
 had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, 
 and lost their regularity; they were no longer one di 
 rectly over another, but often like silvery coins poured 
 from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, 
 as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice 
 was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. Being 
 curious to know what position my great bubbles occu 
 pied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake 
 containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom 
 
274 WALDEN 
 
 upward. The new ice had formed around and under the 
 bubble, so that it was included between the two ices. It 
 was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, 
 and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a 
 rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches 
 in diameter; and I was surprised to find that directly 
 under the bubble the ice was melted with great regu 
 larity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of 
 five eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin 
 partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly 
 an eighth of an inch thick ; and in many places the small 
 bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and 
 probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, 
 which were a foot in diameter. I inferred that the in 
 finite number of minute bubbles which I had first seen 
 against the under surface of the ice were now frozen in 
 likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like 
 a burning-glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. 
 These are the little air-guns which contribute to make 
 the ice crack and whoop. 
 
 At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I 
 had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl 
 around the house as if it had not had permission to do so 
 till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in 
 in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even 
 after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight 
 in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward 
 Fair Haven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when re 
 turning from the village at ten or eleven o clock at night, 
 I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 275 
 
 the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my 
 dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint 
 honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 
 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the 
 night of the 22d of December, Flint s and other shallower 
 ponds and the river having been frozen ten days or 
 more; in 46, the 16th; in 49, about the 31st; and in 
 50, about the 27th of December; in 52, the 5th of Jan 
 uary; in 53, the 31st of December. The snow had al 
 ready covered the ground since the 25th of November, 
 and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. 
 I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to 
 keep a bright fire both within my house and within my 
 breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect 
 the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or 
 on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree 
 under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence which 
 had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I sacri 
 ficed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Ter 
 minus. How much more interesting an event is that 
 man s supper who has just been forth in the snow to 
 hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! 
 His bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots 
 and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our 
 towns to support many fires, but which at present warm 
 none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young 
 wood. There was also the driftwood of the pond. In the 
 course of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch 
 pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish 
 when the railroad was built. This I hauled up partly 
 on the shore. After soaking two years and then lying 
 
276 WALDEN 
 
 high six months it was perfectly sound, though water 
 logged past drying. I amused myself one winter day 
 with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half 
 a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet 
 long on my shoulder, and the other on the ice ; or I tied 
 several logs together with a birch withe, and then, with 
 a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the end, 
 dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged 
 and almost as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, 
 but made a very hot fire ; nay, I thought that they burned 
 better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by 
 the water, burned longer, as in a lamp. 
 
 Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of Eng 
 land, says that "the encroachments of trespassers, and 
 the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the 
 forest," were "considered as great nuisances by the old 
 forest law, and were severely punished under the name 
 of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarum ad 
 nocwnentum forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game 
 and the detriment of the forest. But I was interested in 
 the preservation of the venison and the vert more than 
 the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much as though I 
 had been the Lord Warden himself ; and if any part was 
 burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved 
 with a grief that lasted longer and was more inconsol 
 able than that of the proprietors ; nay, I grieved when it 
 was cut down by the proprietors themselves. I would 
 that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some 
 of that awe which the old Romans did when they came 
 to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum 
 conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 277 
 
 some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and 
 prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this 
 grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and 
 children, etc. 
 
 It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood 
 even in this age and in this new country, a value more ; 
 permanent and universal than that of gold. After all 
 our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile 
 of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon 
 and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, 
 we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty 
 years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New 
 York and Philadelphia "nearly equals, and sometimes 
 exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this im 
 mense capital annually requires more than three hun 
 dred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance 
 of three hundred miles by cultivated plains." In this 
 town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the 
 only question is, how much higher it is to be this year 
 than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who 
 come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure 
 to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price 
 for the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. It 
 is now many years that men have resorted to the forest 
 for fuel and the materials of the arts : the New Englander 
 and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the 
 farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; 
 in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, 
 the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few 
 sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. 
 Neither could I do without them. 
 
278 WALDEN 
 
 Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affec 
 tion. I loved to have mine before my window, and the 
 more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. 
 I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by 
 spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I 
 played about the stumps which I had got out of my 
 bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, 
 they warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them, 
 and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel 
 could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised 
 I to get the village blacksmith to " jump " it ; but I jumped 
 him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, 
 made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true. 
 
 A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is 
 interesting to remember how much of this food for fire 
 is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous 
 years I had often gone "prospecting" over some bare 
 hillside, where a pitch pine wood had formerly stood, 
 and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost inde 
 structible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will 
 still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all 
 become vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the 
 thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four or 
 five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel 
 you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, 
 yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein 
 of gold, deep into the earth. But commonly I kindled 
 my fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had 
 stored up in my shed before the snow came. Green 
 hickory finely split makes the woodchopper s kindlings, 
 when he has a camp in the woods. Once in a while I got 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 279 
 
 a little of this. When the villagers were lighting their 
 fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various 
 wild inhabitants of W T alden vale, by a smoky streamer 
 from my chimney, that I was awake. 
 
 Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, 
 Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, 
 Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, 
 Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; 
 Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form 
 Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; 
 By night star-veiling, and by day 
 Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; 
 Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, 
 And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. 
 
 Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little of 
 that, answered my purpose better than any other. I 
 sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in 
 a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four 
 hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. 
 My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as 
 if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I 
 and Fire that lived there; and commonly my house 
 keeper proved trustworthy. One day, however, as I was 
 splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at the 
 window and see if the house was not on fire ; it was the 
 only time I remember to have been particularly anxious 
 on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had 
 caught my bed, and I went in and extinguished it when 
 it had burned a place as big as my hand. But my house 
 occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof 
 was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in 
 the middle of almost any winter day. 
 
280 WALDEN 
 
 The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third 
 potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair 
 left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the 
 wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as 
 man, and they survive the winter only because they are 
 so careful to secure them. Some of my friends spoke as 
 if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze my 
 self. The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms 
 with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having 
 discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apart 
 ment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes 
 that his bed, in which he can move about divested of 
 more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in 
 the midst of winter, and by means of windows even ad 
 mit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. 
 Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a 
 little time for the fine arts. Though, when I had been 
 exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my whole body 
 began to grow torpid, when I reached the genial atmos 
 phere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and 
 prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously housed has 
 little to boast of in this respect, nor need we trouble our 
 selves to speculate how the human race may be at last 
 destroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads any 
 time with a little sharper blast from the north. We go 
 on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a 
 little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period 
 to man s existence on the globe. 
 
 The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for 
 economy, since I did not own the forest; but it did not 
 keep fire so well as the open fireplace. Cooking was then, 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 281 
 
 for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic 
 process. It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, 
 that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the 
 Indian fashion. The stove not only took up room and 
 scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as 
 if I had lost a companion. You can always see a face in 
 the fire. The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies 
 his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have 
 accumulated during the day. But I could no longer sit 
 and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet 
 recurred to me with new force. 
 
 " Never, bright flame, may be denied to me 
 Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. 
 What but my hopes shot upward e er so bright ? 
 What but my fortunes sunk so low in night ? 
 Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, 
 Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all ? 
 Was thy existence then too fanciful 
 For our life s common light, who are so dull ? 
 Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold 
 With our congenial souls ? secrets too bold ? 
 
 Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit 
 
 Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, 
 
 Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire 
 
 Warms feet and hands nor does to more aspire; 
 
 By whose compact utilitarian heap 
 
 The present may sit down and go to sleep, 
 
 Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, 
 
 Ajid with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked." 
 
XIV 
 
 FORMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTER 
 VISITORS 
 
 _L WEATHERED some merry snow-storms, and spent 
 some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the 
 snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of the 
 owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my 
 walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood and 
 sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted 
 . ^e in making a path through the deepest snow in the 
 woods, for when I had once gone through the wind blew 
 the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by 
 absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so 
 not only made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night 
 their dark line was my guide. For human society I was 
 obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these 
 woods. Within the memory of many of my townsmen 
 the road near which my house stands resounded with the 
 laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which 
 border it were notched and dotted here and there with 
 their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then 
 much more shut in by the forest than now. In some 
 places, within my own remembrance, the pines would 
 scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and chil 
 dren who were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone 
 and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS 283 
 
 of the distance. Though mainly but a humble route to 
 neighboring villages, or for the woodman s team, it once 
 amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and 
 lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open 
 fields stretch from the village to the woods, it then ran 
 through a maple swamp on a foundation of logs, the 
 remnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present 
 dusty highway, from the Stratton, now the Aims-House, 
 Farm, to Brister s Hill. 
 
 East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato 
 Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentle 
 man, of Concord village, who built his slave a house, and 
 gave him permission to live in Walden Woods ; Cato, 
 not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was 
 a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his 
 little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till 
 he should be old and need them; but a younger and 
 whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, 
 occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato s 
 half -obliterated cellar-hole still remains, though known 
 to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of 
 pines. It is now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus 
 glabra), and one of the earliest species of goldenrod 
 (Solidago stricta) grows there luxuriantly. 
 
 Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to 
 town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, 
 where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the 
 Walden Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had 
 a loud and notable voice. At length, in the war of 1812, 
 her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers, prisoners 
 on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and 
 
284 WALDEN 
 
 hens were all burned up together. She led a hard life, 
 and somewhat inhumane. One old frequenter of these 
 woods remembers, that as he passed her house one 
 noon he heard her muttering to herself over her gur 
 gling pot, "Ye are all bones, bones!" I have seen 
 bricks amid the oak copse there. 
 
 Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister s Hill, 
 lived Brister Freeman, " a handy Negro," slave of Squire 
 Cummings once, there where grow still the apple 
 trees which Brister planted and tended; large old trees 
 now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. 
 Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln 
 bury ing-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked 
 graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat 
 from Concord, where he is styled " Sippio Brister," 
 Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called, 
 "a man of color," as if he were discolored. It also 
 told me, with staring emphasis, when he died; which 
 was but an indirect way of informing me that he ever 
 lived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, 
 who told fortunes, yet pleasantly, large, round, and 
 black, blacker than any of the children of night, such 
 a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since. 
 
 Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road 
 in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the 
 Stratton family; whose orchard once covered all the 
 slope of Brister s Hill, but was long since killed out by 
 pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old roots 
 furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village 
 tree. 
 
 Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed s location, on 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS 285 
 
 the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; 
 ground famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly 
 named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent 
 and astounding part in our New England life, and de 
 serves, as much as any mythological character, to have 
 his biography written one day; who first comes in the 
 guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and mur 
 ders the whole family, New-England Rum. But 
 history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; 
 let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend 
 an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and 
 dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood; the 
 well the same, which tempered the traveller s beverage 
 and refreshed his steed. Here then men saluted one 
 another, and heard and told the news, and went their 
 ways again. 
 
 Breed s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, 
 though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the 
 size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, 
 one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the 
 edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over 
 Davenant s " Gondibert," that winter that I labored with 
 a lethargy, which, by the way, I never knew whether 
 to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who 
 goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout 
 potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake 
 and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my 
 attempt to read Chalmers collection of English poetry 
 without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had 
 just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and 
 in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a strag- 
 
286 WALDEN 
 
 gling troop of men and boys, and I among the fore 
 most, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was 
 far south over the woods, we who had run to fires 
 before, barn, shop, or dwelling-house , or all to 
 gether. " It s Baker s barn," cried one. " It is the Cod- 
 man place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks 
 went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and 
 we all shouted "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons 
 shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bear 
 ing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insur 
 ance Company, who was bound to go however far; 
 and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more 
 slow and sure; and rearmost of all, as it was afterward 
 whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the 
 alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting 
 the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road 
 we heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of the 
 fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we 
 were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled 
 our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on 
 to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone 
 and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled 
 one another, expressed our sentiments through speak 
 ing-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great 
 conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including 
 Bascom s shop, and, between ourselves, we thought 
 that, were we there in season with our "tub," and a 
 full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last 
 and universal one into another flood. We finally re 
 treated without doing any mischief, returned to sleep 
 and " Gondibert." But as for " Gondibert," I would 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS 287 
 
 except that passage in the preface about wit being the 
 soul s powder, " but most of mankind are strangers 
 to wit, as Indians are to powder." 
 
 It chanced that I walked that way across the fields 
 the following night, about the same hour, and hearing 
 a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and 
 discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, 
 the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone 
 was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach 
 and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering 
 cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. 
 He had been working far off in the river meadows all 
 day, and had improved the first moments that he could 
 call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his 
 youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and points 
 of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there 
 was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed 
 between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing 
 but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house being gone, 
 he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the 
 sympathy which my mere presence implied, and showed 
 me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well 
 was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be \ 
 burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the j 
 well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, 
 feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden 
 had been fastened to the heavy end, all that he could 
 now cling to, to convince me that it was no common 
 "rider." I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in 
 my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family. 
 
 Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and 
 
288 WALDEN 
 
 lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nut 
 ting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln. 
 
 Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road 
 approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter 
 squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthen 
 ware, and left descendants to succeed him. Neither 
 were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by 
 sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff 
 came in vain to collect the taxes, and " attached a chip," 
 for form s sake, as I have read in his accounts, there 
 being nothing else that he could lay his hands on. One 
 day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who 
 was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his 
 horse against my field and inquired concerning Wyman 
 the younger. He had long ago bought a potter s wheel 
 of him, and wished to know what had become of him. 
 I had read of the potter s clay and wheel in Scripture, 
 but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use 
 were not such as had come down unbroken from those 
 days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and I 
 was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever prac 
 ticed in my neighborhood. 
 
 The last inhabitant of these woods before me was 
 an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name 
 with coil enough), who occupied Wyman s tenement, 
 Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he had 
 been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived I should have 
 made him fight his battles over again. His trade here 
 was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; 
 Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of him is 
 tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who had 
 
WALDBN WOODS 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS 289 
 
 seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech 
 than you could well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in 
 midsummer, being affected with the trembling delirium, 
 and his face was the color of carmine. He died in the 
 road at the foot of Brister s Hill shortly after I came to 
 the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a 
 neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his 
 comrades avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited 
 it. There lay his old clothes curled up by use, as if they 
 were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay 
 broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the 
 fountain. The last could never have been the symbol 
 of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had 
 heard of Brister s Spring, he had never seen it; and 
 soiled cards, kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, 
 were scattered over the floor. One black chicken which 
 the administrator could not catch, black as night and 
 as silent, not even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still 
 went to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there 
 was the dim outline of a garden, which had been planted 
 but had never received its first hoeing, owing to those 
 terrible shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. It 
 was overrun with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, 
 which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of 
 a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of 
 the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo; but no warm 
 cap or mittens would he want more. 
 
 Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of 
 these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and straw 
 berries, raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and 
 sumachs growing in the sunny sward there ; some pitch 
 
290 WALDEN 
 
 pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney 
 nook, and a sweet-scented black birch, perhaps, waves 
 where the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent 
 is visible, where once a spring oozed; now dry and 
 tearless grass ; or it was covered deep, not to be 
 discovered till some late day, with a flat stone under 
 the sod, when the last of the race departed. What a 
 sorrowful act must that be, the covering up of wells ! 
 coincident with the opening of wells of tears. These 
 cellar dents, like deserted fox burrows, old holes, are all 
 that is left where once were the stir and bustle of hu 
 man life, and " fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 hr-somo fernl and dialect or other were by turns dis 
 cussed. But all I can learn of their conclusions amounts 
 to just this, that " Cato and Brister pulled wool; " which 
 is about as edifying as the history of more famous 
 schools of philosophy. 
 
 Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the 
 door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet- 
 scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the mus 
 ing traveller; planted and tended once by children s 
 hands, in front-yard plots, now standing by wall- 
 sides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising 
 forests ; the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that 
 family. Little did the dusky children think that the 
 puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in 
 the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, 
 would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself 
 in the rear that shaded it, and grown man s garden and 
 orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer 
 a half -century after they had grown up and died, 
 
WINTER VISITORS 291 
 
 blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that 
 first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful, lilac 
 colors. 
 
 But this small village, germ of something more, why 
 did it fail while Concord keeps its ground ? Were there 
 no natural advantages, no water privileges, for 
 sooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister s 
 Spring, privilege to drink long and healthy draughts 
 at these* all unimproved by these men but to dilute their 
 glass. They were universally a thirsty race. Might not 
 the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, 
 linen-spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, 
 making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a 
 numerous posterity have inherited the land of their 
 fathers? The sterile soil would at least have been 
 proof against a lowland degeneracy. Alas! how little 
 does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance 
 the beauty of the landscape! Again, perhaps, Nature 
 will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised 
 last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. 
 
 I am not aware that any man has ever built on the 
 spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on 
 the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, 
 whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and 
 accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the 
 earth itself will be destroyed. With such reminiscences 
 I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. 
 
 At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the 
 snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house 
 for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as 
 
292 WALDEN 
 
 snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which 
 are said to have survived for a long time buried in 
 drifts, even without food; or like that early settler s 
 family in the town of Sutton, in this State, whose cottage 
 was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 
 when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by 
 the hole which the chimney s breath made in the drift, 
 and so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian con 
 cerned himself about me; nor needed he, for the mas 
 ter of the house was at home. The Great Snow ! How 
 cheerful it is to hear of ! When the farmers could not 
 get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and 
 were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their 
 houses, and, when the crust was harder, cut off the 
 trees in the swamps, ten feet from the ground, as it ap 
 peared the next spring. 
 
 In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the 
 highway to my house, about half a mile long, might 
 have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with 
 wide intervals between the dots. For a week of even 
 weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and 
 of the same length, coming and going, stepping delib 
 erately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in 
 my own deep tracks, to such routine the winter re 
 duces us, yet often they were filled with heaven s 
 own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my 
 walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently 
 tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow 
 to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow 
 birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when 
 the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so 
 

 WINTER VISITORS 293 
 
 sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir 
 trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the 
 snow was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking 
 down another snow-storm on my head at every step ; or 
 sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands 
 and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter 
 quarters. One afternoon I amused myself by watching 
 a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the 
 lower dead limbs of a white pine, close to the trunk, 
 in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He 
 could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow 
 with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When I 
 made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and 
 erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but 
 their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too 
 felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an 
 hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, 
 winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow 
 slit left between their lids, by which he preserved a 
 peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, 
 looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring 
 to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his 
 visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer 
 approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn 
 about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams 
 disturbed ; and when he launched himself off and flapped 
 through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected 
 breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from 
 them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a 
 delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, 
 feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive pin- 
 
294 WALDEN 
 
 ions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace 
 await the dawning of his day. 
 
 As I walked over the long causeway made for the 
 railroad through the meadows, I encountered many a 
 blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer 
 play; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, 
 heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also. Nor was 
 it much better by the carriage road from Brister s Hill. 
 For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian, when 
 the contents of the broad open fields were all piled 
 up between the walls of the Walden road, and half an 
 hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveller. 
 And when I returned new drifts would have formed, 
 through which I floundered, where the busy northwest 
 wind had been depositing the powdery snow round 
 a sharp angle in the road, and not a rabbit s track, nor 
 even the fine print, the small type, of a meadow mouse 
 was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in mid 
 winter, some warm and springy swamp where the 
 grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with peren 
 nial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited 
 the return of spring. 
 
 Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I re 
 turned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep 
 tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and 
 found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my house 
 filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday after 
 noon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching 
 of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, 
 who from far through the woods sought my house, to 
 have a social "crack;" one of the few of his vocation 
 
WINTER VISITORS 295 
 
 who are "men on their farms;" who donned a frock 
 instead of a professor s gown, and is as ready to ex 
 tract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load 
 of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and 
 simple times, when men sat about large fires in cold, 
 bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other 
 dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which 
 wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those 
 which have the thickest shells are commonly empty. 
 
 The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through 
 deepest snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. 
 A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a phi 
 losopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a 
 poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can pre 
 dict his comings and goings? His business calls him 
 out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. We made 
 that small house ring with boisterous mirth and re 
 sound with the murmur of much sober talk, making 
 amends then to Walden vale for the long silences. 
 Broadway was still and deserted in comparison. At 
 suitable intervals there were regular salutes of laughter, 
 which might have been referred indifferently to the 
 last-uttered or the forth-coming jest. We made many 
 a " bran new " theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, 
 which combined the advantages of conviviality with 
 the clear-headedness which philosophy requires. 
 
 I shouldnot forget that during my last winter at the 
 pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one 
 time came through the village, through snow and rain 
 and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and 
 shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the 
 
296 WALDEN 
 
 last of the philosophers, Connecticut gave him to 
 the world, he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as 
 he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompt 
 ing God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain 
 only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the 
 man of the most faith of any alive. His words and atti 
 tude always suppose a better state of things than other 
 men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man 
 to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no ven 
 ture in the present. But though comparatively disre 
 garded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by 
 most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers 
 will come to him for advice. 
 
 " How blind that cannot see serenity ! " 
 
 A true friend of man ; almost the only friend of human 
 progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, 
 with unwearied patience and faith making plain the 
 image engraven in men s bodies, the God of w T hom they 
 are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his hos 
 pitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, 
 and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding 
 to it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that 
 he should keep a caravansary on the world s highway, 
 where philosophers of all nations might put up, and 
 on his sign should be printed, " Entertainment for man, 
 but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a 
 quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road." He is 
 perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of 
 any I chance to know; the same yesterday and to-mor 
 row. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effect- 
 
WINTER VISITORS 297 
 
 ually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to 
 no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way 
 we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth 
 had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the 
 landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the 
 overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not 
 see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him. 
 
 Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we 
 sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring 
 the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We 
 waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together 
 so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared 
 from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but 
 came and went grandly, like the clouds which float 
 through the western sky, and the mother-o -pearl flocks 
 which sometimes form and dissolve there. There we 
 worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and 
 there, and building castles in the air for which earth 
 offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker ! Great 
 Expecter ! to converse with whom was a New England 
 Night s Entertainment. Ah ! such discourse we had, 
 hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have 
 spoken of, we three, it expanded and racked my 
 little house ; I should not dare to say how many pounds 
 weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on 
 every circular inch ; it opened its seams so that they had 
 to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the 
 consequent leak; but I had enough of that kind of 
 oakum already picked. 
 
 There was one other with whom I had "solid sea 
 sons," long to be remembered, at his house in the vil- 
 
298 WALDEN 
 
 lage, and who looked in upon me from time to time; 
 but I had no more for society there. 
 
 There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the 
 Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, 
 " The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his court 
 yard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he 
 pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." I often per 
 formed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to 
 milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man 
 approaching from the town. 
 
XV 
 
 WINTER ANIMALS 
 
 HEN the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded 
 not only new and shorter routes to many points, but 
 new views from their surfaces of the familiar land 
 scape around them. When I crossed Flint s Pond, after 
 it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled 
 about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide 
 and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin s 
 Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the ex 
 tremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember 
 to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeter 
 minable distance over the ice, moving slowly about 
 with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers or Esquimaux, 
 or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, 
 and I did not know whether they were giants or pyg 
 mies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lin 
 coln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing 
 no house between my own hut and the lecture room. In 
 Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats 
 dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though 
 none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, 
 being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only 
 shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where 
 I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet 
 deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were con- 
 
300 WALDEN 
 
 fined to their streets. There, far from the village street, 
 and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of 
 sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard 
 well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines 
 bent down with snow or bristling with icicles. 
 
 For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter 
 days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hoot 
 ing owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen 
 earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, 
 the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite 
 familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while 
 it was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter 
 evening without hearing it; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo, 
 sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables ac 
 cented somewhat like how der do ; or sometimes hoo hoo 
 only. One night in the beginning of winter, before the 
 pond froze over, about nine o clock, I was startled by 
 the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, 
 heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the 
 woods as they flew low over my house. They passed 
 over the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred 
 from settling by my light, their commodore honking all 
 the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistak 
 able cat owl from very near me, with the most harsh 
 and tremendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant 
 of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, 
 as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder 
 from Hudson s Bay by exhibiting a greater compass 
 and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of 
 Concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the 
 citadel at this time of night consecrated to me ? Do you 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 301 
 
 think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and 
 that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as your 
 self ? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo ! It was one of the most 
 thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a 
 discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a 
 concord such as these plains never saw nor heard. 
 
 I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, 
 my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it 
 were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were 
 troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was 
 waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if 
 some one had driven a team against my door, and in 
 the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter 
 of a mile long and a third of an inch wide. 
 
 Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the 
 snow-crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge 
 or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like 
 forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking 
 expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright 
 and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages 
 into our account, may there not be a civilization going 
 on among brutes as well as men ? They seemed to me 
 to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their 
 defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one 
 came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked 
 a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. 
 
 Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked 
 me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and 
 down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods 
 for this purpose. In the course of the winter I threw 
 out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not 
 
302 WALDEN 
 
 got ripe, on to the snow-crust by my door, and was 
 amused by watching the motions of the various animals 
 which were baited by it. In the twilight and the night 
 the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. 
 All day long the red squirrels came and went, and 
 afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. 
 One would approach at first warily through the shrub 
 oaks, running over the snow-crust by fits and starts 
 like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, 
 with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making in 
 conceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for 
 a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never 
 getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then 
 suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a 
 gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe 
 were fixed on him, for all the motions of a squirrel, 
 even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply 
 spectators as much as those of a dancing girl, wast 
 ing more time in delay and circumspection than would 
 have sufficed to walk the whole distance, I never 
 saw one walk, and then suddenly, before you could 
 say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young 
 pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all im 
 aginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the 
 universe at the same time, for no reason that I could 
 ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At 
 length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable 
 ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical 
 way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my 
 window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit 
 for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 303 
 
 to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the 
 half -naked cobs about; till at length he grew more 
 dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the 
 inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held bal 
 anced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his care 
 less grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look 
 over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as 
 if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up 
 whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now 
 thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in 
 the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste 
 many an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some 
 longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than him 
 self, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it 
 to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same 
 zigzag course and frequent pauses, scratching along 
 with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the 
 while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicu 
 lar and horizontal, being determined to put it through 
 at any rate; a singularly frivolous and whimsical 
 fellow; and so he would get off with it to where he 
 lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or 
 fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs 
 strewn about the woods in various directions. 
 
 At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams 
 were heard long before, as they were warily making 
 their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in a stealthy 
 and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer 
 and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels 
 have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they 
 attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too 
 
304 WALDEN 
 
 big for their throats and chokes them; and after great 
 labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the en 
 deavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. 
 They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much re 
 spect for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, 
 went to work as if they were taking what was their 
 own. 
 
 Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, 
 picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew 
 to the nearest twig, and, placing them under their claws, 
 hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it 
 were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently re 
 duced for their slender throats. A little flock of these tit 
 mice came daily to pick a dinner out of my wood-pile, or 
 the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, 
 like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with 
 sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in springlike days, 
 a wiry summery phe-be from the woodside. They were 
 so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of 
 wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks 
 without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my 
 shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village 
 garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that 
 circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I 
 could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be 
 quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, 
 when that was the nearest way. 
 
 When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again 
 near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my 
 south hillside and about my wood-pile, the partridges 
 eame out of the woods morning and evening to feed 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 305 
 
 there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the par 
 tridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow 
 from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sift 
 ing down in the sunbeams like golden dust, for this brave 
 bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently cov 
 ered up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges 
 from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains con 
 cealed for a day or two." I used to start them in the 
 open land also, where they had come out of the woods 
 at sunset to "bud" the wild apple trees. They will 
 come regularly every evening to particular trees, where 
 the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the 
 distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. 
 I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. 
 It is Nature s own bird which lives on buds and diet- 
 drink. 
 
 In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, 
 I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the 
 woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the 
 instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting-horn at 
 intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods 
 ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open 
 level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their 
 Actseon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters re 
 turning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for 
 a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox 
 would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would 
 be safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no 
 foxhound could overtake him; but, having left his pur 
 suers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come 
 up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, 
 
306 WALDEN 
 
 where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he 
 will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far 
 to one side, and he appears to know that water will not 
 retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a 
 fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when 
 the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way 
 across, and then return to the same shore. Ere long the 
 hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes 
 a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and 
 circle round my house, and yelp and hound without re 
 garding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so 
 that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus 
 they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, 
 for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. 
 One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to in 
 quire after his hound that made a large track, and had 
 been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he 
 was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I at 
 tempted to answer his questions he interrupted me by 
 asking, " What do you do here ? " He had lost a dog, 
 but found a man. 
 
 One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to 
 come to bathe in Walden once every year when the 
 water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon 
 me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one 
 afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; 
 and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of 
 hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall 
 into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other 
 wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched 
 him. Some way behind came an old hound and her 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 307 
 
 three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, 
 and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the after 
 noon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Wai- 
 den, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward 
 Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, 
 their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sound 
 ing nearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now 
 from the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and 
 listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter s ear, when 
 suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles 
 with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed 
 by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, 
 keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind; 
 and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect 
 and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a mo 
 ment compassion restrained the latter s arm; but that 
 was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can 
 follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang ! the 
 fox, rolling over the rock, lay dead on the ground. The 
 hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. 
 Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded 
 through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At 
 length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the 
 ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran 
 directly to the rock ; but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly 
 ceased her hounding, as if struck dumb with amazement, 
 and walked round and round him in silence ; and one 
 by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were 
 sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter 
 came forward and stood in their midst, and the mys 
 tery was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned 
 
308 WALDEN 
 
 the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at length 
 turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston 
 squire came to the Concord hunter s cottage to inquire 
 for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been 
 hunting on their own account from Weston woods. The 
 Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him 
 the skin; but the other declined it and departed. He did 
 not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned 
 that they had crossed the river and put up at a farm 
 house for the night, whence, having been well fed, they 
 took their departure early in the morning. 
 
 The hunter who told me this could remember one 
 Sam Nutting, who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven 
 Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concord 
 village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose 
 there. Nutting had a famous foxhound named Bur- 
 goyne, he pronounced it Bugine, which my inform 
 ant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book" of an old 
 trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, 
 and representative, I find the following entry. Jan. 18th, 
 1742-3, " John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 2 3;" 
 they are not now found here; and in his ledger, Feb. 
 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit "by J a Catt 
 skin 1 4J; " of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was 
 a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have got 
 credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given for 
 deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One man still 
 preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this 
 vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the 
 hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were 
 formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 309 
 
 well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by 
 the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and more 
 melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting- 
 horn. 
 
