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WALDEN 
 
 OR 
 
 LIFE IN THE WOODS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU 
 
 EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 
 BY 
 
 JAMES CLOYD BOWMAN, M.A. 
 
 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE 
 IOWA STATE COIXEGE 
 
 SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
 CHICAGO NEW YORK 
 
^K 
 
 K^ 
 \^'^ 
 
 Copyright 1917 by 
 Scott, Foresman and Company 
 
 ^0 
 
 4^ 
 
 OCT 27 m 
 
 ©C1,A477289 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Economy 27 
 
 II. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For 97 
 
 III. Beading 114 
 
 IV. Sounds 125 
 
 V. Solitude ; 141 
 
 VI. Visitors 151 
 
 VII. The Beanfield 164 
 
 VIII. The Village 175 
 
 IX. The Ponds 181 
 
 X. Baker Farm 2()6 
 
 XI. Higher Laws 214 
 
 XII. Brute Neighbors 226 
 
 XIII. House-warming 239 
 
 XIV. Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors 255 
 
 XV. Winter Animals 269 
 
 XVI. The Pond in Winter 279 
 
 XVII. Spring 294 
 
 XVIII. Conclusion 313 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 1 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 Henry David Thoreau was born July 12, 1817, in Concord, 
 Massachusetts. On his father's side he was descended from a 
 merchant family. His grandfather, a man of Scotch and 
 French extraction, came to New England from the island of 
 Jersey, and opened a store on Long Wharf in Boston. Before 
 his death, he moved to Concord, where Henry's father earned 
 on the family business until through reverses he lost all of his 
 inherited substance. Later, he found a modest support for his 
 family through the manufacture of lead pencils, Henry thus 
 characterized his father : "I think I may say that he was wholly 
 unpretending, and there was this peculiarity in his aim, that 
 though he had pecuniary difficulties to contend with the greater 
 l)art of his life, he always studied how to make a good article, 
 pencil or other (for he practiced various arts), and was never 
 satisfied with what he had produced. Nor was he ever in the 
 least disposed to put off a poor one for the sake of pecuniary 
 gain, as if he labored for a higher end," 
 
 The personality of Henry's mother stood in broad contrast to 
 that of his father. She was of old New England stock, possessed 
 unusual vivacity, inherent nimbleness of wit, and a natural love 
 of society. An incessant talker, she had an unfailing fund of 
 reminiscence and anecdote, and never hesitated, when necessity 
 arose, to defend herself with sarcastic rejoinder. She possessed 
 the good taste which was necessary to make the simple furnish- 
 ings of her home attractive, and the finesse which enabled her 
 
 5 
 
6 WALDEN 
 
 to impress her guests with the charm and artistry of her enter- 
 tainment. Although the brilliant color of her bonnet sometimes 
 shocked her Puritan neighbors, her stability of character main- 
 tained their respect. 
 
 From the blending of parental characteristics, there was pro- 
 duced in Thoreau a strikingly complex personality with many 
 contradictory traits of character. From his father he in- 
 herited a quiet, retiring manner, an unflinching honesty, a 
 Puritanic conscience, an unusual ideality, and a lofty aim; from 
 his paternal ancestry came also a "stimulating contrariness," 
 and a great love of nature, Avhich invited him to spend much 
 of his time out-of-doors; from his mother, a gift of fine con- 
 versation, and a convivial vein that notr infrequently dominated 
 his action. He also received by birth a mechanical bent, which 
 made him clever in the use of tools. 
 
 Thureau's boyhood days were spent in Concord. He drove 
 iiis father's cow to pasture, supplied logs for the family fire- 
 jdace, and early began his lifelong attachment to the out-of- 
 doors. As a boy he often preferred to watch his playmates 
 rather than to take part in their games, although when the mood 
 was on, he could lead them all in rollicking fun. Most of all, he 
 enjoyed wandering alone across the fields and along the river 
 in search for rare flowers and herbs or for Indian relics, and 
 he felt especially repaid if he chanced to see an occasional 
 Indian canoeing down the stream. With his brother John, he 
 often hunted and fished. He was such a serious lad that at the 
 age of ten the boys .nicknamed him "Judge." 
 
 He was fitted — or as he preferred to say, "made unfit" — for 
 college at the Concord Academy. Although he was frequently 
 indifferent to the prescribed studies, he was always recognized as 
 a lad of uncommonly "good understanding." It was during this 
 period that he grounded himself in elementary Latin and Greek, 
 the study of which later led him into the secrets of the philoso- 
 phy and poetry of the ancient peoples, which he so much loved. 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 He lays whatever deficiencies liis academic training suffered, not 
 to his teachers, but to the fact that "those hours that should 
 have been devoted to study have been spent in scouring the 
 woods and exploring the lakes and streams of my native village." 
 During these years he kept everything about the house in fault- 
 less repair, and raised the best fruit and melons in the village. 
 At the age of sixteen Thoreau entered Harvard. He helped 
 to pay his way in part by occasional terms of teaching, and 
 the college added to the small amount furnished in this way 
 from a fund set apart for needy students. He was housed in 
 Hollis, "with many and noisy neighbors." Preferring the library 
 to the classroom, and a book and a secluded corner to a room 
 filled with boisterous companions, he read everything he could 
 find which related to classical English literature; so eager was he 
 that he fairly devoured the twenty-one bulky volumes of Chal- 
 mers' Collection of the English Poets. One of the members of 
 his class describes him as "cold and unimpassioned," and adds 
 that "he did not care for people; his classmates seemed very 
 remote." He himself writes: "Though bodily I have been a 
 member of Harvard University, heart and soul I have been far 
 away among the scenes of my boyhood. . . , My spirit yearned 
 for the sympathy of my old and almost forgotten friend. 
 Nature." "Methinks I should be content to sit at the back- 
 door in Concord, under the poplar-tree, henceforth forever." 
 One can understand why he wrote: "The really diligent stu- 
 dent in one of the hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as 
 the dervish in the desert." One must not forget, however, that 
 there was a very different side to his nature. He could also say 
 with equal sincerity: "Think not that my classmates have no 
 place in my heart, — but that is too sacred a matter even for a 
 class-book." During his college days he acquired much knowl- 
 edge that no professor ever required in a quiz. He read widely ; 
 he often walked alone and fronted the essential facts of life; 
 above all, he kept his own personality constantly expanding. 
 
g WALDEX 
 
 Tlioreau was graduated from Harvard at the age of twenty, 
 and President Quincy gave him a recommendation to the effect 
 that he was "well qualified as an instructor, for employment in 
 any public or private school or private family." He made a 
 fruitless journey to Maine in search of a position. On his 
 I'eturn for a few weeks during the fall of 1837 he taught in 
 the Concord grammar school; but when the directors demanded 
 that he administer corporal punishment, he resigned. During 
 the following three years, in partnership with his brother John, 
 he maintained a private academy in Concord. In addition to 
 his regular duties, he read his first lecture on Society before the 
 ( 'oncord Lyceum and began his first Journal or day-book. He 
 made a voyage of exploration in a boat of his own construction, 
 on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers with his brother John; 
 an experience which was later turned into his first published 
 vvork, The Week. About this time he began to write for the 
 Dial. He also found time to fall in love; but when he dis- 
 (Mjvered his brother John's attachment for the same girl, he 
 resigned in his favor. 
 
 When Thoreau abandoned teaching in 1841, he accepted the 
 invitation to become a member of the Emerson household, and 
 lived for the following two years with one of the most intellectu- 
 ally stimulating families in America. His acquaintance with 
 Emerson dates back to 1837 when a friend of the two families 
 called Emerson's attention to the fact that a certain passage 
 from the young man's diary contained a thought similar to one 
 expressed by the older man in a recent lecture. The result was that 
 Emerson made an appointment to meet Thoreau, and ever after- 
 wards took an active interest in his advancement. Thoreau's 
 duties during the time he lived with Emerson were as varied as 
 the qualities of his personality. He kept the house in repair; he 
 furnished the fuel for the fire ; he planted and hoed the garden ; 
 he helped with the editing and business management of tlii' 
 Dial. On one or two occasions when Mr. Emerson was absent 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 ou a lecture tour, he acted as sole editor of the magazme. In 
 these ways, he gave full return for his entertainment. 
 
 This intimate contact with Emerson had a marked influence 
 upon Thoreau. For a time his manners, his tone of voice, his 
 mode of expression, hecame almost the exact counterpart of 
 Emerson's. Probably, however, this outward transformation 
 came about through a strong natural magnetism in Emerson 
 rather than though any conscious imitation by Thoreau. It is 
 certain that the younger man's independence of mind and nobil- 
 ity of character impressed the older man not a little. Emer- 
 son's son relates that his father "delighted to be led to the very 
 inner shrines of the wood-gods by this man, clear-eyed and true 
 and stern enough to be trusted Avith their secrets." As Thoreau 
 grew older, he sturdily maintained his individuality, and lived 
 his own life according to the Genius of his own being. Thoreau 
 was also stimulated much by Mrs. Emerson's high opinion of 
 him. During this period he continued to write for the Biol, 
 and to study literature, philosophy, and Nature. He pub- 
 lished a Walk to Wachusett in the "Boston Miscellany." He 
 grasped the opportunity for rapid mental expansion which 
 came to him through meeting and sharing the talk of the many 
 distinguished visitors who flocked to Mr. Emerson. Diligently 
 he kept his daily entries in his Journal. 
 
 During the winter of 1842 occurred the death of Thoreau's 
 brother John and of Emerson's son Waldo. In John he lost the 
 only really intimate friend that he had ever possessed except 
 Emerson ; in Waldo, the child that he loved most. These events 
 had a marked effect in deepening his introspective life. Con- 
 cerning his brother, he wrote: "A man can attend but one fu- 
 neral in his life, can behold but one cornse." "Only Nature has 
 a right to prieve pernetuallv, for she onlv is innocent. Soon the 
 ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing" alonsr the river which he 
 frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting- serenity 
 will appear in the face of God, and will not be sorrowful, if he 
 
10 WALDEN 
 
 is not." "As for Waldo," he said, "lie died as the mist rises 
 from the brook, which the sun will soon dart his rays through. 
 Do not the flowers die every autumn'? ... I was not startled 
 to hear that he was dead : it seemed the most natural event that 
 could happen. His fine organization demanded it, and nature 
 gently yielded its request. . . . Neither will Nature manifest 
 any sorrow at this death, but soon the note of the lark will be 
 heard down in the meadow, and fresh dandelions will spring 
 from the old stocks where he plucked them last summer." In 
 this experience with death he came to view human life in its 
 larger aspects as related to the serenity of the universe. 
 
 In 1843, he received an invitation to tutor the children of 
 Emerson's brother William, who lived at Castleton, Staten 
 Island. The offer was accepted in the hope that it might lead to 
 permanent literary employment in New York City, as he was 
 already recognized as one of the most promising contributors to 
 the Dial. He met the various New York publishers, but with 
 little success aside from forming a lasting friendship witli 
 Horace Greeley. He also tried to find employment as a school 
 teacher, but failed in this, too, and returned to Concord in the 
 fall of 1843, when he had completed his engagement as tutor. 
 
 During the following year, he lived at home, and helped his 
 father manufacture lead pencils. He applied himself with 
 great diligence, and was soon able "from a box containing a 
 bushel or more of loose pencils to take up just a dozen pencils 
 at every grasp." In attempting to improve the quality and 
 make a better pencil than was then on the market, he carried on 
 a tireless series of experiments, and having somewhat satisfied 
 himself with the results, took his work to the chemists and 
 artists of Boston for their examination. They reported that his 
 pencil was the equal of the best imported product of London. 
 When he came home with the proof of the excellence of his 
 workmanship, his friends assured him that his fortune was as 
 good as made. He, however, replied that he was done with lead 
 
INTRODUCTION H 
 
 pencils. "I would not do again that I have done once." The 
 fact is — though he maintained the utmost silence on the subject 
 — that he was dreaming- dreams and building castles in the air. 
 He was interested in knowledge, in the development of his own 
 personality, in the art of living well, rather than in the conven- 
 tional routine of business. He was constantly aiming at turn- 
 ing his experience into books; this explains why he studied 
 Nature so consistently^ and why he kept his Journal so faith- 
 fully for so many years. "Here have I been these forty years 
 learning the language of these fields that I may the better ex- 
 press myself." 
 
 Arrived at the age of twenty-eight, Thoreau faced the crisis 
 of his life. On the one hand, business invited him to comfort, 
 to local popularity, to wealth ; on the other, authorship and the 
 development of his own i)ersonality, to the disappointment of 
 his friends and neighbors, to poverty. Thoreau proved him- 
 self a man who "dared to live his thoughts." His nature de- 
 manded for its fullest development "a retreat suitable for phil- 
 osophical meditation, and the practice of a simpler, hardier, 
 and healthier life." He was influenced not a little in his de- 
 cision by the silent influence of Emerson, by the encourage- 
 ment of Channing and Alcott, and by the spirit of the times. 
 Social reform dominated the thought of Concord. Almost 
 every person had some scheme or other for improving society. 
 Most people advocated a return from the complex, artificial 
 life of society, to simplicity, to nature. In order to attain to 
 this state it was pretty generally agreed that each should 
 largely earn his living with his own hands. But this was 
 only the minor part of the program : the real fruits were to 
 be garnered in high thinking, in "the feeling of the infinite." 
 The movement was, in fact, a healthy reaction against the 
 narrow, selfish, conventional materialism of the age. As to 
 the most practical means for securing these ends, there was a 
 difference of opinion. Some maintained that the solution lay in 
 
12 WALDEN 
 
 collective action, in communism ; for these, the Brook Farm ex- 
 periment was the most noteworthy effort. Others believed in 
 individualism; for these, Thoreau's life at Walden Pond was 
 the most successful experiment. 
 
 Thoreau seems to have considered trying the experiment of 
 retiring from society as early as 1841. For several days dur- 
 ing this year he visited his friend, Stearns Wheeler, who was 
 attempting a solitary life in a hut on Flint's Pond. Thoreau 
 wrote in his Journal at the time : "I want to go soon and live 
 away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering 
 among the reeds." Later, Thoreau's fancy w^as attracted to the 
 Hollowell Farm, which stood in deep seclusion near the river, 
 about two miles distant from Concord. He went so far as to 
 make a bargain to buy it, and was disappointed for a time when 
 the owner asked to be released from his agreement. Later still, 
 after the death of his brother John, he naturally turned to 
 Walden Pond. It was here that as boj's he and John had swum 
 and fished and hunted. It was here that he had often drifted 
 about in his boat, lost in musings and day-dreams. It was here 
 that Emerson was planning to establish a summer camp. It 
 was here that his friend Channing strongly urged him to estab- 
 lish himself : "I see nothing for you in this earth but that field 
 which I once christened 'Briers' ; go out upon that, build youi-- 
 self a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring your- 
 self alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you. Eal 
 yourself up ; you will eat nobody else, nor anything else." 
 
 Early one morning near the end of March, 1845, Thoreau 
 obeyed the insistent impulse which had been growing upon him 
 for three or four years. He secured Emerson's permission to 
 "squat" on his land, borrowed Alcott's axe, and betook himself 
 to the shore of Walden Pond. Leisurely he began to cut and 
 frame logs for his hut. He took special pains to find time to 
 get the full enjoyment from his Avork. Each evening he went 
 home to the village to sleep. Within three or four weeks he had 
 
INTRODUCTION I3 
 
 the logs ready for the walls. He dug bis cellar on the southern 
 slope of a hill, thirty or forty yards from the water's edge, 
 bought the planks from the shanty of an Irishman who worked 
 on the Fitchburg Railroad, and transported them to his build- 
 ing site. In the beginning of May, "rather to improve so good 
 an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity," Tho- 
 reau invited some of his friends to help "raise'' his house. He 
 was especially proud that among those present were Emerson, 
 Curtis, Channing, and Alcott. On the fourth day of July — in 
 commemoration of his own individual independence — he took up 
 his abode in the hut, and gradually brought it to completion 
 before the winter set in. 
 
 Thoreau was fitted as one man in a thousand for the experi- 
 ment which he undertook. "My greatest skill,". he wrote, "has 
 been to want but little." He was always rich I.acause his wants 
 were so few, and because he knew so well how to supply them 
 himself. When in need of money he could turn his hand to any 
 sort of job that wanted to be done since he had "as many trades 
 as fingers." "He was expert as a walker, swimmer, runner, rower, 
 and in all outdoor employments." In fact, he was more at home 
 without than within doors. His personality was especially fitted to 
 en J03' li\nng alone ; he "never found the companion that was so 
 companionable as solitude." He was fortunate, too, in that his 
 nearest neighbor dwelt a mile away. It gave him elbow room 
 to exercise unobserved his individuality. The wild flowers 
 and herbs, the fishes, and the wild animals were his nearest 
 neighbors; they satisfied his incessant thirst for the wild in 
 nature. And yet he was not so far removed as to become 
 a confirmed hermit. His friends came frequently to share his 
 copious conversation and his simple hospitality. Nearly every 
 day he walked to the village to acquaint himself with the hap- 
 penings of the world, and to meet his immediate family and 
 his friends. Often he was invited out to supper, and did not 
 return to his lodge until a late hour. Above all, his life at 
 
14 WALDEN 
 
 Walden Pond gave him the long desired leisure for meditation 
 and for the practice of writing. His thoughts gradually rip- 
 ened, and his style refined itself under ceaseless effort. His idea 
 in going to Walden Pond was not after all to separate himself 
 from society; it was rather to develop his own personality in 
 order that he might the better contribute to society. He went 
 to the pond in the spirit of a student ; he came back to Concord 
 a teacher. 
 