 At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes 
 met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, 
 which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand 
 silent amid the bushes till I had passed. 
 
 Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. 
 There were scores of pitch pines around my house, from 
 one to four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed 
 by mice the previous winter, a Norwegian winter for 
 them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were 
 obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their 
 other diet. These trees were alive and apparently flour 
 ishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a 
 foot, though completely girdled; but after another win 
 ter such were without exception dead. It is remarkable 
 that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole pine 
 tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and 
 down it ; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these 
 trees, which are wont to grow up densely. 
 
 The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. 
 One had her form under my house all winter, separated 
 from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each 
 morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir, 
 thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the 
 floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come round my 
 door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had 
 thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the ground 
 that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Some- 
 
310 WALDEN 
 
 times in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered 
 sight of one sitting motionless under my window. When 
 I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with 
 a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited 
 my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces 
 from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to 
 move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged 
 ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It 
 looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of 
 nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes 
 appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took 
 a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over 
 the snow-crust, straightening its body and its limbs into 
 graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and 
 itself, the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and 
 the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slen- 
 derness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus, levipes, light- 
 foot, some think.) 
 
 What is a country without rabbits and partridges? 
 They are among the most simple and indigenous animal 
 products; ancient and venerable families known to anti 
 quity as to modern times ; of the very hue and substance 
 of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground, 
 and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. 
 It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a 
 rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as 
 much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge 
 and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives 
 of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is 
 cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford 
 them concealment, and they become more numerous 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 311 
 
 than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does 
 not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, 
 and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or 
 rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair 
 snares, which some cow-boy tends. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE POND IN WINTER 
 
 APTER a still winter night I awoke with the impres 
 sion that some question had been put to me, which I had 
 been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what 
 how when where ? But there was dawning Na 
 ture, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad 
 windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question 
 on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature 
 and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted 
 with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which 
 my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature 
 puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. 
 She has long ago taken her resolution. " O Prince, our 
 eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the 
 soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. 
 The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious 
 creation ; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, 
 which extends from earth even into the plains of the 
 ether." 
 
 Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and 
 pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. 
 After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to 
 find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface 
 of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and re 
 flected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 313 
 
 of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the 
 heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an 
 equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any 
 level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, 
 it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months 
 or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a 
 pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot 
 of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window un 
 der my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into 
 the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened 
 light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright 
 sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial 
 waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, 
 corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the 
 inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over 
 our heads. 
 
 Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with 
 frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, 
 and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to 
 take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively fol 
 low other fashions and trust other authorities than their 
 townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns 
 together in parts where else they would be ripped. They 
 sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the 
 dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the 
 citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with books, 
 and know and can tell much less than they have done. 
 The things which they practice are said not yet to be 
 known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch 
 for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a 
 summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, 
 
814 WALDEN 
 
 or knew where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get 
 these in midwinter? Oh, he got worms out of rotten 
 logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. His 
 life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of 
 the naturalist penetrate ; himself a subject for the natu 
 ralist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with 
 his knife in search of insects ; the former lays open logs 
 to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and 
 wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man 
 has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried 
 out in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the 
 pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swal 
 lows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of 
 being are filled. 
 
 When I strolled around the pond in misty weather 
 I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which 
 some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps 
 have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the 
 ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal dis 
 tance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the 
 line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have 
 passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or 
 more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, 
 being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. 
 These alders loomed through the mist at regular inter 
 vals as you walked half way round the pond. 
 
 Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying 
 on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the 
 ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always 
 surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous 
 fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 315 
 
 woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They 
 possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which 
 separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous 
 cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. 
 They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the 
 stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, 
 if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious 
 stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei 
 or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are 
 Walden all over and all through; are themselves small 
 Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is sur 
 prising that they are caught here, that in this deep 
 and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and 
 chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, 
 this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced 
 to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure 
 of all eyes there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, 
 they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal trans 
 lated before his time to the thin air of heaven. 
 
 As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of 
 Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice 
 broke up, early in 46, with compass and chain and 
 sounding line. There have been many stories told about 
 the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which 
 certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is re 
 markable how long men will believe in the bottomless- 
 ness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I 
 have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in 
 this neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden 
 reached quite through to the other side of the globe. 
 
316 WALDEN 
 
 Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, look 
 ing down through the illusive medium, perchance with 
 watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty con 
 clusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, 
 have seen vast holes " into which a load of hay might be 
 driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted 
 source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions 
 from these parts. Others have gone down from the vil 
 lage with a " fifty-six " and a wagon load of inch rope, 
 but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the 
 " fifty-six " was resting by the way, they were paying out 
 the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly 
 immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. But I can 
 assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight 
 bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, 
 depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone 
 weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accu 
 rately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull 
 so much harder before the water got underneath to 
 help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred 
 and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which 
 it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This 
 is a remarkable depth for so small an area ; yet not an 
 inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if 
 all ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds 
 of men ? I am thankful that this pond was made deep 
 and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite 
 some ponds will be thought to be bottomless. 
 
 A factory-owner, hearing what depth I had found, 
 thought that it could not be true, for, judging from his 
 acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 317 
 
 angle. But the deepest ponds are not so deep in propor 
 tion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, would 
 not leave very remarkabk valleys. They are not like 
 cups between the hills ; forthis one, which is so unusually 
 deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its 
 centre not deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, 
 emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than 
 we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable 
 in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, 
 standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which 
 he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy 
 fathoms deep, four miles in breadth," and about fifty 
 miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, " If we 
 could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, 
 or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, before 
 the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have 
 appeared ! 
 
 "So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
 Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, 
 Capacious bed of waters." 
 
 But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we 
 apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have 
 seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a 
 shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So 
 much for the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch 
 Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley 
 with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a 
 "horrid chasm," from which the waters have receded, 
 though it requires the insight and the far sight of the 
 geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of 
 this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores 
 
318 WALDEN 
 
 of a primitive lake in the ^ow horizon hills, and no 
 subsequent elevation of the (plain have been necessary 
 to conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they who 
 work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the 
 puddles after a shower. The Amount of it is, the imagi 
 nation, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars 
 higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of 
 the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable com 
 pared with its breadth. 
 
 As I sounded through the ice I could determine the 
 shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is pos 
 sible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, 
 and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the 
 deepest part there are several acres more level than al 
 most any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and 
 plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, 
 the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty 
 rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate 
 the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction 
 beforehand within three or four inches. Some are ac 
 customed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in 
 quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under 
 these circumstances is to level all inequalities. The 
 regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the shores 
 and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect 
 that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the sound 
 ings quite across the pond, and its direction could be 
 determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape be 
 comes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep 
 water and channel. 
 
 When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 319 
 
 rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than 
 a hundred in all, I observed this remarkable coinci 
 dence. Having noticed that the number indicating the 
 greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the map, 
 I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadth 
 wise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest 
 length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly 
 at the point of greatest depth, notwithstanding that the 
 middle is so nearly level, the outline of the pond far 
 from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were 
 got by measuring into the coves; and I said to myself, 
 Who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest 
 part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle ? Is not 
 this the rule also for the height of mountains, regarded 
 as the opposite of valleys ? We know that a hill is not 
 highest at its narrowest part. 
 
 Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, 
 were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths 
 and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be 
 an expansion of water within the land not only hori 
 zontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independ 
 ent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the 
 course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, 
 has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth 
 of the cove was wider compared with its length, the water 
 over the bar was deeper compared with that in the 
 basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, 
 and the character of the surrounding shore, and you 
 have almost elements enough to make out a formula 
 for all cases. 
 
 In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this 
 
320 WALDEN 
 
 experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observing 
 the outlines of its surface and the character of its shores 
 alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which contains 
 about forty-one acres, and, like this, has no island in 
 it, nor any visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of 
 greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, 
 where two opposite capes approached each other and 
 two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point 
 a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line 
 of greatest length, as the deepest. The deepest part 
 was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still 
 farther in the direction to which I had inclined, and 
 was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, 
 a stream running through, or an island in the pond, 
 would make the problem much more complicated. 
 
 If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need 
 only one fact, or the description of one actual phenome 
 non, to infer all the particular results at that point. 
 Now we know only a few laws, and our result is viti 
 ated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in 
 Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in 
 the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are 
 commonly confined to those instances which we detect ; 
 but the harmony which results from a far greater num 
 ber of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, 
 which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. 
 Tiie particular laws are as our points of view, as, to 
 t.hr traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, 
 and it has an infinite number of profiles, though abso 
 lutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through 
 it is not comprehended in its entireness. 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 321 
 
 What I have observed of the pond is no less true in 
 ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two 
 diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the 
 system and the heart in man, but draw lines through 
 the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man s 
 particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his 
 coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the 
 height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need 
 only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent 
 country or circumstances, to infer his depth and con 
 cealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous 
 circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks over 
 shadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a 
 corresponding depth in him. But a low and smooth 
 shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, 
 a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a cor 
 responding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across 
 the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclina 
 tion ; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are 
 detained and partially land-locked. These inclinations 
 are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and 
 direction are determined by the promontories of the 
 shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is 
 gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or 
 there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to 
 the surface, that which was at first but an inclination in 
 the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes 
 an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the 
 thought secures its own conditions, changes, per 
 haps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, 
 or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into this 
 
322 WALDEN 
 
 life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the 
 surface somewhere ? It is true, we are such poor navi 
 gators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off 
 and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only 
 with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the 
 public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of 
 science, where they merely refit for this world, and no 
 natural currents concur to individualize them. 
 
 As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not dis 
 covered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though 
 perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places 
 may be found, for where the water flows into the pond 
 it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in 
 winter. When the ice-men were at work here in 46-7, 
 the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by 
 those who were stacking them up there, not being thick 
 enough to lie side by side with the rest ; and the cutters 
 thus discovered that the ice over a small space was 
 two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made 
 them think that there was an inlet there. They also 
 showed me in another place what they thought was a 
 " leach-hole," through which the pond leaked out under 
 a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me out on a 
 cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten 
 feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond 
 not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than 
 that. One has suggested, that if such a " leach-hole " 
 should be found, its connection with the meadow, if any 
 existed, might be proved by conveying some colored 
 powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then 
 putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, which 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 323 
 
 would catch some of the particles carried through by 
 the current. 
 
 While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen 
 inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. 
 It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice. At 
 one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when 
 observed by means of a level on land directed toward 
 a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an 
 inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the 
 shore. It was probably greater in the middle. Who 
 knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we 
 might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? 
 When two legs of my level were on the shore and the 
 third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the 
 latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal 
 amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across 
 the pond. When I began to cut holes for sounding 
 there were three or four inches of water on the ice under 
 a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water 
 began immediately to run into these holes, and continued 
 to run for two days in deep streams, which wore away 
 the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, if not 
 mainly, to dry the surface of the pond ; for, as the water 
 ran in, it raised and floated the ice. This was some 
 what like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let the 
 water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, 
 and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over 
 all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, 
 shaped somewhat like a spider s web, what you may 
 call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by 
 the water flowing from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, 
 
324 WALDEN 
 
 also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I 
 saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the 
 head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees 
 or hillside. 
 
 While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are 
 thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the 
 village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impres 
 sively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and 
 thirst of July now in January, wearing a thick coat 
 and mittens ! when so many things are not provided for. 
 It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world 
 which will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts 
 and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes, 
 and carts off their very element and air, held fast by 
 chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favor 
 ing winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer 
 there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is 
 drawn through the streets. These ice-cutters are a 
 merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went 
 among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit- 
 fashion with them, I standing underneath. 
 
 In the winter of 46-7 there came a hundred men of 
 Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond 
 one morning, with many carloads of ungainly-look 
 ing farming tools, sleds, plows, drill-barrows, turf- 
 knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed 
 with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not de 
 scribed in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. 
 I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of 
 winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently intro- 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 325. 
 
 duced Trom Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that 
 they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking 
 the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. 
 They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind 
 the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I 
 understood, amounted to half a million already; but in 
 order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he 
 took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden 
 Pond in the midst of a hard winter. They went to work 
 at once, plowing, harrowing, rolling, furrowing, in ad 
 mirable order, as if they were bent on making this a 
 model farm ; but when I was looking sharp to see what 
 kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of 
 fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the 
 virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down 
 to the sand, or rather the water, for it was a very 
 springy soil, indeed all the terra firnia there was, 
 and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they 
 must be cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went 
 every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, 
 from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemed 
 to me, like a flock of arctic snowbirds. But sometimes 
 Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired man, walk 
 ing behind his team, slipped through a crack in the 
 ground down toward Tartarus, and he who was so 
 brave before suddenly became but the ninth part of a 
 man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to 
 take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there 
 was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen 
 soil took a piece of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got 
 set in llic furrow and had to be cut out. 
 
326 WALDEN 
 
 To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee 
 overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out 
 the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too well 
 known to require description, and these, being sledded 
 to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice plat 
 form, and raised by grappling irons and block and 
 tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so 
 many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by 
 side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base 
 of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told 
 me that in a good day they could get out a thousand 
 tons, which was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts 
 and "cradle-holes" were worn in the ice, as on terra 
 finna, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, 
 and the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of 
 ice hollowed out like buckets. They stacked up the 
 cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high 
 on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay 
 between the outside layers to exclude the air; for when 
 the wind, though never so cold, finds a passage through, 
 it will wear large cavities, leaving slight supports or 
 studs only here and there, and finally topple it down. 
 At first it looked like a vast blue fort or Valhalla; but 
 when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into 
 the crevices, and this became covered with rime and 
 icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary 
 ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, 
 that old man we see in the almanac, his shanty, as 
 if he had a design to estivate with us. They calculated 
 that not twenty-five per cent, of this would reach its 
 destination, and that two or three per cent, would be 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 327 
 
 wasted in the cars. However, a still greater part of this 
 heap had a different destiny from what was intended; 
 for, either because the ice was found not to keep so well 
 as was expected, containing more air than usual, or for 
 some other reason, it never got to market. This heap, 
 made in the winter of 46-7 and estimated to contain 
 ten thousand tons, was finally covered with hay and 
 boards; and though it was unroofed the following July, 
 and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed 
 to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next 
 winter, and was not quite melted till September, 1848. 
 Thus the pond recovered the greater part. 
 
 Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has 
 a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and 
 you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or 
 the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a 
 mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from 
 the ice-man s sled into the village street, and lies there 
 for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to 
 all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden 
 which in the state of water was green will often, -when 
 frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. So 
 the hollows about this pond will, sometimes, in the win 
 ter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat like its 
 own, but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps 
 the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and 
 air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. 
 Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They 
 told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh 
 Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why 
 is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but 
 
328 WALDEN 
 
 frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that 
 this is the difference between the affections and the 
 intellect. 
 
 Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hun 
 dred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams 
 and horses and apparently all the implements of farm 
 ing, such a picture as we see on the first page of the 
 almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded 
 of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable 
 of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, 
 and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from 
 the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water 
 there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending 
 up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will ap 
 pear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall 
 hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes him 
 self, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating 
 leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where 
 lately a hundred men securely labored. 
 
 Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of 
 Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay 
 and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe 
 my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal phi 
 losophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition 
 years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with 
 which our modern world and its literature seem puny 
 and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be 
 referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its 
 sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book 
 and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the 
 servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 329 
 
 Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading 
 the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust 
 and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water 
 for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together 
 in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled 
 with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds 
 it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of At 
 lantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, 
 and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of 
 the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian 
 seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only 
 heard the names. 
 
XVII 
 SPRING 
 
 A HE opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters com 
 monly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, 
 agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away 
 the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on 
 Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new 
 garment to take the place of the old. This pond never 
 breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, 
 on account both of its greater depth and its having no 
 stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. 
 I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not 
 excepting that of 52-3, which gave the ponds so severe 
 a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a 
 week or ten days later than Flint s Pond and Fair 
 Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the 
 shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates 
 better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress 
 of the season, being least affected by transient changes 
 of temperature. A severe cold of a few days duration 
 in March may very much retard the opening of the 
 former ponds, while the temperature of Walden in 
 creases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust 
 into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, 
 stood at 32, or freezing point; near the shore at 33; 
 in the middle of Flint s Pond, the same day, at 
 
SPRING 331 
 
 at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under 
 ice a foot thick, at 36. This difference of three and a 
 half degrees between the temperature of the deep water 
 and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a 
 great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show 
 why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. 
 The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several 
 inches thinner than in the middle. In midwinter the 
 middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. 
 So, also, every one who has waded about the shores 
 of a pond in summer must have perceived how much 
 warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three 
 or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on 
 the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In 
 spring the sun not only exerts an influence through 
 the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its 
 heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is re 
 flected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also 
 warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at 
 the same time that it is melting it more directly above, 
 making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which 
 it contains to extend themselves upward and down 
 ward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last 
 disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its 
 grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or 
 " comb," that is, assume the appearance of honeycomb, 
 whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right 
 angles with what was the water surface. Where there 
 is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over 
 it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by 
 this reflected heat; and I have been told that in the 
 
332 WALDEN 
 
 experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow 
 wooden pond, though the cold air circulated under 
 neath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of 
 the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced 
 this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the 
 winter melts off the snow ice from Walden, and leaves a 
 hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be 
 a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more 
 wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. 
 Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the 
 ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath. 
 
 The phenomena of the year take place every day in 
 a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speak 
 ing, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly 
 than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after 
 all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly 
 until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. 
 The night is the winter, the morning and evening are 
 the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The 
 cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of 
 temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, 
 February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint s Pond to 
 spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I 
 struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like 
 a gong for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a 
 tight drum-head. The pond began to boom about an 
 hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun s 
 rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched 
 itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually 
 increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four 
 hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once 
 
SPRING 333 
 
 more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his in 
 fluence. In the right stage of the weather a pond fires 
 its evening gun with great regularity. But in the middle 
 of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being 
 less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and 
 probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been 
 stunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the 
 "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and pre 
 vents their biting. The pond does not thunder every 
 evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its 
 thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in 
 the weather, it does. Who would have suspected so 
 large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sen 
 sitive ? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience 
 when it should as surely as the buds expand in the 
 spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papillae. 
 The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes 
 as the globule of mercury in its tube. 
 
 One attraction in coming to the woods to live was 
 that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the 
 Spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins 
 to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel in it as I 
 walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually 
 melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; 
 and I see how I shall get through the winter without 
 adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer 
 necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, 
 to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the 
 striped squirrel s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly 
 exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his 
 winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had 
 
334 WALDEN 
 
 heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the 
 ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew 
 warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, 
 nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though 
 it was completely melted for half a rod in width about 
 the shore, the middle was merely honeycombed and 
 saturated with water, so that you could put your foot 
 through it when six inches thick; but by the next day 
 evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, 
 it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the 
 fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle 
 only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 
 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; 
 in 46, the 25th of March; in 47, the 8th of April; in 
 51, the 28th of March; in 52, the 18th of April; in 53, 
 the 23d of March; in 54, about the 7th of April. 
 
 Every incident connected with the breaking up of the 
 rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is 
 particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of 
 so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they 
 who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night 
 with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy 
 fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days 
 see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of 
 the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who 
 has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as 
 thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she 
 had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and 
 he had helped to lay her keel, who has come to his 
 growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore 
 if he should live to the age of Methuselah, told me - 
 
SPRING 335 
 
 and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any 
 of Nature s operations, for I thought that there were 
 no secrets between them that one spring day he took 
 his gun and boat, and thought that he would have a 
 little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the 
 meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and he 
 dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, 
 where he lived, to Fair Haven Pond, which he found, 
 unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm 
 field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to 
 see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any 
 ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an 
 island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the 
 bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was 
 melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there 
 was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy 
 bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought 
 it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After 
 he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low 
 and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand 
 and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard, 
 gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a 
 universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and 
 roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of 
 a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seiz 
 ing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he 
 found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice 
 had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the 
 shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its 
 edge grating on the shore, at first gently nibbled and 
 crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering 
 
336 WALDEN 
 
 its wrecks along the island to a considerable height 
 before it came to a standstill. 
 
 At length the sun s rays have attained the right angle, 
 and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the 
 snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a 
 checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with 
 incense, through which the traveller picks his way 
 from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand 
 tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the 
 blood of winter which they are bearing off. 
 
 Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe 
 the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flow 
 ing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through 
 which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon 
 not very common on so large a scale, though the num 
 ber of freshly exposed banks of the right material must 
 have been greatly multiplied since railroads were in 
 vented. The material was sand of every degree of fine 
 ness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with 
 a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and 
 even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to 
 flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out 
 through the snow and overflowing it where no sand 
 was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams over 
 lap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of 
 hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of cur 
 rents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it 
 takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps 
 of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, 
 as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and 
 imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are re- 
 
SPRING 337 
 
 minded of coral, of leopards paws or birds feet, of 
 brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. 
 It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color 
 we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage 
 more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, 
 vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under 
 some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future 
 geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a 
 cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The va 
 rious shades of the sand are singularly rich and agree 
 able, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, 
 yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches 
 the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter 
 into strands, the separate streams losing their semi- 
 cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and 
 broad, running together as they are more moist, till they 
 form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully 
 shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms 
 of vegetation ; till at length, in the water itself, they are 
 converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths 
 of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the 
 ripple-marks on the bottom. 
 
 The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet 
 high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of 
 foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one 
 or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What 
 makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into 
 existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side 
 the inert bank, for the sun acts on one side first, 
 end on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of 
 an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood 
 
338 WALDEN 
 
 in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and 
 me, had come to where he was still at work, sporting 
 on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his 
 fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the 
 vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something 
 such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. 
 You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the 
 vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses 
 itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea in 
 wardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and 
 are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its 
 prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal 
 body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable 
 to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (\LJ3<i>, labor, 
 lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; \o/36$, globus, 
 lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); ex 
 ternally, a dry thin leaf, even as the / and v are a pressed 
 and dried b. The radicals of lobe are Ib, the soft mass of 
 the 6 (single-lobed, or B, double-lobed), with the liquid / 
 behind it pressing it forward. In globe, gib, the guttural 
 g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The 
 feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner 
 leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in 
 the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very 
 globe continually transcends and translates itself, and 
 becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with deli 
 cate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which 
 the fronds of water-plants have impressed on the watery 
 mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers 
 are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, 
 and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. 
 
SPRING 339 
 
 When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, 
 but in the morning the streams will start once more and 
 branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You 
 here see perchance how blood-vessels are formed. If you 
 look closely you observe that first there pushes forward 
 from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with 
 a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its 
 way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with 
 more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the 
 most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which 
 the most inert also yields, separates from the latter 
 and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery 
 within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glanc 
 ing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or 
 branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up 
 in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly 
 the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best 
 material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its 
 channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious 
 matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony 
 system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the 
 fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass 
 of thawing clay ? The ball of the human finger is but a 
 drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their ex 
 tent from the thawing mass of the body. W T ho knows 
 what the human body would expand and flow out to 
 under a more genial heaven ? Is not the hand a spread 
 ing palm leaf with its lobes and veins ? The ear may be 
 regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, Umbilicaria, on the 
 side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip 
 labium, from labor (?) laps or lapses from the sides 
 
340 WALDEN 
 
 of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest con 
 gealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, 
 the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a 
 slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed 
 and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe 
 of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering 
 drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the 
 leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions 
 it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences 
 would have caused it to flow yet farther. 
 
 Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the 
 principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker 
 of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion 
 will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn 
 over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more 
 exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of 
 vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its 
 character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver, 
 lights, and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong 
 side outward ; but this suggests at least that Nature has 
 some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. 
 This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is 
 Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as 
 mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing 
 more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It 
 convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling- 
 clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. 
 Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is no 
 thing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the 
 bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature 
 is " in full blast " within. The earth is not a mere frag- 
 
SPRING 341 
 
 ment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the 
 leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and anti 
 quaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a 
 tree, which precede flowers and fruit, not a fossil 
 earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great 
 central life all animal and vegetable life is merely para 
 sitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves. 
 You may melt your metals and cast them into the most 
 beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me 
 like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. 
 And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic 
 like clay in the hands of the potter. 
 
 Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill 
 and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the 
 ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, 
 and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other 
 climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is 
 more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one 
 melts, the other but breaks in pieces. 
 
 When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a 
 few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was 
 pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant 
 year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the 
 withered vegetation which had withstood the winter, 
 life-everlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild 
 grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than 
 in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till 
 then ; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, 
 hardhack, meadow-sweet, and other strong-stemmed 
 plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain 
 the earliest birds, decent weeds, at least, which 
 
342 WALDEN 
 
 widowed Nature wears. I am particularly attracted 
 by the arching and sheaf -like top of the wool -grass; 
 it brings back the summer to our winter memories, 
 and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and 
 which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation 
 to types already in the mind of man that astronomy 
 has. It is an antique style, older than Greek or Egyp 
 tian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive 
 of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. 
 We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude 
 and boisterous tyrant ; but with the gentleness of a 
 lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. 
 
 At the approach of spring the red squirrels got under 
 my house, two at a time, directly under IT / feet as I sat 
 reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling 
 and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling 
 sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped 
 they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and 
 respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop 
 them. No, you don t chickaree chickaree. They 
 were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive 
 their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was 
 irresistible. 
 
 The first sparrow of spring ! The year beginning with 
 younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings 
 heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the 
 bluebird, the song sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the 
 last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell ! What at such 
 a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all 
 written revelations ? The brooks sing carols and glees 
 to the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low over the 
 
SPRING 343 
 
 meadow, is already seeking the first slimy life that 
 awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in 
 all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The 
 grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire, - " et 
 primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata," 
 as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the 
 returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its 
 flame ; the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, 
 like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the 
 summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing 
 on again, lifting its spear of last year s hay with the 
 fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes 
 out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for 
 in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the 
 grass-blades are their channels, and from year to year 
 the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the 
 mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So 
 our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts 
 forth its green blade to eternity. 
 
 Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods 
 wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider 
 still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off 
 from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing 
 from the bushes on the shore, olit, olit, olit, chip, 
 chip, chip, che char, che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is 
 helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping 
 curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to 
 those of the shore, but more regular ! It is unusually 
 hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and 
 all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind 
 slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it 
 
344 WALDEN 
 
 reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to be 
 hold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare 
 face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the 
 joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore, 
 a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it 
 were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between 
 winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. 
 But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said. 
 The change from storm and winter to serene and mild 
 weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and 
 elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things pro 
 claim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an 
 influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at 
 hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the 
 eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the 
 window, and lo ! where yesterday was cold gray ice there 
 lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope 
 as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening 
 sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if 
 it had intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a 
 robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a 
 thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not for 
 get for many a thousand more, the same sweet and 
 powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the 
 end of a New England summer day ! If I could ever find 
 the twig he sits upon ! I mean he; I mean the twig. This 
 at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch pines 
 and shrub oaks about my house, which had so long 
 drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters, 
 looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if 
 effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew 
 
SPRING 345 
 
 that it would not rain any more. You may tell by look 
 ing at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, 
 whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was 
 startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, 
 like weary travellers getting in late from Southern lakes, 
 and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and 
 mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear 
 the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, 
 they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor 
 wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut 
 the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods. 
 
 In the morning I watched the geese from the door 
 through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty 
 rods off , so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared 
 like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when 
 I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great 
 flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and 
 when they had got into rank circled about over my 
 head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight 
 to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at in 
 tervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A 
 " plump " of ducks rose at the same time and took the 
 route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. 
 
 For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of 
 some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its 
 companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound 
 of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the 
 pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, 
 and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my 
 clearing, though it had not seemed that the township 
 contained so many that it could afford me any, and I 
 
346 WALDEN 
 
 fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that 
 dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost 
 all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the pre 
 cursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with 
 song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, 
 and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the 
 poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature. 
 
 As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the 
 coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of 
 Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age. 
 
 " Bums ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit, 
 Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis." 
 
 "The East- Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathsean kingdom, 
 And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays. 
 
 Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things, 
 The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed; 
 Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high 
 Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven." 
 
 A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades 
 greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of bet 
 ter thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the 
 present always, and took advantage of every accident 
 that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence 
 of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend 
 our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportu 
 nities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter 
 while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morn 
 ing all men s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to 
 vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sin 
 ner may return. Through our own recovered innocence 
 
SPRING 347 
 
 we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may 
 have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunk 
 ard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, 
 and despaired of the world ; but the sun shines bright and 
 warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and 
 you meet him at some serene work, and see how his 
 exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy 
 and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the 
 innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. 
 There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, 
 but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, 
 blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born in 
 stinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes to 
 no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots pre 
 paring to burst from his gnarled rind and try another 
 year s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. 
 Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the 
 jailer does not leave open his prison doors, why the 
 judge does not dismiss his case, why the preacher 
 does not dismiss his congregation ! It is because they do 
 not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the 
 pardon which he freely offers to all. 
 
 " A return to goodness produced each day in the tran 
 quil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in 
 respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one 
 approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the 
 sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like man 
 ner the evil which one does in the interval of a day pre 
 vents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again 
 from developing themselves and destroys them. 
 
 " After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented 
 
348 WALDEN 
 
 many times from developing themselves, then the benefi 
 cent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. 
 As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer 
 to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ 
 much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature 
 of this man like that of the brute, think that he has 
 never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those 
 the true and natural sentiments of man ? " \^ ^ 
 
 " The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger 
 Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. 
 Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read 
 On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear 
 The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. 
 Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended 
 To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, 
 And mortals knew no shores but their own. 
 
 There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm 
 Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed." 
 
 On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank 
 of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing 
 on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the musk- 
 rats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat 
 like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, 
 when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful 
 hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple 
 and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing 
 the under side of its wings, which gleamed like a satin 
 ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. 
 This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness 
 and poetry are associated with that sport. The merlin 
 it seemed to me it might be called : but I care not for its 
 
SPRING 349 
 
 name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever wit 
 nessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor 
 soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud 
 reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again 
 with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beauti 
 ful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then re 
 covering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its 
 foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion 
 in the universe, sporting there alone, and to need 
 none but the morning and the ether with which it played. 
 It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath 
 it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, 
 and its father in the heavens ? The tenant of the air, it 
 seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some 
 time in the crevice of a crag ; or was its native nest 
 made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow s 
 trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft 
 midsummer haze caught up from earth ? Its eyry now 
 some cliffy cloud. 
 
 Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and 
 bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of 
 jewels. Ah ! I have penetrated to those meadows on the 
 morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hum 
 mock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, 
 when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in 
 so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, 
 if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some sup* 
 pose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All 
 things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy 
 sting ? O Grave, where was thy victory, then ? 
 
 Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the un- 
 
350 WALDEN 
 
 explored forests and meadows which surround it. We 
 need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in 
 marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, 
 and hear the booming of the snipe ; to smell the whisper 
 ing sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl 
 builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close 
 to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to 
 explore and learn all things, we require that all things be 
 mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be in 
 finitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because 
 unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. 
 We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, 
 vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, 
 the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the 
 thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and 
 produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits 
 transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we 
 never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vul 
 ture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheart 
 ens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. 
 There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my 
 house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my 
 way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but 
 the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and in 
 violable health of Nature was my compensation for this. 
 I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads 
 can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on 
 one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely 
 squashed out of existence like pulp, tadpoles which 
 herons gobble up, and tortoises arid toads run over in the 
 road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! 
 
SPRING 351 
 
 With the liability to accident, we must see how little ac 
 count is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise 
 man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poison 
 ous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is 
 a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its 
 pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped. 
 
 Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other 
 trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the 
 pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the land 
 scape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were break 
 ing through mists and shining faintly on the hillsides 
 here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a 
 loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month 
 I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the 
 veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I 
 had heard the wood thrush long before. The phcebe had 
 already come once more and looked in at my door and 
 window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for 
 her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched 
 talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the 
 premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon 
 covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along 
 the shore, so that you could have collected a barrelful. 
 This is the " sulphur showers " we hear of. Even in 
 Calidas drama of Sacontala, we read of " rills dyed yel 
 low with the golden dust of the lotus." And so the sea 
 sons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into 
 higher and higher grass. 
 
 Thus was my first year s life in the woods completed ; 
 and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Wai- 
 den September 6th, 1847. 
 
XVIII 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Xo the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change 
 of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the 
 world. The buckeye does not grow in New England, 
 and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. The wild 
 goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his 
 fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and 
 plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even 
 the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, 
 cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener 
 and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet 
 we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone 
 walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set 
 to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen 
 town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego 
 this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal 
 fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views 
 of it. 
 
 Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our 
 craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage 
 like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the 
 globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voy 
 aging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors pre 
 scribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to 
 southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is 
 
CONCLUSION 353 
 
 not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would 
 a man hunt giraffes if he could ? Snipes and woodcocks 
 also may afford rare sport ; but I trust it would be nobler 
 game to shoot one s self. 
 
 "Direct your eye right inward, and you ll find 
 A thousand regions in your mind 
 Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be 
 Expert in home-cosmography." 
 
 What does Africa, what does the West stand for ? Is 
 not our own interior white on the chart ? black though 
 it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the 
 source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or 
 a Northwest Passage around this continent, that we 
 would find ? Are these the problems which most concern 
 mankind ? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his 
 wife should be so earnest to find him ? Does Mr. Grin- 
 nell know where he himself is ? Be rather the Mungo 
 Park, the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher, of your own 
 streams and oceans ; explore your own higher latitudes, 
 with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if 
 they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for 
 a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat 
 merely ? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents 
 and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of 
 trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm 
 beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty 
 state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be pa 
 triotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater 
 to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, 
 but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still 
 animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. 
 
354 WALDEN 
 
 What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring 
 Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an in 
 direct recognition of the fact that there are continents 
 and seas in the moral world to which every man is an 
 isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is 
 easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and 
 storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five 
 hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore 
 the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one s 
 being alone. 
 
 "Erret, et extremes alter scrutetur Iberos. 
 Plus habet hie vitae, plus habet ille viae." 
 
 Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. 
 I have more of God, they more of the road. 
 
 It is not worth the while to go round the world to count 
 the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can 
 do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes 
 Hole " by which to get at the inside at last. England and 
 France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, 
 all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has 
 ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt 
 the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all 
 tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if 
 you would travel farther than all travellers, be natural 
 ized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head 
 against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philoso 
 pher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye 
 and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to 
 the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now 
 on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the 
 
CONCLUSION 355 
 
 Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn- 
 out China or Japan, but leads on direct, a tangent to this 
 sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, 
 moon down, and at last earth down too. 
 
 It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery " to 
 ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in or 
 der to place one s self in formal opposition to the most 
 sacred laws of society." He declared that "a soldier 
 who fights in the ranks does not require half so much 
 courage *as a foot-pad," -" that honor and religion 
 have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a 
 firm resolve." This was manly, as the world goes; and 
 yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have 
 found himself often enough "in formal opposition" to 
 what are deemed "the most sacred laws of society," 
 through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have 
 tested his resolution without going out of his way. It 
 is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to 
 society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he 
 find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, 
 which will never be one of opposition to a just govern 
 ment, if he should chance to meet with such. 
 
 I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. 
 Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to 
 live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It 
 is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a 
 particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. 
 I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path 
 from my door to the pond-side ; and though it is five or 
 six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, 
 I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped 
 
356 WALDEN 
 
 / to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and im 
 pressible by thejeel of men ; and so with the paths which 
 the mind travels. How worn and dusty, _ then^jnust be 
 the highways x>f the worldy-how-deep he ruts of tradi 
 tion ajndj^nforadtyJ I did not wish to take a cabin pas- 
 sageTBut: rather to go before the mast and on the deck of 
 the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid 
 the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. 
 
 I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one 
 advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and 
 endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will 
 meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He 
 will put some things behind, will pass an invisible bound 
 ary; newyuniversal, and more liberal laws will begin to 
 establish themselves around and within him ; or the old 
 laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more 
 liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher 
 order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, 
 the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and 
 will notjpe solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor 
 
 weakness wea.kne.ss. If you have built castles in the air, 
 your work need not be lost ; that is where they should be. 
 Now put the foundations under them. 
 
 It is a ridiculous demand which England and America 
 make, that you shall speak so that they can understand 
 you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so. As if that 
 were important, and there were not enough to under 
 stand you without them. As if Nature could support but 
 one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as 
 well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, 
 and hish and whoa, which Bright can understand, were 
 
WALDEN FROM THE SITE OF THE HOUSE 
 
CONCLUSION 357 
 
 the best English. As if there were safety in stupidity 
 alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be 
 extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough be 
 yond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to 
 be adequate to the truth of which I have been con 
 vinced. Extra vagance ! it depends on how you are 
 yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pas 
 tures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the 
 cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, 
 and runs after her calf, in milking time. I desire to 
 speak somewhere without bounds ; like a man in a wak 
 ing moment, to men in their waking moments; for I 
 am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to 
 lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has 
 heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak 
 extravagantly any more forever ? In view of the future 
 or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in 
 front, our outlines dim and misty on that side; as our 
 shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the 
 sun. The volatile truth of our words should contin 
 ually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. 
 Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument 
 alone remains. The words which express our faith and 
 piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fra 
 grant like frankincense to superior natures. 
 
 Why level downward to our dullest perception al 
 ways, and praise that as common sense? The com 
 monest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they 
 express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class 
 those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half 
 witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their 
 
358 WALDEN 
 
 wit. Some would find fault with the morning red, if 
 they ever got up early enough. "They pretend," as I 
 hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four different 
 senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doc 
 trine of the Vedas ; " but in this part of the world it is 
 considered a ground for complaint if a man s writings 
 admit of more than one interpretation. While England 
 endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor 
 to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more 
 widely and fatally? 
 
 I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, 
 but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found 
 with my pages on this score than was found with the 
 Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue 
 color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were 
 muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is 
 white, but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like 
 the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure 
 ether beyond. 
 
 Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, 
 and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs com 
 pared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. 
 But what is that to the purpose ? A living dog is better 
 than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself be 
 cause he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the 
 biggest pygmy that he can ? Let every one mind his 
 own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. 
 
 Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed 
 and in such desperate enterprises ? If a man does not 
 * r -keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because 
 he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the 
 
CONCLUSION 359_ * 
 
 music which he hears, however measured or far away. ^t 
 It is not important that he should mature as soon as Str-J 
 apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into sum 
 mer? If the condition of things which we were made 
 for is not yet, what were any reality which we can sub 
 stitute ? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. 
 Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over 
 ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to 
 gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if 
 the former were not ? 
 
 There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was 
 disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into 
 his mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an 
 imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a per 
 fect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It 
 shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do no 
 thing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the 
 forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be 
 made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for 
 and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually de 
 serted him, for they grew old in their works and died, 
 but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness 
 of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, 
 endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial 
 youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time 
 kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance be 
 cause he could not overcome him. Before he had found 
 a stock in all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was 
 a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to peel 
 the stick. Before he had given it the proper shape the 
 dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the 
 
360 WALDEN 
 
 point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that 
 race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the 
 time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa 
 was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on the 
 ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, 
 Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But 
 why do I stay to mention these things? When the 
 finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly ex 
 panded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the 
 fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a 
 new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair 
 proportions ; in which, though the old cities and dynas 
 ties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had 
 taken their places. And now he saw by the heap of 
 shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his 
 work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, 
 and that no more time had elapsed than is required for 
 a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on 
 and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. The material 
 was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result 
 be other than wonderful ? 
 
 No face which we can give to a matter will stead us 
 so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For 
 the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false 
 position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we sup 
 pose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in 
 two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult 
 to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, 
 the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what 
 you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom 
 Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked i* 
 

 CONCLUSION 361 
 
 he had anything to say. " Tell the tailors," said he, " to 
 remember to make a knot in their thread before they 
 take the first stitch." His companion s prayer is for 
 gotten, -v 
 
 However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; do not^ 
 shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you 
 are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault 
 finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, 
 poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, 
 thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The 
 setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms- 
 house as brightly as from the rich man s abode; the 
 snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do 
 not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, 
 and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The 
 town s poor seem to me often to live the most inde 
 pendent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great 
 enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that 
 they are above being supported by the town; but it 
 oftener happens that they are not above supporting 
 themselves by dishonest means, which should be more 
 disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, 
 like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new 
 things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return 
 to them. Things do not change ; we change. Sell your 
 clothes ahcTkeep your thoughts. Cod will see that you 
 do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a 
 garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be 
 just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. 
 The philosopher said : " From an army of three divisions 
 one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; 
 
362 WALDEN 
 
 from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot 
 J#ke away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be 
 J developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be 
 I J jplayed on; it is all dissipation. I^umility like darkness 
 reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty 
 and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation 
 widens to our view." We are often reminded that if 
 there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our 
 aims must still be the same, and our means essentially 
 t tjxe same. ^Moreover, if you are restricted in your range 
 ^DJ poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, 
 for instance, you are but confined to the most signifi 
 cant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal 
 with the material which yields the most sugar and the 
 most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. 
 
 7 You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses 
 ever on a lower level by magnanimity^ on a higher. 
 Superfluous wealth can buysuperfluities only. Money 
 is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. 
 
 I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose com 
 position was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, 
 in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a 
 confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise 
 of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their 
 adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what 
 notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no 
 more interested in such things than in the contents of 
 the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation 
 are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is 
 a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of Cali 
 fornia and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the 
 
CONCLUSION 363 
 
 Hon. Mr. of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all 
 
 transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to 
 leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I 
 delight to come to my bearings, not walk in proces 
 sion with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but 
 to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may, 
 not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial 
 Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while 
 it goes by. What are men celebrating ? They are all 
 on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a 
 speech from somebody. God is only the president of 
 the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to 
 settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly 
 and rightfully attracts me ; not hang by the beam of 
 the scale and try to weigh less, not suppose a case, 
 but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, 
 and that on which no power can resist me. It affords 
 me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before 
 I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly- 
 benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read 
 that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him 
 had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But 
 presently the traveller s horse sank in up to the girths, 
 and he observed to the boy, "I thought you said that 
 this bog had a hard bottom." "So it has," answered 
 the latter, "but you have not got half way to it yet." 
 So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but 
 he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, 
 said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. 
 I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a 
 nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would 
 
364 WALDEN 
 
 keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me 
 feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. 
 Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you 
 can wake up in the night and think of your work with 
 satisfaction, a work at which you would not be 
 ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, 
 and so only. Every nail driven should be as another 
 rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on 
 the work. 
 
 Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me 
 truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in 
 abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity 
 and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the 
 inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the 
 ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze 
 them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the 
 fame of the vintage ; but I thought of an older, a newer, 
 and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they 
 had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house 
 and grounds and "entertainment" pass for nothing 
 with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in 
 his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for 
 hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who 
 lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I 
 should have done better had I called on him. 
 
 How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle 
 and musty virtues, which any work would make im 
 pertinent ? As if one were to begin the day with long- 
 suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in 
 the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness 
 and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the 
 
CONCLUSION 365 
 
 China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. 
 This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself 
 on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston 
 and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long 
 descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and 
 literature with satisfaction. There are the Records of 
 the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of 
 Great Men ! It is the good Adam contemplating his own 
 virtue. "Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung 
 divine songs, which shall never die," that is, as long 
 as we can remember them. The learned societies and 
 great men of Assyria, where are they ? What youth 
 ful philosophers and experimentalists we are ! There is 
 not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human 
 life. These may be but the spring months in the life of 
 the race. If we have had the seven-years itch, we have 
 not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We 
 are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which 
 we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the sur 
 face, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where 
 we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our 
 time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an estab 
 lished order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, 
 we are ambitious spirits! /As I stand over the insect 
 crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and 
 endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask 
 myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and 
 hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its bene 
 factor, and impart to its race some cheering informa 
 tion, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and 
 Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.* 
 
366 WALDEN 
 
 There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, 
 and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only sug 
 gest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the 
 most enlightened countries. There are such words as 
 joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, 
 sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordi 
 nary and mean. We think that we can change our 
 clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very 
 large and respectable, and that the United States are 
 a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises 
 and falls behind every man which can float the British 
 Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his 
 mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust 
 will next come out of the ground ? The government of 
 the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, 
 in after-dinner conversations over the wine. 
 
 The life in us is like the water in the river. It may 
 rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and 
 flood the parched uplands ; even this may be the event 
 ful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It 
 was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far 
 inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, 
 before science began to record its freshets. Every one 
 has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New 
 England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out 
 of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which 
 had stood in a farmer s kitchen for sixty years, first in 
 Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, from 
 an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier 
 still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond 
 it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, 
 
CONCLUSION 367 
 
 hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who doesi 
 not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality/ 
 strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what* 
 beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried 
 for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness 
 in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the 
 alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been 
 gradually converted into the semblance of its well-sea 
 soned tomb, heard perchance gnawing out now for 
 years by the astonished family of man, as they sat 
 round the festive board, may unexpectedly come 
 forth from amidst society s most trivial and handselled 
 furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! 
 
 I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all 
 this; but such is the character of that morrow which 
 mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light 
 which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that 
 day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day 
 to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. 
 
 0^\v 
 
NOTES 
 
 Page 4, lines 16, 17. You who read these pages, who are 
 said to live in New England. Note the limited audience 
 which Thoreau had in mind. It may have "been from modesty, aa 
 if he expected only his friends and neighbors to take an interest 
 in his book ; or it may be that he depended chiefly on the interest 
 in the Transcendental movement, which was largely confined to 
 New England, to attract readers. His experience with his first 
 book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, of which only 
 a little over two hundred copies were sold in the first four years, 
 was such as to prepare him for a small sale. 
 
 Line 17. Are said to live. Implies some doubt as to whether 
 they really live in the best sense of the word. 
 
 Lines 21, 22. I have travelled a good deal in Concord. 
 Thoreau regarded Concord or indeed any man s home as an 
 epitome of the world. It was not necessary, in his opinion, to go 
 far in order to see all that was really worth seeing. This opinion 
 did not prevent his refreshing himself by occasional somewhat 
 more extended journeys into the world, however. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Bramins. More often spelled Brahmins or 
 JBrahmans. The religious upper caste of the Hindoos. Some of 
 the more rigorous devotees tortured themselves in many ways and 
 lived by begging. Thoreau was an earnest student of the Hindoo 
 philosophy and mythology, reading translations of the sacred 
 books. 
 
 Page 5, line 11. lolaus. One of the twelve labors imposed upon Her 
 cules by King Eurystheus was the fight with a monstrous water- 
 gnake called the Hydra, which had nine heads, one of which WM 
 immortal. Whenever a head was cut off, two grew in its place, 
 until Hercules charioteer lolaus (I-o-la us) seared the stumps with 
 a red-hot iron. The immortal head was buried under a mass of 
 rock. 
 
 Line 18. Suckled by a wolf. Like Romulus and Remus. 
 
 Line 22. Peck of dirt. The allusion is to the old saying that 
 every person must eat a peck of dirt before he dies, quoted to 
 children who are thought over-particular about the cleanliness of 
 their food. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. Augean stables. The cleansing of th 
 Augean stable was one of Hercules labors. 
 
370 NOTES 
 
 Page 6, line 6. An old book. The Bible. 
 
 Line 12. Inde genus, etc. From Ovid s story of Deucalion and 
 
 Pyrrha in the Metamorphoses. 
 
 Line 14. Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh was the subject of an early 
 essay by Thoreau, who greatly admired his literary style (see 
 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, "Sunday"). The 
 lines are Raleigh s translation of the Latin of Ovid, which he 
 quotes in his History of the World. 
 
 Page 7, line 16. On the limits. Mr. Sanborn, in the Bibliophile edi 
 tion of Walden, suggests that this has reference to the jail-limits 
 for imprisoned debtors. 
 
 Page 8, lines 11, 12. Divinity stir within him. 
 
 " It must be so, Plato, thou reasonest well ! 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
 This longing after immortality ? 
 Or whence this secret dread and inward horror 
 Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul 
 Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? 
 T is the divinity that stirs within us ; 
 Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
 And intimates eternity to man." 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON, Cato, Act V, Sc. i. 
 
 Line 9 from bottom. Wilberforce. William Wilberforce (1759- 
 
 1833), an English philanthropist and anti-slavery leader. 
 Last line, page 9, line 1. Bravery of minks and muskrats. See 
 
 p. 73, line 15, and note. 
 Page 9, line 9 from bottom. Whirled round the globe. That is 
 
 in railroad trains and steamships. 
 
 Page 10, line 7 from bottom. Evelyn. John Evelyn (1620-1706), 
 a famous English diarist and writer, an authority on garden 
 ing. His book on trees, entitled Sylva, was a favorite with Tho 
 reau. 
 Line 2 from bottom. Hippocrates, An ancient Greek physician, 
 
 called the " father of medicine." 
 Page 13, line 4 from bottom. Second nature. Habit is second 
 
 nature. Cicero, Plutarch, Montaigne, and others. 
 Page 14, line 1. Darwin. Charles Darwin, the great English natu 
 ralist. His famous book on the Origin of Species was not pub 
 lished at the time Walden was written, but Thoreau had read his 
 Voyage of a Naturalist round the World, and he quotes and com 
 ments upon it extensively in his Journal. 
 
 .line 7. New Hollander. New Holland is an old name for Aus 
 tralia. 
 
 Line 11. Liebig. Baron Justus von Liebig, a famous German 
 chemist (1803-1873). 
 
NOTES 371 
 
 Page 18, lines 16, 17. Notch it on my stick. As Bobinson Crusoe 
 
 kept his calendar. 
 
 Lines 17, 18. The meeting of two eternities, the past and 
 future. 
 
 " This narrow isthmus twixt two boundless seas, 
 The past, the future, two eternities ! " 
 
 THOMAS MOOBE, Lalla Rookh. 
 
 " One life, a little gleam of time between two eternities." 
 Thomas Carlyle s Heroes and Hero-Worship, "The Hero as Man 
 of Letters." 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, 
 and a turtle-dove. These may be taken to represent the 
 vague desires and aspirations of man s spiritual nature, things 
 that we seek for as belonging of right to us, but existing some 
 where out of our reach. 
 
 Page 19, line 19. Gazette. Any daily paper. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Reporter to a journal. Probably his own 
 " journal " is meant. When this journal passed into the hands of 
 another " editor," the contributions referred to were printed in 
 full. They occupy fourteen volumes of the Walden Edition of 
 Thoreau, and were published in 1906. 
 
 Page 20, lines 11-13. The red huckleberry . . . the yellow 
 violet. These were all rarities in Concord, and as such especially 
 cherished by Thoreau. The Journal gives account of them from 
 time to time. The red huckleberry is not a separate species, but 
 was probably what is known as a " sport." 
 
 Page 21, lines 24, 25. My purpose in going to Walden Pond. 
 This statement is explicit. It controverts the popular idea that 
 Thoreau was posing as a hermit in living alone at Walden. A 
 part of this " private business " was the writing of his first book, 
 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. But see also 
 pp. 100, 101. 
 
 Page 22, line 2. Celestial Empire. There is, of course, a play upon 
 the words here. The early American trade with China often 
 called the Celestial Empire was largely from the port of Salem, 
 Mass., but it is an intercourse with the spiritual world of which 
 Thoreau is thinking. 
 
 Lines 5, 6. Ice and pine timber and a little granite. The 
 chief raw products exported from New England in Thoreau s 
 time. 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. La Porous e. Jean -Francois de Galaup, 
 Comte de La Pe"rouse (1741-1788), a famous French navigator, 
 who made discoveries in the Far East. His fate did not remain 
 entirely untold, for, some forty years after his death, it was learned 
 
372 NOTES 
 
 that he was shipwrecked in the New Hebrides and perished with 
 all his crew. 
 
 Page 23, line 1. Hanno. A Carthaginian navigator who explored the 
 west coast of Africa. 
 
 Page 24, line 6 from bottom. The owner of the farm. That is, 
 his clothes on the scarecrow. " Clothes make the man." 
 
 Page 25, line 4. Madam Pfeiffer. Ida Reyer Pfeiffer (1797-1858), 
 a Viennese traveller, whose A Woman s Journey round the World 
 was published in 1850. 
 
 Page 26, line 12. New wine in old bottles. " Neither do men 
 put new wine into old bottles." Matthew, ix, 17. 
 
 Page 27, line 3. The old philosopher. Bias, one of the Seven Wise 
 Men of Greece, who lived at Priene in Ionia, where he was born 
 about B. c. 570. Under date of July 12, 1840, Thoreau notes this 
 anecdote about him in his Journal : " In the sack of Priene, when 
 the inhabitants with much hurry and bustle were carrying their 
 effects to a place of safety, some one asked Bias, who remained 
 tranquil amid the confusion, why he was not thinking how he 
 should save something, as the others were. I do so, said Bias, 
 for I carry all my effects with me. " 
 
 Page 28, line 2. The Farcae. The Fates who, according to the Greek 
 mythology, controlled the lives of men as if spinning and cutting 
 a thread. 
 
 Line 15. Egyptian wheat. This old story of the longevity of the 
 
 wheat germ is now denied. Thoreau corrected his own copy of 
 
 the book to read " is said to have been handed down." 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. All costume off a man, etc. Thoreau 
 
 \ originally said this apropos of the costumes of a party of Tyrolese 
 
 singers who visited Concord in February, 1841. (See the Journal, 
 
 vol. i, pp. 196, 197.) This is a good instance of the way he made 
 
 the entries in his Journal serve his purposes, or rather of the way 
 
 particular observations led to generalizations which later proved 
 
 of use to him in his writing. 
 
 Page 29, line 3 from bottom. Samuel Laing. A Scotch traveller who 
 published several books on Norway and Sweden. 
 
 Page 30, line 6. Domestic. From the Latin domesticus, from tiomus, 
 house. 
 
 Page 31, lines 24, 25. Penobscot Indians. Indians of this tribe 
 came down from Maine to Massachusetts in Thoreau s time to sell 
 baskets, etc. See pp. 20, 21. 
 
 Page 32, lines 7, 8. Have freedom in his love, and in his soul 
 be free. 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 

 NOTES 373 
 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for an hermitage ; 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free, 
 Angels alone that soar above 
 
 Enjoy such liberty." 
 
 RICHABD LOVBLACE, " To Althea from Prison." 
 
 Line 20. Oookin. Daniel Qookin, who was born in England about 
 1612, and died at Cambridge, Mass., in 1687. His book on the In 
 dians was written in 1674, but remained unpublished until the 
 Massachusetts Historical Society printed it in 1792. 
 
 Page 33, lines, 13, 14. The birds of the air have their nests, and 
 the foxes their holes. " And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes 
 have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of 
 man hath not where to lay his head." Matthew, viii, 20. 
 
 Page 34, line 3. Rumf ord fireplace. Benjamin Thompson, Count 
 Rumford, discovered the principles upon which fireplaces and 
 chimneys are properly constructed. 
 
 Lines 12-14. The cost of a thing is the amount of -what I 
 will call life which is required to be exchanged for it. 
 Is this a good definition ? 
 
 Page 35, lines 9, 10. The poor ye have always with you, etc. 
 " For the poor always ye have with you." John, xii, 8. " What 
 mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, 
 saying, The fathers," etc. This and the two verses following are 
 from Ezekiel, xviii (2-4). 
 
 Page 36, line 9 from bottom. Suent. Working smoothly. On February 
 3, 1852, Thoreau wrote in his Journal : " Suent is an expressive 
 word, applied to machinery whose joints are worn, which has got 
 into working order, apparently from sueo, to be accustomed. So 
 of the writer s faculties." For Thoreau s definition of the word one 
 looks in vain in the regular dictionaries (Murray s New English 
 Dictionary has not yet reached the letter S). One learns from them 
 that it is a dialectic word, used in some provinces in England and 
 locally in the United States, that "suant" is the usual spelling, 
 and that the ordinary meaning is "evenly spread," "smooth" in 
 that sense, as of the sowing of grain. Most of the dialect dictionaries 
 make a similar report, but the large English Dialect Dictionary by 
 Joseph Wright (1904) gives, as an adverbial usage, " Smoothly, 
 easily, without friction ; evenly, regularly," and quotes J. Drum- 
 mond Robinson writing of Gloucestershire, " A carpenter, if the 
 wood planes easily, would say it works suent," and F. T. El worthy, 
 who heard in West Somerset, " A drap o oil 11 make the wheel 
 turn suanter by half." This usage of the word is Thoreau s pre 
 cisely, except that he makes it an adjective instead of an adverb. 
 
374 NOTES 
 
 He probably got the word in conversation with some workman, 
 as it does not appear to have found its way into literature until 
 Thoreau himself made use of it. As the word is not a literary one, 
 it seems doubtful if the etymology that he suggests is correct, and 
 the dictionary derivation from the Old French suant, " following," 
 is more likely to be the right one. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. A hair springe. Perhaps "springe" is a 
 misprint for " spring," though all the editions have it so. It is diffi 
 cult to conceive of any serious harm coming to a man from his 
 catching his foot in a horsehair noose, but if it were in a steel bear- 
 trap set so delicately that a hair would spring it, that would be 
 quite another matter. 
 
 Page 37, line 1. Chapman. George Chapman (1559 P-1634), an Eng 
 lish poet of the Elizabethan age. 
 
 Line 9. Momus. In Greek mythology the spirit of mockery and 
 fault-finding. 
 
 Page 38, line 5. Silent poor. The poor who do not let the world know 
 of their poverty and are not inmates of almshouses or recipients of 
 public charity. 
 
 Line 7. Garlic. Herodotus names garlic as one of the principal foods 
 of the pyramid-builders. 
 
 Page 39, line 6 from bottom. Glow-shoes. A corruption of the 
 word " galoshes," the rubber overshoes now commonly called 
 " rubbers " in New England. 
 
 Page 40, lines 9, 10. Memnon. In Greek mythology the son of Au 
 rora, goddess of the dawn. The Greeks gave his name to a colossal 
 statue at Thebes, Egypt, which was supposed to send forth music 
 when struck by the rays of the rising sun. 
 Line 21. Sardanapalus was a rich and luxurious king of Assyria, 
 
 in the seventh century B. c. 
 
 Last line. Jonathany Brother Jonathan/is the American people, 
 Uncle Sam is the nation. Now that the American people is a less 
 homogeneous entity than formerly, we hear less Jof (Brother Jona- 
 than. I r * 
 
 Page 41, line 5. Breathe a malaria. The word " malaria " means 
 in itself " bad air," being taken directly from the Italian maV aria 
 or mala aria. Modern scientific research has shown us, however, 
 that the disease cannot be breathed in, but is communicated by the 
 bites of the anopheles mosquito. 
 
 Line 19. Agri-culture. The division calls attention to the deriva 
 tion of the word from the Latin agri cultura, the culture, or tilling, 
 of a field. 
 
 Page 42, line 6 from bottom. Johnson. Edward Johnson (1600-1682), 
 author of The Wonder- Working Providence of Lion s Saviour in 
 
NOTES 375 
 
 New England, an account of the founding and early history of 
 
 Massachusetts. 
 Page 43, lines 5, 6. The secretary of the Province of New 
 
 Netherland. This was Cornells van Tienhoven. The document 
 
 referred to will be found in translation in E. B. O Callaghan s 
 
 Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 
 
 vol. i, p. 365. 
 Page 45, line 1. I borrowed an axe. He borrowed it of his friend 
 
 A. Bronson Alcott, who was a prominent member of the Concord 
 
 literary group. 
 
 Line 21. Lark and pewee. The meadowlark and the phoabe. 
 Line 8 from bottom. Winter of man s discontent. 
 