 Thoreau's manner of life at Walden Pond was picturesque 
 and striking, to say the least. His first "religious exercise" of 
 the day Avas an early morning bath in the pond. After break- 
 fast he scrupulously swept his floor and dusted his furniture, — 
 though he was careful that no time should be wasted that might 
 be emjDloyed in "dusting his brain." Some mornings his hoe 
 resounded merrily on the stones of his bean field; other morn- 
 ings, says he, "I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till 
 noon, rapt in a reverie, midst the pines, and hickories, and 
 sumachs, in undisturbed solitude, while the birds sang around 
 or flitted noiselessly through the house, until by the sun falling 
 in at my west window, or the noise of some traveler's wagon on 
 the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time." He 
 found long intervals for the study of wild nature ; he spent on 
 the average of at least one-half of each day in the open air.. 
 He became the "self-appointed inspector of snow storms and 
 rain storms" and watched with much pleasure the dawns and 
 the sunsets. Not a flavor of the breeze passed him unheeded 
 and he opened every sense to its natural surroundings. He 
 became as truly a part of nature as were the trees and the 
 birds and the wild animals. A portion of each day he set apart 
 for the reading of his favorite authors and for the careful writ- 
 ing of his diligent observations and experiences. "If the day 
 and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life 
 emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs — is 
 more elastic, starrv, and imnKH'tal — that is your success." He 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 was never in a hurry; he was never unemployed. His indi- 
 viduality found a perfect environment for its normal growth 
 and expression. The crudities of youth, which he had brought 
 with him to Walden Pond, gradually disappeared as he took 
 on the decision and dignity of manhood. 
 
 When a friend called, Thoreau would seat him opposite him- 
 self, and would lead him, with rare conversational power, into 
 the ideal realms of philosophy or Oriental religion and poetry 
 or contemporary life; or he would take him forth under the 
 trees and along the pond, where he found inexhaustible re- 
 sources for entertainment. "Every plant or flower on the bank 
 or in the water, and every fish, turtle, frog, lizard about us, was 
 transformed by the wand of his knowledge from the low form 
 into which the spell of our ignorance had reduced it, into a 
 mystic beauty. Like no one else, he knew the meaning of every 
 note and movement of bird and beast, and fish and insect."^ 
 When his guest chanced to stay beyond the dinner hour, Thoreau 
 took him to the hillside in front of his cabin, where he had 
 made a hole in the ground inlaid with cobblestones. Here 
 he built a wood fire, and while the stones heated, brought 
 flour or meal from the hut, carried it to the shore, and mixed it 
 with pond water. Returning, he raked the coals aside, spread 
 the dough upon the heated stones, brought from his cellar 
 dressed horned pouts, placed them upon other stones, and served 
 beans which had been previously baked. Soon the guest was 
 captivated by the delicious flavor of the primitive cuisine. On 
 these occasions there was one thing that Thoreau never did: 
 he never explained or apologized for anything that was imper- 
 fect or lacking. He shared exactly Avhat he had; and few 
 guests ever left him without feeling the charm of his enter- 
 tainment. 
 
 After maintaining his residence at Walden Pond for two 
 years and two months, Thoreau returned to his father's house 
 
 iM"oncure Conway, Fraser's Magazine, April, 1666. 
 
IQ WALDEN 
 
 to live. He was now a man of thirty ; he was a deep student of 
 literature and a profound observer of nature; he was, too, a 
 master of prose style. He says : "I left the woods for as good 
 reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had 
 several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for 
 that one." Perhaps it seemed to him that he had exhausted the 
 possibilities of the experiment. He doubtless said to himself 
 as he had said earlier with reference to the manufacturing of 
 lead pencils : "I would not do again that I have done once." 
 At any rate, so far as he himself Avas concerned, his experiment 
 was an entire success. He had so simplified his life that with a 
 weekly outlay of seven-and-twent}'' cents he had an abundance 
 of all sorts. He was thus able to maintain himself by working 
 on the average six weeks a year. The remainder of his time he 
 had industriously spent in establishing his philosophy of life, 
 in developing the finest qualities of his personalitj^, and in 
 perfecting his style of writing. When he left Walden Pond, 
 his character was no longer in a plastic state ; the trend of his 
 life was established. 
 
 Thoreau's influence upon others has gradually grown until it 
 has become very marked. His writing revealed the almost un- 
 limited possibilities of a careful, accurate observation of the 
 water, the fields, and the woods. In fact it opened an entirely 
 new field to literature, and gave rise to a school of American 
 naturalists.^ His philosophy of life attracted wide attention 
 in England and America, and encouraged many persons to turn 
 from the artificial toward the natural and the real, to simplify 
 their mode of living. His constantly increasing popularity is 
 sutlicient evidence as to the success of his experiment. 
 
 What remains of Thoreau's life may be briefly related. He 
 again accepted an invitation to live in the Emerson home from 
 
 lAmong the writers of this school may be mentioned Thomas Went- 
 worth Higginson, John Burroughs, John Muir, Bradford Torrey, William 
 Hamilton Gibson, Frank Bolles, Charles Conrad Abbott, Harriett Mann 
 Miller, and Florence Merrlam Bailey. 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 October, 1847, to July, 184S. while the master of the house was 
 making his second European tour. When Emerson returned, 
 Thoreau went back to his father's house, and, except when ab- 
 sent upon excursions, he lived with his family for the remainder 
 of his life. In 1847, through the kind offices of Horace Greeley, 
 Thoreau published an essay on "Carlyle" in Graham's Magazine, 
 and in 1848, a paper on "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods" in the 
 Union Magazine. For these he received his first money for his 
 writing, the sura of one hundred and twenty-five dollai^s. 
 
 In 1849, Thoreau published at his own expense, through a 
 Boston bookseller, his first book, A Week on the Concord and 
 Merrimack Rivers. In addition to a description of his river voy- 
 age, the book contained a rather miscellaneous collection of 
 poems, of articles which had appeared in the Dial, of passages 
 from his Journal, and of brief philosophical discourses. At the 
 end of four years but three hundred copies of the book had been 
 sold and given out for review. The remaining seven hundred 
 copies were returned to the author. Thoreau writes thus with a 
 dry humor concerning the incident : "The wares are sent me at 
 last, and I have an opportunity to examine my purchase. They 
 are something more substantial than fame, as my back knows, 
 which has borne them np two flights of stairs to a place similar 
 to that to which they trace their origin. ... I have now a 
 library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred o1: 
 which I wrote myself. . . . This is authorship. These are the 
 work of my brain. ... I can see now what I write for, and the 
 result of my labors. Nevertheless, in spite of this result, sitting 
 beside the inert mass of my works, I take up my pen tonight, to 
 record what thought or experience I may have had, with as much 
 satisfaction as ever." 
 
 In the fall of the same year, Thoreau, with a friend, took the 
 first of his Cape Cod tramps. In the fall of 1850, with Chaii- 
 ning, he spent a week in Canada. In 1853, he made his second 
 excursion into the Maine woods. These journeys furnished hira 
 
18 WALDEN 
 
 with material for a number of articles in Putnam's Montlili/ 
 Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly, and for two posthumous 
 hooks. He thus describes his usual method of travel: "The 
 cheapest way to travel is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a 
 spoon, and a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some 
 sugar. When you come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish 
 and cook them; or you can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's 
 house for fourpence, moisten it in the next brook that crosses 
 the road, and dip it into your sugar — this alone will last you 
 the whole day." He also included a supply of tea. He wore 
 serviceable old clothes, and carried a small bundle of necessaiy 
 luggage. Thus aecoutered, he traveled at the rate of thirtj' 
 miles per day "by the week together." When necessity de- 
 manded, he found entertainment at some farmhouse; otherwise, 
 he slept out-of-doors. People usually, at first sight, thought him 
 a peddler of small wares, or a tramp. This method of travel, 
 however, exactly suited his purpose. It gave him the first-hand 
 knowledge of nature which he desired; but during these years 
 Thoreau's writing brought him so little financial return that he 
 was compelled to earn most of his living by surv^eying land and 
 making pencils. He earned a small amount each year from 
 lecturing. He kept his life so simple and his wants so few, 
 however, that he needed to work but a few weeks during the 
 spring and fall. The remainder of the time he spent in the 
 jiursuit of his favorite interests. 
 
 During the summer of 1854 came the greatest event of Tho- 
 reau's literary career, — the publication of Walden, by Ticknor 
 and Company, of Boston. The greater portion of the book was 
 oiiginally set down in his diary during the time that he lived at 
 AValden Pond. Not a few passages, however, were written at a 
 later date, while he was selecting, arranging, and remodeling 
 Ills materials, and putting them into final form. He published 
 I lie book, he says, in order to satisfy his curious townsmen who 
 weie constantly inquiring concerning his mode of life. He also 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 felt that he had certain not unimportant truths to contribute to 
 the social and intellectual life of his neighbors in Concord. The 
 book attracted a considerable amount of attention, and the en- 
 tire first edition was sold within a few years. The reputation 
 of the book brought Thoreau into demand as a lecturer, and 
 thus relieved his straitened circumstances to some extent. It 
 also brought him a number of new friends. Among these was 
 Frank B. Sanborn, who associated himself rather intimately 
 with the author for two years, and later became his first 
 biographer. 
 
 In 1856 Avhile lecturing near New York City, Thoreau visited 
 Walt Whitman. He wrote soon after this visit : "Whitman 
 is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen. Kings 
 and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long de- 
 served to." In 1857, John Brown visited Concord, and found 
 Thoreau one of the most friendly toward his cause. Two years 
 later Brown visited him again. When Brown fell into the hands 
 of his captors at Harper's Feriy in 1859, it was Thoreau who 
 most fearlessly championed his cause. The address which he 
 delivered at Concord, Worcester, and Boston, is by far the most 
 important of all Thoreau's public utterances. His indignation 
 at his cautious and fearful neighbors reaches almost to the 
 sublimity of the Hebrew Prophets. He looses his contempt for 
 the petty conventions and tlie hypocrisies of the commonplace 
 life everywhere about him, and lets his words fairly burn as 
 they strike home. In the address which Emerson delivered at 
 Thoreau's funeral, he spoke of Whitman and Brown and Joe 
 Polls, Thoreau's Indian guide in Maine, as the three men who 
 most impressed Thoreau during his later years. In this choice 
 one sees afresh the assertion of the contradictoiy elements of 
 Thoreau's personality. 
 
 During the early summer of 1858, Thoreau, in company with 
 his friend Blake, camped on Monadnoc. Later in the summer 
 he took a trip to the White Mountains with his neighbor, Ed- 
 
20 WALDKN 
 
 ward Hoar. Late in the fall, his English friend, Cholmondelay, 
 tempted him with a trip to the West Indies. Thoreau, how- 
 e\er, was obliged to refuse because of the sickness of his father. 
 In the summer of 1860 he made a second visit to Monadnoc, — 
 this time in company with his friend, Channing. These fre- 
 (juent trips satisfied his incessant craving for the wild in nature 
 and in animal life, and supplied him with material for his writ- 
 ing. Whenever it became necessary, he busied himself for a 
 few days or weeks at one or the other of his trades in order to 
 earn a livelihood. 
 
 In December, 1860, through exposure while surveying land, 
 Thoreau contracted a severe cold, which soon developed into 
 tuberculosis. This disease was constitutional with him; his 
 brother John and his sister Helen had earlier succumbed to it. 
 In the spring and early summer of 1861, his friends induced 
 him to make an expedition to Minnesota and in company with 
 the son of the educator, Horace Mann, he visited St. Paul and 
 journeyed as far up the Minnesota Kiver as Redwood. Here 
 he interested himself for a time in the Sioux Indians. Soon he 
 became restless, and in July returned to Concord little benefited 
 by his excursion. During the following winter his ailment rap- 
 idly grew upon him. His sister Sophia wrote : "His spirits do 
 not fail him ; he continues in his usual serene mood." He enter- 
 tained numerous visitors during his last months. To one who 
 solicitously inquired if he had made his peace with God, he re- 
 plied: "I have never quarrelled with Him." To a friend he 
 wrote: "I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret 
 nothing." At another time he wrote : "For joy I could em- 
 brace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it. And then 1 
 think of those amongst men who will know I love them, though 
 1 tell them not." It was in this mood that he died, May 6, 1862. 
 As long as any strength remained in him, he revised, rewrote, 
 and rearranged the materials which he had collected in his Jour- 
 nal; he followed his individual Genius to the very end. Emer- 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 son at the grave appropriately said: "His soul was made for 
 the noblest society ; he had in a short life exhausted the capabili- 
 ties of this world ; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there 
 is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home." 
 
 The posthumous fame of Thoreau is without parallel in Amer- 
 ican letters. During his life he studiously avoided personal ad- 
 vertisement. At the time of his death he was generally un- 
 known outside the boundaries of Concord. Of his two pub- 
 lished works, the first was an almost complete failure and the 
 second lacked much of phenomenal success. At his death he 
 left behind him nothing to keep alive his meager reputation. 
 His sister, into whose hands his manuscripts descended, did 
 what she could to prevent their publication. Lowell, the first 
 critic of renown to notice his work, scathed and belittled him 
 unmercifully, and seemed to leave little more to be said. His 
 few immediate friends mostly injured his chance for success 
 by exaggerating his wrong traits of character. Yet in spite 
 of his rejection by his own generation, a change began to come 
 about during the eighties, and by the end of the nineties his 
 fame had grown so rapidly as to beat down all opposition. 
 Ten volumes of his works have been published since his death. 
 He has found something like a dozen biographers, and the 
 critical articles concerning him reach into the hundreds. The 
 interesting fact is that the tide of favorable opinion is still 
 flowing in his direction. 
 
 Thoreau's genius perhaps did not lie primarily in the field 
 of literature. Many of his readers have sought him because of 
 his delightful revelations of the out-of-doors; many others, 
 because of the charm of his unique personality. In its com- 
 i::lexity, its inapproachable austerity, its delightful • surprises, 
 its perplexing contradictions, it furnishes much the same inex- 
 haustible attraction as does nature herself. His seeing eye 
 satisfies the searcher after fact ; his idealistic imagination floods 
 the vision of the lover of fancy. His fame, -however, is based 
 
■2-2 WALDEN 
 
 most securely upon his simple philosophy of life. In an age of 
 increasing artificiality and extravagance, he maintained his 
 naturalness and freedom. He distinguished clearly between the 
 essentials of life and its mere external trappings. For him the 
 joy of living was to be found in life itself; not in its artificial 
 recreation. His advice is: "However mean your life is, 
 meet it and live it. . . . Do not trouble yourself much to get 
 new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn to the old; 
 return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your 
 clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not 
 want society. . . . We are often reminded that if there were 
 bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be 
 the same, and our means essentially the same. ... It is life 
 near the bone where it is sweetest. . . . Superfluous wealth can 
 buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one neces- 
 sity of the soul." When one reads such a philosopher he 
 feels — in spite of all the multiplied teachings in the opposite 
 direction — that the realities of life are secure. And so long as 
 they remain secure, so long the fame of Thoreau is likely to 
 last. 
 
 II 
 
 Walden 
 
 In Walden^ Thoreau describes the experiment which he under- 
 took on the shore of Walden Pond, "for convenience sake put- 
 ting the experience of two years into one." In a general way, 
 the narrative follows the order of the seasons. In chapter I, 
 the author discusses the slavery of modem life and shows how 
 one may make himself independent and happy, and then gives 
 a detailed account of the expense involved in building his house. 
 In chapter II, he describes the location of his house and the man- 
 ner of his life. In chapter III, he discourses upon reading. 
 In chapters IV to XII inclusive, he describes those of his activi- 
 ties that have to do primarily with summer; in chapter XIII, 
 
INTEODUCTION 23 
 
 with autumn and the preparations for winter ; in chapters XIY 
 to XVI inclusive, with winter ; in chapter XVII, with spring. In 
 chapter XVIII, he summarizes the teaching of the entire book. 
 Viewed as a whole, the book lacks form. This is due in part 
 to the influence of Carlyle, and in part to Thoreau's manner of 
 writing. The material was written in his Journal at intervals 
 during a period of fifteen years. The entries were made inde- 
 pendently of one another. When Thoreau came to put them to- 
 gether in Walden, he found it impossible to blend the various 
 parts into a perfect whole. The lack of form, however, had its 
 advantage; it formed a receptacle into which Thoreau was able 
 to place unhampered each of his moods and idiosyncrasies. The 
 result is that Walden is one of the most intim.ate and human of 
 written documents. The author's style is his ready servant. 
 With it he can express each mood with equal felicity. The 
 itemized bill for the construction of his house is related with 
 the same fidelity and ease as are the descriptions of nature and 
 the statements in regard to his ideal philosophy. The epigram- 
 matic quality of Walden is due largely to the influence of Emer- 
 son; its exaggeration, to the deliberate attempt of the author 
 to wake his neighbors up. His style is, in fact, a sort of "celes- 
 tial homespun," plain and not without harshness, but inter- 
 woven with the golden woof of an intense, penetrative, sympa- 
 thetic imagination. It shares, too, with Thoreau's personality 
 something of the tang of the wild crab. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 List of Thoreau's Books. 
 Riverside Edition — 
 
 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. 
 
 Walden; or, Life in the Woods. 
 
 The Maine Woods. 
 
 Cape Cod. 
 
 Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journal of 
 
 Thoreau. 
 Summer: From the Journal of Thoreau. 
 Autumn : From the Journal of Thoreau. 
 Winter: From the Journal of Thoreau. 
 Excursions (including A Yankee in Canada). 
 Miscellanies. 
 Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by 
 
 F. B. Sanborn. 
 Walden Edition — 
 A twenty-volume edition. This is the only edition that 
 
 contains the Journal. 
 
 Biographies of Thoreau : 
 
 William Ellery Channing. 
 
 Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist. New edition, edited by F. B. 
 Sanborn, Boston, 1902. 
 H. A. Page. 
 
 Thoreau: His Life and Aims. Boston, 1877. 
 Henry S. Salt. 
 
 The Life of Henry David Thoreau. Revised edition, Lon- 
 
 24 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 25 
 
 Annie Russell Marble. 
 
 Thoreau: His Home, Friends, and Books. New York, 
 1902. 
 F. B. Sanborn. 
 
 Henry D. Tlwreau. Revised edition, Boston, 1909. 
 Mark Van Doren. • 
 
 Henry D. Thoreau. Boston, 1916. 
 
 Bibliographies of Thoreau : 
 John P. Anderson. 
 
 Bibliography of Henry David Thoreau. Published as an 
 appendix to Mr. Salt's Life of Thoreau. Revised edi- 
 tion, London, 1896. 
 Francis H. Allen. 
 