 " Now is the winter of our discontent 
 Made glorious summer by this sun of York." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE, Richard III, Act I, Sc. i, lines 1, 2. 
 
 Page 46, line 12. Stray goose. A wild goose, at that time on its 
 way to its breeding-grounds in the north. The geese migrate in 
 flocks, and this bird must have become separated from its com 
 panions by some accident. 
 
 Verse. Men say they know many things, etc. Thoreau, 
 though a genuine poet in some ways, was not an accomplished 
 writer of verse. He seems to have lacked a delicate ear for rhyme 
 and rhythm, and the study of meters and verse-forms did not in 
 terest him. He wrote a good deal of verse, however, especially in 
 his younger years, and much of it in more or less fragmentary 
 form. His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 
 is plentifully sprinkled with it, and Walden contains four pieces, 
 of which one, a ten-line stanza on " Smoke," is a true poem. The 
 others would, perhaps, be called doggerel by undiscerning critics, 
 but, though rude and unbeautiful in form, they embody poetic 
 thoughts. 
 
 Page 49, line 6. The removal of the gods of Troy. See book ii 
 
 of the sEneid. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Acquaintances. These " raisers " were A. 
 Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing 
 (the poet), George William Curtis and his brother Bursill, and 
 Edmund Hosmer of Concord with his sons John, Edmund, and 
 Andrew. (George Willis Cooke s Introduction to George William 
 Curtis s Early Letters to John S. Dwight.) 
 
 Page 50, line 2 from bottom. Cowbirds and cuckoos. The Ameri 
 can cowbird and the European cuckoo have this parasitic habit. 
 
 Page 51, lines 7, 8. The tailor . . . the ninth part of a man. The 
 allusion, of course, is to the familiar saying, " It takes nine tailors 
 to make a man." 
 
376 NOTES 
 
 Lines 15, 16. One . . . possessed with the idea of making 
 architectural ornaments have a core of truth. Horatio 
 Greenough, the sculptor, in a letter which Emerson showed to 
 Thoreau. See Journal, vol. iii, pp. 181-183 (Jan. 11, 1852). 
 Page 52, line 1. Trinity Church. The particular Trinity Church 
 referred to is that on Broadway, opposite the head of Wall St., 
 New York. 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. No olives nor -wines. That is, no luxuries. 
 Page 53, line 12 from bottom. I built a chimney. See pp. 266, 267. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Plastered house. He plastered the house 
 in November. (See p. 271.) To give the plastering time to dry, as 
 we learn from the Journal, he left the house from November 12 
 to December 6. 
 
 Page 55, line 11. The devil s attorney. A "devil s advocate" is 
 " one given to bringing forward accusations against personal char 
 acter" (Century Dictionary). The term was originally applied in 
 its Latin form of Advocatus Diaboli to the advocate in the Papal 
 court whose duty it was to bring in all possible evidence and urge 
 all possible objections against any person who was proposed for 
 canonization. 
 
 Line 12. Cambridge College. Harvard College, of which Thoreau 
 
 was a graduate, is referred to, of course. 
 
 Page 57, line 6. Motes in his eyes. The words, though not the 
 thought, are Biblical. See Matthew, vii, 3-5. 
 
 Line 15. Rodgers penknife. Joseph Rodgers and Sons were, and 
 are, famous cutlers of Sheffield, England. The house was founded 
 in 1682 and is still doing business. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say. Adam 
 Smith (1723-1790, Scotch), David Ricardo (1772-1823, English 
 Jew), Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832, French), three noted political 
 economists. 
 
 Page 58, line 16. Princess Adelaide appears to have been an imagi 
 nary princess. 
 
 Line 19. Eating locusts and -wild honey. Like John the Bap 
 tist. 
 
 Line 20. Flying Childers. A celebrated English race-horse of the 
 early eighteenth century. He is said never to have been beaten. 
 
 Line 24. Fitchburg. In Massachusetts ; the nearest large town to 
 the west of Concord, and then the terminus of the Fitchburg Rail 
 road. 
 
 Page 61, line 9 from bottom. Arthur Young. An English agricul 
 turist (1741-1820), author of many books on farming. 
 Page 63, line 20. Bhagvat-Geeta. Or Bhagavad-Gita", one of the 
 acred books of the Hindoos. 
 
NOTES 377 
 
 Line 27. When I was there. Arcadia was a pastoral country of 
 ancient Greece. The name has long been used figuratively for any 
 ideally simple and poetic place or state of existence. The particular 
 allusion here is to the expression, found in the literature of several 
 languages, " I too have lived in Arcadia." This seems to have origi 
 nated with the Italian painter Bartolommeo Schedone (1560-1616), 
 who placed at the bottom of one of his pictures, formerly in the Sciarra 
 collection (now dispersed) in Rome, the words " Et ego in Arcadia." 
 
 Page 64, line 3. Thebes. It is the Egyptian, not the Greek, Thebes 
 that is referred to. Homer calls it " hundred-gated " (Iliad, book 
 ix, line 383). 
 
 Lines 21, 22. It costs more than it comes to. A familiar say 
 ing in New England when a thing costs more in time or labor or 
 worry than it does in money. 
 
 Line 24. Vitruvius. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect 
 of the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, author of an important 
 work on architecture. 
 
 Line 26. Thirty centuries. Thoreau probably meant to say " forty 
 centuries." Napoleon, in a short address to his soldiers in Egypt, 
 said of the Pyramids, " From the summit of those monuments forty 
 centuries look down upon you." 
 
 Page 65, line 9. As many trades as fingers. Thoreau s regular oc 
 cupations besides his main vocation of literature, which brought 
 him in but little money were teaching, surveying, manufacturing 
 lead-pencils, and lecturing, but in his young manhood, as he indi 
 cates here, he earned an occasional dollar by manual labor of vari 
 ous kinds. In connection with his lead-pencil business, which de 
 scended to him from his father, he dealt in plumbago, as is shown 
 by numerous scraps of correspondence preserved among his papers. 
 Last line. Salt. Note that this is not included among the " experi 
 ments that failed." In most editions of Walden after the first, the 
 brace, through a printer s error, is made to include this necessary 
 of life. 
 
 Page 66, line 21. Their bills have not yet been received. Nat 
 urally, since the washing and mending were done at home. Tho 
 reau s writings are full of such touches of dry humor as this. Note 
 that the syntax of this sentence is a little weak. 
 
 Page 67, line 2 from bottom. A comparative statement. Is Tho 
 reau quite logical here ? Is it a comparative or a positive statement 
 that he has been making ? 
 
 Page 68, line 6. Purslane. This familiar weed is sometimes used for 
 
 greens. 
 
 Line 9. Trivial name. A technical term, signifying the second part 
 of the scientific name, the " specific " name, or that applied to the 
 
378 NOTES 
 
 species, the first part being the " generic," as applied to the genus. 
 Oleracea means " partaking of the nature of herbs or vegetables. * 
 
 Page 69, line 1. Egyptian his hatching eggs. From ancient times 
 the Egyptians have hatched eggs artificially. Sir Gardner Wilkin 
 son, in his important work on The Manners and Customs of the An 
 cient Egyptians (edition of 1847), describes at length the method in 
 use in modern Egypt, which he believes to have been handed down 
 from the ancients, and quotes the historian Diodorus (i, 74) : " Dis 
 pensing with the incubation of the hens, they with their own hands 
 bring the eggs to maturity ; and the young chickens thus produced 
 are not inferior in any respect to those hatched by natural means." 
 Line 15. Spiritus. Latin for " breath " and also for " spirit." Since 
 it means both breath and spirit, it serves Thoreau s purpose better 
 than either of the English words. Why ? 
 
 Page 70, lines 8, 9. Marcus Porcius Cato. Cato the Censor (B. o. 
 234-149), a Roman statesman and soldier, author of De He Mustica 
 (Concerning Rural Matters), a book which Thoreau quotes freely 
 in the Journal. 
 
 Page 71, lines 10-12. For -we can make liquor, etc. These lines 
 are from a song or piece of verse entitled " New England s Annoy 
 ances," written by one of the early settlers and said to be "the old 
 est known composition in English verse by an American Colonist." 
 " Notes and Queries " in the Boston Transcript quotes it in full from 
 Fugitive Poetry in the Chandos Classics, and cites a slightly different 
 version in Lewis s History of Lynn, quoted by Barber in his Histor 
 ical Collections of Massachusetts. Thoreau probably saw it in Barber 
 and was attracted by the quaint and humorous lines. 
 Last line. Squatting. It was on his friend Emerson s land that he 
 squatted. 
 
 Page 72, line 13. Their thirds. Their widows thirds in inheritance. 
 
 Page 73, line 9. Exuviae. Things cast off (Latin). 
 Line 15. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be 
 free. In the Journal, vol. i, p. 481 (undated), Thoreau quotes from 
 a conversation with a Concord trapper, one George Melvin, the as 
 tonishing statement : " 4 Oh, the muskrats are the greatest fellows to 
 gnaw their legs off. Why, I caught one once that had just gnawed 
 his third leg off, this being the third time he had been trapped ; 
 and he lay dead by the trap, for he could n t run on one leg. " 
 Neither Melvin nor Thoreau seems to have offered any explanation 
 of how a muskrat could run on two legs, and the story as it stands 
 can hardly be credited. It seems to be an undisputed fact that 
 many animals when caught in steel traps will gnaw off the leg to 
 free themselves, and it is not incredible that one caught a second 
 time might gnaw off the second leg, but beyond that the thing 
 
NOTES 379 
 
 appears to be impossible. The Journal goes on to say: "Such 
 tragedies are enacted even in this sphere and along our peaceful 
 streams, and dignify at least the hunter s trade. Only courage does 
 anywhere prolong life, whether of man or beast." 
 
 Page 74, line 10 from bottom. The moon will not sour milk nor 
 taint meat of mine. Alluding to a current popular superstition. 
 
 Page 75, line 3. " The evil that men do lives after them." 
 
 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III, Sc. ii, line 80. 
 Line 8. Bonfire. The word was formerly applied to fires for the 
 
 burning of heretics, proscribed books, etc. 
 
 Line 9. Auction. The emphasis is on the derivation of the word, 
 from the Latin audio, meaning an increasing, that is of the price 
 by bidding. 
 
 Line 21. Bartram. William Bartram (1739-1823), an American 
 botanist, son of the botanist John Bartram. The book quoted from 
 is his Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, etc. 
 
 Page 76, lines 15-17. The Mexicans, etc. See the account in Pres- 
 cott s Conquest of Mexico, Book i, Chapter iv. 
 
 Page 77, line 9. A good business. See Journal, vol. i, p. 251, April 
 20, 1841 : " There are certain current expressions and blasphemous 
 moods of viewing things, as when we say he is doing a good busi 
 ness, more profane than cursing and swearing. There is death and 
 sin in such words. Let not the children hear them." This passage 
 was printed with two or three verbal alterations in the first edition 
 of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but was omitted 
 from the second edition. The blasphemy, of course, consists in 
 calling a lucrative business a good one. 
 
 Line 22. To keep the flocks of Admetus. Apollo, god of 
 poetry and song, was compelled for nine years to tend the flocks 
 of Admetus, king of Pherae. 
 
 Page 80, line 3 after break. Philanthropic enterprises. In spite 
 of a certain impatience with formal charities, Thoreau was by no 
 means uncharitable towards the poor people of Concord with 
 whom he came in contact. 
 
 Page 81, line 3 from bottom. Robin Goodfellow. The well-dis 
 posed but mischievous elf also known as Puck. 
 
 Page 82, line 3 from bottom. Howard. The famous English philan 
 thropist John Howard (1726?-1790). 
 
 Page 84, line 2. Intra. Inside (Latin), as extra means literally outside. 
 
 Page 85, line 5. Mrs. Fry. Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), an English 
 woman who accomplished much in the field of prison-reform. 
 Lines 20, 21. Charity that hides a multitude of sins. See 
 1 Peter, iv, 8. 
 
 Page 86, lines 3 and 2 from bottom. Do not let your left hand 
 
380 NOTES 
 
 know what your right hand does. " But when thou doest 
 alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." 
 Matthew, vi, 3. 
 
 Page 87, lines 3, 4. Our manners have been corrupted by 
 communication with the saints. "Evil communications 
 corrupt good manners." 1 Corinthians, xv, 33. 
 Line 5. Cursing of God and enduring Him forever. Accord 
 ing to the Westminster Catechism, the chief end of man is " to 
 glorify God and to enjoy him forever." 
 Line 15. Indian, botanic, magnetic. So quacks have been wont 
 
 to characterize their methods. 
 
 Line 22. Sadi. A famous Persian poet of the thirteenth century. 
 Page 89, last line. T. Carew. Thomas Carew, an English poet of the 
 
 Dearly seventeenth century. 
 Page 91, line 15. The Hollowell place. On the Sudbury River, 
 
 between the Corner road and Nut Meadow Brook. 
 Page 92, line 3. Survey. Thoreau was a surveyor by occupation and 
 a punster on occasion. The lines are quoted from Cowper s " Verses 
 supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk." 
 Lines 9-12. Put his farm in rhyme . . . skimmed milk. Note 
 the changes in the figures, from a farm to a cow, from the cow 
 to her milk. Mixed metaphors are usually undesirable, but in this 
 case the things are naturally related together and the effect is 
 rather pleasing than otherwise. 
 
 Page 93, line 1. Atlas. According to the Greek myth, the Titan who 
 bore the sky upon his shoulders. In art he is sometimes represented 
 as supporting the spherical world. 
 Page 94, line 2. As I have said. See page 2. 
 
 Lines 2, 3. Ode to dejection. Doubtless alluding to Coleridge s 
 
 poem so entitled. 
 
 Line 19. A certain house on a mountain. A saw-miller a 
 house in the Catskills, where he lodged in the summer of 1844. It 
 is described in the Journal, vol. i, pp. 361, 362. 
 
 Page 95, lines 1, 2. From hand to hand. Thoreau sold the boat in 
 which he made his Concord and Merrimack voyage to Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, who wrote of it in his Journal (published as American 
 Note-Books), and later it passed into the hands of William Ellery 
 Chanuing, poet and friend of Thoreau. 
 Line 11. The Harivansa. A Sanskrit poem, one of the sacred 
 
 books of the Hindoos. Also spelled Harivansha. 
 Page 97, line 6. Keep butter cool. The well is the old-fashioned 
 
 country refrigerator. 
 
 Line 10 from bottom. Damodara. A name given to the divine hero 
 Krishna of the Hindoo mythology . flis exploits are related in the 
 Mahabharata. 
 
NOTES 381 
 
 Page 98, line 4. Pleiades, Hyades, Aldebaran, Altair. The 
 first two are constellations, and the last two stars of the first mag 
 nitude, Aldebaran being in the constellation of the Hyades. 
 
 Lines 21-24. Characters were engraven, etc. Commentary of the 
 philosopher Tsang on Confucius The Great Learning, Chapter ii. 
 
 Last line, and page 99, line 1. Singing its own -wrath and 
 wandering. The Iliad begins, " Sing, goddess, of the wrath of 
 Achilles, the son of Peleus " ; and the Odyssey, " Tell me, muse, 
 of the much-travelled man who wandered far." 
 
 Page 99, line 2. Till forbidden. This phrase, abbreviated " t f," 
 is the printer s sign for a standing advertisement. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Transpire. Is this a good word here ? 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. The Vedas. The early sacred books of India. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. Memnoii. See note on p. 40. 
 Page 100, last two lines. I went to the woods because I 
 wished to live deliberately, etc. See p. 21. The two state 
 ments are not conflicting. There is more than one motive for many 
 human actions. 
 
 Page 101, line 6. Spartan-like. The ancient Spartans lived a brave, 
 hardy, simple life, to fit themselves for war and the service of the 
 state. 
 
 Line 16. The chief end of man. From the Westminster Cate 
 chism. 
 
 Lines 18, 19. The fable tells us that we -were long ago 
 changed into men. " According to fable, when the island of 
 ^Egina was depopulated by sickness, at the instance of /Eacus, 
 Jupiter turned the ants into men, that is, as some think, he made 
 men of the inhabitants who lived meanly like ants." A Week on 
 the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Riverside Edition, p. 72. 
 
 Lines 19, 20. Like pygmies we fight with cranes. Homer in 
 book iii of the Iliad tells of the pygmies and their battles with 
 the cranes. 
 
 Line 21. Clout upon clout. Patch upon patch. The expression 
 may have been suggested to Thoreau by its use in the song " New 
 England s Annoyances," quoted on p. 71. Speaking of the diffi 
 culty of getting new clothing in the Colony, the writer says, 
 
 " If we get a garment to cover without, 
 Our other in-garments are clout upon clout." 
 
 Page 102, line 3. Dead reckoning. A nautical term which is de 
 fined in the dictionaries. 
 
 Line 7. German Confederacy. The German Confederation, 
 which included Austria, existed from 1815 to 1866, when it was 
 succeeded by the North German Confederation, Austria withdraw 
 ing. The present Empire was established in 1871. 
 
382 NOTES 
 
 Page 103, lines 5, 6. Riding on a rail. Note the play upon words. 
 Lines 22, 23. Setting the bell. Turning it till it rests mouth 
 upward just beyond the balancing-point, kept from going farther 
 by the " stop-stay s " coming into contact with the " slider." The 
 next pull of the bell-rope brings it back down again, carries it up 
 the other side, and sets it again there. Each pull of the rope gives 
 the bell a complete revolution beginning and ending mouth up 
 ward. This method of ringing is called ringing "high," and it is 
 the one used in calling the congregation to church. The blows of 
 the clapper come more slowly than when the bell is rung " low," 
 that is without setting it, which was the old-fashioned way of 
 giving the fire-alarm. For the above information the editor is in 
 debted to the kindness of Dr. Arthur H. Nichols of Boston, one 
 of the few Americans who are thoroughly conversant with the old 
 English art of bell-ringing. 
 
 Page 104, line 12. Wachito River. The Washita River, as it is now 
 commonly called, rises in Arkansas and empties into the Hed 
 River in Louisiana. " Gouging " is, or was, a barbarous practice 
 of the inhabitants of that region in connection with fighting. It 
 was done by a peculiar turn of the thumb. It has also been prac 
 ticed in some parts of Europe, as in Norway. 
 
 Line 14. Rudiment of an eye. Alluding to the blind fishes of the 
 Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 
 
 Page 105, line 7 from bottom. French Revolution. "This was 
 written before the last ( 1848) Revolution broke out ; but a revolu 
 tion in France might be expected any day ; and it would be as easy 
 to tell where it would end, before it was born, as after it was five 
 years old." Thoreau s footnote in an early draft of Walden, 
 printed by Mr. Sauborn as a note in the Bibliophile edition of the 
 book. 
 
 Page 106, line 3. Come to the end of them. In his personal copy 
 of Walden, now in the possession of Mr. Paul Lemperly of Cleve 
 land, Ohio, Thoreau altered this to " accomplish it." 
 
 Page 107, line 18. Mill-dam. This was the spot in the centre of the 
 village of Concord where the inhabitants congregated to gossip. 
 
 Page 108, line 12 from bottom. Tied to the mast like Ulysses. 
 Ulysses, it will be remembered, had his sailors tie him to the mast 
 in passing the Sirens, while their ears were stopped to prevent their 
 hearing the fatal song. 
 
 Line 2 from bottom. In place. In their original positions ; a geo 
 logical term. 
 
 Page 112, line 11. Delphi and Dodona. The two principal oracles 
 of the Greeks were at the temple of Apollo at Delphi in Phocis 
 and at the temple of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus. 
 
NOTES 383 
 
 Line 16. The athletes. That is, the athletes of ancient Greece, 
 
 who underwent very severe training. 
 Line 2 from bottom. Born again. See John, iii, 3. 
 
 Page 114, line 1. Alexander carried the Iliad with him. He ia 
 also said to have slept nightly with the Iliad and his sword under 
 his pillow. 
 
 Page 115, line 11. Homer has never yet been printed-in Eng 
 lish. That is, the true spirit of the old Greek poet cannot be 
 adequately expressed in English or in any other modern language. 
 Line 8 from bottom. The Vaticans. The Vatican, the Papal palace 
 in Rome, contains a large library. Thoreau is looking forward to 
 the time when all such libraries shall be filled full with the great 
 religious and poetical works of the world and of all ages. 
 Line 7 from bottom. Zendavestas. The Zend-Avesta is the bible 
 of Zoroastrianism, a religion of Persia and India. 
 
 Page 116, line 9. What we have to stand on tip-toe to read. 
 That which cannot be read without making an effort, and reaching 
 up to it. 
 
 Line 14. The lowest and foremost form. In the old district 
 
 schools the youngest children sat on a low form, or bench, in front. 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. The course of their true love. " The 
 
 course of true love never did run smooth." A Midsummer-Night s 
 
 Dream, Act I, Sc. i, line 134. 
 
 Page 117, line 14. To appear in monthly parts. This method of 
 publication obtained to some extent in the middle of the last cen 
 tury, and was particularly adapted to the long novels in vogue in 
 those days. The novels were issued thus separately, not as aerials 
 in magazines. 
 
 Line 17. Corrugations. The gizzards, or principal stomachs, of 
 fowls and all seed-eating birds are provided with muscular, cor 
 rugated walls. 
 
 Page 118, line 8. Woodchopper. This man s characteristics are 
 described at some length on pp. 159-166. His name was Alek The- 
 rien, and he appears again and again in the Journal. 
 
 Page 119, line 7 from bottom. Tit-men. Little men, pygmies. The 
 word seems to have been original with Thoreau. He used it also 
 in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Riverside Edition, 
 p. 503, and in the Journal, vol. i, p. 373. The word " tit " appar 
 ently meant originally something small. It is now chiefly used in 
 such compounds as " titmouse " and "titlark." 
 
 Page 121, line 1. Lyceum. The Lyceum in Concord was an organi 
 zation which provided lectures and lecture-courses by various 
 persons in a central hall. Thoreau was actively interested in it. 
 Lectures were very popular in New England in the middle of the 
 
384 NOTES 
 
 last century, and were an important element in the culture of com 
 munities. Every considerable town had its lyceum. The original 
 Lyceum in Athens was a gymnasium near the temple of Apollo 
 Lycius, where Aristotle walked, and taught his philosophy. 
 
 Line 14. Abe"lard. Pierre Ab&ard (1079-1142), a celebrated 
 French theologian and philosopher. 
 
 Line 22. Utopian. Sir Thomas More s (1478-1535) Utopia is a 
 book describing an imaginary island and the ideal social state ex 
 isting upon it. Hence Utopian " means ideal but impracticable. 
 Page 122, line 6. Olive-Branches. The Olive Branch was a Meth 
 odist weekly published in Boston for a number of years beginning 
 with 1836. 
 
 Line 9. Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. The old 
 New York publishing house of Harper & Bros, is still in active 
 business. George W. Redding & Co. were booksellers at No. 8 
 State St., Boston. 
 
 Page 123, last line but one. Bath. That is, in the pond. That is why 
 Thoreau makes a point of mentioning it. The daily bath was not 
 in those days the universal custom that it has since become. 
 Page 124, line 6. Corn in the night. On warm summer nights the 
 Indian corn is said to grow so rapidly that the process can be 
 heard. 
 
 Line 22. The Puri Indians. A Brazilian tribe, of a very low order 
 
 of social development. 
 
 Page 127, line 7. Tantivy. A hunting-cry indicating that the chase 
 is at full speed, supposed to be imitative of the sound of the hunt 
 ing-horn. The accent is on the second syllable, tan-tiv y. The 
 word is here used figuratively, of course, but it is not necessary to 
 assume that its meaning is otherwise different from the original 
 one. See also p. 177, last line. 
 
 Line 14. Reed-birds. Thoreau probably used the word indefinitely 
 to indicate any small birds among the sedges and reeds. The reed- 
 bird of the Middle States is the bobolink of New England, and 
 Thoreau knew it only by the latter name. 
 
 Lines 16, 17. The beat of a partridge. The drum of the ruffed 
 grouse, almost invariably called partridge in New England. 
 
 Verse. " In truth, our village has become a butt," etc. 
 From a poem entitled "Walden Spring," by Thoreau s friend 
 William Ellery Channing, second of the name. It was printed in 
 The Woodman, and other Poems (1848). 
 
 Page 128, lines 9 and 8 from bottom. Indian huckleberry hills. 
 The hills where the Indians formerly gathered huckleberries. 
 Thoreau sometimes used the word huckleberries to include blue 
 berries. 
 
NOTES 385 
 
 Page 129, lines 6, 7. Cloud-compeller. A name for the god Zeus, 
 
 or Jupiter. 
 Page 130, lines 23, 24. Dismal Swamp. The name is used gener- 
 
 ically ; no particular swamp is referred to. 
 
 Page 131, line 11. Atropoa. One of the Fame. The Fate who cut the 
 thread of man s life. See note on p. 28. 
 
 Lines 17, 18. Sons of Tell. The allusion, of course, is to the legend 
 of William Tell shooting the apple from his son s head. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. Buena Vista. In the Battle of Buena Vista, 
 fought Feb. 22 and 23, 1847, the Americans won a victory over the 
 Mexicans in the face of great odds. 
 
 Last line. Three-o clock-in-the-morning courage. Thoreau s 
 memory was at fault as to the precise hour in the morning named 
 by Napoleon. " As to moral courage, he had found very rare, he 
 said, that of two hours after midnight, that is to say the courage 
 of the unprepared ... he had found that he himself possessed the 
 courage of two hours after midnight in the greatest degree." 
 Memorial de Ste.-Helene, by Las Cases. 
 
 Page 132, line 4. Great Snow. Probably no particular storm is re 
 ferred to. There was a " Great Snow " in 1717 and another in 1780, 
 and very likely still other snowstorms have been so called. 
 
 Line 12. Daisies and the nests of field mice. Thoreau is al 
 luding to ^Robert Burns s ploughshare and his poems " To a 
 Mountain Daisy " and " To a Mouse." 
 
 Line 11 from bottom. Long Wharf. In Boston. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Palm-leaf. The making of hats from palm* 
 leaves was formerly a Massachusetts industry. These hats, such as 
 the Panama hat, are now made in the countries where the palms 
 grow, and where labor is much cheaper than in this country. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Cocoanut husks. The fibre of the husk is 
 
 called coir, and is used in making door-mats and matting. 
 Page 133, line 6. Cedar. The "cedar" of the Maine woods is the 
 arbor- vitse (Thuya occidentalis). Its wood is used for fence-posts, 
 railroad-ties, etc., and it is grown largely for hedges and orna 
 mental purposes. 
 
 Line 8. Thomaston lime. Lime from Thomaston, Maine. 
 
 Line 13. Milwaukee. At the time when Thoreau was writing, Mil 
 waukee was a young and rapidly growing city, fast filling up with 
 immigrants from Germany. 
 
 Page 135, lines 3, 4. " To be the mast," etc. Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 book i, lines 293, 294. 
 
 Lines 5, 6. Cattle of a thousand hills. " The cattle upon a thou 
 sand hills." Psalm 1, 10. 
 
 Lines 13, 14. The mountains . . . skip like rams and the 
 little hills like lambs. See Psalm cxiv, 4. 
 
386 NOTES 
 
 Line 20. The Feterboro Hills. In southern New Hampshire. 
 They form Concord s northwest horizon. 
 
 Page 136, line 5. I cross it like a cart-path. He finally came to 
 realize its possibilities as a. footpath, however ! " The railroad ia 
 perhaps our pleasantest and wildest road." Journal, vol. iii, 
 p. 342. 
 
 Page 137, lines 5, 6. In the horizon. Thoreau habitually used this 
 somewhat antiquated form instead of the more common " #n the 
 horizon." 
 
 Page 138, line 4. U-lu-lu. The word seems to have been adapted by 
 Thoreau from the Latin u/uZo, to howl, to utter a mournful cry. 
 Ulula was the Latin name for a species of owl. The word is trans 
 lated "screech owl," but the bird was not nearly related to our 
 American screech owl, unhappily so named. 
 
 Line 5. JBen Jonsouian. In thus alluding to Ben Jonson it seems 
 probable that Thoreau had in mind the witches scene in Jon- 
 son s " Masque of Queens," in which the hag s inform their dame 
 of the various grewsome things they have gathered to go into their 
 cauldron. 
 
 Line 11 from bottom. Bor-r-r-r-n. This is intended to suggest a 
 quaver on the vowel, not a trill of the r. The Journal (vol. i, p. 379) 
 with " bor-or-or-or-orn " perhaps indicates the sound more nearly, 
 the r, of course, after the New England fashion, not being pro 
 nounced itself, but simply governing the sound of the 0. 
 Line 5 from bottom. A hooting owl. See note on " cat owl," 
 p. 300. 
 
 Page 139, line 12 from bottom. Single spruce. In his own copy of 
 Walden. Thoreau corrected this to "double spruce," which is an 
 old name for the black spruce, the common spruce of the New 
 England swamps, and the only species found in the neighborhood 
 of Concord. The " single," or white, spruce is more northerly 
 in its range, but is found on the Maine coast and in the forests 
 of northern New England. The common spruce of northern New 
 England, however, and ranging much farther south than the white, 
 is the red spruce, a tree which in Thoreau s time was not dis 
 tinguished from the black spruce. The significance of the words 
 " single " and " double " as applied to the white and black spruces 
 is not at all clear. 
 
 Page 140, line 2. Stygian. The river Styx in Grecian mythology 
 flowed around Hades, the world of the dead. Hence Stygian means 
 "of Hades," " of the lower world." 
 
 Line 11. Aldermanic. The traditional alderman is a corpulent 
 person, especially as to the paunch. Green turtle and other rich 
 and expensive foods are said to be responsible for this. 
 
NOTES 387 
 
 Line 12. Heart-leaf. The floating-heart (Nymphoides lacunosum). 
 Line 19. Down to his mark. In drinking-bouts it was customary 
 
 to pass round a large cup with marks on the inside to indicate how 
 
 much each man was expected to drink. 
 Line 6 from bottom. Under the pond. As one would say " under 
 
 the table." 
 Page 141, line 16. Healthy, wealthy, and wise. 
 
 " Early to bed and early to rise 
 Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard s Almanack. 
 
 Page 142, line 4. Cat owl. A name for the great horned owl (Bubo 
 virginianus), the face of which, with its large "horns," or " ears," 
 bears some resemblance to that of a cat. 
 Line 5. Laughing loon. A common note of the loon resembles 
 
 wild, demoniac laughter. 
 Line 6. Lark. That is, a meadowlark. 
 
 Page 145, line 8. " The world to darkness and to me." From 
 
 Gray s " Elegy in a Country Churchyard." 
 
 Line 11. Hung. " Hanged " is the form preferred in this sense, but 
 Thoreau, like most good writers, did not always bind himself by 
 the rules which lesser men have to follow. 
 
 Line 17. Black melancholy. The word "melancholy" is from 
 two Greek words signifying " black bile," an imaginary secretion 
 which the ancient and mediaeval physiologists supposed to be the 
 cause of melancholy. 
 
 Line 19. ^Eolian music. ^Eolus was the Greek god of the winds. 
 An aeolian harp is an instrument provided with strings for the wind 
 to play upon. 
 
 Page 146, verse. " Mourning untimely consumes the sad," etc. 
 From a metrical version of James Macpherson s prose " transla 
 tion " of the Gaelic poem " Croma," by Ossian. It is now generally 
 believed that Ossian was only a legendary character, and that the 
 poems which Macpherson pretended to have translated were inven 
 tions of his own. 
 
 Page 147, line 13 from bottom. Men frequently say to me. In 
 transcribing this and the following sentence from his Journal, 
 where doubtless he first wrote them, Thoreau seems to have neg 
 lected to change the tense. 
 
 Page 148, line 4. Beacon Hill. The Massachusetts State House, 
 where the legislature meets, occupies the summit of Beacon Hill 
 in Boston. In Thoreau s day the most aristocratic residential section 
 of Boston was also on Beacon Hill, and perhaps Thoreau couples 
 it with the Five Points for the sake of the contrast. 
 
 The Five Points. A down-town section of New York, for- 
 
388 NOTES 
 
 merly famed as the most evil part of the city, but now invaded by 
 business. It was so named on account of an intersection of streets 
 forming five points, the name becoming extended to cover a con 
 siderable district. 
 Lineal 2. A fair view. The man s property, accumulated and kept 
 
 iy sordid labor, did not appear fair, or beautiful, to Thoreau. 
 Line 18. Brighton. A town near Boston and now a part of that 
 
 city. It was the seat of the cattle-market and abattoir. 
 Line 19. Bright-town. " Bright " is a favorite name for oxen. 
 Page 149, line 8 from bottom. Indra. One of the chief gods of the 
 
 Hindoo mythology. He was the head of the gods of the air. 
 Page 152, line 7. Mock sun. A parhelion, or sun-dog. 
 
 Line 9. Legion. Alluding, of course, to the devils which Jesus cast 
 out from the man with an unclean spirit in the country of the Gad- 
 aren/s. " And he asked him, What is thy name ? And he answered, 
 saying 1 , My name is Legion : for we are many." Mark, v, 9. 
 Lhfel2. The Mill Brook. A brook flowing through the village of 
 /Concord. 
 
 /Lines 24, 25. Goffe and Whalley were two of the "regicides" 
 / tinder indictment for the killing of King Charles I. They lay in 
 / hiding in the neighborhood of New Haven, Conn., and later near 
 
 |/ Hadley, Mass. 
 
 Line 25. He is thought to be dead. The " old settler and origi 
 nal proprietor " was probably Pan, the Greek god of flocks and 
 shepherds, pastures and forests, whose dominion has been extended 
 by some later writers to include all nature, on account of the iden 
 tity of his name in the nominative case with irdv, pan, the neuter 
 gender of the Greek adjective irds, pas, meaning all. The familiar 
 words " The great god Pan is dead " come from Plutarch s essay 
 on " Why the Oracles cease to give Answers," wherein a story is 
 told of a great voice having been heard out of the sea address 
 ing a sailor on board ship and saying, " When you are arrived at 
 Palodes, take care to make it known that the great god Pan is 
 dead" (Dr. Robert Midgley s translation). "Pan is dead" formg 
 the refrain to Mrs. Browning s poem " The Dead Pan." 
 Line 26. An elderly dame. Doubtless Dame Nature. 
 Page 153, line 11 from bottom. Old Parrs. Thomas Parr, who died 
 in London in 1635, was called " Old Parr." He was said to have 
 been born in 1483, which would make his age 152 years at the 
 time of his death. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Acheron. A river in Hades. 
 Page 154, line 4. Hygeia. The Greek goddess of health. 
 
 Line 5. JEsculapius. The Greek god of physicians and healing. 
 Line 9. Daughter of Juno and wild lettuce. Homer calls 
 
is to the., ^r 
 .he ridicuJ^r 
 
 NOTES 389 
 
 Hebe the daughter of Jupiter and Juno, that is of Zeus and ITera, 
 but, according to other accounts, her birth was the result of her 
 mother, Juno, having eaten heartily of wild lettuce at a banquet 
 given by Jupiter. (Bell s New Pantheon, J. Bell, London, 1790.) 
 
 Page 155, line 2 from bottom. Tremont or Astor or Middlesex 
 House. The Tremont House was in Boston, the Astor House in 
 New York, and the Middlesex House in Concord. 
 
 Page 156, line 1. Ridiculous mouse. The allusion 
 
 Latin fable of the mountain in labor and the birth of the ridi 
 Ills rnus. 
 Line 13. Form their columns. As in military operations. 
 
 Page 157, lines 8, 9. On "whose carpet the sun rarely fell. 
 It was the custom in the country to keep the "best" room, or 
 parlor, closed most of the time, with the shades drawn to prevent 
 the carpet from fading. The room was reserved for the most im 
 portant occasions, such as funerals and weddings. 
 
 Page 158, line 3. Cerberus. The three-headed dog guarding the 
 
 entrance to Hades. 
 
 Lines 7, 8. Lines of Spenser. The lines quoted are from Ed 
 mund Spenser s The Faerie Queene, book i, Canto i, stanza 35. 
 Line 1 after verse. Winslow. Edward Winslow (1595-1655). The 
 narrative from which Thoreau quotes is given in full in Alexan 
 der Young s Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of 
 Plymouth (Boston, 1841). 
 
 Page 159, line 3 from bottom. Homeric or Paphlagonian man. 
 This man, Therien, has been referred to before. See note to p. 118. 
 In the Trojan War the Paphlagonians came to the assistance of 
 the Trojans from their country on the shores of the Black Sea. 
 The Bibliophile Society s edition of Walden prints a note of Tho- 
 reau s from his manuscript : " Aleck Therien, he calls himself 
 (Terrien, Alexander the Farmer)." This explains the characteri 
 zation of the name as " suitable and poetic," terrien being French 
 for " landowner." In the man s native French, " Therien" would 
 be practically equivalent in pronunciation to " Terrien " ; but, in 
 Concord, as the editor learns from Dr. E. W. Emerson, the name 
 was pronounced as if it were English, The ri-e n. 
 
 Page 160, lines 10-15. " Why are you in tears," etc. Iliad, 
 
 beginning of book xvi. 
 
 Lines 16, 17. "White oak bark . . . for a sick man. White 
 oak bark is a powerful astringent, and is used in medicine both 
 externally and internally to a limited extent. 
 
 Page 161, lines 9-11. He was n t a-going . . . earned his 
 
 board. An indirect quotation. 
 Line 18. How thick the pigeons are! The wild pigeons, 
 
390 NOTES 
 
 which are now suspected to be extinct, were common in Concord in 
 Thoreau s time. 
 
 Page 163, line 12. He had got to. " He " evidently refers to th 
 neighbor. In the next sentence " he " is the woodchopper. 
 
 Page 165, line 8. Pecunia. Whence "pecuniary"; the Latin word 
 for money, from jaecus, cattle. 
 
 Page 167, lines 4, 5. Offering to lend them a dipper. One Sun 
 day, as we learn from his Journal (vol. iii, p. 198), he lent his 
 dipper to two young women who came asking for water, but they 
 failed to return it, and he indulges in some playful anathemas 
 upon them. " They will never know peace till they have returned 
 the dipper. In all the worlds this is decreed." 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Inferior. One of Thoreau s plays upon words. 
 The point is that, humility being lowliness, anything exceeding 
 it must be lower still. 
 
 Page 169, lines 11, 12. I have too good a memory to make 
 that necessary. " As if it were of any use, when a man failed to 
 make any memorable impression on you, for him to leave his name. 
 . . . No ! I kept a book to put their fames in." Journal, vol. iii, 
 pp. 215, 216. 
 
 Page 170, line 8. Com-munity, a league for mutual defence. 
 Thoreau is supposing a derivation of the word " community " from 
 the Latin munio, to defend, with the prefix com-, signifying to 
 gether, rather than from communitas, the real original of the word. 
 Communitas comes from communis, common, general, from com- 
 and the root w?u, to bind. 
 Line 17. This is the home that I built. The allusion here is 
 
 apparent to any one familiar with nursery rhymes. 
 Line 22. Hen-harriers. Hen-harrier is an old name for the marsh 
 hawk. It comes from England, where it is applied to a similar 
 species of hawk. The name is inappropriate, as applied to our bird 
 at least, for the marsh hawk seldom disturbs poultry. 
 Line 2 from bottom. " Welcome, Englishmen ! " The words 
 with which the Indian Samoset greeted the Pilgrims at Ply 
 mouth. 
 
 Page 171, line 10. Antaeus. A giant, son of Earth. Whenever he 
 fell to the ground, he arose again with renewed strength. Her 
 cules killed him by holding him up away from contact with the 
 earth, his mother. 
 
 Line 13. Johnswort. St. John s-wort, one species of which, Hy- 
 pericum perforatum, is a familiar yellow flower of the summer 
 fields. 
 
 Page 172, line 4. Brought from Boston. Thoreau s father removed 
 his family from Concord to Chelmsford in October, 1818, and 
 
NOTES 391 
 
 thence, in March, 1821, to Boston, where they lived about two 
 years, returning to Concord in 1823. 
 
 Line 7. My flute. The flute was Thoreau s only musical instru 
 ment, except a music-box, which he prized highly. Miss Louisa 
 M. Alcott, the story-writer, who knew Thoreau, wrote a poem on 
 " Thoreau s Flute " after his death. 
 
 Line 11 from bottom. Arrowheads. Thoreau had a remarkable 
 faculty for finding these. His friend the poet Channing says that 
 a companion on a walk once remarked to him, " I do not see where 
 you find your Indian arrowheads," whereupon, " stooping to the 
 ground, Henry picked one up, and presented it to him, crying, 
 Here is one. " His collection of Indian implements was depos 
 ited in the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 Page 173, line 14. Wormwood. Doubtless the Roman wormwood, 
 so called, or ragweed (Ambrosia artemisicefolia) , is referred to. 
 
 Lines 14, 15. Piper and millet grass. "Piper-grass" is a 
 name for the couch-grass, quitch-grass, or witch-grass (Agropyron 
 repens), a very troublesome weed. The name is commonly used in 
 Concord, and perhaps elsewhere, but appears not to have found 
 its way into the books. Miss Jane Hosmer, of Concord, has kindly 
 identified this plant for the editor. As to the millet grass, we 
 learn from Thoreau s Journal (Aug. 25, 1858) that he had given 
 that name to two species of grass, Setaria glauca and Setaria viri- 
 dis. 
 
 Page 174, line 4. The ministerial husbandman. He is probably 
 alluding to some passing minister who made the exclamation. 
 
 Line 5. " Corn, my boy, for fodder." The reply of the minis 
 ter s companion. 
 
 Line 8. Grateful dobbin. Dobbin is, or was, a favorite name for 
 a farm horse. Dobbin was grateful for any stop that gave him a 
 brief rest. 
 
 Line 17. Mr. Colman. Rev. Henry Colman (1785-1849), who de 
 voted himself for many years to the study of agriculture and rural 
 economy. He was State Commissioner for the Agricultural Survey 
 of Massachusetts. 
 
 Line 20. English hay. The various species of grass grown for 
 the fodder hay crop in New England and elsewhere in the United 
 States are not native, but introduced from Europe. The hay ia 
 called English hay to distinguish it from the meadow hay har 
 vested for bedding. 
 
 Last two lines. Ranz des Vaches. The air played or sung by 
 the Swiss herdsmen to call their cattle. It varies in the different 
 cantons of Switzerland. 
 Page 175, line 9. Paganini. Niccol6 Paganini (1784-1840) was a cele- 
 
392 NOTES 
 
 brated Italian violinist, who could play astonishingly upon a single 
 string. 
 
 Line 10 from bottom, Music. Thoreau had a deep feeling for 
 music, which to him was perhaps another name for poetry. He 
 heard it in many natural sounds, as we have seen in a previous 
 chapter, and the wind over the telegraph-wire excited him almost 
 to rhapsody and " reminded him of Anacreon." He heard it, too, 
 in a hand-organ, but he knew nothing of the more elaborate ex 
 pressions of musical art, and such things as oratorios had no par 
 ticular attractions for him. 
 
 Page 176, line 1. A sound as if the heavens were rent. The 
 sudden swoops or dives in which the nighthawk indulges during 
 the breeding-season are accompanied by a loud booming sound, 
 probably made by the wings. 
 
 Line 8. The hawk. The nighthawk, however, as Thoreau well 
 
 knew, is not a hawk at all, but a species of goatsucker. 
 Page 177, line 4. " Trainers." Concord had a drill-ground, or " train 
 ing "-ground, for the militia. 
 
 Line 7. Tintinnabulum. Virgil s word in the passage alluded to, 
 which is to be found in the Fourth Book of the Georgics, is tinni 
 tus, jingling. Tintinnabulum is the word for a bell. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Spit a Mexican. This was the time of the 
 Mexican War. 
 
 Last line. Tantivy. See note on p. 127, 1. 7. 
 
 Page 178, line 10. Know beans. A familiar phrase in New England, 
 most commonly used in the negative. Of an ignorant person, or 
 one comparatively ignorant, it is said, " He does n t know beans." 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. Hector. The Trojan hero in the Iliad. He 
 
 wore a plumed helmet. 
 
 Page 179, line 6. A Pythagorean. A follower of Pythagoras, the 
 famous Greek philosopher of the sixth century B. C. He is said to 
 have prohibited the eating of beans, as well as of meat and fish, 
 by his disciples, but there is some doubt as to the universality of 
 these prohibitions. 
 
 L- -Line 8. Voting. Beans were used in voting by the ancient Greeks 
 and Romans. 
 
 Line 16. Lsetation. Manuring or manure. The word occurs fre 
 quently in Evelyn and is perhaps confined to him. 
 
 Line 17. Repastination. Digging over again. 
 
 Lines 26, 27. Sir Kenelm Digby. An English diplomatist, phi 
 losopher, and author, who was born in 1603 and died in 1665. He 
 dabbled extensively in the occult sciences, and was also in some 
 measure a serious student of natural phenomena. Among his books 
 is A Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants. 
 
NOTES 393 
 
 Page 180, line 7. Crow fence. A white string- surrounding a field, 
 
 for use as a scarecrow. 
 Lines 11, 12. Patremfamilias . . . oportet. " A householder 
 
 must be a seller, not a buyer." From Gate s De Re Rustica. 
 Line 8 from bottom. Plant the common small white bush 
 bean, etc. Thoreau here writes half in fun, half in earnest, after 
 the style of the agricultural journals. 
 
 Page 182, line 7. Our ambassadors, etc. It is one of the duties of 
 our consuls to send home to Washington such seeds as may be ex 
 pected to be of value to our farmers. Formerly Congress distributed 
 seeds, but this work is now done by the Agricultural Department. 
 
 Page 183, line 7. Ceres. The Roman goddess of agriculture. 
 
 The Terrestrial Jove. So called to distinguish him from 
 Pluto, the Infernal Jove. 
 
 Line 8. Plutus. The god of wealth. He is not to be confused with 
 Pluto, and he had no connection in mythology with the infernal 
 regions. The adjective "infernal" which Thoreau joins to him is 
 perhaps a slip in his usually accurate classical lore. 
 Line 15. Varro. Marcus Terentius Varro Reatinus (B. c. 116-28), 
 author of a De Re Rustica and many other books. 
 
 Page 184, lines 3-6. The ear of wheat, etc. Thoreau got his ety 
 mology from Varro. See the Journal entry for Jan. 29, 1854. 
 
 Page 185, line 2 from bottom. Redding & Company s. George 
 W. Redding & Co. kept a " newspaper depot " at No. 8 State St., 
 Boston, in the thirties and a " periodical depot " there in the forties, 
 and when Thoreau published Walden they were booksellers on. 
 State St. and tea-dealers on Washington St. 
 
 Page 186, line 5. Etesian winds. The name given by Greek and 
 Latin writers to the northerly winds that blow regularly in the 
 summer season over the ^Egean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. 
 The regularity of these winds is doubtless the quality that Thoreau 
 had in mind in using the figure. 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. Lick. A colloquial word which has the sanction 
 of old and good usage. 
 
 Page 187, line 2. Window tax. A tax was formerly levied in Eng 
 land on the windows of houses. The words as applied to Concord 
 are not to be taken literally. 
 
 Line 14. Orpheus. According to legend, the earliest Greek poet 
 and a son of Apollo. He sailed as one of the Argonauts in search 
 of the Golden Fleece, and in passing the Sirens saved himself and 
 his companions in the manner described. 
 
 Page 188, line 4. " As I sailed." This is the refrain of the grim old 
 ballad of Captain Kidd, which is really not at all suggestive of 
 " genial thoughts." 
 
394 NOTES 
 
 Page 190, lines 7, 8. As I have elsewhere related. In an essay 
 entitled " Resistance to Civil Government," printed in a volume 
 entitled Esthetic Papers, edited by Elizabeth P. Peabody and 
 published by her at Boston in 1849. The essay, which was proba 
 bly originally delivered as a lecture, is included among 1 Thoreau a 
 Miscellanies under the title of " Civil Disobedience." The incident 
 is characteristic of his independence of spirit. 
 
 Line 16. Amok. Usually spelled "amuck." 
 
 Lines 26, 27. A fortnight in the woods of Maine. " Ktaadn" 
 
 in The Maine Woods is the narrative of this excursion. 
 Page 191, line 6. A soldier of our camp. That is, one of our friends, 
 some one who would appreciate the book. 
 
 Verse. Nee bella fuerunt, etc. From the Elegies of Tibullua, 
 book i, Elegy 10, lines 7, 8. 
 
 Last five lines, " You . . . bends." Analects of Confucius, Book 
 
 xii, Chapter xix. 
 
 Page 192, lines 4, 5. /"To fresh woods and pastures new." 
 From Milton s Lycidas. \ 
 
 Line 7. Fair Haven Hill. A hill overlooking Fair Haven Pond on 
 the Sudbury River about half a mile from Walden Pond. 
 
 Line 12. Cow-boy . The farm boy who drives the cows to and from 
 pasture ; not the " cow-puncher " of the West. 
 
 Line 17. The bloom. It is evident that Thoreau is using the term 
 huckleberry here to include the marketable blueberries. The true 
 huckleberry, which is seldom sent to market, has no bloom in its 
 common black form. 
 
 Page 193, line 3. Coenobites. A coenobite is a member of any reli 
 gious community ; a monk living in a monastery as opposed to a 
 hermit or anchorite. This is another of Thoreau s puns : the unsuc 
 cessful fisherman could see no bites. 
 
 Page 195, lines 6-4 from bottom. The sea, however, is said to be 
 blue one day and green another without any percep 
 tible change in the atmosphere. The reader will find the 
 color of the sea treated rather exhaustively from the esthetic point 
 of view in Mr. John C. Van Dyke s The Opal Sea (New York, 1906). 
 Page 197, line 18. Studies of a Michael Angelo. Michael An- 
 
 gelo s figures often show an overdevelopment of muscle. 
 Page 198, lines 6-12. Making another hole . . . axe out again. 
 An instance of Thoreau s practical ingenuity. 
 
 Line 19. Some think it is bottomless. See p. 315. 
 
 Line 25. Heart-leaves. See note on p. 140, 1. 12. 
 
 Line 26. Water-target. The water-shield (Brasenia peltata), an 
 aquatic plant with floating peltate leaves and jelly-covered stems. 
 Page 199, line 5. Nine Acre Corner. A small village in the southern 
 part of Concord. 
 
NOTES 395 
 
 Line 17. The fall. That is, the fall of man. 
 
 Line 22. Who knows, etc. A mere fancy of Thoreau s. It is 
 hardly to be believed that he expected to be taken literally. 
 
 Lines 23, 24. Castalian Fountain. A spring on the slopes of Mt. 
 
 Parnassus in Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. 
 Page 201, line 13. Flint s Fond. Also called Sandy Pond ; in the 
 
 town of Lincoln. See p. 216. 
 
 Page 202, line 16. Tradition. Thoreau made a note to this passage 
 in his own copy of Walden as follows : " This is told of Alexan 
 der s Lake, Killingly, Ct., by Barber. Vide his Connecticut Histor 
 ical Collections." 
 
 Line 2 from bottom. Settler whom I have mentioned. On 
 p. 152. 
 
 Last line. Divining-rod. A forked stick of witch-hazel or other 
 tree or shrub, with which certain persons were supposed to discover 
 the presence of water underground. The branch was grasped by 
 the two forks and carried about in a horizontal position until the 
 end turned down and pointed towards the ground. The spot where 
 this happened was the place where the well must be dug. 
 Page 203, line 11. The paver. The glacier which during the glacial 
 period brought the boulders and drift from a distance and depos 
 ited them here. 
 
 Line 12. Saffron Walden. A borough in the County of Essex, 
 about forty miles from London. Thoreau got the name from Eve 
 lyn s Diary, as we learn from a note in his private copy of Walden. 
 
 I/me 5 from bottom. Boiling Spring. A spring about half a mile 
 from Thoreau s hut. A " boiling spring " in New England is one in 
 which the water can be seen coming up through the sandy bottom, 
 giving the sand a boiling appearance. The term has no reference 
 to the temperature of the water. 
 
 Page 204, line 16. Chivins or roach. The fish which Thoreau called 
 chivin is the common American chub, now known to science as 
 Semotilus bullaris. 
 
 Line 17. A very few breams. " Bream " is a name for the fresh 
 water sunfish, or " pumpkin-seed." The true bream is a European 
 fish not found in this country. Thoreau had a note here in his per 
 sonal copy of the book, reading, " Pomotis obesus (Nov. 26, 1858) ; 
 one trout weighing a little over 5 Ibs. (vide Nov. 14, 1857)." The 
 references are to his Journal, where we find that he discovered some 
 small " breams " in Walden on the date first mentioned, which were 
 pronounced by Mr. F. W. Putnam at a meeting of the Boston So 
 ciety of Natural History to be Pomotis (or Bryttus) obesus ,^ also 
 that the trout was speared early in November, 1857, by a man who 
 i Now called EnneacanthvJt obesus. 
 
396 NOTES 
 
 also " saw another not quite so large." Thoreau frequently sent 
 specimens of one kind or another to the Boston Society of Natural 
 History, which still exhibits in its museum some very well pre 
 served birds -nests contributed by him. 
 
 Line 20. The only eels I have heard of here. The presence 
 of eels in a pond without visible outlet is particularly interesting 
 because eels spawn only in the sea, and are dependent upon a free 
 passage up and down the rivers and brooks. 
 
 Page 205, line 4. Reticulatus. Marked like a net. Esox reticulatus is 
 the scientific name of the pond pickerel. 
 
 Line 5. Guttatus. Spotted. 
 
 Lines 13, 14. Mussels. Freshwater clama (Unio). 
 
 Line 15. Mud-turtle. Thoreau s name for the snapping turtle 
 (Chelonura serpentina). 
 
 Line 20. Hirundo bicolor. Now called Iridoprocne bicolor, and 
 commonly known as the tree swallow in the vernacular. 
 
 Line 21. Totanus macularius. The name now in use is Actitis 
 macularia. The bird is the spotted sandpiper, the common tip-up 
 or teeter-tail of our shores and inland streams. In his own copy of 
 the book Thoreau inserted " kingfishers dart away from its coves," 
 before " and the peetweets." 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Fair Haven. Fairhaven Pond, or Fairhaven 
 Bay, is a widening of the Sudbury River in Concord, about three 
 quarters of a mile from Walden Pond. 
 
 Page 206, line 8. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. 
 Thoreau was right in this conjecture, though he apparently never 
 satisfied himself fully in regard to the origin of these stone-heaps. 
 They are built by the chivin, or chub (Semotilus bullaris). An 
 account of this fish and its nest-building habits will be found in 
 a paper on The Fishes of the Connecticut Lakes and Neighboring 
 Waters, by W. C. Kendall and E. L. Goldsborough, published as 
 Document No. 633 of the United States Bureau of Fisheries. 
 Page 207, line 9. When you invert your head. This method of 
 viewing the landscape was a favorite recreation of Thoreau s. Every 
 one who has tried it knows how much more beautiful and pictur 
 esque the landscape appears when so seen than when viewed in the 
 ordinary way. Several theories to account for this have been ad 
 vanced, and Thoreau, as his Journal shows, puzzled over the phe 
 nomenon a good deal, but never settled the matter satisfactorily. 
 Page 208, line 5. Boom. Like a logger s boom. 
 
 Line 14. ^ATater-bug. Of the kind commonly called lucky-bugs, or 
 
 whirligig beetles. 
 
 Page 210, line 4. We shall, perhaps, look down, etc. That is, 
 after death. 
 
NOTES 397 
 
 Page 211, line 13. One. This use of the word, for "some one," is 
 common with Thoreau, one of the somewhat antiquated forms of 
 speech which are so characteristic of his dignified style. Note that 
 this is not the impersonal " one." 
 
 Page 212, line 8. He did not know -whose it was ; it belonged 
 to the pond. One of those concealed indirect quotations of which 
 Thoreau was fond. The old man said, " I don t know whose it was," 
 and then added, humorously, " It belonged to the pond." 
 
 Page 213, last six lines. The villagers, etc. This plan of taking water 
 from Walden for the use of the town of Concord was abandoned, 
 and Sandy Pond was drawn upon for the purpose, though not till 
 some years after Thoreau s death. 
 
 Page 214, line 4. Trojan horse. The Trojan horse was a huge wooden 
 horse filled with soldiers, by means of which the Greeks finally cap 
 tured Troy. 
 Line 6. Moore of Moore Hall. The knight who, according to 
 
 a satirical old ballad, slew the Dragon of Wantley. 
 Line 3 from bottom. In whom there was no guile. " Jesus saw 
 Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite 
 indeed, in whom is no guile ! " John, i, 47. 
 
 Page 215, line 3, 4. It is no dream of mine, 
 To ornament a line. 
 
 That is, the Walden he is telling about is not a mere dream, used 
 for literary purposes only. In the draft of Walden printed by the 
 Bibliophile Society, these lines are preceded by 
 
 " It is a real place, 
 (Boston, I tell it to your face.") 
 
 The whole poem if such it may be called is a somewhat mys 
 tical identification of himself with the place which he had made so 
 peculiarly his own. 
 Lines 7, 8 after verse. State Street. Then as now the " Wall 
 
 Street " of Boston, the street of the bankers and stock-brokers. 
 Page 216, lines 3, 4. Waste its sweetness in the ocean wave. 
 
 " Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 
 
 GRAY S " Elegy in a Country Churchyard." 
 
 Line 10 from bottom. Pad. A lily-pad, the leaf of the water-lily. 
 Page 217, line 2. Curious balls. The reader who is interested to 
 learn more of these balls, which are not so very uncommon on sea- 
 beaches and the shores of ponds, is referred to two papers " On 
 Balls of Vegetable Matter from Sandy Shores," by W. F. Ganong, 
 in the botanical journal Rhodora (Boston), for March, 1905, and 
 August, 1909. 
 
398 NOTES 
 
 Line 17. The unclean and stupid farmer. No particular farmer 
 is referred to, of course. It is improbable that Thoreau knew what 
 particular Flint had given his name to the pond. He is simply 
 venting his indignation against a cheap and easy way of naming 
 the features of the landscape which is too common in America, 
 though now less so than formerly. In so characterizing a stranger 
 who doubtless lived and died many years before, he takes perhaps 
 a rather dangerous liberty. 
 
 Line 25. So it is not named for me. That is, so far as I am 
 
 concerned, it shall not bear the name of such a man. 
 Page 218, lines 11, 12. Privilege. The allusion is to the "mill privi 
 lege " or " water privilege," granted to an individual by the com 
 munity, whereby he is at liberty to use the water of a stream to 
 run his mill or for other private purposes. 
 
 Page 219, line 3. Icarian Sea. A part of the ^Egean, where Icarus 
 was fabled to have fallen to his death on flying too near the sun. 
 
 Line 5 after blank. Lake country. The Lake Country of England, 
 in Cumberland and Westmoreland, is famous for its literary asso 
 ciations. 
 
 Line 6 after blank. "Water privileges. The term here refers, not 
 to the right to use water, but to the water itself. It is very com 
 monly so used in this country. 
 
 Page 220, line 1. Pitch pine. Mr. Charles Sprague Sargent, the lead 
 ing authority on North American trees, recognizes only one form of 
 this species. 
 Page 221, line 14. White lily. The white water-lily. 
 
 Lines 27, 28. The diamond of Kohinoor. One of the largest and 
 most valuable diamonds in the world, the property of the British 
 Crown. It is supposed to have been found in India before the 
 Christian era, and it has had an eventful history, passing through the 
 hands of many Indian princes before it was acquired for Queen Vic 
 toria in 1850. Koh-i-nur, as it is more properly written, is the name 
 of the stone itself, and means " mountain of light." It is, there 
 fore, not entirely accurate to speak of the diamond of Kohinoor. 
 Page 223, line 7. Valhalla. The abode of the Norse gods. 
 
 Line 8. Creeping juniper. It is not the true creeping juniper 
 (Juniperus horizontalis ) that Thoreau refers to, but what is known 
 as the common juniper (Juniperus communis, var. depressa), which 
 grows in spreading circular patches in pasture -lands. 
 
 Line 10. "White spruce. For "white " read "black." See note on 
 p. 139. Thoreau changed it to " black" in his own personal copy. 
 
 Line 13. Swamp-pink. White azalea. 
 