 A Bibliography of Henry David Thoreau. Boston, 1908. 
 
 Critical Essays: 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Thoreau" in Lectures and Bio- 
 graphical Sketches, London, 1883. 
 Lowell, James Russell. "Thoreau" in My Study Windows, 
 
 Boston, 1871. 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis. "Henry David Thoreau: His 
 
 Character," in Familiar Studies of Men and Books, Lon* 
 
 don, 1882. 
 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. "Thoreau" in Short Studies 
 
 of American Authors, Boston, 1888. 
 Burroughs, John. (1) "Henry D. Thoreau" in Indoor 
 
 Studies, Boston, 1889. (2) "Thoreau's Wildness" in 
 
 Essays from the Critic, Boston, 1882. 
 More, Paul Elmer. (1) "A Hermit's Notes on Thoreau" in 
 
 Shelburne Essays, First Series, New York, 1904. (2) 
 
 "Thoreau's Journal" in Shelburne Essays, Fifth Series, 
 
 New York, 1908. 
 
WALDEN 
 
 ECONOMY 
 
 When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of 
 them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, 
 in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden 
 Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the 
 labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. 
 At present I am a sojourner in ci\dlized life again. 
 
 I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of 
 my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made 
 by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some 
 would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me -at 
 all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural 
 and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did 
 not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others 
 have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted 
 to charitable purposes ; and some, who have large families, how 
 many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those 
 of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon 
 me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this 
 book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted ; in this 
 it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main 
 difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, 
 always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so 
 much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as 
 well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrow- 
 
28 WALDEN 
 
 ness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of 
 every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his 
 own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives ; 
 some such account as he would send to his kindred from a dis- 
 tant land ; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a 
 distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly 
 addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, 
 they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that 
 none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may 
 do good service to him whom it fits. 
 
 I would fain say something, not so much concerning the 
 Chinese and Sandwich Islanders, as you who read these pages, 
 who are said to live in Ncav England; something about your 
 condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in 
 this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that 
 it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. 
 I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and eveiywhere, in 
 shojDS, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to 
 me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What 
 I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and look- 
 ing in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their 
 heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over 
 their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume 
 their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing 
 but liquids can pass into the stomach" ; or dwelling, chained for 
 life, at the foot of a tree ; or measuring with their bodies, like 
 caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires ; or standing on one leg 
 on the tops of pillars, — even these forms of conscious penance 
 are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which 
 I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in 
 comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; 
 for they were only twelve, and had an end ; but I could never see 
 that these men slew or captured any monster or flnished any 
 labor. They have no friend lolas to burn with a hot iron the 
 
ECONOMY 29 
 
 root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two 
 spring up. 
 
 I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have 
 inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for 
 these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they 
 had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that 
 they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were 
 called Co labor in. Who made them serfs of the soin Why 
 should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat 
 only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their 
 graves as soon as they are born ? They have got to live a man's 
 life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as 
 they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh 
 crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road 
 of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its 
 Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, 
 tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who 
 struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find 
 it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. 
 
 But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man 
 is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, 
 commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an 
 old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt 
 and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they 
 will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said 
 that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over 
 their heads behind them : — 
 
 Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, 
 Et documenta, damus qua simus origine nati. 
 
 Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, — 
 
 From thence our kind-hearted is, enduring pain and care, 
 Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are. 
 
30 WALDEN 
 
 So much for a blind obedience to a blundering: oracle, throwing 
 the stones over their heads behind them, not seeing where they 
 fell. 
 
 Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through 
 mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious 
 cares and superfluously coarse labors of life, that its finer fruits 
 cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, 
 are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the 
 laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day ; he 
 cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men ; his labor 
 would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any- 
 thing but a machine. How can he remember well his igno- 
 rance — ^which his growth requires — who has so often to use liis 
 knowledge 1 We should feed and clothe him gratuitously some- 
 times, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. 
 The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can 
 be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not 
 treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. 
 
 Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are 
 sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that 
 some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the din- 
 ners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes 
 which are fast w^earing or are already worn out, and have come 
 to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your 
 creditors of an hour. It is very evident w4iat mean and sneak- 
 ing lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by 
 experience ; always on the limits, trying to get into business and 
 trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the 
 Latins ces alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were 
 made of brass ; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's 
 brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, 
 and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get cus- 
 tom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses ; lying, 
 flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civil- 
 
ECONOMY 31 
 
 ity, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous gener- 
 osity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his 
 shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his gro- 
 ceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up 
 something against a sick day, something to be tiieked away in an 
 old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, 
 in a brick bank ; no matter where, no matter how much or how 
 little. 
 
 I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost 
 say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of 
 servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and 
 subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to 
 have a southern overseer ; it is worse to have a northern one : but 
 worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a 
 divinity in man. Look at the teamster on the highway, wending 
 to market by day or night ; does any divinity stir within him ? 
 His highest duty to fodder and water his horses ! What is his 
 destiny to him compared with the shipping interests ? Does not 
 he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, 
 is-he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day 
 he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and pris- 
 oner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own 
 deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own 
 private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which 
 determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation 
 even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination, 
 — what Wilberf orce is there to bring that about *? Think, also, 
 of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last 
 day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates ! As if you 
 could kill time without injuring eternity. 
 
 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is 
 called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate 
 city you go into the desperate country, and have to console your- 
 self with the bravery of minks and mnskrats. A stereotyped but 
 
32 WALDEN 
 
 unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the 
 games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, 
 for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom 
 not to do desperate things. 
 
 When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is 
 the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and 
 means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the 
 common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. 
 Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and 
 healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never 
 too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, 
 however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every- 
 body echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out 
 to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some 
 had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on 
 their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and 
 find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for 
 new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch 
 fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going ; new people put a little dry 
 wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the 
 speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age 
 is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, 
 for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost 
 doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value 
 by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice 
 to give the young, their own experience has. been so partial, and 
 their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, 
 as they must believe ; and it may be that they have some faith 
 left which belies that experience, and they are only less young 
 than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, 
 and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even 
 earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and 
 probably cannot tell me anything, to the purpose. Here is life, 
 an experiment to a great extent untried by me ; but it does not 
 
ECONOMY 33 
 
 avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which 
 I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said 
 nothing about. 
 
 One farmer says to me, "you cannot live on vegetable food 
 solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with" ; and so he 
 religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system 
 with the raw material of bones, walking all the while he talks 
 behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerks him 
 and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some 
 things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most 
 helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and 
 in others still are entirely unknown. 
 
 The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been 
 gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, 
 and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, 
 "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances 
 of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often you 
 may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall 
 on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." 
 Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our 
 nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter 
 nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which pre- 
 sume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as oVd 
 as Adam. But man's capacities have never been measured ; nor 
 are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little 
 has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "bo 
 not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast 
 left undone?" 
 
 We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for 
 instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at 
 once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it 
 would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in 
 which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful 
 triangles! What distant and different beings in the various 
 
34 WALDEN" 
 
 mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the 
 same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our 
 several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers 
 to another? Could a gi'eater miracle take place than for us to 
 look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live 
 in all the ages of the world in an hour ; ay, in all the worlds of 
 the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology ! — I know of no reading 
 of another's experience so startling and informing as this 
 would be. 
 
 The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in 
 my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely 
 to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I 
 behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old 
 man, — you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of 
 a kind, — I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from 
 all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another 
 like stranded vessels. 
 
 I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. 
 We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly 
 bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as 
 to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a 
 well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate 
 the importance of what work we do ; and yet how much is not 
 done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant 
 we are ! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it ; all the 
 day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers 
 and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sin- 
 cerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and deny- 
 ing the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but 
 there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one 
 center. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a 
 miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, 
 "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know 
 what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man 
 
ECONOMY ^ 35 
 
 has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his under- 
 standing-, I foresee that all men will at lengrth establish their lives 
 on that basis. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and 
 anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is 
 necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, careful. It would be 
 some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in 
 the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are 
 the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken 
 to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the 
 merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought 
 at the stores, what they stored, that is, ^vhat are the grossest 
 groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little 
 influence on the essential laws of man's existence ; as our skele- 
 tons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our 
 ancestors. 
 
 By the words, necessari/ of life, I mean whatever, of all that 
 man obtains bj^ his own exertions, has been from the first, or 
 from long use has become, so important to human life that few^, 
 if any, whether from savageness, or jioverty, or philosophy, ever 
 attempt to do without it. JTo many creatures there is in this i 
 sense but one necessary of life. Food. To the bison of the 
 prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink ; 
 unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain's 
 shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food 
 and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate 
 may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads 
 of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have 
 secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of 
 life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, 
 not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from 
 the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the conse- 
 quent use of it, at first a luxurj-, arose the present necessity to 
 sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second 
 
36 WALDEN 
 
 nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain 
 our own internal heat ; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, 
 that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may 
 not cookery properly be said to begin ? Darwin, the naturalist, 
 says of the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego that, while his own 
 party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far 
 from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were 
 observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspira- 
 tion at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the New 
 Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shiv- 
 ers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of 
 these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? 
 According to Liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel 
 which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold 
 weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the 
 result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place 
 when this is too rapid ; or for want of fuel, or from some defect 
 in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not 
 to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It 
 appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, 
 animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal 
 heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps 
 up the fire within us, — and Fuel serves only to prepare that 
 Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from 
 without, — Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the 
 heat thus generated and absorbed. 
 
 The grand necessity, then, for our bodies is to keep warm, 
 to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, 
 not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our 
 beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts 
 of birds to rrer)are this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has 
 its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor 
 man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, 
 no less pliysical than social, we refer directly a great part of our 
 
ECONOMY 37 
 
 ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a 
 sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then 
 unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are 
 sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more 
 various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are 
 wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this 
 country, as I find my own experience, a few implements, a knife, 
 an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamp- 
 light, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to neces- 
 saries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not 
 wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and un- 
 healthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty 
 years, in order that they may live,^ — that is, keep comfortably 
 warm, — and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich 
 are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot ; as 
 I implied before, they are cooked, of course a la mode. 
 
 Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of 
 life are not only not indispensable, but j^ositive hindrances to 
 the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and com- 
 forts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life 
 than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, 
 Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been 
 poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not 
 much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of 
 them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers 
 and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise 
 observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we 
 should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is 
 luxury, whether in agiiculture, or commerce, or literature, or 
 art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not 
 philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once 
 admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have 
 subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wis- 
 dom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, 
 
38 WALDEN 
 
 independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of 
 tlie problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The 
 success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier- 
 like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live 
 merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are 
 in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why 
 do men degenerate ever ? What makes families run out ? What 
 is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys 
 nations'? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives'? 
 The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward 
 form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like 
 his contemporaries. How can a man be* a philosopher and not 
 maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men ? 
 
 When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have 
 described, what does he want next ? Surely not more warmth of 
 the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splen- 
 did houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, 
 incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained 
 those things which are necessary to life, there is another alter- 
 native than to obtain the superfluities ; and that is, to adventure 
 on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. 
 The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has >ent its 
 radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also 
 with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly 
 in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion 
 into the heavens above? — for the nobler plants are valued 
 for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from 
 the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, 
 which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they 
 have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this 
 ])urpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering 
 season. 
 
 I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, 
 who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and 
 
ECONOMY 39 
 
 perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly 
 than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not 
 knowing how they live, — if, indeed, there are any such, as has 
 been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and 
 inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and 
 cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers, — and, to 
 some extent, I reckon myself in this number ; I do not speak to 
 those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and 
 they know whether they are well employed or not ; — but mainly 
 to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complain- 
 ing of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might 
 improve them. There are some who complain most energetically 
 and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing 
 their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy but 
 most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated 
 dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have 
 forged their own golden or silver fetters. 
 
 If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my 
 life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my 
 readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history ; it 
 would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I 
 will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished. 
 
 In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been 
 anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick 
 too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and 
 future, which is precisely the present moment ; to toe that line. 
 You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in 
 my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but 
 inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I 
 know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate. 
 
 I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am 
 still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken con- 
 cerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they 
 
40 WALDEN 
 
 answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, 
 and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear 
 behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if 
 they had lost them themselves. 
 
 To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if 
 possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and 
 winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, 
 have I been about mine ! No doubt, many of my townsmen have 
 met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for 
 Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It 
 is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, 
 doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. 
 
 So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside .the town, 
 trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it 
 express ! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own 
 breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had con- 
 cerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would 
 have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At 
 other times watching from the observatory of some cliif or tree, 
 to telegTaph any new arrival ; or waiting at evening on the hill- 
 tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I 
 never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again 
 in the sun. 
 
 For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide 
 circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to i:>rint the bulk 
 of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got 
 only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains 
 were their own reward. 
 
 For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms 
 and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully ; survej'or, if not of 
 highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping 
 them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, 
 where the public heel had testified to their utility. 
 
 I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which sive a 
 
ECONOMY 41 
 
 faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences ; and 
 I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the 
 farm ; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon 
 worked in a particular field today; that was none of my busi- 
 ness. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and 
 the nettle tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape 
 and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry 
 seasons. 
 
 In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it without 
 boasting, faithfully minding my business, till it became more 
 and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit 
 me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure 
 with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to 
 have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less 
 accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set 
 my heart on that. 
 
 Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the 
 house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you 
 wish to buy any baskets ?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," 
 was the reply. 
 
 "What!" exclaimed the Indian, as he went out the gate, "do 
 you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white 
 neighbors so well off, — that the lawyer had only to weave argu- 
 ments, and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he had 
 said to himself : I will go into business ; I will weave baskets ; it 
 is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the 
 baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the 
 white man's to buj'- them. He had not discovered that it was 
 necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, 
 or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something 
 else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven 
 a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it 
 worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, 
 did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of 
 
42 WALDEN 
 
 studying bow to make it Avorth men's while to buy my baskets, 
 I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The 
 life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. 
 Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the 
 others? 
 
 Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me 
 any room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere 
 else, but I must shift for myself, T turned my face more exclu- 
 sively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I 
 determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire 
 the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. 
 My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply 
 nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business 
 with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing 
 which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and 
 business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish. 
 
 I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; 
 they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the 
 Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, 
 in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export 
 such articles as the country affords, purely native products, 
 much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native 
 bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details 
 yourself in person; to be at once julot and captain, and owner 
 and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep uhe accounts; to read 
 every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to 
 superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon 
 many parts of the coast almost at the same time; — often the 
 richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore; — to be 
 your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking 
 all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady dis- 
 patch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and 
 exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the 
 markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate 
 
ECONOMY 43 
 
 the tendencies of trade and civilization, — taking advantage of 
 the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and 
 all improvements in navigation ; — charts to be studied, the posi- 
 tion of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and 
 ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the 
 error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that 
 should have reached a friendly pier, — there is the untold fate 
 of La Perouse ; — universal science to be kept pace with, study- 
 ing the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adven- 
 turers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down 
 to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to 
 time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties 
 of a man, — such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare 
 and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal 
 knowledge. 
 
 I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for 
 business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade ; 
 it offers advantage which it may not be good policy to divulge ; 
 it is a good post and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be 
 filled ; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own 
 driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and 
 ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 As this business was to be entered into without the usual 
 capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, 
 that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were 
 to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the prac- 
 tical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love 
 of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, 
 than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect 
 that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat^ and 
 secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may 
 judge how much of any necessary or important work may be 
 
44 WALDEN 
 
 accomplished without adding" to his wardrobe. Kings and 
 queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor 
 or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of 
 wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses 
 to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become 
 more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the 
 wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without 
 such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even 
 as our bo*dies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation 
 for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is 
 greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean 
 and unpatched, clothes than to have a sound conscience. But 
 even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed 
 is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such 
 tests as this ; — ^who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, 
 over the knee ? Most behave as if they believed that their pros- 
 pects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would 
 be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with 
 a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentle- 
 man's legs, they can be mended ; but if a similar accident hap- 
 pens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it ; for 
 he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. 
 We know but few men, a gTeat many coats and breeches. Dress 
 a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who 
 would not soonest salute the scarecrow ? Passing a cornfield the 
 other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the 
 owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten 
 than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked 
 at every stranger who approached his master's premises with 
 clothes on, but was easily quieted hy a naked thief. It is an 
 interesting question how far men would retain their relative 
 rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such 
 a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men, which 
 belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, 
 
ECONOMY 45 
 
 in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, 
 had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt 
 the necessity of wearing other than a traveling dress, when she 
 went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized 
 country, where . . . people are judged of by their clothes." 
 Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental pos- 
 session of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage 
 alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But 
 they who yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far 
 heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Besides, 
 clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call 
 endless; a woman's dress, at least, is never done. 
 
 A man who has at length found something to do will not need 
 to get a new suit to do it in ; for him the old will do, that has 
 lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes 
 will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet, — if a 
 hero ever has a valet, — bare feet are older than shoes, and he 
 can make them do. Only they who go to soirees and legislative 
 halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man 
 changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and 
 shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? 
 Who ever saw his old clothes, — his old coat, actually worn out, 
 resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of 
 charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to 
 be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who 
 could do with less ? I say, beware of all enterprises that require 
 new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there 
 is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If 
 you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. 
 All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, 
 or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a 
 new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so 
 conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel 
 like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeo- 
 
46 WALDEN 
 
 ing" new wine in old bottles. Our moulting- season, like that of 
 the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to soli- 
 tary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and 
 the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and 
 expan^^ion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal 
 coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, 
 and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well 
 as that of mankind. 
 
 We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous 
 plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fan- 
 ciful clothes are our epidermis or false skin, which partakes not 
 of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal 
 injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular 
 integiTment, or cortex ; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, 
 which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the 
 man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear something- 
 equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so 
 simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and 
 that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if 
 an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk 
 out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick 
 garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and 
 cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers ; 
 while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last 
 as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots 
 for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a 
 dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a 
 better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor 
 that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be 
 found wise men to do him reverence ? 
 