 Line 14. Dogwood. The flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) is 
 doubtless referred to. 
 
NOTES 399 
 
 Red alder berry. The red berry of the so-called black alder, 
 or winter-berry, which is not an alder at all, but a species of holly, 
 Ilex verticillata. 
 
 Line 15. Waxwork. The Roxbury waxwork, or bittersweet. 
 
 Line 16. Wild holly. Nemopanthus mucronata. 
 
 Page 224, line 7. Pigeons. The wild pigeons were caught by means 
 of nets in Concord in Thoreau s day. He describes a " pigeon- 
 place " in his Journal under date of Sept. 12, 1851. 
 
 Line 12. Shingle tree. It seems probable that this is in apposition 
 with the word " pine," meaning a particularly good tree to make 
 shingles of. There seems to be no current usage that applies the 
 term "shingle tree "to any particular species of tree growing 
 naturally in Concord. A correspondent informs the editor that 
 shingles were formerly made of red pine (Pinus resinosa) exten 
 sively, and it is possible that Thoreau referred to that tree, which 
 he found growing in one or two places in Concord, and to which 
 he would have made a point of " paying a visit." The " taller mast 
 of a pine " he speaks of here, however, must have been a white 
 pine, for no other species grew tall in Concord. 
 
 Lines 16, 17. I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow s 
 arch. Under date of Aug. 9, 1851, Thoreau wrote in his Journal, 
 " It was a splendid sunset . . . , a celestial light on all the land, 
 go that all people went to their doors and windows to look on the, 
 grass and leaves and buildings and the sky, and it was equally 
 glorious in whatever quarter you looked ; a sort of f ulgor as of 
 stereotyped lightning filled the air. Of which this is my solution. 
 We were in the westernmost edge of the shower at the moment 
 the sun was setting, and its rays shone through the cloud and the 
 falling rain. We were, in fact, in a rainbow, and it was here its 
 arch rested on the earth. At a little distance we should have seen 
 all the colors." This is doubtless the occasion referred to here. 
 Whatever may have been the cause of the atmospheric effect 
 described, it can hardly have been literally as Thoreau suggests, 
 for the rainbow is always centred directly opposite the spectator 
 standing with his back to the sun, and it is, of course, impossible 
 for one to stand in the abutment of the arch. The rainbow is a 
 reflection from the raindrops, not a palpable arch that one can 
 approach and enter. No two persons see precisely the same bow. 
 With all his minute and painstaking study of natural phenomena, 
 Thoreau sometimes jumped at conclusions without careful con 
 sideration. It was poetic, not scientific, truth that was his main 
 pursuit, and since he combined science with his poetry more suc 
 cessfully than most, we can pardon an occasional slip of this kind. 
 
 Line 21. Like a dolphin. The dolphin which in dying assumes 
 

 400 NOTES 
 
 beautiful colors and has hence acquired a poetic celebrity is not 
 
 the true dolphin, but a fish more properly called a coryphene, any 
 
 species of the genus Coryphcena. 
 Line 28. Benvenuto Cellini. A famous Italian goldsmith and 
 
 sculptor of the Renaissance period, whose autobiography is one of 
 
 the most celebrated books of the kind. 
 Page 225, line 4 after blank. Baker Farm. Now included in the 
 
 estate of Mr. Charles Francis Adams. 
 
 A poet. William Ellery Channing, the second of the name, 
 
 Thoreau s friend before referred to. The poem is entitled Baker 
 
 Farm." 
 Page 226, verse. "And here a poet builded," etc. These lines 
 
 also are from Channing s " Baker Farm." 
 Page 228, line 16. Irishman. Thoreau is writing, of course, about 
 
 the poor class of Irish immigrant of his day, a time when the Irish 
 
 were practically the only foreigners coming to Massachusetts. 
 Page 229, lines 12, 13. "I catch shiners with fishworms, 
 
 and bait the perch with them." See Thoreau s comment on 
 
 p. 231. Perch yellow perch, that is, the kind referred to can, 
 
 generally be caught with worms, so that it is not necessary to catch i 
 
 the worthless shiners first. 
 
 " You d better go now." That is, go fishing. The emphasis i 
 * is on the " now." 
 
 Line 23. Was seemingly distilled. It took so long to prepare it. 
 Page 230, lines 11, 12. Remember thy Creator in the days of 
 
 thy youth. Is this original with Thoreau ? If not, is it quoted 
 
 exactly ? and why does it not appear in quotation marks ? 
 Verse. "Landscape where the richest element," etc. 
 
 Thoreau is still quoting Channing s " Baker Farm." 
 Page 231, line 2 from bottom. W^ebbed. People living on wet ground 
 
 or leading a more or less aquatic life are often humorously styled 
 
 " web-footed." 
 Page 232, line 10. Venison. Though now restricted to deer-meat, 
 
 except in poetic usage, the term formerly signified the flesh of any 
 
 beast of the chase. 
 Lines 13-15. An instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, 
 
 spiritual life, and another toward a primitive rank 
 
 and savage one. Each of these instincts was stronger in 
 
 Thoreau than in most men, and the combined presence of the two 
 
 made itself more manifest in him, perhaps, than in any other 
 
 writer of equal eminence. 
 Line 16. I love the wild. " Thoreau s Wildness " is the subject 
 
 of a short essay by John Burroughs in his Literary Values. 
 Page 233, lines 15-20. They mistake who assert, etc. This is, of 
 

 NOTES 401 
 
 course, no longer true of American sports. Many more outdoor 
 games are now played in this country than in Thoreau s day. 
 
 Page 234, lines 19, 20. I am compelled to doubt if equally 
 valuable sports are ever substituted for these. He 
 might have written differently if he had lived to learn the modern 
 sport of animal photography. 
 
 Line 25. Mighty hunters. See note on Nimrod, p. 309, line 1. 
 Line 28. Fishers of men. See Mark, i, 17. 
 
 Line 29. Chaucer s nun. It was really the monk, not the nun, of 
 Chaucer s Canterbury Tales that gave not a plucked hen for the 
 text that says that hunters are not holy men. 
 
 Page 235, lines 12, 13. Phil-anthropic. The word comes from the 
 Greek 0iAeo> (phileo), to love, and &v6p(airos (anthropos), man. Tho- 
 reau italicizes the latter part so as to suggest that his love for living 
 things is not confined to man. 
 
 Page 236, lines 5, 6. The Governor and his Council . . . went 
 a-fishing there. This doubtless does not refer to any actual 
 event. The Governor and his Council are used figuratively. 
 
 Page 237, line 5 from bottom. Kirby and Spence. An Introduc 
 tion to Entomology, by William Kirby and William Spence, 4 vols., 
 London, 1815-1826. 
 
 Page 239, line 2 from bottom. Star-dust. Star-dust is literally cosmic 
 dust, which is supposed to fall on the earth from outside space like 
 the meteorites. It has been found on the snow in high latitudes, 
 but it is probable that much that is so called is in reality volcanic 
 dust from terrestrial sources. 
 
 Page 240, line 10. A dish of tea. A cup of tea. The former phrase, 
 
 once common, is now seldom heard. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Ved. Veda. See note on p. 99, line 7 from 
 bottom. 
 
 Page 241, line 1. Vedant. The Vedic philosophy. 
 Lines 9, 10. Says Thseng-tseu. In the commentary on Confucius* 
 
 book, The Great Learning, Chapter vii. 
 Line 16. An alderman to his turtle. See note on " aldermanic," 
 
 p. 140, line 11. 
 
 Lines 16, 17. Not that food which entereth into the mouth 
 defileth a man. Quoted (inexactly) from Matthew, xv, 11. 
 
 Page 242, line 1. The harp which trembles round the world. 
 The music of nature, perhaps ; or it may be that the music of the 
 spheres is referred to. 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. Mencius. A Chinese philosopher of the third 
 and fourth centuries B. c., one of the leading teachers of Confu 
 cianism. The name is Latinized from Meng-Tse. 
 
 Page 243, verse. " How happy she who hath due place aa- 
 
402 NOTES 
 
 signed," etc. From Dr. John Donne s Epistle " To Sir Edward 
 Herbert, since Lord Herbert of Cherbury." 
 
 Page 245, line 8. Every man is the builder of a temple, called 
 his body. " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that 
 the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " 1 Corinthians, iii, 16. 
 
 Page 247, line 1. A companion. This was Thoreau s intimate friend 
 
 William Ellery Channing, the poet. 
 
 Line 5. Hermit. The hermit is Thoreau, of course. This fashion of 
 writing in dialogue form, as in Izaak Walton s Compleat Angler, was 
 once common. As used here it gives an antiquated flavor to the 
 text in keeping with Thoreau s style. 
 
 Line 14. Bose. A sort of generic name for the farm dog. 
 Lines 15-21. And oh, the housekeeping, etc. Put into more 
 colloquial form this would probably read somewhat as follows : 
 "Who wants to live out in the world, where housekeeping with 
 its endless routine of drudgery is necessary ? Better not keep house 
 at all, but live in a hollow tree, where there are no such things aa 
 calls and dinner-parties and only a woodpecker taps at the door. 
 Out there in the world people swarm like flies in the sun. They are 
 born into too complex an existence for me. I do very well with my 
 spring-water and my loaf of brown bread." 
 
 Page 249, line 11. Confut-see. The Chinese form of Confucius. 
 Line 13. Mem. Abbreviation for "memorandum." 
 Line 3 from bottom. Pilpay & Co. Pilpay and the other fable- 
 makers. Pilpay, or Bidpai, as the Arabic word is more correctly 
 rendered, was formerly supposed to be a Hindoo philosopher and 
 the author of the fables translated into Arabic as the Fables of 
 Bidpai, but it is now known that the word is not a proper name, but 
 comes from a Sanskrit word meaning " master of knowledge," and 
 that the fables are collected from very ancient sources, Indian, 
 Persian, and Arabic. 
 
 Page 250, line 3. A wild native kind. In his own copy Thoreau 
 inserts as a note here, u Mus leucopus." This is the white-footed 
 mouse, or deer mouse, now called by the mammalogists Peromys- 
 cus leucopus noveboracensis. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Tetrao umbellus. Now called Bonasa um- 
 bellus, the ruffed grouse. 
 
 Page 251, line 2 from bottom. Sportsman. No " true sportsman," as 
 the phrase is used nowadays, would shoot grouse in the breeding- 
 season. 
 
 Page 253, line 6. Turtle doves. Mourning doves. The true turtle 
 
 dove is not an American bird. 
 
 Line 11 from bottom. Duellum. Latin for "duel." 
 Line 10 from bottom. Bellum. Latin for " war." 
 
NOTES 403 
 
 Page 254, lines 20, 21. Whose mother had charged him to 
 return with his shield or upon it. This is the well-known 
 charge of a Spartan woman to her son upon his departure to war. 
 It comes down to us through Plutarch, in whose " Apothegms of 
 the Laconian Women," the story appears thus : " Another [Spartan 
 mother] on handing her boy his shield, exhorting him, said, My 
 son, either this or upon this. " This truly Laconic exhortation is 
 generally extended to read as Thoreau gives it. 
 
 Lines 22, 23. Achilles . . . Patroclus. Achilles, the Greek hero 
 of the Trojan War, sulked in his tent on account of a quarrel with 
 Agamemnon, until his friend Patroclus was killed by the Trojans, 
 when he sallied out to avenge him. 
 
 Page 255, line 13. Austerlitz. At the Battle of Austerlitz in Moravia, 
 Dec. 2, 1805, Napoleon defeated the combined forces of Russia and 
 Austria. 
 
 Dresden. This was another of Napoleon s victories. The battle 
 was fought Aug. 26-27, 1813, and resulted in a signal defeat for 
 the Allies, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. 
 
 Two killed, etc. The allusions are to the Concord Fight of 
 April 19, 1775. 
 
 Page 256, line 15. Hotel des Invalides. A great home for disabled 
 soldiers in Paris. It contains the tomb of Napoleon. 
 
 Line 22. Kirby and Spence. See note on page 237, line 5 from 
 bottom.^ k . 1 
 
 Line 24. Huber. Francois Huber (1750-1831), a Swiss naturalist, | 
 noted especially for his researches in connection with bees. 
 
 Line 25. .2Eneas Sylvius. Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464), a 
 learned Italian ecclesiastic and writer, who occupied the Papal 
 throne as Pius II from 1458 until his death. He is bjest known as 
 a writer under the Latinized form of his name. 
 
 Page 257, lines 2, 3. Olaus Magnus. A Swedish ecclesiastic and his 
 torian, author of a History of the Northern Nations which was 
 published in Latin in 1555. 
 
 Lines 9, 10. Webster s Fugitive-Slave Bill. Daniel Webster 
 was an influential supporter of this bill, but Senator James M. 
 Mason of Virginia was its author. 
 
 Line 11 from bottom. Jerbilla. Another, and probably an incorrect } 
 form of Gerbillus, the name of a genus of Old-World jumping mice, 
 jerboas. 
 
 Page 258, line 8 from bottom. His horse. The allusion is to Pegasus, 
 the winged horse of Greek mythology, who, with a kick of his hoof, 
 caused the fountain Hippocrene to spring forth on Mt. Helicon in 
 Boeotia. Hippocrene was the inspiring well of the Muses, and hence 
 in modern poetry Pegasus is called the horse of the Muses and the 
 
404 NOTES 
 
 poet s steed. Note that Thoreau here calls himself a poet ; and such 
 he really was, though most of his poetry was written in prose. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Colymbus glacialis. The loon is now called 
 
 by ornithologists Gavia immer. 
 
 Page 260, last line. Swam much faster there. It is a fact that 
 the loon and probably all other diving birds progress more rapidly 
 under water than on the surface. Many birds fly under water, but 
 the loon uses its feet alone under ordinary circumstances, according 
 to the latest writer on the subject, Dr. Charles W. Townsend, in 
 The Auk, July, 1909. 
 
 Page 261, line 8 from bottom. Looning. Thoreau may have heard 
 this word somewhere, but it is very probable that he coined it him 
 self from a fancy that the loon was named from this howling note. 
 The word " loon," however, as applied to a bird, appears to come 
 from an Old Norse word through the Shetland dialect, which gives 
 the name " loom " to several diving birds. " Looning " has now 
 found its way into some of the dictionaries, apparently solely on the 
 strength of Thoreau s using it. He used it again in The Maine 
 Woods. 
 
 Page 262, lines 13-19. They would sometimes circle ... to a 
 distant part which was left free. Of what service to the 
 ducks is this well-known habit of circling and doubling ? 
 
 Line 19. What beside safety they got. The black duck, the 
 species which Thoreau would have seen most commonly at Walden, 
 feeds at night and often rests by day in wide and deep ponds 
 where it can get no food, but where it is safe from its enemies. I 
 Page 263, line 3-11. There, too, I admired . . . lovers of Nature 
 there. Is this a correctly constructed sentence ? 
 
 Line 11. Butchers rake the tongues of bison, etc. The 
 " butchers" since Thoreau s time have killed the last of the bison, 
 except for a few small herds which are being protected and fostered 
 in the Yellowstone Park and elsewhere. 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. They now sleep. Note the play upon the 
 
 word " sleep." 
 
 Page 264, line 4. When in flower. When does the chestnut tree 
 bloom ? 
 
 Lines 10, 11. A good substitute for bread. Chestnuts contain 
 a large percentage of starch, the element that gives bread its food 
 value. 
 
 Line 25. The totem of an Indian tribe. InE. B. O Callaghan g 
 Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 
 a French document of 1666 is quoted which names the " pomme-de- 
 terre" or potato, as the totem of one of the Iroquois tribes. The 
 figures, taken from Indian drawings, might equally well represent 
 
NOTES 405 
 
 the ground-nut, which we learn from Lewis Henry Morgan s League 
 of the Iroquois was one of their principal foods. It seems probable 
 that this Iroquois tribe is the one Thoreau refers to, though just 
 where he obtained his information it is not easy to ascertain. He 
 accumulated a large amount of material for a book about the In 
 dians which his early death prevented him from writing. 
 Page 265, line 5. Ceres or Minerva. Ceres was the Roman goddess 
 of agriculture. Minerva, or her Greek counterpart Athene, accord 
 ing to the myth, gave the Greeks the olive tree and the plough. 
 Lines 12, 13. Ah, many a tale their color told. Thoreau evi 
 dently had in mind the lines by Thomas Moore, 
 " Those evening bells ! those evening bells ! 
 How many a tale their music tells," etc. 
 
 Lines 4 and 3 from bottom. Avoiding -winter and unspeak 
 able cold. Probably an echo of the line in the Iliad (book iii, 
 line 4), where the cranes are spoken of as avoiding winter and 
 unspeakable rain, -f 
 Page 266, line 6 from bottom. Nebuchadnezzar. King of Babylonia, 
 
 B. c. 604-561. 
 
 Page 267, line 6. A poet. Channing again. 
 Page 268, lines 15, 16. Keeping-room. Sitting-room. The term is, 
 
 or was, used locally in England and in New England. 
 Page 269, line 5. Saturn. An Italian god, identified by the Romans 
 with the Greek Cronos, who was the chief of the gods till his son 
 Zeus deposed him. It is, of course, the sill of the house that is so 
 designated here. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Put out. Note the play on the words. 
 Page 270, line 10. Keeping. Why is the word italicized ? 
 
 Line 18. Backing out. The proper method of leaving the presence 
 
 of royalty. 
 Page 272, line 2. Unio fluviatilis. A species of freshwater clam. 
 
 Many species of Unio are found in our ponds and streams. 
 Page 275, line 3. Honk or quack. Honk is the note of the wild 
 
 goose ; the black duck quacks, much like the domestic duck. 
 Line 19. Vulcan. The god of fire in the classical mythology. 
 Lines 19, 20. Terminus. The Roman god of boundaries. 
 Line 22. Steal. It is the harmless "stealing" of dead wood for 
 which the owner of the land has no use that Thoreau is talking of. 
 Line 3 from bottom. The Irish. The Fitchburg Railroad was built 
 
 largely by the labor of Irish immigrants. 
 
 Page 276, line 13. Gilpin. William Gilpin (1724-1804), an English 
 clergyman, author of theological works and of many volumes on 
 the picturesque in landscape scenery and gardening, including a 
 two- volume book on "Forest Scenery." 
 
406 NOTES 
 
 Line 9 from bottom. Lord Warden. Under date of April 12, 
 1852, Thoreau, who had evidently just been reading Gilpin, writes 
 in his Journal : " In the New Forest in Hampshire they had a chief 
 officer called the Lord Warden and under him two distinct officers, 
 one to preserve the venison of the forest, another to preserve its 
 vert , t. e. woods, lawns, etc. Does not our Walden need such ? The 
 Lord Warden was a person of distinction, as the Duke of Glouces 
 ter." 
 
 Last two lines. Lucum conlucare. See Cato, De Re Rustica, 
 
 139. 
 
 Page 277, line 11. Michaux. Francois Andr<* Michaux, son of Andre" 
 Michaux, and like his father a French botanist who travelled in 
 America. His Histoire des Arbres forestiers de FAmerique septen- 
 trionale was published 1810-13. 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. New Hollander. See note, p. 370. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Goody Blake and Harry Gill. See Words 
 worth s poem of this title. 
 
 Page 278, line 11. " Jump " it. That is, shape it on his anvil. The 
 word is perhaps not quite correctly used here. See the dictionaries. 
 
 Line 14. Fat pine. Pine that is full of pitch. This seems to be an 
 
 Americanism. 
 Page 279, line 9 of verse. Go thou my incense. Go thou as my 
 
 incense. 
 
 Page 280, line 8 from bottom. Cut their threads. See note on 
 Atropos, p. 385. 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. Cold Fridays. The cold day alluded to, which 
 Thoreau mentions several times in his Journal, occurred Jan. 19, 
 1810. Under date of Jan. 11, 1857, he wrote : "Mother remembers 
 the Cold Friday very well. She lived in the house where I was born. 
 The people in the kitchen . . . drew up close to the fire, but the 
 dishes which the Hardy girl was washing froze as fast as she 
 washed them, close to the fire." In the entry for the 22d of the 
 same month, he wrote : " I asked M. [Mr. George Minott of Concord] 
 about the Cold Friday. He said, It was plaguy cold ; it stung like 
 a wasp. He remembers seeing them toss up water in a shoemaker s 
 shop, usually a very warm place, and when it struck the floor it was 
 frozen and rattled like so many shot." The Great Snow alluded to 
 was probably that of 1780. See note, p. 385. 
 
 Page 281, verse. " Never, bright flame, may be denied to me," 
 etc. These lines are from a poem entitled " The Wood-Fire," by 
 Ellen H. Hooper, which appeared in the second number of The 
 Dial, in 1840. Mrs. Hooper was a daughter of William Sturgis and 
 wife of Dr. Robert W. Hooper, a Boston physician. 
 Page 283, line 6. On a foundation of logs. The corduroy road, ae 
 
NOTES 407 
 
 it is called, made of logs laid side by side across the roadway, is 
 much used for crossing swampy places on cart-paths and backwoods 
 roads. 
 
 Lines 13, 14. Cato Uticensis. Marcus Porcius Cato, great-grandson 
 of Cato the Censor of the same name, called Uticensis from the fact 
 of his having died at Utica. He was a celebrated Roman philoso 
 pher and patriot of the first century B. c. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Solidago stricta. Thoreau afterwards found 
 himself in some doubt as to the identification of the particular 
 species of goldenrod, and he substituted arguta (with a question- 
 mark) for stricta on his personal copy of the book. It could hardly 
 have been stricta, which does not grow in New England, and arguta, 
 though common in the Massachusetts woodland, is not an early 
 species. 
 
 Page 284, lines 8, 9. Squire Cummings. A Concord physician of 
 
 y Scotch parentage, who died in 1788. (Sanborn in the Bibliophile 
 
 A edition of Walden.) 
 
 1 Line 16. Scipio Africanus. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, 1 
 a celebrated Roman general, who was born probably in B. c. 237 
 
 iand died about B. c. 183. 
 Last line. Breed s location. Breed was a barber who kept a shop 
 in Concord together with a tailor named Newell. Their sign read, 
 " Tailoring and barbering done with speed 
 By John C. Newell & John C. Breed." 
 
 Journal, vol. ii, p. 20. 
 
 Page 285, line 10 from bottom. Davenant s " Gondibert." Sir 
 William D Avenant, or Davenant, was an English poet and drama 
 tist of the Seventeenth Century, whose best-known work is his epic 
 poem " Gondibert." He was at one time poet laureate, but like 
 many another occupant of that position, he is now but little 
 read. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. An uncle. Charles Dunbar, a brother of Tho- 
 reau s mother and a very eccentric man, about whom many amusing 
 anecdotes are related in the Journal. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. Chalmers collection of English poetry. 
 Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, with John 
 son s Lives, and additional Lives, by Alexander Chalmers, a Scot 
 tish editor and biographer living in London, published in 1810 in 
 twenty-one volumes. 
 Line 3 from bottom. Nervii. A powerful and warlike people of 
 
 Belgic Gaul who were conquered by Caesar. 
 
 Page 286, line 12. The engine bell tinkled behind. This was be 
 fore the days of steam fire-engines, of course, and the engine was 
 drawn by hand. 
 
 in- M 
 
 ot- l 
 
 in 
 
408 NOTES 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Tub. This is still the humorous name for the 
 hand fire-engines, which are now, except in a few small towns, 
 used only in athletic contests by firemen s associations. 
 
 Page 287, line 3 from bottom. Rider. A rail of a stake-and-rider fence. 
 
 Page 288, line 8 from bottom. Hugh Quoil. This story of a poor 
 drunkard, an admirable bit of human nature and pathos, is told at 
 greater length in the Journal, vol. i, pp. 414-418. Aside from its 
 intrinsic interest, it will also serve to show something of Thoreau s 
 method in adapting his journal entries for use in more permanent 
 form. 
 
 " I had one neighbor within half a mile for a short time when I 
 first went to the woods, Hugh Quoil, an Irishman who had been a 
 soldier at Waterloo, Colonel Quoil, as he was called, I believe 
 that he had killed a colonel and ridden off his horse, who lived 
 from hand sometimes to mouth, though it was commonly a 
 glass of rum that the hand carried. He and his wife awaited their 
 fate together in an old ruin in Walden woods. What life he got 
 or what means of death he got by ditching. 
 
 " I never was much acquainted with Hugh Quoil, though some 
 times I met him in the path, and now do believe that a solid shank- 
 bone, and skull which no longer aches, lie somewhere, and can still 
 be produced, which once with garment of flesh and broadcloth were 
 called and hired to do work as Hugh Quoil. He was a man of 
 manners and gentlemanlike, as one who had seen the world, and 
 was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. 
 At a distance he had seemingly a ruddy face as of biting January, 
 but nearer at hand it was bright carmine. It would have burnt 
 your finger to touch his cheek. He wore a straight- bodied snuff - 
 colored coat which had long been familiar with him, and carried 
 a turf -knife in his hand instead of a sword. He had fought on 
 the English side before, but he fought on the Napoleon side now. 
 Napoleon went to St. Helena ; Hugh Quoil came to Walden Pond. 
 I heard that he used to tell travellers who inquired about myself 
 
 that and Thoreau owned the farm together, but Thoreau 
 
 kved on the place and carried it on. 
 
 / " He was thirstier than I, and drank more, probably, but not out 
 of the pond. That was never the lower for him. Perhaps I ate 
 more than he. The last time I met him, the only time I spoke with 
 him, was at the foot of the hill on the highway, as I was crossing 
 to the spring one summer afternoon, the pond water being too warm 
 for me. I was crossing the road with a pail in my hand r when Quoil 
 came down the hill, wearing his snuff-colored coat, as if it were 
 winter, and shaking with delirium tremens. I hailed him and told 
 him that my errand was to get water at a spring close by, only at 
 
NOTES 409 
 
 the foot of the hill over the fence. He answered, with stuttering 
 and parched lips, bloodshot eye, and staggering gesture, he d like 
 to see it. Follow me there, then. But I had got my pail full and 
 back before he scaled the fence. And he, drawing his coat about 
 him, to warm him, or to cool him, answered in delirium-tremens 
 hydrophobia dialect, which is not easy to be written here, he d 
 heard of it, but had never seen it ; and so shivered his way along to 
 town, to liquor and to oblivion. 
 
 " On Sundays, brother Irishmen and others, who had gone far 
 astray from steady habits and the village, crossed my bean-field 
 with empty jugs toward Quoil s. But what for ? Did they sell rum 
 there? I asked. Respectable people they, Know no harm of 
 them, Never heard that they drank too much, was the answer 
 of all wayfarers. They went by sober, stealthy, silent, skulking 
 (no harm to get elm bark Sundays) ; returned loquacious, sociable, 
 having long intended to call on you. __ \ 
 
 h~dne~atfefhoon Hngh Quoil, feeling better, perchance, 
 
 with snuff -colored coat, as usual, paced solitary and soldier-like, 
 thinking of Waterloo, along the woodland road to the foot of the 
 hill by the spring ; and there the Fates met him, and threw him 
 down in his snuff-colored coat on the gravel, and got ready to cut 
 his thread ; but not till travellers passed, who would raise him 
 up, get him perpendicular, then settle, settle quick ; but legs, what 
 are they ? Lay me down, says Hugh hoarsely. House locked 
 up key in pocket wife in town. And the Fates cut, and 
 there he lay by the wayside, five feet ten, and looking taller than 
 in life. 
 
 " He has gone away; his house here all tore to pieces. What 
 kind of fighting or ditching work he finds to do now, how it fares 
 with him, whether his thirst is quenched, whether there is still some 
 semblance of that carmine cheek, struggles still with some liquid 
 demon perchance on more equal terms till he swallow him 
 completely, I cannot by any means learn. What his salutation is 
 now, what his January-morning face, what he thinks of Waterloo, 
 what start he has gained or lost, what work still for the ditcher 
 and forester and soldier now, there is no evidence. He was here, 
 the likes of him, for a season, standing light in his shoes like a 
 faded gentleman, with gesture almost learned in drawing-rooms ; 
 wore clothes, hat, shoes, cut ditches, felled wood, did farm work 
 for various people, kindled fires, worked enough, ate enough, drank 
 too much. He was one of those unnamed, countless sects of philoso 
 phers who founded no school. 
 
 " Now that he was gone, and his wife was gone too, for she 
 could not support the solitude, before it was too late and the 
 
410 NOTES 
 
 house was torn down, I went over to make a call. Now that Irish 
 men with jugs avuidod the old house} I visited it, an 4 unlucky 
 castle now, said they.j There lay his old clothes curled up by habit, 
 as if it were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay 
 broken on the hearth ; and scattered about were soiled cards 
 king 1 of diamonds, hearts, spades on the floor. One black chicken, 
 which they could not catch, still went to roost in the next apart 
 ment, stepping silent over the floor, frightened by the sound of 
 its own wings, black as night and as silent, too, not even croaking ; 
 awaiting Reynard, its god actually dead. There was the dim outline 
 of a garden which had been planted, but had never received itg 
 first hoeing, now overrun with weeds, with burs and cockles, which 
 stick to your clothes ; as if in the spring he had contemplated a 
 harvest of corn and beans before that strange trembling of the limbs 
 overtook him/ Skin of woodchuck fresh-stretched, never to be 
 cured, met once in bean-field by the Waterloo man with uplifted 
 hoe ; no cap, no mittens wanted. Pipe on hearth no more to be 
 lighted, best buried with him." 
 
 Page 289, lines 11, 12. A bowl broken at the fountain. " Or ever 
 the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the 
 pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cis 
 tern." Ecclesiastes, xii, 6. 
 
 Page 290, line 12. " Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." 
 " Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." Milton s Para 
 dise Lost, book ii, line 560. 
 
 Line 15. " Cato and Brister pulled wool." There is, perhaps, 
 a double, or even a triple, meaning here in Thoreau s mind. 
 
 Page 291, line 13. Blossom like the rose. See Isaiah xxxv, 1. 
 
 Page 292, lines 7 and 6 from bottom. Filled with heaven s own 
 blue. The reflection of the blue sky from the snow where it lies in 
 shadow, as in the deep footprints. This reflection of the blue sky 
 on shadowed ground is universal in summer and winter, but is sel 
 dom noticed, except by persons who have trained themselves to see 
 it. It is more observable on the white snow than elsewhere, but it 
 is to be seen everywhere out of doors in fair weather. But we 
 must not lose sight of the poetry of Thoreau s thought in consider 
 ing the natural phenomenon. 
 
 Page 293, line 8. Strix nebulosa. Now known as Strix varia. 
 Line 20. Peninsular relation. If he had closed his eyes entirely, 
 
 he would, to follow up the metaphor, have islanded himself. 
 Line 4 from bottom. I could not hear the slightest sound. 
 What makes an owl s flight noiseless ; and of what service is such 
 a flight to the bird ? 
 
 Page 294, line 2. The dawning of his day. That is, the coming on 
 of night. 
 
NOTES 411 
 
 Line 7. Heathen as I was. Thoreau did not profess to be a 
 Christian in religion, though he was an intensely religious man. 
 The allusion here is, of course, to a well-known saying of Christ s. 
 
 Line 17. Meadow mouse. Thoreau corrected this to "deer 
 mouse " in his personal copy. 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. A woodchopper. Doubtless the French- 
 Canadian, Therien, of whom we have heard before. 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. A long-headed farmer. Mr. Sanborn in the 
 Bibliophile Walden tells us that this was Thoreau s friend Edmund 
 Hosmer of Concord. 
 
 Page 295, lines 7, 8. We tried our teeth on many a nut which 
 wise squirrels have long since abandoned. That is, they 
 tried to solve some of the world s unsolvable problems. 
 
 Line 11. A poet. Channing. 
 
 Line 17. Boisterous mirth. Thoreau was no such stiff and un 
 bending Stoic philosopher as he is sometimes imagined. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. Another welcome visitor. Amos Bronson 
 Alcott (1799-1888). His early efforts asapeddlerof Yankee goods 
 in the South were unsuccessful commercially, but he afterwards 
 became widely known as a philosopher and lecturer. His daughter, 
 Louisa M. Alcott, is better known to young people. She went to 
 school to Thoreau. 
 
 page 290, line 4. Disgracing man. Putting man to shame. An 
 obsolete usage of the word. 
 
 Line 2 after verse. Old Mortality. The character who gives the 
 name to one of Scott s novels. He was an old man who travelled 
 over Scotland cleaning and making plain the inscriptions on old 
 gravestones. 
 
 Lines 6 and 5 from bottom. Entertainment for man, etc. On 
 the signs of inns were formerly placed the words " Entertainment 
 for man and beast." 
 
 Page 297, line 2. Ingenuus. Freeborn ; hence, worthy of a freeman, 
 noble, upright, candid, ingenuous. 
 
 Line 10. Pumpkin pine. " When growing densely in deep and damp 
 old forests, with only a few branches near the top, the slowly- 
 grown wood [of the white pine] is perfectly clear and soft, destitute 
 of resin, and almost without sap-wood, and has a yellowish color, 
 like the flesh of the pumpkin. It is then called pumpkin pine. . . . 
 [The name is] little used except in Maine, and by persons who im 
 port wood from that State." George B. Emerson, 1846. 
 
 Line 15. Flocks. In the sense of flocks of wool, not of flocks of 
 sheep. 
 
 Lines 20, 21. A New England Night s Entertainment. Al 
 luding, of course, to The Arabian Nights Entertainments, 
 
412 NOTES 
 
 Line 22. The old settler. See p. 152. 
 
 Line 2 from bottom. One other. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 Page 298, line 4. Visitor who never comes. The angel of God, 
 perhaps. Or, perhaps, rather, the ideal man, the Friend for whom 
 Thoreau was always looking 1 , but never found because there never 
 was, nor could be, such a friend. This is one of those vague and 
 mystical thoughts which we find frequently in Thoreau s writings, 
 which we can understand in some measure without being able to 
 explain. 
 
 The Vishnu Purana. The best-known of the Puranas, or later 
 religious writings of the Hindoos, manuals of sectarian Brah- 
 manisra. 
 
 Page 300, line 3. Moose-yard. Moose and deer are well-known to 
 " yard " in winter when the snow is deep. They congregate in some 
 secluded and remote place in the woods and by trampling the snow 
 keep a yard clear where they can get about comfortably and feed. 
 
 Line 10. Lingua vernacula. Language of the common people. 
 
 Line 8 from bottom. Cat owl. The great horned owl. A careful 
 study of all Thoreau s references to owls in his Journal leads to 
 the conviction that the hooting owl spoken of above and on pages 
 138 and 139 was also of this species. 
 
 Last two lines. Alarming the citadel. When the Gauls took 
 Rome in B. c. 390, the citadel, which still held out, was saved by 
 the cackling of the sacred geese in the temple of Juno, which 
 warned the garrison of an assault. 
 Page 301, line 7. The whooping of the ice. See pp. 332, 333. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Sciurus Hudsonius. Now called Sciurus 
 
 hudsonicus. 
 
 Page 302, line 9 from bottom. "Winding up his clock. A familiar 
 note of the red squirrel resembles the sound made by the winding 
 of a clock. 
 
 Page 305, line 8 from bottom. Actaeon. A hunter who, according to 
 the Greek myth, surprised Artemis (Diana) at her bath, and was 
 changed by her into a stag and then attacked and killed by his 
 own dogs. 
 
 Page 306, line 10. Hound. Thoreau, here and on page 307, appar 
 ently uses the word as synonymous with "bay," just as we have 
 found him coining the word " looning " to signify the note of the 
 loon, and probably for the same reason ; but he is not warranted 
 in doing so by the etymology of the word, which originally meant 
 any kind of dog and was spelled " hund." 
 
 Line 15. A man came to my hut from Lexington. The 
 conversation is given in detail in the Journal, vol. i, pp. 398, 399. 
 " Have you seen my hound, sir ? I want to know what ! a law- 
 
NOTES 413 
 
 yer s office ? law books ? if you ve seen anything of a hound 
 about here. Why, what do you do here ? I live here. No, I 
 have n t. Have n t you heard one in the woods anywhere ? Oh, 
 yes, I heard one this evening. What do you do here ? But he 
 was some way off. Which side did he seem to be ? Well, I 
 should think he was the other side of the pond. This is a large 
 dog ; makes a large track. He s been out hunting from Lexington 
 for a week. How long have you lived here ? Oh, about a year. 
 Somebody said there was a man up here had a camp in the woods 
 somewhere, and he d got him. Well, I don t know of anybody. 
 There s Britton s camp over on the other road. It may be there. 
 Isn t there anybody in these woods ? Yes, they are chopping 
 right up here behind me. How far is it ? Only a few steps. 
 Hark a moment. There, don t you hear the sound of their 
 axes ? " 
 
 Line 6 from bottom. A cruise. The word is habitually used by 
 hunters, apparently without thought of any nautical associa 
 tions. 
 
 Page 308, line 14 from bottom. Wast Book. Waste-book, or day 
 book. The cover of this old account-book which Thoreau examined 
 was inscribed : 
 
 Mr. Ephraim Jones 
 
 His Wast Book 
 
 Anno Domini 
 
 1742." 
 
 In the Journal, vol. vi,pp. 77-80, 88, 94-96, 101, Thoreau tells 
 of some of the interesting and amusing things he found in this 
 book and two ledgers which he afterwards looked over. 
 
 Line 12 from bottom. Representative. In the General Court, 
 the legislature of Massachusetts. 
 
 Line 11 from bottom. 2 3. These figures and those a few lines 
 down stand for pounds, shillings, and pence, of course. 
 
 Line 9 from bottom. Catt. Thoreau had misgivings as to this after 
 printing it, and he wrote in the margin of his own copy, " Can it 
 be calf? Vide small ledger, near beginning." There seems to be 
 no inherent reason for doubting that it might have been a wild 
 cat s skin, however. Wildcats have been killed in eastern Massa 
 chusetts, even in recent years. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. The last deer. Under the protection that has 
 
 been afforded them deer have recently increased very considerably 
 
 all over New England, and they are now not very rare in the 
 
 neighborhood of Concord. 
 
 Page 309, line 1. Nimrod. According to Genesis, Nimrod was " a 
 
414 NOTES 
 
 mighty hunter before the Lord," and this seems to be all that is 
 known of him. Few men are so celebrated on so slight a foundation 
 of known fact. 
 
 Line 9 from bottom. The hares. The common gray rabbit, now 
 known to naturalists as Lepus fioridanus transitionalis, but called 
 by Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, with whose Report on the Quadrupeds 
 of Massachusetts, published in 1840, Thoreau was familiar, Lepus 
 Americanus. The true L. americanus l is the larger varying hare, 
 which turns white in winter. The subspecies L. americanus vir- 
 ginianus is, or was, found in Concord, and Thoreau knew it by 
 hearsay under the name of the white rabbit. He saw its tracks 
 occasionally in the snow, but it is not certain that he ever saw 
 the animal itself alive. 
 
 Page 310, lines 9, 10. The breed of nobler bloods. " Rome, thou 
 hast lost the breed of noble bloods!" Shakespeare s Julius 
 Ccesar, Act I, Sc. ii, line 151. 
 
 Line 15. Venison. See note on p. 232. 
 
 Line 18. Some think. Lucius ^lius, according to Varro, thought 
 
 the word lepus was so derived, on account of the hare s swiftness. 
 
 Varro himself thought it came from the Greek. (De Re Rustica, 
 
 3, 12.) 
 
 Page 313, line 4. Marmots. That is, the woodchucks, a species of 
 
 marmot. 
 
 Page 315, line 4. "Whose fame is trumpeted. This is to be taken 
 literally. Formerly the travelling vender of fish in New England 
 villages blew a horn from time to time as he drove through the 
 streets. The " fish-horn " still survives, though it is no longer used 
 by the fish-man. 
 
 Line 11. Waldenses. The Waldenses, or Waldensians, upon whose 
 name Thoreau is playing here, are a small religious sect chiefly 
 located in the north of Italy, which was started by Peter Waldo of 
 Lyons, France, in 1170, as a reform movement in the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Thoreau is also thinking of the Latin termina 
 tion -enses signifying " inhabitants of." 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. Two such Bottomless Ponds. "Yester 
 day, September 14, [1850,] walked to White Pond in Stow, on the 
 Marlborough road, having passed one pond called sometimes Pratt s 
 Pond, sometimes Bottomless Pond, in Sudbury. Saw afterward 
 another pond beyond Willis s also called Bottomless Pond, in a 
 thick swamp. To name two ponds bottomless when both have a 
 bottom ! Verily men choose darkness rather than light." Jour 
 nal, vol. ii, p. G8. 
 
 1 In modern usage the specific names of animals are never capitalized, even when 
 they are proper nouns in the genitive case or proper adjectives. 
 
NOTES 415 
 
 Page 316, line 9. A "fifty -six." A fifty-six pound weight, half the 
 old-fashioned hundredweight of one hundred and twelve pounds. 
 
 Page 317, line 8. William Gilpin. See note on p. 276. The quota 
 tion is from his Observations on the Highlands of Scotland. The 
 verse he quotes from Paradise Lost, book vii, lines 288-290. 
 
 Page 323, line 12. An undulation in the crust of the earth. 
 This reminds one of the modern seismographs. The instrument in 
 the museum of Harvard University detects vibrations which are 
 supposed to be caused by the beat of the surf upon the shore about 
 seven miles away. 
 
 Page 324, lines 16, 17 after blank. To saw pit-fashion. Logs are 
 sometimes sawed in this way, one sawyer standing in a pit below 
 the log and another above. 
 
 Last line. Winter rye. As Thoreau very well knew, this crop is 
 sown in the autumn. It is called winter rye because it lives through 
 the winter to grow and ripen in the following spring and summer. 
 
 Page 325, line 7 from bottom. Tartarus. The lowest of the lower 
 worlds, according to the mythology of the Iliad. Later it was 
 used as synonymous with Hades. 
 
 Page 328, line 12 from bottom. Thus it appears, etc. This para 
 graph tells what might have happened to the Walden ice. 
 Last line, page 329, line 1. Brahma and Vishnu and Indra. 
 Three great gods of the Hindoo mythology. 
 
 Page 329, lines 7, 8. Atlantis. A mythical island in the Atlantic 
 Ocean, an account of which is given in Plato s dialogue " Timseus." 
 Line 8. The Hesperides. The Hesperides, according to Greek 
 mythology, were three sisters (or four, or seven, for the accounts 
 vary), whose parentage is variously given. The islands of their 
 abode were generally located in the extreme west. 
 
 The periplus of Hanno. See note on Hanno, p. 372. Periplus, 
 or periplous, is a Greek word meaning sailing round. Hanno s 
 periplus was his voyage along the west coast of Africa. His ac 
 count of it is still extant in a Greek translation, which has been 
 translated into English. 
 
 Line 9, Ternate and Tidore. Two of the Spice Islands of the 
 Melanesian Archipelago. Thoreau s ship takes a somewhat irregu 
 lar course, makes a genuine periplus, in fact. 
 
 Page 333, lines 6, 7. Fishes and muskrats . . . stunned by 
 a blow on it. Fishes, such as pickerel, seen through the ice in 
 shallow water may be stunned by a sharp blow on the ice above 
 them and so captured. 
 
 Page 335, line 10. Field of ice. This is the technical term in the 
 Arctic regions for a large sheet of ice. 
 
 Page 337, line 5. Acanthus. A European plaat, the conventionalized 
 
410 NOTES 
 
 leaf of which was much used in classical architecture, as on the 
 capital of the Corinthian column. 
 
 Chiccory. The leaf of this well-known and beautiful plant of 
 the roadsides and waste places was imitated in the Gothic orna 
 mentation of the Fifteenth Century. 
 
 Ivy. The conventionalized ivy leaf is an ancient architectural 
 ornament, being- found in Etruscan and Grseco-Roman design. 
 Line 6. Vine. The vine came into use as an architectural ornament 
 in the early Christian and Byzantine period. 
 
 Page 338, lines 13-21. Lobe, etc. These lines illustrate Thoreau s 
 
 fondness for etymological speculations. 
 
 Line 14. Labor. The verb labor, not to be confused with the noun 
 labor (English "labor"), which seems to come from a different 
 root. 
 
 Page 339, Hue 4 from bottom. Palm. Our word " palm " in both its 
 senses comes from the Latin palma, which also was used for the 
 palm tree as well as for the palm of the hand. The original mean 
 ing was the latter, however, the word coming from the Greek 
 ira\d]unf] (palame), which was used only in this original sense, the 
 Greeks employing a different word for the tree. 
 Line 3 from bottom. Umbilicaria. A genus of lichens. 
 
 Page 340, line 13. Champollion. Jean FranQois Champollion, a 
 famous French archaeologist, who by means of the celebrated Ro- 
 setta Stone discovered the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, 
 announcing his discovery in 1822. 
 
 Page 341, line 5. A living earth. The geologists teach us that the 
 earth is constantly undergoing change and growth, that geological 
 processes are not things of the past, but are still going on. 
 Lines 16, 17. Seeks the sea with music or migrates to 
 Other climes in clouds. Note the alliteration. 
 
 Page 342, line 1. Widowed Nature. Why is nature so character 
 ized ? 
 
 Page 343, line 2. The sinking sound of melting snow. We have 
 all heard this sound in the spring woods, but how many of us 
 have ever even thought of it ? and who else has ever written about 
 it ? The reader of Walden and of Thoreau s other books and Jour 
 nals must be impressed with the universality of his observation of 
 nature. He saw and heard so many various things that it is not to 
 be wondered at that he failed to attain the specialist s knowledge 
 of any one branch of natural history. Note the alliteration in this 
 sentence. 
 
 Line 4, 5. Et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus 
 evocata. " And for the first time the grass springs up, called 
 forth by the early rains. " Varro, De Ee Rustica, 2, 2, 14. 
 
NOTES 417 
 
 Lines 8 and 7 from bottom. Olit, olit, olit, etc. Is this a good 
 rendering of the song sparrow s song ? 
 
 Page 344, line 5. Leuciscus. Leuciscus is a genus of freshwater fishes 
 which in Thoreau s time was considered to include those commonly 
 known as the roach, the dace, the shiner, and the minnow. No 
 fishes belonging to this genus as at present constituted are known 
 to occur in Massachusetts. 
 Line 7. Was dead and is alive again. In what connection do 
 
 these words occur in the Bible ? 
 
 Lines 15, 16. Out the window. " Out " is thus used preposition- 
 ally instead of out of " in Chaucer and Shakespeare as well as in 
 some more recent writers, but it is more common colloquially than 
 in literature. 
 Line 6 from bottom. I mean he ; I mean the twig. Give your 
 
 idea of what Thoreau does mean here. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Turdus migratorius. Long the accepted 
 scientific name of the American robin, which is now known to 
 ornithologists as Planesticus migratorius. 
 
 Page 345, line 11. My first spring night in the woods. We must 
 not miss the beauty of this description of the first spring evening, 
 the sudden outshoot of sunset light from under the storm-clouds, 
 the song of the first robin singing as gloriously after his winter 
 absence as if it were still the summer before, the freshness and life 
 of the pines and oaks wet with the rain and gleaming in the west 
 ern light, the arrival of the honking geese from their long South 
 ern journey, their hushed clamor as they settle in the pond near 
 by, and finally silence and the closed door and the thinker alone 
 with his thoughts. The date of this evening, as we learn from the 
 Journal, was March 26, 1846. 
 
 Page 346, verse. Eurus ad Auroram, etc. From Ovid s Metamor 
 phoses, book i, lines 61, 62, 78-81. 
 
 Last two lines. While such a sun, etc. " And while the lamp 
 holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return." Isaac Watts s 
 Hymns and Spiritual Songs, book i, Hymn 88. 
 
 Page 347, line 17. Entered into the joy of his Lord. "Enter 
 thou into the joy of thy lord." Matthew, xxv, 21 and 23. 
 
 Page 348, verse. The Golden Age, etc. Translated (doubtless by 
 Thoreau himself) from Ovid s Metamorphoses, book i, lines 89-96, 
 107, 108. 
 Line 5 after verse. The sticks which boys play with their 
 
 fingers. Evidently clappers, or " bones," are referred to. 
 Lines 6-10 after verse. I observed a very slight and grace 
 ful hawk, etc. The tumbling described is a well-known habit of 
 the marsh hawk during the mating-season. 
 
418 NOTES 
 
 Page 349, lines 3 and 2 from bottom. O Death, where was thy 
 sting ? etc. " death, where is thy sting ? grave, where is thy 
 victory." 1 Corinthians, xv, 55. 
 
 Page 350, line 3. The meadow-hen. The term is said to be applied 
 to the American coot, but Thoreau used it for the Virginia rail and 
 perhaps the sora, or Carolina rail. See the Journal (Index). 
 Line 4. The booming of the snipe. The sound made by the 
 snipe s wings as he performs his strange courtship flight. The 
 performance is observed in Massachusetts only during the spring 
 migration and most commonly in the evening. Thoreau writes in 
 his Journal under date of April 9, 1858: " I hear the booming of 
 snipe this evening, and Sophia [his sister] says she heard them on 
 the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have 
 begun yet earlier. Persons walking up or down our village street 
 in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound 
 in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This boom 
 ing of the snipe is our regular village serenade. I heard it this 
 evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the win 
 dow. Yet common and annual and remarkable as it is, not one in a 
 hundred of the villagers hears it, and hardly so many know what 
 it is. ... Mr. Hoar was almost the only inhabitant of this street 
 whom I had heard speak of this note, which he used annually to 
 hear and listen for in his sundown or evening walks." 
 Last six lines. I love to see that Nature is so rife, etc. We 
 must not infer any cruelty from all this. Thoreau could be tender 
 and sympathetic when the concrete occasion arose, but just now he 
 is glorying in one aspect of Nature, her inexhaustible vigor and 
 prodigality. His outlook was broad enough to see the health of 
 the whole in the disease and death and corruption of a part. 
 
 Page 351, line 16. The wood thrush. It must have been the hermit 
 thrush that he had heard " long before " the first week in May. 
 The wood thrush does not usually arrive in the latitude of Concord 
 till the second week of that month, but the hermit comes about the 
 middle of April or even earlier. Thoreau did not distinguish be 
 tween the songs of these two birds, both of which are found in the 
 Concord woods. In the White Mountains and in Maine he mistook 
 the olive-backed thrushes also as well as the hermits for the species 
 with which he was more familiar, and called them all wood thrushes. 
 Some of the most beautiful passages in his Journal are devoted to 
 the song of the " wood thrush." 
 
 Line 7 from bottom. Calidas. Kalidasa, a poet and dramatist of 
 India and accounted one of the great poets of the world. The 
 Sacontala is his best-known drama. 
 
 Page 352, lines 5-7. He breaks his fast, etc. For poetic purposes 
 
NOTES 419 
 
 Thoreau condenses into a single day a migration flight that in 
 reality occupies weeks of time undoubtedly. The flight is not per 
 formed all at one time, but the birds linger to rest and feed on the 
 way, moving along as circumstances impel. 
 
 Line 14. Tierra del Fuego. The Spanish signifies "land of 
 fire." 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. Picking oakum. Picking old rope-ends for 
 calking the seams of ships. An occupation for sailors when they 
 are not required for more active work. 
 
 Line 3 from bottom. Great-circle sailing. A great circle is a 
 circle on the surface of a sphere the plane of which passes through 
 the centre of the sphere. It is the largest possible circle that can 
 be drawn on a sphere, but the number of possible great circles to a 
 sphere is, of course, infinite. Great-circle sailing is navigation along 
 the arc of a great circle of the earth. It traverses the shortest dis 
 tances between any two points. Thoreau s figure, therefore, means 
 that we sail stupidly straight ahead without going out of our course 
 to see the interesting things that are happening elsewhere in the 
 world. 
 
 Lines 3 and 2 from bottom. The doctors prescribe for dis 
 eases of the skin merely. That is, they do not go below the 
 surface of things. 
 
 Page 353, line 10. "White on the chart. The coast charts leave the 
 interior of the country white and unmarked. 
 Black. That is, with evil. 
 
 Line 15. Franklin. Sir John Franklin f the explorer, who perished 
 in the Arctic Ocean in 1847. His fate remained unknown until 
 1859, and many expeditions went in search of him in the mean 
 time, among them two fitted out by Henry Grinnell, a New York 
 merchant. 
 
 Lines 17, 18. Mungo Park. A Scottish explorer who was drowned 
 in 1806 during a fight with the natives while exploring the course 
 of the river Niger. 
 
 Line 18. Lewis and Clark. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, 
 who conducted an important exploration of our Northwest in 
 1803-1806. 
 
 Frobisher. Sir Martin Frobisher, an English navigator who 
 tried to discover the Northwest Passage in 1576. 
 
 Line 5 from bottom. A hummock left by the ice. Thoreau s 
 Journal contains many observations on the transportation of 
 meadow hummocks by the ice, and especially of the transplanting 
 of the buttonbush by that means. The ice on overflowed meadows 
 often freezes solid to the ground, and then, being raised and broken 
 up by a rise of the river, drifts down-stream, carrying here and 
 
420 NOTES 
 
 there the hummocks which have adhered to its under surface, to 
 deposit them in a new place and raise the level there. 
 
 Lines 4 and 3 from bottom. Sacrifice the greater to the leas. 
 Perhaps most of us would not put it this way. Thoreau had little 
 or none of what we commonly call patriotism, none, at least, of 
 the kind that says, " Our country, right or wrong- " ; but he was not 
 lacking in public spirit, and his aims were noble, not selfish. 
 Page 354, lines 1, 2. South-Sea Exploring Expedition. The 
 United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842, commanded by 
 Lieut. Charles Wilkes, U. S. N. It explored the Pacific Ocean and 
 its islands, and particularly that part of the Antarctic continent 
 which was afterwards called Wilkes Land. 
 
 Lines 11, 12. "Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos," 
 etc. These are the closing lines of the poem " On an Old Man of 
 Verona who has never been out of the Suburbs " (De Sene Veronensi 
 qui Suburbium nunquam egressus est) , by Claudian, a Latin poet of 
 the fourth and fifth centuries A. D. In his journal entry for May 10, 
 1841, Thoreau says, "A good warning to the restless tourists of 
 these days is contained in the last verses of Claudian s Old Man 
 of Verona, " which he proceeds to quote. 
 
 Lines 13, 14. Let them wander, etc. The literal translation is, 
 " Let another wander and scrutinize the farthest Iberians (Span 
 iards). This one has more of life, that one has more of the road." 
 Thoreau substitutes " Australians " for " Iberians," as better suit 
 ing the conditions of modern geography. 
 
 Lines 3, 4 after verse. Symmes Hole. Capt. John Cleves Symmea 
 of St. Louis in 1818 advanced the theory that the earth was hol 
 low within and open at the poles, and that the interior was habit 
 able if not actually inhabited. An amusing account of Symmea 
 and the methods he took to promulgate his ideas will be found in 
 John Fiske s A Century of Science. 
 
 Line 5 after verse. Gold Coast and Slave Coast. Two sections 
 of the African coast on the north shore of the Gulf of Guinea. 
 
 Lines 11, 12 after verse. Cause the Sphinx to dash her head 
 against a stone. That is, guess all riddles, solve all problems. 
 According to Hesiod, the Sphinx propounded a riddle to all 
 comers, and when they could not guess it, flung them from the 
 rock near the city of Thebes where she had taken her station. 
 Finally (Edipus guessed her riddle, and she destroyed herself in 
 the same way that she had killed her victims. 
 
 Line 4 from bottom. Explore thyself. Tv&Qi <rfavr6v (gnothi 
 seauton), " Know thyself," an old Greek maxim, the origin of which 
 is unknown, though it has been enumerated among the sayings of 
 the Seven Wise Meuof Greece, some attributing it to Thales, othera 
 
NOTES 421 
 
 to Chilon, and still others to Solon. It has also been attributed to 
 Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and other philosophers. 
 Lines 3 and 2 from bottom. Only the defeated and deserters 
 go to the wars. Paradox was a favorite figure of Thoreau s. 
 He means that men who have not the courage to study themselves 
 and live their own life allow themselves to be swept away by out 
 side influences. 
 
 Last line. That farthest western -way. The road to the ulti 
 mate good. Thoreau says " western way " because that is the 
 direction that exploration has taken, exploration and the " star 
 of empire." The western way had always an attraction for him. 
 See his essay on " Walking " in Excursions. 
 
 Page 355, line 5. Mirabeau. The Count de Mirabeau (1749-1791) 
 was a celebrated orator and statesman of the French Revolu 
 tion. 
 
 Line 12. Firm resolve. The Journal entry for July 21, 1851, goe 
 on to quote here from Chambers 1 Edinburgh Journal (through 
 Harper s Magazine, vol. i, p. 648) Mirabeau s further conversation : 
 " Tell me, Du Saillant, when you lead your regiment into the heat 
 of battle, to conquer a province to which he whom you call your 
 master has no right whatever, do you consider that you are per 
 forming a better action than mine, in stopping your friend on the 
 king s highway, and demanding his purse ? I obey without 
 reasoning, replied the count. And I reason without obeying, 
 when obedience appears to me to be contrary to reason, rejoined 
 Mirabeau." 
 
 Page 356, last line. Hish and whoa. Words of command to oxen. 
 Bright. A favorite name for an ox. 
 
 Page 357, line 3. Extra-vagant. The division is to call attention to 
 the literal meaning of the Latin from which the word is derived, 
 wandering beyond. 
 
 Line 10 from bottom. Translated. Carried across, the literal 
 meaning of the word. 
 
 Page 358, line 3. Kabir. A Hindoo religious reformer of the late 
 
 Fifteenth and early Sixteenth centuries. 
 
 Lines 9 and 8 from bottom. A living dog is better than a 
 dead lion. From Ecclesiastes, ix, 4. 
 
 Page 359, last paragraph. There was an artist. Mr. Sanborn con 
 siders this story to have been either adapted or invented by 
 Thoreau. It seems probable that it is entirely original, though 
 modelled after the Hindoo fables with which Thoreau was 
 familiar. 
 
 Page 360, line 3. Kalpa. This is the Sanskrit word for a day of Brahma, 
 a period of 4,320,000,000 of our years. 
 
422 NOTES 
 
 Line 6. Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. 
 
 That is, many " Kalpas " had passed by. 
 
 Page 362, lines 6, 7. And lo ! creation widens to our view. 
 Adapted from the line " And lo ! creation widened in man s view " 
 in the famous sonnet on " Night and Death " by Blanco White. 
 Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841) was a Spaniard of Irish descent 
 who lived in England from 1810. He was a theologian, but is best 
 known as the author of this sonnet, which Coleridge declared to 
 be " the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language." 
 The thought in the preceding sentence, as to darkness revealing 
 the heavenly lights, is also taken from this sonnet. 
 
 Line 8. Croesus. A king of Lydia in the sixth century B. c. His 
 immense wealth became proverbial. 
 
 Line 15. Near the bone where it is sweetest. Alluding to the 
 old proverb, " The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat." 
 
 Line 9 from bottom. Tintinnabulum. Here again Thoreau uses 
 the Latin word for " bell " when he means the sound produced by 
 a bell, a tintinnabulation. 
 
 Page 363, line 3. The Mameluke bey. When Mohammed Ali, 
 viceroy of Egypt, in 1811 massacred the members of the historic 
 body of cavalry known as the Mamelukes, after feasting them in 
 the citadel at Cairo, a single man, Emin Bey, was said to have 
 escaped by leaping his horse from the ramparts to the ground. 
 The story is denied on good authority, the actual fact being that 
 the sole survivor of the massacre had been prevented by illness from 
 attending the banquet at all, and had afterwards been spared by 
 Mohammed Ali. (The Spectator, Nov. 9 and 16, 1907.) 
 
 Lines 11, 12. God is only the president of the day, and 
 Webster is his orator. That is, in these days of parades and 
 celebrations God is looked upon only as a master of ceremonies, a 
 presiding officer to introduce the speakers. 
 
 Lines 19,20. Kittly-beiiders. It is hardly necessary to define this 
 word, though it is not found in all the dictionaries. Other forms 
 which occur in the juvenile vernacular are " tittlety-benders," 
 " teetlety-benders," and the shorter " tittleties " and "teetleties." 
 Thoreau s word may very well be the original one, the first part, 
 " kittly " being the old Scotch word for ticklish. The sport of 
 "running tittleties " on thin ice is always ticklish business. 
 Page 364, line 8 from bottom. Hollow tree. See p. 247. 
 Page 365, line 1. China pride. All mankind, in Thoreau s thought, 
 were in the same state of uuprogressive self -sufficiency as the 
 Chinese. 
 