 When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress 
 tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now," not empha- 
 sizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as imper- 
 sonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, 
 
ECONOMY 47 
 
 simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that 
 I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a 
 moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word 
 separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find 
 out by what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and 
 what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so 
 nearly: and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal 
 mystery, and without any more emphasis of the "they," — "It is 
 true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now." Of 
 what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my char- 
 acter, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to 
 hang the coat on ? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, 
 but Fashion . She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. 
 The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the 
 monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of get- 
 ting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the 
 help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful 
 press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they 
 would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would 
 be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched 
 from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even 
 fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. 
 Nevertheless we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was 
 handed down to us by a mummy. 
 
 On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dress- 
 ing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. 
 At present, men make shift to wear what they can get. Like 
 shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, 
 and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each 
 other's masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fash- 
 ions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at behold- 
 ing the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as 
 if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. 
 All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the 
 
48 WALDEN 
 
 serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, 
 which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any 
 people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of colic and his trap- 
 pings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit 
 by a cannon ball, rags are as becoming as purple. 
 
 The childish and savage taste of men and women for new 
 patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kalei- 
 doscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this 
 generation requires toda}^ The manufacturers have learned that 
 this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ 
 only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one 
 will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it fre- 
 quently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter 
 becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not 
 the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous 
 merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. 
 
 I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by 
 which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives 
 is becoming every day more like that of the English ; and it can- 
 not be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed^ 
 the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and hon- 
 estly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be 
 enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. 
 Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better 
 aim at something- high. 
 
 As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary 
 of life, though there are instances of men having done without 
 it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing 
 says that "The Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag 
 which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after 
 night on the snow ... in a degree of cold which would extin- 
 guish the life of one exposed to it in any woolen clothing." He 
 has seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier 
 
ECONOMY 49 
 
 than other people." But, probably, man did not live long on the 
 earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a 
 house, the domestic comforts, which pln-ase may have originally 
 signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; 
 though these must be extremely partial and occasional in tiiose 
 climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with 
 winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, 
 except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the 
 summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In 
 the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, 
 and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified 
 that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so 
 large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his 
 world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He w^as at first 
 bare and out of doors ; but though this was pleasant enough in 
 serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the 
 winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have 
 nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe 
 himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according 
 to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. IVIan wanted 
 a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, 
 then the warmth of the affections. 
 
 We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human 
 race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rook for 
 shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and 
 loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, 
 as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remem- 
 ber the interest with which when young he looked at shelving 
 rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning 
 of that portion of our most primitive ancestor which still sur- 
 vived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm 
 leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of 
 grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At 
 last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives 
 
50 WALDEN 
 
 are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth to 
 the field is a g:i'eat distance. It would be well perhaps if we were 
 to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction 
 between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so 
 much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds 
 do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in 
 dovecots. 
 
 However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it 
 behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after 
 all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clew, 
 a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum 
 instead. Consider first how^ slight a shelter is absolutely nec- 
 essary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in 
 tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep 
 around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it 
 deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my 
 living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a 
 question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfor- 
 tunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box 
 by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers 
 locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every 
 man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, 
 and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at 
 least, ^et into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the 
 lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This 
 did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alter- 
 native. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever 
 you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dog- 
 ging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the 
 rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have 
 frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. 
 Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, 
 but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude 
 aiul hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made 
 
ECONOMY 51 
 
 here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready 
 to their hands. Goodkin, who was superintendent of the Indians 
 subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, "The 
 best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, 
 with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons 
 when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure 
 of weighty timber, when they are green. . . . The meaner sort 
 are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and 
 are also indifferently tight and Avarm, but not so good as the 
 former. . . . Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long 
 and thirty feet broad. ... I have often lodged in their wig- 
 wams, and found them as warm as the best English houses." 
 He adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within 
 with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with 
 various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regu- 
 late the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in 
 the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first 
 instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down 
 and put up in a few hours ; and every family owned one, or its 
 apartment in one. 
 
 In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as 
 the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but 
 I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the 
 birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and 
 the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more 
 than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns 
 and cities, where civilization especiallj'^ prevails, the number of 
 those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. 
 The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, 
 become indispensable summer and winter, which would buj^ a 
 village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor 
 as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disad- 
 vantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that 
 the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the 
 
52 WALDEN 
 
 civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to 
 own it; nor can he, in the loug run, any better afford to hire. 
 But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized 
 man secures an abode which is a j^alace compared with the sav- 
 age's. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, 
 these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the 
 improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and 
 paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, cop- 
 per jDump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other 
 things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these 
 things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, 
 who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that 
 civilization is a real advance in the condition of man, — and I 
 think that it is, thoiigh only the wise improve their advantages, — 
 it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without 
 making them more costly ; and the cost of a thing is the amount 
 of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for 
 it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this 
 neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay 
 up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer^s 
 life, even if he is not encumbered with a family; — estimating 
 the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day, 
 for if some receive more, others receive less ; — so that he must 
 have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam 
 will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is 
 but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been 
 wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms? 
 / It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage 
 / of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against 
 the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the 
 defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not 
 required to bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an impor- 
 tant distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, 
 no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the 
 
ECONOMY 53 
 
 life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the 
 individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and 
 perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice 
 this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we 
 may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suf- 
 fering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that 
 the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten 
 sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? 
 
 "As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any 
 more to use this proverb in Israel." 
 
 "Behold all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also 
 the soul of the son is mine : the soul that sinneth it shall die." 
 
 When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who 
 are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the 
 most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, 
 that they may become the real owners of their farms, which 
 commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought 
 with hired money, — and we may regard one third of that toil as 
 the cost of their houses, — but commonly they have not paid for 
 them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the 
 value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one gi'eat 
 encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well 
 acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I 
 am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen 
 in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would 
 know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where 
 they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his 
 farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to 
 him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has 
 been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even 
 ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of 
 the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of 
 them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not 
 genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their 
 
54 WALDEN 
 
 engagements, because it is inconvenient ; that is, it is the moral 
 character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse 
 face on the matter, and suggests, besides, that probably not even 
 the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance 
 bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bank- 
 ruptcy and repudiation are the spring-boards from which much 
 of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage 
 stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex 
 Cattle Show goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints 
 of the agricultural machine were suent. 
 
 The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood 
 by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To 
 get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With con- 
 summate skill he has set his trap with a hairspring to catch 
 comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his 
 own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor ; and for a similar 
 reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, 
 though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings: — 
 
 The false society of men — 
 
 — for earthly greatness 
 All heavenly comforts rarefies to air. 
 
 And when the farmer has got his house, he may. not be the 
 richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. 
 As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus 
 against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made 
 it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be 
 avoided"; ^nd it may still be urged, for our houses are such 
 unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than 
 lioused in them ; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our 
 own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this 
 town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell 
 their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have 
 not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free. 
 
ECONOMY 55 
 
 Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or 
 hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civ- 
 ilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally im- 
 proved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, 
 but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the 
 civilized man's pursuits are no worthiei than^ the savage's, if 
 he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross 
 necessaries and comforts merely, why should we have a better 
 dwelling than the former f 
 
 But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found 
 that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward 
 circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded 
 below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the 
 indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other 
 are the almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built 
 the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on 
 garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The 
 mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night 
 perchance to a hut not so good as a wig-wam. It is a mistake to 
 suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civiliza- 
 tion exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants 
 may not be as degi-aded as that of savages. I refer to the 
 degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I 
 should not need to look farther than to the shanties which 
 everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civ- 
 ilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in 
 sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, 
 without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, and the forms 
 of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long 
 habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development 
 of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair 
 to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish 
 this generation are accomplished. Such, too, to a greater or less 
 extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination 
 
56 WALDEN 
 
 in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I 
 could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white 
 or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condi- 
 tion of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the 
 South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was 
 degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no 
 doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of 
 civilized rulers. Their condition only i3roves what squalidness 
 may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the 
 laborers of our Southern States who produce the staple exports 
 of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the 
 South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in 
 moderate circumstances. 
 
 Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, 
 and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because 
 they think, that they must have such a one as their neighbors 
 have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor 
 might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or 
 cap of woodchuek skin, comjDlain of hard times because he 
 could not afford to buy him a crown ! It is possible to invent a 
 house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which 
 yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall 
 we always study to obtain more of these things, and not some-, 
 times to be content with less? Shall the resjDectable citizen 
 thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of 
 the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous 
 glowshoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty 
 guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as 
 simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the 
 benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as mes- 
 sengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not 
 see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of 
 fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow — would it 
 not be a singular allowance? — that our furniture should be more 
 
ECONOMY 57 
 
 complex than the Arab's, in proportion as we are morally and 
 intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are clut- 
 tered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out 
 the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning's 
 work undone. Morning work ! By the blushes of Aurora and 
 the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in 
 this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I 
 was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when 
 the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw 
 them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a 
 furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no 
 dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken 
 ground. 
 
 It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which 
 the herd so diligently follow. The traveler who stops at the best 
 houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume 
 him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their 
 tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think 
 that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury 
 than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attain- 
 ing these to become no better than a modern drawing-room, with 
 its divans, and ottomans, and sunshades, and a hundred other 
 Oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for 
 the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celes- 
 tial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the 
 names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to 
 myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather 
 lide on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to 
 heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a 
 malaria all the way. 
 
 The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primi- 
 tive ages imply this advantage at least, that they left him still 
 but a sojourner in nature. "When he was refreshed with food 
 and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it 
 
58 WALDEN 
 
 were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the 
 valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain tops. 
 But lo ! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who 
 independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become 
 a farmer: and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a house- 
 keeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled 
 down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Chris- 
 tianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have 
 built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family 
 tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle 
 to free himself from this condition^ but the effect of our art is 
 merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state 
 to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for 
 a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for 
 our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal 
 for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to 
 receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our 
 houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal 
 economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does 
 not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gew- 
 gaws upon the mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, 
 to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot 
 but jDcrceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a thing- 
 jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts 
 which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the 
 jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to 
 human muscles alone, on record is that of certain wandering- 
 Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level 
 ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to 
 earth again beyond that distance. The first question which I am 
 tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is. 
 Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, 
 or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then 
 perhaps I may look at your baubles and find them ornamental. 
 
ECONOMY 59 
 
 The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before 
 we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must 
 be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful 
 housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: 
 now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, 
 where there is no house and no housekeeper. 
 
 Old Johnson, in his "Wonder- Working Providence," speak- 
 ing of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was con- 
 temporary, tells us that "they burrow themselves in the earth 
 for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil 
 aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, 
 at the highest side." They did not "provide them houses," says 
 he, "till the earth, by the Lord's blessing, brought forth bread 
 to feed them," and the first j^ear's crop was so light that "they 
 were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season." 
 The secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in 
 Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to 
 take up land there, states more particularly, that "those in New 
 Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no means 
 to build farm houses at first according to their wishes, dig a 
 square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, 
 as long and as broad as they think proper, case the 'earth inside 
 with w^ood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark 
 of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth ; 
 floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceil- 
 ing, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the sjDars with 
 bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these 
 houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, 
 it being understood that partitions are run through those cellars, 
 which are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and 
 principal men in New England, in the beginning of the colonies, 
 commenced their first dwelling houses in this fashion for two 
 reasons : firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not 
 to want food the next season ; secondly, in order not to discour- 
 
60 WALDEN 
 
 age poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers 
 from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when 
 the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves 
 handsome houses, spending on them several thousands." 
 
 In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of 
 prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more 
 pressing wants first. But are the more pressing w^ants satisfied 
 now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxu- 
 rious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is 
 not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut 
 our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their 
 wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected 
 even in the rudest period ; but let our houses first be lined with 
 beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tene- 
 ment of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas ! I have 
 been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined 
 with. 
 
 Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly 
 live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is 
 better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which 
 the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a neigh- 
 borhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper 
 and more easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or 
 bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat 
 stones. I speak understandingly on this subject, for I have 
 made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practi- 
 cally. With a little more wit we might use these materials so 
 as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our 
 civilization a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced 
 and wiser savage. But to make haste to my own experiment. 
 
 Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went 
 down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended 
 to build my house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy 
 
ECONOMY 61 
 
 white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to 
 begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous 
 course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in 
 your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold 
 on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it 
 sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I 
 worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out 
 on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines 
 and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not 
 yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was 
 all dark colored and saturated with water. There were some 
 slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there ; but 
 for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my 
 way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the 
 hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I 
 heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to com- 
 mence another year with us. They were plea3ant spring days, 
 in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as 
 the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch 
 itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a 
 green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had 
 placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the 
 wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on 
 the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as ] 
 stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps be- 
 cause he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It 
 appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their 
 present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel 
 the influence of the spring of sjDrings arousing them, they would 
 of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had pre- 
 viously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with 
 portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for 
 the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted 
 the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, 
 
52 WALDEN 
 
 I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling 
 as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. 
 
 So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, 
 and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not hav- 
 ing many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to 
 
 myself, — 
 
 Men say they know many things; 
 
 But lo! they have taken wings, 
 
 The arts and sciences. 
 
 And a thousand appliances ; 
 
 The wind that blows 
 
 Is all that anybody knows. 
 
 I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs 
 on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, 
 leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight 
 and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully 
 mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other 
 tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very long 
 ones ; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and 
 read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting 
 amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my 
 bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were 
 covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was 
 more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut 
 down some of them, having becoming better acquainted with it. 
 Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of 
 my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had 
 made. 
 
 By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, 
 but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready 
 for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of James 
 Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, 
 for boards. James Collins' shanty was considered an uncom- 
 monly fine one. When T called to see it he was not at home. 
 
ECONOMY 63 
 
 I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the 
 window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with 
 a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt 
 being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. 
 The roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped 
 and made brittle by the sun. Door-sill there was none, but a 
 perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. 
 came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The 
 hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a 
 dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only 
 here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. 
 She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the 
 walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, 
 warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two 
 feet deep. In her own words, they were "good boards overhead, 
 good boards all around, and a good window," — of two whole 
 squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. 
 There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the 
 house where it was born, a silk parasol, a gilt-framed looking- 
 glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all 
 told. The bargain was soon completed, for James had in the 
 meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five 
 cents tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, selling 
 to nobody else meanwhile : I to take possession at six. It were 
 well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct 
 but wholly unjust claims, on the score of ground rent and fuel. 
 This he assured me was the onlj^ encumbrance. At six I passed 
 him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their 
 all, — bed, coffee mill, looking-glass, hens, — all but the cat, she 
 took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned 
 afterward, trod in a trap set for woodehucks, and so became a 
 dead cat at last. 
 
 I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the 
 nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, 
 
64 WALDEN 
 
 spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp 
 back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two 
 as I drove along the woodland path. I was informed treacher- 
 ously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, 
 in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, 
 straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, 
 and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and 
 look freshly up, unconcerned with spring thoughts, at the 
 devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. He 
 was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this 
 seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods 
 of Troy. 
 
 I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, 
 where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, doAvn through 
 sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegeta- 
 tion, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes 
 would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, 
 and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the 
 sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours' work. I took 
 particular pleasure in this breaking of gi^ound, for in almost 
 all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temjDerature. 
 Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found 
 the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after 
 the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent 
 in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the 
 entrance of a burrow. 
 
 At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of 
 my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for 
 neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of 
 my house. No man was ever more honored in the character 
 of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at 
 the raising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy 
 my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and 
 roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, 
 
ECONOMY 65 
 
 so tliat it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before board- 
 ing I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing 
 two cart-loads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. 
 I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a lire 
 became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean- 
 while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which 
 mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and 
 agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my 
 bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat 
 under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours 
 in that way. In those days, when my hands were much em- 
 ployed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which 
 lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as 
 much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose, as the 
 Iliad. 
 
 It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately 
 than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, 
 a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and 
 perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a 
 better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There 
 is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house 
 that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but 
 if men constructed their dwellings Avith their own hands, and 
 provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly 
 enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as 
 birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! 
 we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests 
 which other birds have built, and cheer no traveler with their 
 chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the 
 pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does archi- 
 tecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men ? I never 
 in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and 
 natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the 
 
66 WALDEN 
 
 community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of 
 a man: it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the 
 farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object 
 does it finally serve ? No doubt another may also think for me ; 
 but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the 
 exclusion of my thinking for myself. 
 
 True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have 
 heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making archi- 
 tectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence 
 a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well per- 
 haps from his point of view, but only a little better than the 
 common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, 
 he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only 
 how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every 
 sugar plum in fact might have an almond or caraway seed in 
 it, — though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without 
 the sugar, — and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might 
 build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care 
 of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that orna- 
 ments were something outward and in the skin merely, — that 
 the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o'- 
 pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway 
 their Trinity Church ? But a man has no more to do with the 
 style of architecture of liis house than a tortoise with that of 
 its shell : nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the 
 precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find 
 it out. He may turn }>ale when the trial comes. This man 
 seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his 
 half truth to the rude occupants, who really knew it better than 
 he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has grad- 
 ually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and 
 character of the indweller, who is the only builder, — out of 
 some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a 
 thought for the appearance ; and whatever additional beauty of 
 
ECONOMY 67 
 
 this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like 
 unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in 
 this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending-, 
 humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the 
 life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any pecu- 
 liarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque ; 
 and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when 
 his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, 
 and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his 
 dwelling, A great proportion of architectural ornaments are 
 literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like 
 borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can 
 do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the 
 cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of 
 style in literature, and the architects of our Bibles spent as much 
 time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? 
 So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their pro- 
 fessors. Much as it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks 
 are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed 
 upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest 
 sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having 
 departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his 
 own coffin, — the architecture of the gTave, and "carpenter" is 
 but another name for "coffin-maker." One man says, in his 
 despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at 
 your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of 
 his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. 
 What an abundance of leisure he must have ! Why do you take 
 up a handful of the dirt? Better paint your house your own 
 complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise 
 to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have 
 got my ornaments ready I will wear them. 
 
 Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of 
 5 my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imper- 
 
■63 WALDEN 
 
 feet and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, Avhose 
 edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane. 
 
 I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet 
 wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and 
 a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door 
 at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of 
 my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, 
 but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, 
 was as follows ; and I give the details because very few are able 
 to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, 
 the separate cost of the various materials which compose them : 
 
 "{ 
 
 »".* «■«■[ ""it"" 
 
 Refuse shingles for roof and sides 4.00 
 
 Laths 1.25 
 
 Two second-hand windows with glass. . . . 2.43 
 
 One thousand old brick 4.00 
 
 Two casks of lime 2.40 That was high. 
 
 Hair 31 J ^^'^ f^^ ^ 
 
 [ needed. 
 
 Mantel-tree iron 15 
 
 Nails 3.90 
 
 Hinges and screws 14 
 
 Latch 10 
 
 Chalk 01 ^■ 
 
 j I carried a good 
 Transportation ^-^0 jpart on my back. 
 
 In all $28,121/0 
 
 These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones, and 
 sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small 
 woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left 
 after building the house. 
 
 I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on 
 the main street in Concord in gi-andeur and luxury, as soon 
 
ECONOMY 69' 
 
 as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my 
 present one. 
 
 I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can 
 obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the 
 rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more 
 than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather 
 than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do 
 not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much 
 cant and hypocrisy, — chaff which I find it difficult to separate 
 from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man, — I 
 will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is 
 such a relief to both the moral and physical system ; and I am 
 resolved that I will not through humility become the deviPs 
 attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. 
 At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's room, which 
 is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, 
 though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty- 
 two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers 
 the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps 
 a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we 
 had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education 
 would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have 
 been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an educa- 
 tion would in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which 
 the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or 
 somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they 
 would with proper management on both sides. Those things for 
 which the most money is demanded are never the things which 
 the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important 
 item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education 
 which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his 
 contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a 
 college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and 
 cents, and then following blindly the principles of a division 
 
70 WALDEN 
 
 of labor to its extreme, a principle which should never be fol- 
 lowed but with circumspection, — to call in a contractor who 
 makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen 
 or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the 
 students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it; 
 and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. I 
 think that it would be better than this, for the students, or those 
 who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation 
 themselves. The student who secures his coveted leisure and 
 retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to 
 man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding 
 himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. 
 ^'But," says one, "you do not mean that the students should go 
 to work with their hands instead of their heads'?" I do not 
 mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think 
 a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, 
 or study it merely, while the community supports them at this 
 expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. 
 How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying 
 the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their 
 minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know- 
 something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not 
 pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into 
 the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is pro- 
 fessed and practiced but the art of life; — to survey the world 
 through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural 
 eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, 
 or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new 
 satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or 
 to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured 
 by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplat- 
 ing the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have 
 advanred the most at the end of a month, — the boy who had 
 made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and 
 
ECONOMY 71 
 
 smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, 
 the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the 
 Institution in the meanwhile, and had received a Rogers' pen- 
 knife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his 
 fingers'? ... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving 
 college that I had studied navigation ! — why, if I had taken one 
 turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even 
 the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, 
 while that economy of living which is synonymous with philos- 
 ophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The conse- 
 quence is that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and 
 Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. 
 
 As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improve- 
 ments" : there is an illusion about them ; there is not ahvays a 
 positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest 
 to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding invest- 
 ments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, 
 which distract our attention from serious things. They are but 
 improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was 
 already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston 
 or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic 
 telegrai3h from Maine to Texas ; but Maine and Texas, it may 
 be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such 
 a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a 
 distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one 
 end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to 
 say. As if the main object Avere to talk fast and not to talk 
 sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring 
 the old world some weeks nearer to the new ; but perchance the 
 first news that will leak through into the broad, flapi^ing Ameri- 
 can ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping 
 cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute 
 does not carry the most important messages ; he is not an evan- 
 gelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honev. 
 
72 WALDEN 
 
 I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to 
 mill. 
 
 One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money; 
 you love to travel ; you might take the ears and go to Fitchburg- 
 today and see the country." But I am wiser than that. I have 
 learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot. I say 
 to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The dis- 
 tance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a 
 day's wages. I remember when wages Avere sixty cents a day 
 for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and 
 get there before night ; I have traveled at that rate by the week 
 together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, 
 and arrive there sometime tomorrow, or possibly this evening, 
 if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going 
 to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the 
 day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think 
 that I should keep ahead of you ; and as for seeing the country 
 and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your 
 acquaintance altogether. 
 
 Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and 
 with regard to the railroad even Ave may say it is as broad as it 
 is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all 
 mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. 
 Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activitj^ 
 of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride 
 somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a 
 crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All 
 aboard!" when the smoke is bloAvn away and the vapor con- 
 densed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest 
 are run over, — and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy 
 accident." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned 
 their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably 
 have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This 
 spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order 
 
ECONOMY 73 
 
 to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part 
 of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make 
 a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live 
 the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. 
 ''What!" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the 
 shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built a 
 good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you 
 might have done worse ; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, 
 that you could have spent your time better than digging in this 
 dirt. 
 
 Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve 
 dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet 
 my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of 
 light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small 
 part with i3otatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot 
 contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, 
 and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight 
 cents an acre. One farmer said that it was "good for nothing 
 but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure whatever 
 on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not 
 expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it 
 all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which 
 supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of 
 virgin mold, easily distinguishable through the summer by the 
 greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for the 
 most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the drift- 
 wood from the pond, have supiDlied the remainder of my fuel. 
 I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing, though 
 I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season 
 were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14,721/2. The seed corn 
 was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless 
 you plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, 
 and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet 
 
74 WALDEN 
 
 corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come t( 
 anything. My wliole income from the farm was 
 
 $23.44 
 Deducting the outgoes * 14.721/^ 
 
 There are left $ 8.71% 
 
 besides produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate 
 was made of the value of $4.50, — the amount on hand much 
 more than balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All 
 things considered, that is, considering the importance of a man's 
 soul and of today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by 
 my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient char- 
 acter, I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in 
 Concord did that year. 
 
 The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land 
 which I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from 
 the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by 
 many celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young among 
 the rest, that if one would live simplj^ and eat only the crop 
 which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange 
 it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive 
 things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, 
 and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen 
 to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than 
 to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work 
 as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and 
 thus he Avould not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as 
 at present. I desire to speak impartially on this point, and as 
 one not interested in the success or failure of the present eco- 
 nomical and social arrangements. I was more independent than 
 any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or 
 farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very 
 crooked one, every moment. Besides being better off than they 
 
ECONOMY 75 
 
 already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I 
 should have been nearly as well off as before. 
 
 I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of 
 herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much 
 the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but, if we consider 
 necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the 
 advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of 
 his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it 
 is no boy's play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all 
 respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so 
 great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. True, there never 
 was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor 
 am I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, I 
 should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board 
 for any work he might do for me, for fear I should become a 
 horseman or a herdsman merely; and if society seems to be the 
 gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one man's gain is 
 not another's loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with 
 his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works 
 would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man 
 share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow 
 that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of 
 himself in that case ? When men begin to do, not merely unnec- 
 essary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assist- 
 ance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with 
 the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. 
 Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a 
 symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. Though 
 we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the pros- 
 perity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to which 
 the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to have the 
 largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is 
 not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few 
 halls for free worship or free speech in this county. It should 
 
76 WALDEN 
 
 not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power 
 of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate 
 themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta 
 than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the 
 luxuiy of princes. A simple and independent mind does not 
 toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to 
 any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, 
 except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone 
 hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any 
 hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambi- 
 tion to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount 
 of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken 
 to smooth and polish their manners? One jDiece of good sense 
 would be more memorable than a monument as high as the 
 moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of 
 Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone 
 wall that bounds an honest man's field than a hundred-gated 
 Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life. 
 The religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish 
 build splendid temples; but what you might call Christianity 
 does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its 
 tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is 
 nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so manj^ 
 men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives con- 
 structing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have 
 been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then 
 given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some 
 excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the 
 religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all 
 the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or 
 the United States Banks. It costs more than it comes to. The 
 mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread 
 and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs 
 it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and 
 
ECONOMY 77 
 
 the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the 
 thirty centuries begin to look down on it, mankind begin to look 
 up at it. As for your high towers and monuments, there was a 
 crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to 
 China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese 
 pots and kettles rattle ; but I think that I shall not go out of my 
 way to admire the hole which he made. Many are concerned 
 about the monuments of the West and East, — to know who built 
 them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days 
 did not build them, — who were above such trifling. But to 
 proceed with my statistic*. 
 
 By surveying, carj^entry, and day-labor of various other 
 kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades 
 as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight 
 months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when 
 these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two 
 years, — not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, 
 which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on 
 hand at the last date, was 
 
 Rice $1,731/2 
 
 Molasses 1.73 Cheapest form of the saccharine. 
 
 Rye meal 1.04% 
 
 Indian meal 99% Cheaper than rye. 
 
 Pork 22 
 
 f Costs more than Indian meal/ 
 1 both money and trouble. 
 
 Flour 88 
 
 
 Sugar .80 
 
 Lard 65 
 
 Apples 25 
 
 Dried apple . 22 
 
 Sweet potatoes 10 
 
 One pumpkin 06 
 
 One watermelon 02 
 
 Salt 03 J t- 
 
 Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told ; but I should not thus unblush- 
 ingiy publish my gaiilt, if I did not know that most of my 
 
78 WALDEN 
 
 readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds 
 would look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught 
 a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to 
 slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my beanfield, — effect his 
 transmigration, as a Tartar would say, — and devour him, partly 
 for experiment's sake ; but though it afforded me a momentary 
 enjoyment, nothwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the 
 longest use would not make that a good practice, however it 
 might seem to have your woodchueks ready dressed by the village 
 butcher. 
 
 Clothing' and some incidental expenses within the same dates, 
 though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to 
 
 $8.40% 
 Oil and some household utensils 2.00 
 
 So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and 
 mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, 
 and their bills have not yet been received, — and these are all and 
 more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in 
 this part of the world, — were 
 
 House $28,121/2 
 
 Farm one year 14.72% . 
 
 Food eight months 8.74 
 
 Clothing, etc., eight months 8.40% 
 
 Oil, etc., eight months 2.00 
 
 In all 1 . .$61.99% 
 
 I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living 
 to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold 
 
 $23.44 
 Earned by day-labor 13.34 
 
 In all $36.78 
 
ECONOMY 79 
 
 which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance 
 of $25.21% on the one side, — this being very nearly the means 
 with which I started, and the measure of expenses to be in- 
 curred, — and on the other, besides the leisure and independence 
 and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as 
 I choose to occupy it. 
 
 These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstruct- 
 ive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a 
 certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not 
 rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate, 
 that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents 
 a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian 
 meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, mo- 
 lasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that I should 
 live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India. 
 To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as 
 well state that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, 
 and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was fre- 
 quently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the 
 dining out, being, as I have stated, a constant element, does not 
 in the least affect a comparative statement like this. 
 
 I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost 
 incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in 
 this latitude ; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, 
 and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory 
 dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of 
 purslane {Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield, 
 boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness 
 of the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man 
 desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient 
 number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of 
 salt ? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the 
 demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to 
 such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of neces- 
 
80 WALDEN 
 
 saries, but for want of luxuries ; and I know a good woman who 
 thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking 
 water only. 
 
 The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather 
 from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not 
 venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a 
 well-stocked larder. 
 
 Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine 
 hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle 
 or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house ; 
 but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried 
 flour also ; but have at last found a mixture of rj-e and Indian 
 meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no 
 little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succes- 
 sion, tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his 
 hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, 
 and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble 
 fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in 
 cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of 
 bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back 
 to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, 
 when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the 
 mildness and refinement of this diet, and traveling gradually 
 down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough 
 which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through 
 the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, 
 wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem 
 the soul of bread, the spiritm which fills its cellular tissue, which 
 is religiously preserved like the vestal fire, — some precious 
 bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the Maj^ower, did 
 the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swell- 
 ing, spreadino-. in cerealian billows over the land. — this seed I 
 regularly and faithfully procured from the \dllage, till at length 
 one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast ; by which 
 
ECONOMY 81 
 
 accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable, — 
 for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic proc- 
 ess, — and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives 
 earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without 
 yeast might not be, and elderly people x:)rophesied a speedy 
 decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential 
 ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the 
 land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of 
 carrying a bottle-full in my pocket, which would sometimes pop 
 and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and 
 more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than 
 any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. 
 Neither did I put any sal soda, or other acid or alkali, into my 
 bread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe 
 which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before 
 Christ. "Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque 
 bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aquae paulatim 
 addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito, 
 coquitoque sub testu." Which I take to mean — "Make kneaded 
 bread thus. 'Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal 
 into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. 
 When you have kneaded it well, mold it, and bake it under a 
 cover," that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. 
 But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing 
 to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than 
 a month. 
 
 Every New Englander might easily raise all his own bread- 
 stuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on 
 distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we 
 from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and 
 sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in 
 a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part 
 the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own 
 producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome. 
 
82 WALDEN 
 
 at a greater cost, at the store. . I saw that I could easily raise 
 my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will 
 grow on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the 
 best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and 
 pork ; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I found by 
 experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of 
 pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a 
 few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were 
 growing I could use various substitutes besides those which I 
 have named. "For," as the Forefathers sang, — 
 
 we can make liquor to sweeten our lips 
 Of i)umpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips. 
 
 Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this 
 might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did 
 without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. 
 I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go 
 after it. 
 
 Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food 
 was concerned, and having a shelter alread}^, it would only 
 remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now 
 wear were woven in a farmer's family, — thank Heaven there is 
 so much virtue still in man ; for I think the fall from the farmer 
 to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man 
 to the farmer; — and in a new country fuel is an encumbrance. 
 As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, T might 
 purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I culti- 
 vated was sold — namely, eight dollars and eis-ht cents. But as 
 it was. I considered that T enhanced the value of the land by 
 squatting on it. 
 
 There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me 
 such mi potions as. if T think that I can live on vearetable food 
 alonp- and to strike at the root of the matter at once, — for the 
 root i« faith, — T am accustomed to answer such, that I can live 
 
ECONOMY 83 
 
 on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot 
 understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad 
 to hear of experiments of this kind being- tried ; as that a young 
 man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, 
 using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same 
 and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experi- 
 ments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, 
 or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed. 
 
 My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost 
 me nothing of which I have not rendered an account, consisted 
 of a bed, a table, a desk, tln^ee chairs, a looking-glass three 
 inches in diameter, a i^air of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a 
 skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and 
 forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for 
 molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so jDOor that he need 
 sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of 
 such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for 
 taking them away. Furniture ! Thank God, I can sit and I can 
 stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but 
 a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed 
 in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven 
 and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That 
 is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from ins^Decting 
 such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a jDOor 
 one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the 
 more you have of such things the jDOorer you are. Each load 
 looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties ; and if 
 one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what 
 do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvics; at 
 last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave 
 this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were 
 buckled to a man^s belt, and he could not move over the rough 
 country where our lines are cast without dragging them, — drag- 
 
84 WALDEN 
 
 ging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. 
 The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder 
 man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set ! "Sir, 
 if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set ?" If you 
 are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he 
 owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even 
 to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and 
 will not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and 
 making what headway he can. I think that the man is at a dead 
 set who has got through a knot hole or gateway where his sledge 
 load of furniture cannot follow him. I cannot but feel com- 
 passion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly 
 free, all girded and ready, speak of his "furniture," as whether 
 it is insured or not. "But what shall I do with my furniture?" 
 My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider's web then. Even 
 those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire 
 more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody's 
 barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is 
 traveling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has 
 accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the 
 courage to burn ; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. 
 Throw away the first three at least. It would surpass the powers 
 of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I 
 should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run. 
 When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which 
 contained his all — looking like an enormous wen which had 
 grown out of the nape of his neck — I have pitied him, not 
 because that was his all, but because he had all that he could 
 carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be 
 a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance 
 it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it. 
 
 I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for cur- 
 tains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, 
 and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not 
 
ECONOMY 85 
 
 sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my 
 furniture or fade my carpet, and if he is sometimes too warm a 
 friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some cur- 
 tain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the 
 details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but as 
 I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare 
 within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe 
 my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the 
 beginnings of evil. 
 
 Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's 
 effects, for his life had not been ineffectual : — 
 
 The evil that men do lives after them. 
 
 As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun 
 to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried 
 tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret 
 and other dust holes, these things were not burned ; instead of a 
 bonfire^ or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, 
 or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view 
 them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their 
 garrets and dustholes, to lie there till their estates are settled, 
 when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust. 
 The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be 
 profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the 
 semblance of casting their slough annually ; they have the idea 
 of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not 
 be well if we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first 
 fruits," as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the 
 Mucclasse Indians'? "When a town celebrates the busk," says 
 he, "having previously provided themselves with new clothes, 
 new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they 
 collect all their worn-out clothes and other despicable things, 
 sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, of 
 their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old pro- 
 
36 WALDEN 
 
 visions they cast together into one common heap, and consume 
 it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three 
 days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. During this fast 
 they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion 
 whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors 
 may return to their town. 
 
 "On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry 
 wood together, jDroduces new fire in the public square, from 
 whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new 
 and pure flame." 
 
 They then feast on the new corn and fruits and dance and 
 sing for three days, "and the four following days they receive 
 visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns 
 who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves." 
 
 The Mexicans also practiced a similar purification at the end 
 of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the 
 world to come to an end. 
 
 I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the 
 dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward 
 and spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt that they 
 were originally inspired directly from heaven to do thus, though 
 they have no Biblical record of the revelation. 
 