 Line 16. The seven-years itch. " As bad as the seven-years 
 itch " was formerly, and perhaps is still, a current expression, but 
 
NOTES 423 
 
 the editor is informed by a well-known specialist on skin diseases 
 that it is a purely mythical complaint. 
 
 Line 17. The seventeen-year locust. A species of cicada which 
 makes its appearance in the mature form every seventeen years, 
 living the intervening time in the larval state under ground. The 
 brood which occurred in 1852 in Franklin, Hampshire, and Bristol 
 Counties, Massachusetts, is probably the particular one referred to. 
 
 Page 366, lines 8 and 7 from bottom. The story -which has gone 
 the rounds of New England. Doubtless a newspaper story, 
 which, like many such tales, may or may not have been true ; but 
 it served Thoreau s purpose for an analogy. He was always look 
 ing for analogies between the physical world and the spiritual. 
 
 Page 367, line 6 from bottom. John or Jonathan. John Bull and 
 Brother Jonathan are referred to. For the latter personage see 
 note, p. 374. 
 

INDEX 
 
 ACTON (Mass.), 136. 
 
 Aes alienum, another s brass, a very 
 ancient slough, 7. 
 
 xEsculapius, that old herb-doctor, 
 154. 
 
 Age and youth, 9. 
 
 Aims-House Farm, 283. 
 
 America, the only true, 228. 
 
 " Ainok " against T., society run 
 ning, 190. 
 
 Amusements, games and, despair 
 concealed under, 8, 9. 
 
 Animal food, objections to, 237. 
 
 Animal labor, man better without 
 the help of, 62, 63. 
 
 Animal life and heat nearly synony 
 mous, 14. 
 
 Ants, battle of the, 253-257. 
 
 Apples, the world eating green, 86. 
 
 Architecture, need of relation be 
 tween man, truth, and, 51, 52. 
 
 Asiatic Russia, Mme. Pfeiffer in, 
 25. 
 
 Atlas, 93. 
 
 Atropos, as name for engine, 131. 
 
 Auction, of a deacon s effects, 75 ; or 
 increasing, 75. 
 
 Average, the law of, in nature and 
 ethics, 321. 
 
 Baker Farm, 223-231, 307. 
 Baker s barn, 286. 
 
 Bands of music in distance, 177, 178. 
 Bartram, William, quoted, 75. 
 Baskets, strolling Indian selling, 20, 
 
 21. 
 
 Bean-Field, The, 171-184. 
 Bedford (Mass.), 136. 
 Behavior, repentance for good, 11. 
 Bells of Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, 
 
 Concord, the, 136. 
 " Best " room, the pine wood behind 
 
 house, 157. 
 
 Bibles of mankind, 118, 119. 
 Birds, living with the, 95. 
 Body a temple, man s, 245. 
 Bogs with hard bottom, 363. 
 
 Books, how to read, Ii2 ; the inherit* 
 
 ance of nations, 114. 
 Box, living in a, 32. 
 Brahmins, their forms of conscious 
 
 penance, 4, 5 ; Walden ice makes 
 
 T. one with the, 329. 
 Bread without yeast, 68-70. 
 Breed s hut, 285. 
 Bricks, mortar growing harder on, 
 
 266. 
 
 Brighton or Bright-town, 148. 
 Brister s Hill, 252, 283, 284, 289, 294. 
 Brister s Spring, 289, 291. 
 Brute Neighbors, 247-262. 
 Bug from an egg in table of apple 
 
 wood, the, 366. 
 
 Building one s own house, signifi 
 cance of, 50, 51. 
 Business habits indispensable.strict, 
 
 21, 22. 
 Busk, Indian feast of first fruits, 75. 
 
 Calidas Sacontala quoted, 351. 
 
 Cambridge, college room rent com 
 pared with T. s, 55 ; crowded hives 
 of, 150. 
 
 Canadian woodchopper, 159-166. 
 
 Canoe, water-logged in Walden 
 Pond, 212. 
 
 Cards left by visitors, 143, 144. 
 
 Carew, Thomas, quoted, 89. 
 
 Caryatides, gossips leaning against 
 barn like, 186. 
 
 Cat, the Collins s, 48 ; in the woods, 
 domestic and " winged," 257, 258. 
 
 Cato Major, quoted, 70, 93, 183, 268. 
 
 Caves, birds do not sing in, 31. 
 
 Celebrating, men, a committee of 
 arrangements, always, 363. 
 
 Celestial Empire, conditions of suc 
 cessful trade with, 22. 
 
 Cellar, a burrow to which house is 
 but a porch, 49. 
 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, quoted, 224, 225. 
 
 Chairs for society, three, 155. 
 
 Change of air, 352. 
 
 Channing, W. E., quoted, 225. 
 
426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chapman, George, quoted, 37. 
 
 Chastity, the flowering of man, 242, 
 243. 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, quoted, 234. 
 
 Chickadees, coming of the, 304. 
 
 Chief end of man, 9. 
 
 Christianity, adopted as an improved 
 method of agri-culture, 41. 
 
 Circulating library, 116, 117. 
 
 Civilization not all a success, 34. 
 
 Classics, a study of the, 111-113 ; must 
 be read in the original, 115. 
 
 Clothing, a necessary of life, 13, 14 ; 
 not always procured for true util 
 ity, 23 ; new and old, 25, 26. 
 
 Cock-crowing, the charms of, 140- 
 142. 
 
 Codman place, the, 286. 
 
 Cold Friday, dating from, 280. 
 
 Collins, James, Irishman whose 
 shanty T. bought, 47. 
 
 Commerce, in praise of, 131-136. 
 
 Common sense, the sense of men 
 asleep, 357, 358. 
 
 Compost, better part of man soon 
 plowed into soil for, 6. 
 
 Concord (Mass.), Walden Pond in, 
 3; travelled a good deal in, 4; the 
 farmers of, 35; house surpassing 
 the luxury of, 54; little fresh meal 
 and corn sold in, 70; Battle Ground, 
 95; effect of a fire bell on people liv 
 ing near, 103, 104; culture, 117, 118; 
 wiser men than produced by soil 
 of, 119; hired man of, 120; liberal 
 education in, 121; "its soothing 
 
 sound is ," 127; sign of a trader 
 
 in, 133; bells of, 136; two-colored 
 waters of, 195 ; Walden bequeathed 
 to, 214, 215; fight of ants, 255; D. 
 Ingraham, Esq., of, 283; "to the 
 rescue, "286; 291,308. 
 
 Concord River, 215, 219. 
 
 Confucius, quoted, 12, 149. 
 
 Cooperation, difficulties of, 79, 80. 
 
 Cost, the amount of life exchanged 
 for a thing, 34; of house, items of, 
 54; of food for eight months, 65, 
 66; total, of living, 66; bean-field, 
 179, 180. 
 
 Cowper, William, quoted, 92. 
 
 Cummings, slave of Squire, 284. 
 
 Damodara, quoted, 97. 
 Darwin, Charles R., quoted, 14. 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, Gondibert 
 quoted, 286. 
 
 Day, deliberately, like nature, spend 
 ing one, 108. 
 
 Debt, getting in and out of, 7. 
 
 Desperation, mass of men lead lives 
 of quiet, 8, 9. 
 
 Dialogue between Hermit and Poet, 
 247-249. 
 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, quoted, 179. 
 
 Discontented, speaking mainly to 
 the, 17, 18. 
 
 Divinity in man ! Look at the team 
 ster, 8. 
 
 Dog in the woods, a village Bose, 257. 
 
 Doing-good, a crowded profession, 
 81. 
 
 Drummond of Hawthornden, Wil 
 liam, quoted, 219. 
 
 Ducks on Walden Pond, 262. 
 
 Dug-out houses of American col 
 onists, 42, 43. 
 
 Dwelling-house, what not to make it, 
 31. 
 
 Economy, 3-89. 
 
 Education, tuition bills pay for the 
 
 least valuable part of, 55, 56. 
 Egotism in writers, 3, 4. 
 Eloquence a transient thing, 113. 
 Elysian life, summer makes possible, 
 
 15. 
 
 England, last news from, 105. 
 Epidermis, our outside clothes, 26. 
 Epitome of the year, the day, 332. 
 Etesian winds, news simmers 
 
 through men like, 186. 
 Evelyn, John, quoted, 10, 179. 
 Expenses, see Cost; farm, 60, 61; 
 
 outgo and income, bean-field, 179- 
 
 181. 
 
 Exploration of one s self, 353-355. 
 Extra Vagance! depends on how 
 
 you are yarded, 357. 
 
 Face, imaginary formation by thaw 
 ing of the, 339, 340. 
 
 Factory system, not best mode of 
 supplying clothing, 29. 
 
 Fair Haven, 205, 219, 225, 274, 300, 307, 
 330; huckleberries on hill, 190, 
 192; Ledges, 308 ; late ice on pond, 
 335. 
 
 Farm, the Hollowell, 92 ; a model, 
 218. 
 
INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 Farmer, John, reflections of, 245. 
 
 Farmer, visits from a long-headed, 
 294. 
 
 Farmers, interesting in proportion 
 as they are poor, 218. 
 
 Fashion, worship of, 28. 
 
 Fate, what a man thinks of himself, 
 his, 8. 
 
 Father tongue, written language our, 
 112. 
 
 Fenda, wife of "Sippio Brister," 
 284. 
 
 Field, John, an Irishman, story of, 
 226. 
 
 Fine art, no place for a work of, 41, 
 42. 
 
 Fire, purification by, 75; " my house 
 keeper," 279; man and, 280; an 
 alarm of, 285. 
 
 Fishes, schools of, in Walden Pond, 
 210, 211; of thought, 297. 
 
 Fishing, with silent man, 192; at 
 night, 194; alone detains citizens 
 at Walden Pond, 235, 236 ; impos 
 sible to T. without loss of self- 
 respect, 236, 237; in winter, 313, 
 314. 
 
 Fitchburg (Mass.), going to, 59. 
 
 Fitchburg Railroad, 127. 
 
 Flint s Pond, 201, 223, 330-333 ; or 
 Sandy, in Lincoln, 216-219 ; covered 
 with snow, like Baffin s Bay, 299. 
 
 Food, a necessary of life, 13; the fuel 
 of man s body, 14; general consid 
 eration of, 60-72 ; objections to ani 
 mal, 237; desirability of simple, 
 238-241. 
 
 Former Inhabitants and Winter Vis 
 itors, 282-298. 
 
 Fox, shooting a, 307. 
 
 Foxes outside T. s house, 301. 
 
 Freeman, " Sippio Brister," 284. 
 
 Frogs, troonk of bull-, 139, 140. 
 
 Fruits, gathering autumn, 263. 
 
 Fuel, a necessary of life, 13, 14; of 
 man s body, food, 14. 
 
 Furniture, generally considered, 72- 
 76; moved out of doors, 125. 
 
 Gazette, news of political parties, 
 not of nature, printed in the, 19. 
 
 Gilpin, William, quoted, 276, 317. 
 
 God, clothes lit to worship, in, 25. 
 
 " God s Drop," proposed as name for 
 Walden Pond, 215. 
 
 Good Genius, advice of T. s, 230. 
 
 Gookin, Daniel, quoted, 32. 
 
 Goose, stray, cackling like spirit 
 
 of the fog, 46; honking of, 300, 
 
 345. 
 
 Goose Pond, 219 ; muskrats in, 299. 
 Gossip, stroll to village to hear, 
 
 185. 
 
 Ground-nut, the, 264, 265. 
 Guns, sound of distant big, 176, 
 
 Hare, the, 309, 310. 
 
 Harivansa, the, quoted, 95. 
 
 Hasty-pudding, friends flee approach 
 of, 271. 
 
 Hawk, watching a, 348, 349. 
 
 Hebe, a worshipper of, 154. 
 
 Hercules, labors of, trifling com 
 pared with those of T. s neigh 
 bors, 5. 
 
 Herds, the keepers of men, 62. 
 
 Hermit. See Dialogue. 
 
 Higher Laws, 232-246. 
 
 Hippocrates, on cutting the nails, 10, 
 11. 
 
 Hollowell place, the, 91, 92. 
 
 Homer, Iliad, 111; never yet printed 
 in English, 115 ; quoted, 160. 
 
 Horses to hang clothes on, wooden, 
 23, 24. 
 
 Hospitalality, not hospitality but, 
 168. 
 
 Hounds hunting woods in winter, 
 
 House, every spot possible site for a, 
 90 ; the ideal, 266-271. 
 
 House-raising at Walden Pond, 49, 
 50. 
 
 House- Warming, 263-281. 
 
 Houses, superfluities in our, 39. 
 
 Housework, a pleasant pastime, 125. 
 
 Huckleberries never reach Boston, 
 192. 
 
 Hunters, boys to be made first sports 
 men, then, 234. 
 
 Hyde, Tom, the tinker, quoted, 360, 
 361. 
 
 Hygeia, no worshipper of, 154. 
 
 I, the first person, retained in this 
 
 book, 3, 4. 
 Ice, looking through the, on Walden 
 
 Pond, 272 ; whooping of the, 301 ; 
 
 cutting through, to get water, 312, 
 
 313 ; cutting on Walden Pond, 
 
INDEX 
 
 323-329; beauty of Walden, 327; 
 
 booming of the, 333. 
 Indian houses in Mass, colony, 32, 
 
 33. 
 Ingraham, Cato, slave of Duncan, 
 
 283. 
 
 Inherited property a misfortune, 5. 
 Inspector of storms, self appointed, 
 
 19, 20. 
 
 lolaus, and hydra s head, 5. 
 Irish, physical condition of the poor, 
 
 38, 39. 
 44 It is no dream of mine," verse, 
 
 215. 
 
 Jays, arrival of the, 303, 304. 
 Jesuits and Indian torture, 83. 
 Jesus Christ, liberalizing influence 
 
 of, 120. 
 Johnson, Edward, quoted, 42, 43. 
 
 Khoung-tseu, 105. 
 Kieou-he-yu, 105. 
 Kirby, William, and Spence, quoted, 
 
 237, 256. 
 Kittlybenders, let us not play at, 
 
 363. 
 
 Laborer, choosing occupation of a 
 day, 77 ; falling in pond with many 
 clothes on, 83. 
 
 Laboring man has no time to be any 
 thing but a machine, the, 6, 7. 
 
 Laing, Samuel, quoted, 29, 30. 
 
 Lake, the earth s eye, a, 206. 
 
 Lake Champlain, Long Wharf to, 
 132. 
 
 " Leach-hole " in Walden Pond, 322. 
 
 Leaf, resemblance of sand formation 
 to a, 338. 
 
 Lexington (Mass.), 306. 
 
 Liebig, J. F. von, quoted, 14. 
 
 Life, cares and labors of, 6, 7 ; an 
 experiment, 10; students not to 
 play or study life, but to live, 56, 
 57; purposes of, 100* 101 ; one has 
 imagined, living the, 356; live 
 your, however mean, 361 ; in us, 
 like the water in the river, 366. 
 
 " Light-winged Smoke, Icarian 
 bird, 1 verse, 279. 
 
 Lilac, growing by deserted houses, 
 290. 
 
 Limits of living, 7. 
 
 Lincoln (Mass.), 95, 136, 173, 282; 
 
 owls in woods of, 138, 139 ; Flint s 
 Pond in, 216 ; chestnut woods of, 
 263 ; burying-ground, 284, 299. 
 
 Lining of beauty for houses, 44. 
 
 Little Reading, 116. 
 
 Loneliness, desirable, 147, 151, 152. 
 
 Loon, hunting and a game with the, 
 258-262. 
 
 Luxury, fruit of a life of, 16. 
 
 Lyceum, 121, 122. 
 
 Make-a-Stir, Squire, 8. 
 
 Manilla hemp, 132. 
 
 Maples, autumn colors of, 265. 
 
 Massasoit, visited by Winslow, 158. 
 
 Maturing, no need of haste towards, 
 
 359. 
 
 Mencius, quoted, 242, 243. 
 Mentors, of little use, 10. 
 Middlesex Cattle Show, 36. 
 Milky Way ? is not our planet in the, 
 
 147. 
 Minding his business, till ineligible 
 
 as town officer, T. , 20. 
 Minerva, Momus objects to house of, 
 
 37. 
 
 MlrCamar Uddin Mast, quoted, 111. 
 Mirabeau, on highway robbery, 
 
 quoted, 355. 
 Model farm, a, 218. 
 "Modern improvements," an illu 
 sion about, 57, 58. 
 Momus, objection to Minerva s 
 
 house by, 37. 
 Monuments, good sense worth more 
 
 than, 64. 
 Morning, work, a man s, 40 ; renewal 
 
 of, 98-100; work in the early, 172, 
 
 173. 
 
 Mortgages, abundance of, in Con 
 cord, 35, 36. 
 Mouse, in T. s house, 249, 250; the 
 
 wild, 309. 
 Muskrats, colony of, 185; in Goose 
 
 Pond, 299. 
 
 Nature, adapted to our weakness as 
 to our strength, 12; a liberty in, 
 143 ; no melancholy or solitude in 
 the midst of, 145-147; the medi 
 cines of, 153 ; known only as a rob 
 ber by the , farmer, 183 ; men who 
 become a part of, 232, 233; ques 
 tions and answers of, 312; our 
 knowledge of the laws of, 320; 
 
INDEX 
 
 439 
 
 helping lay the keel of, 334 ; prin 
 ciple of operations of, 340; man s 
 need of, 350. 
 
 Necessaries of life, 12, 13. 
 
 Necessity, a seeming fate, commonly 
 called, 6. 
 
 Negro slavery, 8. 
 
 Neighborhood, avoiding a bad, our 
 selves, 37. 
 
 Neva marshes at Walden Pond, no, 
 23. 
 
 New clothes, beware of all enter 
 prises requiring, 26. 
 
 New England, Walden of and for 
 people of, 4; hardships endured 
 that men may die in, 15 ; wealth 
 causes respect in, 25 ; mean life 
 lived by inhabitants of, 107; can 
 hire all the wise men of the world 
 to teach her, 122; natural sports 
 of, 233; Rum, 285; Night s Enter 
 tainment, a, 297. 
 
 New Hollander, naked when Euro 
 pean shivers in clothes, 14. 
 
 New Netherland, Secretary of Pro 
 vince, quoted, 43. 
 
 "News? What s the," 104; futility 
 of the, 104. 
 
 Night, walking the woods by, 187- 
 190. 
 
 Nilometer. See Realometer. 
 
 Nine Acre Corner, White Pond in, 
 199. 
 
 " No Admittance," never printed on 
 T. s gate, 18. 
 
 Novel reading, 116, 117. 
 
 Nutting in Lincoln woods, 263, 264. 
 
 Nutting, Sam, an old hunter, 308. 
 
 Olympus, the outside of the earth 
 everywhere, 94. 
 
 Opposition to society, 355. 
 
 Ornaments, significance of archi 
 tectural, 52. 
 
 Overseer, yourself the worst, 8. 
 
 Ovid, quoted, 6, 346, 348. 
 
 Owl, winged brother of the cat, 
 watching an, 293. 
 
 Owls, wailing of, 138-140; in Walden 
 
 . woods in winter, 300, 301. 
 
 Pantaloons not to be mended like 
 
 legs, 24. 
 
 Partridge, the, 250-252, 304, 311. 
 Pauper, visit from half-witted, 167. 
 
 Penance, people of Concord doing, 4. 
 
 Penobscot Indians, living in cotton 
 tents, 31. 
 
 Perfection, artist of Kouroo who 
 strove after, 359. 
 
 Pfeiffer, Mme. Ida, quoted, 25. 
 
 Philanthropy, generally considered, 
 82-86. 
 
 Philosopher, what he is and is not, 
 16; visits from a, 295-298. 
 
 Philosophers, ancient, poor in out 
 ward, rich in inward riches, 15, 16. 
 
 Pickerel, Walden, 204, 205, 314. 
 
 Pine tree, felling, though more its 
 friend than foe, 47. 
 
 Plants, the nobler valued for their 
 fruit in air and light, 17. 
 
 Plato, 119 ; definition of a man, 165. 
 
 Pleasant Meadow, adjunct to Baker 
 Farm, 225. 
 
 Poet, visits from a, 295. See Dia 
 logue. 
 
 Poets, never yet read by mankind, 
 115, 116. 
 
 Pond in Winter, The, 312-329. 
 
 Ponds, The, 192-222. 
 
 Poor, houses of the, 37, 38. 
 
 Post-office, easily dispensed with, 
 104. 
 
 Present moment, meeting of two 
 eternities, past and future, 18. 
 
 Public opinion, compared with pri 
 vate, 8. 
 
 Pumpkin, sitting alone on a, 41; none 
 so poor that he need sit on a, 72. 
 
 Purslane, dinner of, 68. 
 
 Quoil, Hugh, an Irishman, 288. 
 
 Rabbit, the, 310. 
 
 Railroad car, growing luxuries in, 
 41; slowness and heedlessness of, 
 58,59; men overridden by, 102, 103; 
 listening with praise to sound of, 
 127-136; Iron, Trojan Horse ruin 
 ing Walden, 213, 214. 
 
 Rain, enjoyment of, 147. 
 
 Rainbow, standing in light of, 224. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, quoted, 6. 
 
 Reading, 110-122. 
 
 Reality, finding, 108, 109. 
 
 Realometer, not Nilometer, but a, 
 109. 
 
 Rent, annual tax that would buy a 
 village of wigwams, 33. 
 
430 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Reporter, with labor for pains, 19. 
 Resignation, confirmed despera 
 tion, 8. 
 
 Robin, the evening, 344. 
 Room for thoughts, 156. 
 Runaway slave, 168, 169. 
 
 Sadi of Shiraz, Sheik, quoted, 87. 
 
 Saint Vitus dance, 103. 
 
 Sand cherry, tasted out of compli 
 ment to Nature, 126. 
 
 Sand formations due to thaw, 336- 
 340. 
 
 Sardanapalus, at best houses trav 
 eller considered a, 40. 
 
 Savage, his advantage over civilized 
 man, 35 ; life, instinct towards, 231. 
 
 Scarecrow taken for man whose 
 clothes it wears, 24. 
 
 School, the uncommon, 122. 
 
 Seeds of virtues, not beans, 181. 
 
 Sensuality, in eating and other appe 
 tites, 241-246. 
 
 Serenade, like the music of the cow, 
 137. 
 
 Sewing, work you may call endless, 
 25. 
 
 Shanty, purchase of Collins s, 47, 48. 
 
 Shelter, a necessary of life, 13; how 
 it became a necessary, 29, 30; gen 
 erally considered, 29-45. 
 
 Shingles of thought, whittling, 297. 
 
 Shirts, our liber, or true bark, 26. 
 
 Simplicity of life, 101, 102. 
 
 Skins, sale of, 308. 
 
 Sleepers, railroad, 102, 103. 
 
 Snake under water in torpid state, 
 45,46. 
 
 Snow, the Great, 132, 142; dating 
 from the Great, 280; walking in 
 the, 292. 
 
 Society, commonly too cheap, 151. 
 
 Sounds, 123-142. 
 
 South, laborers a staple production 
 of the, 39. 
 
 Spain, specimen news from, 105. 
 
 Sparrow, the first, of spring, 342. 
 
 Spectator, the part of man which is, 
 149, 150. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, quoted, 158. 
 
 Sportsmen, making boys, 234. 
 
 Spring, 330-361. 
 
 Spring, coming of the, 333, 334; morn 
 ing, moral effect of a, 346, 347. 
 
 Squire Make-a-Stir, 8. 
 
 Squirrel, red, watching the, 301-303; 
 
 in spring, coming oi, 342. 
 Staff, the artist s, which became the 
 
 fairest creation of Brahma, 359. 
 Statistics. See Cost. 
 Stone, nations pride in hammered, 
 
 63. 
 Stove, disadvantages of cooking-, 280, 
 
 281. 
 Stratton, now the Alms-House,Fann, 
 
 283; family, homestead of, 284. 
 Students, poor, Walden addressed 
 
 to, 4. 
 
 Sudbury (Mass.), 97, 335. 
 Sumach growing by T. s house, 126. 
 Survey of Walden Pond, 315-324. 
 Surveyor of forest paths and across 
 
 lot routes, 20. 
 Button (Mass.), 292. 
 
 Tching-thang, quoted, 98. 
 
 Temperature of pond water in 
 spring, 330. 
 
 Tests, our lives tried by a thousand 
 simple, 11. 
 
 Thanksgivings, cattle-shows and so- 
 called, 183. 
 
 Thaw, sand formations due to, 336; 
 Thor and, 341. 
 
 " They," an authority impersonal as 
 the Fates, 27. 
 
 Thieving, practiced only where pro 
 perty is unevenly divided, 191. 
 
 Thor and thaw, 341. 
 
 Thoreau, Henry David, goes to live by 
 Walden Pond, 3 ; prefers to talk in 
 the first person singular, 3, 4 ; be 
 ginning in the woods, 45; purchase 
 of Collins s shanty, 47; began to 
 occupy house, 49; planted beans, 
 60; earnings and spendings, 65-67; 
 making bread, 68; declined offer 
 of a mat, 74 ; imaginary purchase 
 of Hollowell farm, 92 ; situation of 
 house, 95, 126 ; purpose in going to 
 woods, 100, 101 ; hoed beans, did 
 not read books, 123; listening to 
 various sounds, 127-142 ; friendship 
 with Canadian woodchopper, 159- 
 166 ; devotion to husbandry, 179 ; 
 earnings and spendings on bean- 
 field, 180, 181 ; put in jail for not 
 paying taxes, 190; fishing in Wal 
 den Pond, 192-195 ; boiling chowder 
 about 1824, 200; earliest days on 
 
INDEX 
 
 431 
 
 Waldeii Pond, 212, 213 ; first begins 
 to inhabit house in cold weather, 
 2(38 ; finishes house with plastering, 
 271; surveys Walden Fond, 315; 
 leaves Walden, Sept. 6, 1847, 351. 
 
 Thoughts, sell your clothes and keep 
 your, 361. 
 
 Thrasher, brown, 175. 
 
 Thseng-tseu, quoted, 241. 
 
 Tierra del Fuego, 14. 
 
 Time, but a stream to fish in, 109. 
 
 Tintinnabulum from without, the 
 noise of contemporaries, 362. 
 
 Tools, men the tools of their, 41. 
 
 Trees, visits to particular, 223. 
 
 Truth, to be preferred to all things, 
 364. 
 
 Turtle-dove, long ago lost hound, bay 
 horse, and, 18, 19. 
 
 Varro, Marcus Terentius, quoted, 
 183. 
 
 Vedas, the, quoted, 99, 240; andZen- 
 davestas, 115. 
 
 Vegetable-made bones, oxen with, 
 10. 
 
 Village, The, 185-191. 
 
 Village, should play part of a noble 
 man as patron of art, 121, 122; a 
 great news-room, 185 ; running the 
 gauntlet in the, 186. 
 
 Virid Lake as a name for White 
 Pond, 219. 
 
 Vishnu Purana, the, quoted, 298. 
 
 Visitors, 155-170. 
 
 Wachito River, 104. 
 
 Walden, road, townsman on, 148; 
 vale, giving notice, by smoke, to 
 inhabitants of, 279; snow in roads 
 of, 294; vale, making amends for 
 silence, to, 295. 
 
 Walden Pond, house on the shore of, 
 3; purpose in living by, to transact 
 private business, 21 ; advantages 
 of, as a place of business, 23; 
 March, 1845, went to woods by, 45; 
 of their own natures, fishing in the, 
 145; no more lonely than, 152; old 
 settler who dug, 152 ; bottomless 
 as, 166; scenery of, 195-216; origin 
 of paving of, 202; temperature of 
 water in, 203, 204; animals in, 204- 
 20G ; purity of, 214; fishing alone 
 detains citizens at, 235 ; ducks on, 
 
 262; first ice on, 272; dates of first 
 freezing over, 275; 291; bare of 
 snow, 2y9; fox on thin ice of, 306; 
 pickerel of, 314; surveying and 
 sounding, 315-324; cutting ice on, 
 323-329 ; breaking up of ice in, 329- 
 334. 
 
 Walden Woods, geese alighting in, 
 274 ; Cato Ingraharn living in, 283; 
 Zilpha living in, 283 ; Hugh Quoil 
 living, in, 288; owls hooting the 
 lingua vernacula of, 300; fox 
 hunting in, 306. 
 
 Waldenses, pickerel, 315. 
 
 Wasps, visits from, 265. 
 
 Water, colors of, 195-197; transpar 
 ency of, 197-199. 
 
 Wayland (Mass.), 173. 
 
 Weeds, destruction of various, 178. 
 
 "Welcome, Englishmen! " 170. 
 
 Well Meadow, 307. 
 
 West Indian provinces of the fancy 
 and imagination, 8. 
 
 Weston (Mass.), 308. 
 
 " What s the railroad to me ? " 
 verse, 135. 136. 
 
 Where I Lived, and What I Lived 
 for, 90-109. 
 
 Whip-poor-wills, singing of, 137. 
 
 White Pond, 199, 201, 219,221; plan 
 of, 320. 
 
 Wigwam, in Indian gazettes, symbol 
 of a day s march, 30. 
 
 Winslow, Edward, quoted, 158. 
 
 Winter Animals, 299-311. 
 
 Winter Visitors, Former Inhabit 
 ants, and, 282-298. 
 
 Wood, gathering, 275 ; relative value 
 of, in different places, 277. 
 
 Woodchuck, eating a, 66. 
 
 Wood-pile, the, 278. 
 
 Woods, turning face to the, 21. 
 
 Work, exaggerated importance of 
 our, 12. 
 
 Wyman, the potter, 288. 
 
 Yellow Pine Lake, why suggested as 
 
 a name for White Pond, 219. 
 Young, Arthur, 61. 
 Youth and age, 9. 
 
 Zendavestas, Vedas and, 115. 
 Zilpha, a colored woman, 283. 
 Zoroaster, let the hired man com 
 mune with, 120. 
 
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