 For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by 
 the labor of my hands, and I found that by working about six 
 weeks in a year, I could meet alj the expenses of living. The 
 whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free 
 and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, 
 and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out 
 of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and 
 train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my 
 time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my 
 fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I 
 have tried trade ; but I found that it would take ten years to get 
 
ECONOMY 87 
 
 under way in that, and that then I should probably be on ray 
 way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that 
 time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I 
 was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad 
 experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh 
 in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously 
 of picking huckleberries ; that surely I could do, and its small 
 profits might suffice, — for my greatest skill has been to want but 
 little, — so little capital it required, so little distraction from my 
 wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances 
 went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contem- 
 plated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all 
 summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and there- 
 after carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of 
 Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, 
 or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of 
 the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since 
 learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though 
 you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade 
 attaches to the business. 
 
 As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued 
 my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not 
 wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine 
 furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the 
 Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no inter- 
 ruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them 
 when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are 
 "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or 
 perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such 
 I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know 
 what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might 
 advise to work twice as hard as they do, — ^work till they pay 
 for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found 
 that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent 
 
88 WALDEN 
 
 of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a 
 year to support one. The laborer's day ends with the going 
 down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his 
 chosen pursuit, independent of his labor ; but his employer, who 
 speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end 
 of the year to the other. 
 
 In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that 
 to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pas- 
 time, if we will live simply and wisely ; as the pursuits of the 
 simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is 
 not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of 
 his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do. 
 
 One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some 
 acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had 
 the means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living 
 on any account; for, besides that before he has fairly learned 
 it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there 
 may be as many different persons in the world as possible ; but 
 I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue 
 his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neigh- 
 bor's instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let 
 him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would 
 like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, 
 as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye ; 
 but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not 
 arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would 
 preserve the true course. 
 
 Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still 
 for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more 
 expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar 
 underlie, and one wall separate several apartments. But for my 
 part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will com- 
 monly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince 
 another of the advantage of the common wall; and when you 
 
ECONOMY 89 
 
 have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, must 
 be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neighbor, and 
 also not keep his side in repair. The only cooperation which 
 is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; 
 and what little true cooperation there is, is as if it were not, 
 being a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith he will 
 cooperate with equal faith every^vhere ; if he has not faith, he 
 will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever com- 
 pany he is joined to. To cooperate, in the highest as well as 
 the lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard it 
 proposed lately that two young men should travel together 
 over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he 
 went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying 
 a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they 
 could not long be companions or cooperate, since one would not 
 operate at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in 
 their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man who 
 goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another 
 must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time 
 before they get off. 
 
 But all this is verj^ selfish, I have heard some of my towns- 
 men say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in 
 jDhilanthropic enterprises. I. have made some sacrifices to a 
 sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure 
 also. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade 
 me to undertake the supi3ort of some jooor family in the town ; 
 and if I had nothing to do, — for the devil finds employment 
 for the idle, — I might try my hand at some such pastime as that. 
 However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, 
 and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining cer- 
 tain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain 
 myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, 
 they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. 
 
90 WALDEN 
 
 While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways 
 to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be 
 spared to other and less humane purs\iits. You must have a 
 genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing- 
 good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I 
 have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied 
 that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should 
 not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling 
 to do the good which society demands of me, to save the uni- 
 verse from annihilation ; and I believe that a like but infinitely 
 greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But 
 I would not stand between any man and his genius ; and to him 
 who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and 
 soul and life, I would say. Persevere, even if the world call it 
 doing evil, as it is most likely they will. 
 
 I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no 
 doubt many of my readers would make a similar defense. At 
 doing something, — I will not engage that my neighbors shall 
 pronounce it good, — I do not hesitate to say that I should be a 
 capital fellow to hire ; but what that is, it is for my employer to 
 find out. What good I do, in the common sense of that word, 
 must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly 
 unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are and 
 such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more 
 worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. If 
 I were to preach at all in this strain, I should say rather. Set 
 about being good. As if the sun should stop when he has kin- 
 dled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixtli 
 magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in 
 at every cottage window, inspiring' lunatics, and tainting meats, 
 and making darkness visible, in=:tend of steadilv increasing his 
 geni*^! heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no 
 mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the mean- 
 while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, 
 
ECONOMY 91 
 
 or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going 
 about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his 
 heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one 
 day, and drove out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks 
 of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the sur- 
 face of the earth, and dried up every spring, and made the great 
 desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled him headlong to 
 the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief at his 
 death, did not shine for a year. 
 
 There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness 
 tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a cer- 
 tainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious 
 design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that 
 dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, 
 which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till 
 you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good 
 done to me, — some of its virus mingled with my blood. No; — 
 in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man 
 is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be 
 starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of 
 a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a New- 
 foundland dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love 
 for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense. Howard was no 
 doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and has 
 his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred 
 Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not heljD us in our best 
 estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard 
 of a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed 
 to do any good to me, or the like of me. 
 
 The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being 
 burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torment to their 
 tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes 
 chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the 
 missionaries could offer ; and the law to do as you would be done 
 
92 WALDEN 
 
 by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for 
 their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their 
 enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely for- 
 giving them all they did. 
 
 Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though 
 it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give 
 money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to 
 them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor 
 man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and 
 gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. 
 If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. 
 I was wont to iDity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the 
 pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my 
 more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one 
 bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my 
 house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants 
 and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though 
 they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could 
 afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had 
 so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. 
 Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a 
 greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole 
 slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches 
 of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he 
 who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy 
 is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery 
 which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the j^ious slave-breeder 
 devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to bu}^ a Sunday's 
 liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by 
 employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if 
 they employed themselves there f You boast of spending a tenth 
 part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the 
 nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth 
 part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of 
 
ECONOMY 93 
 
 him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the 
 officers of justice? 
 
 Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently 
 appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated ; and it 
 is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one 
 sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, 
 because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. 
 The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than 
 its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend 
 lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after 
 enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, 
 Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, 
 speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession 
 required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, 
 as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and 
 Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. 
 The last were not England's best men and women; only, 
 perhaps, her best philanthropists. 
 
 I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to 
 philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their ■ 
 lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly 
 a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his 
 stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we 
 make herb tea for the sick, serve but a humble use, and are most 
 employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man ; that 
 some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripe- 
 ness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial 
 and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him 
 nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity which 
 hides a multitude of sins. The i^hilanthropist too often sur- 
 rounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs 
 as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our 
 courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our 
 disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. 
 
94 WALDEN 
 
 From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? 
 Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send 
 light ? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would 
 redeem ? If anything- ail a man, so that he does not perform his 
 functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even, — for that is the 
 seat of sympathy, — he forthwith sets about reforming — the 
 world. Being a microcosm himself, he discovers, and it is a 
 true discovery, and he is the man to make it, — that the world 
 has been eating green apples ; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself 
 is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of 
 that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and 
 straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimau 
 and the Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and 
 Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of jDhilanthropic 
 activity, the powers in the meanwhile using him for their own 
 ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe 
 acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were 
 beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more 
 sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity 
 • greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall 
 know, a worse man than myself. 
 
 I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sym- 
 pathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest 
 son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring- 
 come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will for- 
 sake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for 
 not lecturing against the use of tobacco is that I never chewed 
 it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to 
 pay; though there are things enough I have chewed, which I 
 could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any 
 of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what 
 your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the 
 drowning and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set 
 about some free labor. 
 
ECONOMY 95 
 
 Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the 
 saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of 
 God and enduring him forever. One would say that even the 
 prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than con- 
 firmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple 
 and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memor- 
 able praise of God. All health and success does me good, how- 
 ever far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and 
 failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much 
 sympathy it may have with me or I with it. If, then, we would 
 indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or 
 natural means, let us first be as simple and well as Nature our- 
 selves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and 
 take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an over- 
 seer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of 
 the world. 
 
 I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of 
 Shiraz, that "They asked a wise man, saying: Of the many cele- 
 brated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and 
 umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, 
 which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He 
 replied : Each has its approi:>riate produce, and appointed sea- 
 son, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, 
 and during their absence dry and withered ; to neither of which 
 states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of 
 this nature are the azads, or religious independents. — Fix not 
 thy heart on that which is transitory ; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, 
 will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is 
 extinct : if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree ; but 
 if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like 
 the cypress," 
 
96 WALDEN 
 
 COMPLEMENTAL VERSES 
 
 THE PRETENSIONS OF POVERTY 
 
 "Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, 
 To claim a station in the firmament, 
 Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, 
 Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue 
 In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, 
 With roots and pot-herbs ; where thy right hand. 
 Tearing those humane passions from the mind, 
 Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, 
 Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense. 
 And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. 
 We not require the dull society 
 Of your necessitated temperance. 
 Or that unnatural stupidity 
 That knows nor joy nor sorrow ; nor your f orc'd 
 Falsely exalted passive fortitude 
 Above the active. This low abject brood. 
 That fix their seats in mediocrity. 
 Become your servile minds; but w^e advance 
 Such virtues only as admit excess. 
 Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence. 
 All-seeing prudence, magnanimity 
 That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue 
 For which antiquity hath left no name. 
 But patterns only, such as Hercules, 
 Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell ; 
 And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, 
 Study to know but what those worthies were." 
 
 T. Carew. 
 
II 
 
 WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 
 
 At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider 
 every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed 
 the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. 
 In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for 
 all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over 
 each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on 
 husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, 
 mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on 
 it, — took everything but a deed of it, — took his word for his 
 deed, for I dearly love to talk, — cultivated it, and him too to 
 some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long 
 enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled 
 me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. 
 Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated 
 from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? — 
 better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house 
 not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought 
 too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far 
 from it. Well, there I might live, I said ; and there I did live,, 
 for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let 
 the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring- 
 come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they 
 may place their houses, may be sure that they have been antici- 
 pated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, 
 woodlot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines 
 should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted 
 
 97 
 
98 WALDEN 
 
 tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, 
 fallow perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number 
 of things which he can afford to let alone. 
 
 My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal 
 of several farms, — the refusal was all I wanted, — but I never 
 got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that 
 I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell 
 l^lace, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials 
 with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; 
 but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife — every 
 man has such a wife — changed her mind and Avished to keep 
 it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak 
 the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed 
 my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or 
 who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I 
 let him keep the ten dollars and the farm, too, for I had carried 
 it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm 
 for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, 
 made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, 
 and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus 
 that I had been a rich man without any damage to my property. 
 But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried 
 off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to 
 landscapes, — 
 
 I am monarch of all I survey, 
 My right there is none to dispute. 
 
 I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the 
 most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed 
 that he had got a few vsdld apples only. Why, the owner does 
 not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in 
 rime, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly 
 impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and 
 left the farmer only the skimmed milk. 
 
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 99 
 
 The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its' 
 complete retirement, being about two miles from the village, 
 half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the 
 highway by a broad field ; its bounding on the river, which the 
 owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the si3ring, 
 though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous 
 state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, Avhich 
 put such an interv^al between me and the last occupant; the 
 hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, g-nawed by rabbits, show- 
 ing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the 
 recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, 
 when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red 
 maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in 
 haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some 
 rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up 
 some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in 
 short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these 
 advantages I was ready to carry it on ; like Atlas, to take the 
 world on my shoulders, — I never heard what compensation he 
 received for that, — and do all those things w^hich had no other 
 motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested 
 in my possession of it ; for I knew all the while that it would 
 yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I could 
 only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said. 
 
 All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large 
 scale (I have always cultivated a garden), was that I had had 
 my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I 
 have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the 
 bad: and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to 
 be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, 
 As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but 
 little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the 
 county jail. 
 
 Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "cultivator," says, 
 
IQQ WALDEN 
 
 and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of 
 the passage, "When you think of getting a farm, turn it thus in 
 your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look 
 at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The 
 oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." 
 I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as 
 long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me 
 the more at last. 
 
 The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I 
 ]nirpose to describe more at length; for convenience, putting 
 the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not 
 propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as 
 chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake 
 my neighbors up. 
 
 When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began 
 to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, 
 was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my 
 house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defense 
 against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being 
 of rough weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made 
 it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly 
 planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, 
 especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with 
 dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would 
 exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout 
 the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of 
 a certain house on a mountain which I had visited the year 
 ])efore. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to enter- 
 lain a traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her gar- 
 ments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such 
 as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken 
 strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morn- 
 ing wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted ; 
 
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR IQl 
 
 but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside 
 of the earth everywhere. 
 
 The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except 
 a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excur- 
 sions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; 
 but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down 
 the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about 
 me I had made some progress toward settling in the world. 
 This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around 
 me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat 
 as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take 
 the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. 
 It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, 
 even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode 
 without birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such was not 
 my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; 
 not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near 
 them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly 
 frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and 
 more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, 
 serenade a villager, — the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet 
 tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others. 
 
 I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and 
 a half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher 
 than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and 
 Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known 
 to fame, Concord Battle Ground ; but I was so low in the woods 
 that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered 
 with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week, 
 whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn 
 high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the 
 surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing 
 off its mighty clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, 
 its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface were revealed, 
 
102 ^Xr-^ . WALDEN 
 
 while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing m every 
 €lireetion into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal 
 conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later 
 into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains. 
 
 This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the inter- 
 ^•als of a gentle rainstorm in August, when, both air and water 
 being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had 
 all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, 
 and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never 
 smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air 
 above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full 
 of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much 
 the more imjDortant. From a hilltop nearby, where the wood 
 had recently been cut off, theie was a pleasing vista southward 
 across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which 
 form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward 
 each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction 
 through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That 
 Avay I looked between and over the near green hills to some 
 distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, 
 by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the 
 ]:)eaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges" in 
 the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, 
 and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, 
 even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods 
 Avhich surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your 
 neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One 
 value even of the smallest well is that when you look into it 
 you see that the earth is not continent but insular. This is as 
 important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across 
 the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which 
 in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage 
 in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth 
 beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated 
 
WHEKE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 103 
 
 even by this small sheet of intervening water, and I was 
 reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land. 
 
 Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I 
 did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture 
 enough for my imagination. The low shrub-oak plateau to 
 which the opposite shore arose, stretched away toward the 
 prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording 
 ample room for all the roving families of men. "There are none 
 happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon,'' 
 — said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger 
 pastures. 
 
 Both place and time were changed and I dwelt nearer to 
 those parts of the universe and to those ears in history which 
 had most attracted me. Where I live was as far off as many a 
 region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine 
 rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial 
 corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's 
 Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my 
 house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new 
 and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the 
 while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, 
 to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal 
 remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and 
 twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be 
 seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of 
 creation where I had squatted: — 
 
 There was a shepherd that did live, 
 
 And held his thoughts as high 
 As were the mounts whereon his flocks 
 
 Did hourly feed him by. 
 
 What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always 
 wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts? 
 
 Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of 
 
104 WALDEN 
 
 ■ equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. 
 I have been as sincere a worshiper of Aurora as the Greeks. 
 I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious 
 exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that 
 characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching- 
 thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do 
 it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand 
 that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much 
 affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible 
 and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, 
 when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be 
 by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's 
 requiem ; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own 
 wrath and wanderings. 'There was something cosmical about 
 it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting 
 vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the 
 most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then 
 there is least somnolence in us ; and for an hour, at least, some 
 part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and 
 night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called 
 , a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the 
 mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by 
 our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, 
 accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of 
 factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air — to a higher 
 life than we fell asleeiD from; and thus the darkness bear its 
 fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That 
 man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, 
 more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has 
 despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening 
 way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul 
 of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and 
 his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All mem- 
 orable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a 
 
WHEKE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 105 
 
 monung atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake 
 with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most 
 memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All 
 poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and 
 emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous 
 thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morn- 
 ing. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and 
 labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a 
 dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. 
 "Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they 
 have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. 
 If they had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have 
 performed something. The millions are awake enough for phys- 
 ical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for 
 effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions 
 to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have 
 never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have 
 looked him in the face ? 
 
 We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not 
 by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, 
 which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of 
 no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of 
 man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something 
 to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, 
 and so to make a few objects beautiful ; but it is far more glo- 
 rious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium 
 through which we look, which morally we can do. To effect 
 the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man 
 is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the 
 contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we 
 refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, 
 the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done. 
 
 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to 
 front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn 
 
106 WALDEN 
 
 what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that 
 I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living- 
 is so dear ; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was 
 quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the 
 marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to 
 rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, 
 to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and 
 if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine 
 meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it 
 were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a 
 true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it 
 appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether 
 it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded 
 that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoA^ 
 him forever." 
 
 Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us 
 that we were long ago changed into men ; like pyg-mies we fight 
 with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and 
 our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable 
 wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest 
 man has hardlj^ need to count more than his ten fingers, or in 
 extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. 
 Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as 
 two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a 
 million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your 
 thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, 
 such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand- 
 and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he 
 would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port 
 at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator 
 indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three 
 meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred 
 dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is 
 like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its 
 
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 107 
 
 boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell 
 you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with 
 all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are 
 all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and over- 
 grown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up 
 by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by 
 want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households 
 in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid 
 economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and 
 elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is 
 essential that the Nation have comnaerce, and export ice, and 
 talk through a telegraiDh, and ride thirty miles an hour, without 
 a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live 
 like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not 
 get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights 
 to the work, but go to tinkering- upon our lives to improve tliem, 
 who will build railroads'? And if railroads are not built, how 
 shall we get to heaven in season ? But if we stay at home and 
 mind our business, who will want railroads'? We do not ride 
 on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what 
 those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a 
 man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on 
 them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly 
 over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every 
 few years a new lot is laid down and run over ; so that, if some 
 have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune 
 to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is 
 walking in his sleep, a supernumera7-y sleeper in the wrong 
 position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and 
 make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception, I 
 am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles 
 to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for 
 this is a sign that they may some time get up again. 
 
 Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life ? We 
 
108 WALDEN 
 
 are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say- 
 that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand 
 stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't 
 any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus dance, and 
 cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a 
 few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without 
 setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the out- 
 skirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements 
 which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, 
 nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and 
 follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, 
 but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since 
 burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire, — or 
 to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as hand- 
 somely ; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly 
 a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes 
 he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?" as if the 
 rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions 
 to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose; 
 and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After 
 a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. 
 "Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man any- 
 where on this globe," — and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, 
 that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the 
 Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the 
 dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the 
 rudiment of an eye himself. 
 
 For my part, I could easily do without the postoffice. I think 
 that there are very few important communications made through 
 it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two 
 letters in my life — I wrote this some years ago — that were 
 worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institu- 
 tion through which you seriously offer a man that penny for 
 his thought which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am 
 
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR 109 
 
 sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. 
 If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by acci- 
 dent, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steam- 
 boat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, 
 or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, 
 ■ — we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are 
 acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad 
 instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it 
 is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women 
 over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There 
 was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices 
 to learn the foreign news by the last aiTival, that several large 
 squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were 
 broken by the pressure, — news which I seriously think a ready 
 wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with 
 sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know 
 how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro 
 and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right propor- 
 tions, — they may have changed the names a little since I saw 
 the papers, — and serve up a bull-fight when other entertain- 
 ments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an 
 idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most 
 succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: 
 and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news 
 from that quarter was the revolution of 1649 ; and if you have 
 learned the history of her crops for an average year, you 
 never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations 
 are of a merely jDecuniary character. If one may judge who 
 I rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen 
 I in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted. 
 
 What news! how much more important to know what that 
 is which was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the 
 state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. 
 Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and 
 
110 WALDEN 
 
 questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? 
 The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to 
 diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the 
 end of them. The messenger being gone, the i^hilosopher 
 remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy mes- 
 senger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy 
 farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week, — for Sunday 
 is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent Aveek, and not the fresh and 
 brave beginning of a new one, — with this one other draggle- 
 tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, — "Pause ! 
 Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?" 
 
 Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while 
 reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities 
 only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare 
 it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and 
 the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only 
 what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would 
 resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, 
 we perceive that only gi^eat and worthy things have any per- 
 manent and absolute existence, — that petty fears and petty 
 pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always 
 exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, 
 and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and 
 confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which 
 still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who 
 play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than 
 men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are 
 wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo 
 book that "There was a king's son, who, being expelled in 
 infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, 
 growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to 
 belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his 
 father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what 
 he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, 
 
WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOK m 
 
 and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the 
 Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is 
 placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed 
 to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be 
 Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live 
 this mean life that we do because our vision does not j^enetrate 
 the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to 
 be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the 
 reality, where, think you, would be the "Mill-dam" go to? If 
 he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, 
 we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at 
 a meeting-house, or a courthouse, or a jail, or a shop, or a 
 dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true 
 gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. 
 Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind 
 the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In 
 eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all 
 these times and places and occasions are now and here. God 
 Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be 
 more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled 
 to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the 
 perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds 
 us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our 
 conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid 
 for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or 
 the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of 
 his posterity at least could accomplish it. 
 
 Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be 
 thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that 
 falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, 
 gently and without perturbation; let company come and let 
 company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, — deter- 
 mined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and 
 go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in 
 
112 WALDEN 
 
 that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in 
 the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, 
 for the rest of the way is downhill. With unrelaxed nerves,, 
 with morning' vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the 
 mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till 
 it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we 
 run ? We will consider what kind of music they are alike. Let 
 us settle ourselves, and w^ork and wedge our feet downward 
 through the mud and slush of opinion, and jjrejudice, and 
 tradition, and delusion and appearance, that alluvion which 
 covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York 
 and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through 
 poetry and philosojDhy and religion, till we come to a hard 
 bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say. 
 This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, 
 below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found 
 a Avail or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, 
 not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know 
 how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered 
 from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to 
 face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, 
 as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you 
 through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude 
 your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. 
 If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and 
 feel cold in the extremities ; if we are alive, let us go about our 
 business. 
 
 Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but 
 while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. 
 Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would 
 drink deeper ; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. 
 I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet, 
 I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the 
 day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver ; it discerns and rifts 
 
WHEEE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR II3 
 
 its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more 
 busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and 
 feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct 
 tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some crea- 
 tures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine 
 and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest 
 vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin 
 rising vapors I judge j and here I will begin to mine, 
 
Ill 
 
 READING 
 
 "With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, 
 all men would perhaps become essentially students and observ- 
 ers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting' to all 
 alike. In accumulating jiroperty for ourselves or our posterity, 
 in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are 
 mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need 
 fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo 
 philoso]^her raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the 
 divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze 
 upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was 
 then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. 
 No dust has settled on that robe ; no time has elapsed since that 
 divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or 
 which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future. 
 
 My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but 
 to serious reading, than a university ; and though I was beyond 
 the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than 
 ever come within the influence of those books which circulate 
 round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, 
 and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. 
 Says the poet Mir Camar Uddin Mast, "Being seated to run 
 through the region of the spiritual world ; I have had this advan- 
 tage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I 
 have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor 
 of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my table 
 through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and 
 
 114 
 
READING 115 
 
 then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my 
 house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more 
 study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by tiie prospect of 
 such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of 
 travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made 
 me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that / 
 lived. 
 
 The student may read Homer or yEsehylus in the Greek with- 
 out danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that 
 he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morn- 
 ing hours to their jDages. The heroic books, even if printed in 
 the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language 
 dead to degenerate . times ; and we must laboriously seek the 
 meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than 
 common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and gen- 
 erosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all 
 its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic 
 writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in 
 which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth 
 the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn 
 only some Avords of an ancient language, which are raised out 
 of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions 
 and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers 
 and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men 
 sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length 
 make way for more modern and practical studies; but the 
 adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever 
 language they may be written and however ancient they may be. 
 For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of 
 man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and 
 there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as 
 Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to 
 study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read 
 true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will 
 
lie WALDEN 
 
 task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of 
 the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes 
 underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this 
 ohjeet. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as 
 tliey were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak 
 the language of that nation by which they are written, for there 
 is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written 
 language, the language heard and the language read. The one 
 is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, 
 almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, 
 of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of 
 that; if that is our mother tong-ue, this is our father tongue, 
 a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by 
 the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The 
 crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues 
 in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth 
 to read the works of genius written in those languages; for 
 these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, 
 ]3ut in the select language of literature. They had not learned 
 the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials 
 on which they were written were waste paper to them, and 
 they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when 
 the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude 
 written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of 
 their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars 
 Avere enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of 
 antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not 
 hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, aiid a few 
 scholars only are still reading it. 
 
 However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts 
 of eloquence, the noblest Avritten words are commonly as far 
 behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament 
 with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and 
 they who can may read them. The astronomers forever com- 
 
KEADING 117 
 
 meut on and observe them. They are not exhalations like 
 our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called elo- 
 quence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the 
 study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient 
 occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can 
 hear him ; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occa- 
 sion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd 
 which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of 
 mankind, to all in any age who can understand him. 
 
 No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his 
 expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choic- 
 est of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us 
 and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work 
 of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every 
 language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all 
 human lips; — not be represented on canvas or in marble only, 
 but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of 
 an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two 
 thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian 
 literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal 
 tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmos- 
 phere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of 
 time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit 
 inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and 
 the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every 
 cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while 
 they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will 
 not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible 
 aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, 
 exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps 
 scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his cov- 
 eted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of 
 wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still 
 higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and 
 
118 WALDEN 
 
 is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity 
 and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good 
 sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that 
 intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it 
 is that he becomes the founder of a family. 
 
 Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in 
 the language in which they were written must have a very 
 imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it 
 is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made 
 into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be 
 regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been 
 printed in English, nor ^^sehylus, nor Virgil even, — works as 
 refined, as solidly done, find as beautiful almost as the morn- 
 ing itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, 
 have rarely, if ever, equaled the elaborate beauty and finish 
 and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They 
 only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be 
 soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the 
 genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. 
 That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call 
 Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less 
 known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accu- 
 mulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and 
 Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shake- 
 speares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively 
 deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a 
 pile we may hope to scale heaven at last. 
 
 The works of the great poets have never yet been read by 
 mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only 
 been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, 
 not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve 
 a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order 
 to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade ; but of reading as 
 a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet 
 
READING 119 
 
 this only is reading', in a high sense, not that which lulls us as 
 a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but 
 what we have to stand on tiptoe to read and devote our most 
 alert and wakeful hours to. 
 
 I think that having learned our letters we should read the best 
 that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, 
 and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting 
 on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are 
 satisfied if they read or hear read, and jjerchance have been 
 convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for 
 the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in 
 what is called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes 
 in our Circulating Library entitled Little Reading, which I 
 thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been 
 to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can 
 digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats 
 and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others 
 are the machines to provide this provender, they are the 
 machines to read it. They read the nine thousandth tale about 
 Zebulon and Sephronia, and how they loved as none had ever 
 loved before, and neither did the course of their true love rim 
 smooth, — at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up 
 again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a 
 jteeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; 
 and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist 
 rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear. O 
 dear ! how he did get dow^n again ! For my jDart, I think that 
 they had better metamorjDhose all such aspiring heroes of uni- 
 versal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put 
 heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there 
 till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest 
 men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the 
 bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. "The 
 Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by 
 
120 WALDEN 
 
 the celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan/ to appear in monthly 
 parts; a great rush; don't all come together." All this they 
 read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and 
 with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no 
 sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two- 
 cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella, — without any improve- 
 ment, that I can see, the j^ronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, 
 or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The 
 result is dullness of sight, as stagnation of the vital circulations, 
 and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual 
 faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more 
 sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every 
 oven, and finds a surer market. 
 
 The best books are not read even by those who are called good 
 readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There 
 is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the 
 best or for very good books even in English literature, whose 
 words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so 
 called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really 
 little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for 
 the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, 
 which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the 
 feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with 
 them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a 
 French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, 
 but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by 
 birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he 
 can do in this world, he says, besides this, to keep up and add 
 to his English. This is about as much as the college-bred gen- 
 ora]lv do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for 
 lliG purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps 
 ono of the best English books will find how many with whom 
 ^ can converse about it. Or suppose he comes from reading 
 
 Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are 
 
READING 121 
 
 familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody 
 at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, 
 there is hardly the professor in our colleges who, if he has 
 mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionately 
 mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, 
 and has any sympathy to impart the alert and heroic reader; 
 and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who 
 in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not 
 know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. 
 A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up 
 a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest 
 men of antiquitj'- have uttered, and whose worth the wise of 
 every succeeding age have assured us of; — and yet we learn 
 to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class- 
 books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and 
 story books, which are for boys and beginners ; and our reading, 
 our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, 
 worthy only of pygmies and manikins. 
 
 I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Con- 
 cord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. 
 Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As 
 if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him, — my next 
 neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wis- 
 dom of his words. But how actually is it ? His Dialogues, 
 which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, 
 and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived 
 and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any 
 very broad distinction between the illiterateness of -my towns- 
 man who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who 
 has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intel-. 
 lects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but 
 partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race 
 of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights 
 than the columns of the daily paper. 
 
122 WALDEN 
 
 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There 
 are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, 
 if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary 
 than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a 
 new asi^ect on the face of things for us. How many a man has 
 dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The 
 book exists for us j^erchance which will explain our miracles 
 and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we 
 may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb 
 and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all 
 tlie wise men ; not one has been omitted ; and each has answered 
 them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. More- 
 over, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired 
 man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his 
 second birth and x^eculiar religious experience, and is driven 
 as he believes into silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, 
 may tliink it is not true ; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, 
 traveled the same road and had the same experience; but he, 
 being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors 
 accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established 
 worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster 
 then, and, through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, 
 with Jesus Christ Himself, and let "our church" go by the 
 board. 
 
 We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are 
 making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider 
 how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish 
 to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that 
 will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked, — 
 goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a compara- 
 tively decent system of common schools, schools for infants 
 only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, 
 and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the 
 state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any 
 
READING 123 
 
 article of bodily aliment or ailment than on onr mental aliment. 
 It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave 
 off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is 
 time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants 
 the fellows of universities, with leisure — if they are indeed 
 so well off — to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. 
 Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever ? 
 Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education 
 under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard 
 to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and 
 tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our 
 education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should 
 in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. 
 It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It 
 wants only the magnanimit}^ and refinement. It can spend 
 money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, 
 but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things 
 which more intelligent men know to be far more worth. This 
 town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a townhouse, 
 thank fortune or politics, but jirobably it will not spend so 
 much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a 
 hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annu- 
 ally subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than 
 any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nine- 
 teenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which 
 the nineteenth century offers? Why should our life be in any 
 respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skijD 
 the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world 
 at once? — not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, 
 or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the 
 reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see 
 if they know anything. Why should we leave it to Harper & 
 Brothers and Redding & Company to select our reading? As 
 the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with what- 
 
124 WALDEN 
 
 ever conduces to his culture, — genius — learning — wit — books — 
 paintings — statuary — music — philosophical instruments, and the 
 like; so let the village do, — not stop short at a pedagogue, a 
 parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because 
 our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a 
 bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the 
 spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our cir- 
 cumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than 
 the nobleman's. New England can hire all the wise men in the 
 world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, 
 and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we 
 want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. 
 If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a 
 little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of 
 isiiorance which surrounds us. 
 
IV 
 SOUNDS 
 
 But while we are confined to books, though the most select 
 and classic, and read only particular written languages, which 
 are themselves but dialects and provincial, w^e are in danger 
 of forgetting the language which all things and events speak 
 without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much 
 is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through 
 the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is 
 wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the 
 necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of 
 history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, 
 or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, com- 
 pared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be 
 seen ? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer ? Read 
 your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity. 
 
 I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, 
 I often did better than this. There were times when I could 
 not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any 
 work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to 
 my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my 
 accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till 
 noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and 
 sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds 
 sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the 
 sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some trav- 
 eler's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the 
 lapse of time. I grcAV in those seasons like corn in the night, 
 
 125 
 
126 WALDEK 
 
 and they were far better than any work of the hands would 
 have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but 
 so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what 
 the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of 
 works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. 
 The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was 
 morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is 
 accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently 
 smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its 
 trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle 
 or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My 
 days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any 
 heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted 
 by the ticking of a clock ; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of 
 whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they 
 have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning 
 by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for tomorrow, 
 and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness 
 to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt ; but if the birds and flowers 
 had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found 
 wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. 
 The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his 
 indolence. 
 
 I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those 
 who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and 
 the theater, that my life itself was become my amusement and 
 never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and 
 without an end. If we were always indeed getting our living, 
 and resrulating our lives according to the last and best mode 
 we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follo>^^ 
 your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a 
 fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. 
 When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my 
 furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making 
 
SOUNDS 127 
 
 but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white 
 sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it 
 clean and white ; and by the time the villagers had broken their 
 fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow 
 me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninter- 
 rupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out 
 on the gTass, making- a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my 
 three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and 
 pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They 
 seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be 
 brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning 
 over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to 
 see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow 
 on them ; so much more interesting most familiar objects look 
 outdoors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life- 
 everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run 
 round its legs ; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves 
 are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms 
 came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and 
 bedstead, — because they once stood in their midst. 
 
 My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge 
 of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines 
 and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a 
 narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the 
 strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and 
 goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and ground- 
 nut. Near the end of May, the sand-cherry (cerasus pumila) 
 adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged 
 in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the 
 fall, weighed down with good-sized and handsome cherries, 
 fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out 
 of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. 
 The sumach (rhus glabra) grew luxuriantly about the house, 
 pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and 
 
128 ' WALDEN 
 
 growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate 
 tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The 
 large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry 
 sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as 
 by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in 
 diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heed- 
 lessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh 
 and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when 
 there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own 
 weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, when 
 in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed 
 th.eir bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again 
 bent down and broke the tender limbs. 
 
 As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are cir- 
 cling about mj' clearing; the tantivy of wikl pigeons, flying by 
 twos and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the 
 white-pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air ; 
 a fishhawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings 
 up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and 
 seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight 
 of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last 
 half hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying 
 away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying 
 travelers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so 
 out of the world as that bo}^ who, as I hear, w^as put out to a 
 farmer in the east part of the town, but ere long ran away 
 and came home again, quite down at the heel and homesick. He 
 had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place ; the folks 
 were all gone off; why, yon couldn't even hear the whistle! I 
 doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now : — 
 
 In truth, our village has become a butt 
 * For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o 'er 
 Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord. 
 
SOUNDS 129 
 
 The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a Hundred 
 rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along 
 its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. 
 The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length 
 of the road, bow to me as an old acquaintance, they pass me so 
 often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so 
 I am. I, too, would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the 
 orbit of the earth. 
 
 The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer 
 and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over 
 some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city 
 merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adven- 
 turous country traders from the other side. As they come 
 under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the 
 track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of 
 two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, 
 countiymen! Nor is there any man so independent on 
 his farm that he can say them nay. And here's your pay 
 for them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like 
 long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the 
 city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weaiy and 
 heavy laden that dwell within them. With such huge and 
 lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All 
 the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry 
 meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, 
 down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the 
 woolen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that 
 writes them. 
 
 When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off 
 with planetary motion, — or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder 
 knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it wilt 
 ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a 
 returning curve, — with its steam cloud like a banner streaming 
 behind in golden and silver wreaths, .like many a downy cloud 
 
130 WALDEN 
 
 which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to 
 the light, — as if this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller, 
 would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train ; 
 when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort 
 like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire 
 and smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged horse or fiery 
 dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don't know), 
 it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. 
 If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their serv- 
 ants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine 
 were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that 
 which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements and 
 Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands 
 and be their escort. 
 
 I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling 
 that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. 
 Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher 
 and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, 
 conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the 
 shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars 
 which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler 
 of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light 
 of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed 
 Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital heat in him 
 and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is 
 early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snow-shoes, 
 and with the giant plow plow a furrow from the mountains 
 to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, 
 sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the 
 country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the country, 
 stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by 
 his trauip and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote 
 glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and 
 snow ; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to 
 
SOUNDS 131 
 
 start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or per- 
 chance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the 
 superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and 
 cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the 
 enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted 
 and unwearied ! 
 
 Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, 
 where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest 
 night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their 
 inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station- 
 house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the 
 next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The start- 
 ings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village 
 day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and 
 their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their 
 clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regu- 
 lates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in 
 punctuality since the railroad was invented ? Do they not talk 
 and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? 
 There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former 
 place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought ; 
 that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once 
 for all, would never go to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, 
 are on hand when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" 
 is now the by-word ; and it is worth the while to be warned so 
 often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There 
 is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of 
 the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, 
 that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) 
 Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts 
 will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it 
 interferes with no man's business, and the children go to school 
 on the other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all edu- 
 cated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. 
 
132 WALDEN 
 
 Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your 
 own track, then. 
 
 What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and 
 bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I 
 see these men every day go about their business with more or 
 less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, 
 and perchance better employed than they could have consciously 
 devised. I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for 
 half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista than by the 
 steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow- 
 plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three 
 o'clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was 
 the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who 
 go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their 
 iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow, 
 perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I hear 
 the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of 
 their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, 
 without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England 
 northeast snow storm, and I behold the plowmen covered with 
 snow and rime, their heads peering above the mold-board which 
 is turning down other than daisies and the nests of fieldmice, 
 like bouldei-s of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place 
 in the universe. 
 
 Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adven- 
 turous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, 
 far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental 
 experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed 
 and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell 
 the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from 
 Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign 
 parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, 
 and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the 
 world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many 
 
SOUNDS 133 
 
 flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp 
 and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gninny bags, scrap iron, and 
 rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is more legible and inter- 
 esting now than if they should be wrought into paper and 
 printed books. Who can Avrite so graphically the history of 
 the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They 
 are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber 
 from the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last 
 freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did 
 go out or was split up : pine, spruce, cedar, — first, second, third, 
 and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over 
 the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, 
 a prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets 
 slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the 
 lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend,- the final 
 result of dress, — of patterns which are now no longer cried up, 
 unless it be in Milwaukie, as those splendid articles, English, 
 French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered 
 from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, going to become 
 paper of one color or a few shades only, on which forsooth will 
 be written tales of real life, high and low, and founded on fact ! 
 This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New England and 
 commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and the 
 fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for 
 this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perse- 
 verance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep 
 or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster 
 shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain behind 
 it, — and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up 
 by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at 
 last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, 
 vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snow- 
 flake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an 
 excellent dun fish for a Saturday's dinner. Next Spanish hides, 
 
134 WALDEN 
 
 with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of eleva- 
 tion they had when the oxen that wore them Avere careering 
 over the pampas of the Spanish main, — a type of all obstinacy, 
 and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all consti- 
 tutional vices. I confess that, practically speaking, when I 
 have learned a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of chang- 
 ing it for the better or worse in this state of existence. As the 
 Orientals say, "A cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, and 
 bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' labor 
 bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form." The only 
 effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails exhibit is to 
 make glue of them, which I believe is what is usually done with 
 them, and then they will stay put and stick. Here is a hogs- 
 head of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttings- 
 ville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who 
 imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance 
 stands over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the 
 coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his custom- 
 ers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before this 
 morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality. 
 It is advertised in the Cutting-sville Times. 
 
 While these things go up other things come down. Warned 
 by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book and see some 
 tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its way 
 over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an 
 arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarce 
 another eye beholds it ; going 
 
 to be the mast 
 Of some great ammiraJ. 
 
 And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a 
 thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, 
 drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of 
 their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like 
 
SOUNDS • 135 
 
 leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The 
 air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hus- 
 tling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. When the 
 old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do 
 indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. A carload 
 of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves now, 
 their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as 
 their badges of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a 
 stampede to them; they are quite thrown out; they have lost 
 the scent. Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peterboro 
 Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green Mountains. 
 They will not be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone. 
 Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will slink 
 back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and 
 strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral 
 life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get 
 off the track and let the cars go by : — 
 
 Wliat 's the railroad to me? 
 
 I never go to see 
 
 Where it ends. 
 
 It fills a few hollows, 
 
 And makes banks for the swallows, 
 
 It sets the sand a-blowing, 
 
 And the blackberries a-growing, 
 
 but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my 
 eyes put out and m}^ ears si:)oiled by its smoke and steam and 
 
 Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with 
 them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, 
 I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, 
 perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle 
 of a carriage or team along the distant highway. 
 
 Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, 
 
136 WALDEN 
 
 Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, 
 sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the 
 wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound 
 acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the 
 horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound 
 heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the 
 same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the inter- 
 vening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to 
 our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me 
 in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had 
 conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion 
 of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated 
 and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an 
 original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is 
 not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, 
 but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and 
 notes sung by a wood-nymph. 
 
 At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon 
 beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I 
 would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom 
 I was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hill and 
 dale ; but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was 
 prolonged into the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do 
 not mean to be satirical, but to express my appreciation of those 
 youths' singing, when I state that I perceived clearly that it was 
 akin to the music of the cow, and they were at length one articu- 
 lation of Nature. 
 
 Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer, 
 after the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills chanted 
 their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, 
 or upon the ridge pole of the house. They would begin to sing 
 almost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes 
 of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every 
 evening. T had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with 
 
SOUNDS 137 
 
 their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different 
 parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so 
 near me that 1 distinguished not only the cluck after each note, 
 but often that singuhir buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's 
 Aveb, only jDroportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle 
 round and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if 
 tethered by a string, when probably I was near its eggs. They 
 sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musi- 
 cal as ever just before and about dawn. 
 
 "When other birds are still the screech owls take up the strain, 
 like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream 
 is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest 
 and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a 
 most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide 
 lovers remembering tlie pangs and delights of supernal love in 
 the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their dole- 
 ful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me some- 
 times of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and 
 tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be 
 sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy fore- 
 bodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked 
 the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their 
 sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of 
 tlieir transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety 
 and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. 
 Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this 
 side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to 
 some new jDerch on the gray oaks. Then — that I never d been 
 hor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side Avith tremulous 
 sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lin- 
 coln woods. 
 
 I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you 
 could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she 
 meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir 
 
138 WALDEN 
 
 the dying moans of a human being, — some poor weak relic of 
 mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, 
 yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more 
 awful by a certain g-urgling melodiousness, — I find myself begin- 
 ning with the letters gi when I try to imitate it, — expressive of 
 a mind which has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in the 
 mortification of all healthy arid courageous thought. It reminded 
 me of ghouls and idiots and insane bowlings. But now one 
 answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by 
 distance, — Hoo hoo hoo hoorer lioo ; and indeed for the most 
 part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by 
 day or night, summer or winter. 
 
 I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and 
 maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to 
 swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting 
 a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. 
 They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which 
 all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some 
 savage SAvamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea 
 lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps 
 amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk be- 
 neath; but now a more dismal .and fitting day dawns, and a 
 different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of 
 Nature there. 
 
 Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons 
 over bridges, — a sound heard farther than almost any other at 
 night, — the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of 
 some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean- 
 while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdj^ 
 spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, 
 trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake, — if the Walden 
 nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are 
 almost no weeds, there are frogs there, — who would fain keep 
 up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their 
 
SOUNDS 139 
 
 voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly gi-ave, mocking at mirth, 
 and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquid to dis- 
 tend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to 
 drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and water- 
 loggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, with his chin 
 upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling 
 chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of 
 the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the 
 ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway 
 comes over the water from some distant cove the same pass- 
 word repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped 
 down to his mark ; and when this observance has made the cir- 
 cuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of the ceremonies, 
 with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the 
 same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest- 
 paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the bowl goes 
 round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning 
 mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly 
 bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply. 
 I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing 
 from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the 
 while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. 
 The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most 
 remarkable of any bird's, and if they could be naturalized with- 
 out being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous 
 sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and 
 the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the 
 hens to fill the pauses when their lord's clarion rested! No 
 wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock, — to say 
 nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morn- 
 ing in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, 
 and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill 
 for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes 
 of other birds, — think of it ! It would put nations on the alert. 
 
140 WALDEN 
 
 Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier 
 every successive day of liis life, till he became unspeakably 
 healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird's note is cele- 
 brated by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their 
 native songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. 
 He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever 
 good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor 
 on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its 
 shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither 
 dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there 
 was a deficiency of domestic sounds ; neither the churn, nor the 
 spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hiss- 
 ing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An old- 
 fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before 
 this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or 
 rather were never baited in, — only squirrels on the roof and 
 under the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay 
 screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the 
 house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a flock of wild geese 
 or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. 
 Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever 
 visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in 
 the yard. No yard ! but unf enced Nature reaching up to your 
 very sills. A young forest growing up under your windows, 
 and wild sumach and blackberry vines breaking through into 
 your cellar; sturdy pitch-pines rubbing and creaking against 
 the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under 
 the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the 
 gale, — a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind 
 your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate 
 in the Great Snow, — no gate — no front-yard, — and no path to 
 the civilized world ! 
 
SOLITUDE 
 
 This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, 
 and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with 
 a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along 
 the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is 
 cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to 
 attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The 
 bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whip- 
 poorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. 
 Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost 
 takes away my breath ; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled 
 but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind 
 are as remote from storm as the smooth * reflecting surface. 
 Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the 
 wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with 
 their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals 
 do not repose, but seek their prey now ; the fox, and skunk, and 
 rabbit now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are 
 Nature's watchmen, — links which connect the daj^s of animated 
 life. 
 
 When I return to my house I find that visitors have been 
 there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath 
 of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yelloAv walnut leaf or 
 chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece 
 of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which 
 they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled 
 a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my 
 
 141 
 
142 WALDEN 
 
 table. I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, 
 either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, 
 and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some 
 slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass 
 plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half 
 a mile distant, or bj^ the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. 
 Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveler along 
 the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe. 
 
 There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is 
 never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our 
 door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar 
 and worn by ns, appropriated and fenced in some way, and 
 reclaimed from Nature. For what reason liave I this vast range 
 and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for mj'' 
 privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a" 
 mile distant, and no house is ^dsible from any place but the 
 hill tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon 
 bounded by woods all to myfeelf ; a distant vieAV of the railroad 
 where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence 
 which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most 
 part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as 
 much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my 
 own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. 
 At night there was never a traveler passed my house, or knocked 
 at my door, more than if I were the first or last man ; unless it 
 were in the spring, when at long intervals some came from the 
 village to fish for pouts, — they plainly fished much more in the 
 Walden Pond of their own natures, and baited their hooks wdth 
 darkness, — but they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, 
 and left "the world to darkness and to me." and the black kernel 
 of the night was never profaned by any human neighborhood. 
 I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, 
 though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles 
 have been introduced. 
 
SOLITUDE 143 
 
 Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, 
 the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any 
 natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melan- 
 choly man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who 
 lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was 
 never yet such a storm but it was JEolian music to a healthy 
 and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and 
 brave man to a vulgar sadness. "While I enjoy the friendship 
 of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to 
 me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in 
 the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me, 
 too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth 
 than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the 
 seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low- 
 lands, it would still be good for the gTass on the uplands, and, 
 being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, 
 when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were 
 more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I 
 am conscious of ; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands 
 which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and 
 guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they 
 flatter me." I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed 
 b}^ a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after 
 I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near 
 neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy 
 life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the 
 same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed 
 to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while 
 these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet 
 and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the 
 drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite 
 and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere 
 sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neigh- 
 borhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. 
 
144 WALDEN 
 
 Eveiy little pine needle exj^anded and swelled with sympathy 
 and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the pres- 
 ence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are 
 accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of 
 blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that 
 I thought no place could ever be strange to me again. — 
 
 Mourning untimely consumes the sad; 
 Few are their days in the land of the living, 
 Beautiful daughter of Tosear. 
 
 Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain 
 storms in the spring or fall, whioh confined me to the house 
 for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their 
 ceaseless roar and pelting ; when an early twilight ushered in a 
 long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and 
 unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried 
 the village houses so, when the maid stood ready with mop and 
 ])ail in front of entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my 
 door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly 
 enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the light- 
 ning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very 
 conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to 
 bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as 
 you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other 
 day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that 
 mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resist- 
 less bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. 
 Men frequently say to me, ^'I should think you would feel lone- 
 some down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and 
 snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to 
 such, — This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. 
 How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabit- 
 ants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appre- 
 ciated by our instruments'? Why should I feel lonely? is not 
 
SOLITUDE 145 
 
 our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to 
 me not to be the most important question. What sort of space 
 is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him 
 solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring 
 two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most 
 to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post- 
 office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the 
 grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most con- 
 gregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all 
 our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands 
 near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This 
 will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a 
 wise man will dig his cellar. ... I one evening overtook one 
 of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called "a hand- 
 some proi^erty," — though I never got a fair view of it, — on the 
 Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired 
 of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the 
 comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it 
 passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my 
 bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the 
 mud to Brighton, — or Bright-town, — Avhich place he would reach 
 some time in the morning. 
 
 Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man 
 makes indifferent all times and i:)laces. The place where that 
 may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all 
 our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and tran- 
 sient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, 
 the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power 
 which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are 
 continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman 
 whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the 
 workman whose work we are. 
 
 "How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile })owers 
 of Heaven and of Earth !" 
 
146 WALDEN 
 
 "We seek to perceive tliem, and we do not see them ; we seek 
 to hear them, and we do not hear them ; identified with the sub- 
 stance of things, they cannot be separated from them." 
 
 "They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify 
 their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to 
 offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean 
 of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our 
 left, on our right; they environ us on all sides." 
 
 We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little 
 interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our 
 gossips a little while under these circumstances, — have our own 
 thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not 
 remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have 
 neighbors." 
 
 With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. 
 By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from 
 actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, 
 go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. 
 I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the 
 sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhi- 
 bition; on the other hand, I may not he affected by an actual 
 event which appears to concern me much more. I only know 
 myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts 
 and affections ; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which 
 I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However 
 intense my experience, I. am conscious of the presence of any 
 criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, 
 but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it ; and 
 that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the 
 tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a 
 kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he 
 was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neigh- 
 bors and friends sometimes. 
 
 I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. 
 
SOLITUDE 147 
 
 To be in eompauy, even with the best, is soon wearisome and 
 dissij^ating'. I love to be alone. 1 never found the companion 
 that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most 
 part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we 
 stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always 
 alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by 
 the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. 
 The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cam- 
 bridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The 
 farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing* 
 or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is emploj^ed; 
 but when he comes, home at night he cannot sit down in a room 
 alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can 
 "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, him- 
 self for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the stu- 
 dent can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day 
 without ennui and "the blues" ; but he does not realize that the 
 student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and 
 chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks 
 the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it 
 may be a more condensed form of it. 
 
 Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short inter- 
 vals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each 
 other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other 
 a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have to 
 agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, 
 to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not 
 come to open war. We meet at the postoffice, and at the sociable, 
 and about the fireside every night ; we live thick and are in each 
 other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we 
 thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency 
 would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Con- 
 sider the girls in a factory, — never alone, hardly in their dreams. 
 It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square . 
 
148 WALDEN 
 
 mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that 
 we should touch him. 
 
 I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine 
 and exliaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was 
 relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily 
 weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which 
 he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental 
 health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like 
 but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we 
 are never alone. 
 
 I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in 
 the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few com- 
 parisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. 
 I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so 
 loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that 
 lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but 
 the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is 
 alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to 
 be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone, — but the devil, he 
 is far from being alone ; he sees a great deal of company ; he is 
 legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion 
 in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble- 
 bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, 
 or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a 
 January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. 
 
 T have occasional Adsits in the long winter evenings, when the 
 snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old 
 settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug 
 Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; 
 who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and be- 
 tween us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth 
 and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, — a 
 most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps 
 himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley ; and though 
 
SOLITUDE 149 
 
 he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An 
 elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most 
 l^ersons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll some- 
 times, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she 
 has a genius of unequaled fertility, and her memory runs back 
 farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of 
 every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the 
 incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old 
 dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likelj^ to 
 outlive all her children yet. 
 
 The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, — of 
 sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, — such health, 
 such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they 
 ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the 
 sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and 
 the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put 
 on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just 
 cause giieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am 
 I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself? 
 
 What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? 
 Not my or thy gTeat-grandfather's, but our gi-eat-grandmother 
 Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she 
 has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in 
 her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For 
 my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture 
 dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of 
 those long shallow black-schooner-looking wagons which we 
 sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of 
 undiluted morning air. Morning air ! If men will not drink of 
 this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even 
 bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those 
 who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this 
 world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even 
 in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that 
 
150 WALDEN 
 
 and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshiper 
 of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doetor ^seu- 
 lajnus, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent 
 in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent 
 sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, 
 Avho was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had 
 the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She 
 was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, 
 and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever, 
 she came it was spring. 
 
VI 
 
 VISITORS 
 
 I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready 
 enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any 
 full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no 
 hermitj but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of 
 the bar-room, if my business called me thither. 
 
 I had three chairs in my house : one for solitude, two for 
 friendship, three for societj^. When visitors came in larger and 
 unexpected numbers, there was but the third chair for them all, 
 but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is 
 surprising how many great men and women a small house will 
 contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their 
 bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without 
 being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many 
 of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innu- 
 merable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the 
 storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me 
 extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and 
 magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest 
 them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons 
 before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come 
 creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous 
 mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement. 
 
 One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a 
 house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my 
 guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. 
 You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and 
 run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet 
 
 151 
 
152 WALDEN 
 
 of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet 
 motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it 
 reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through 
 the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to 
 unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, 
 like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, 
 even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found 
 it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a comi:)anion on 
 the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we could 
 not begin to hear, — we could not speak low enough to be heard ; 
 as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they 
 break each other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious 
 and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near togetlier, 
 cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak 
 reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that 
 all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. 
 If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each 
 of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not 
 only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot 
 possibly hear each other's voice in any case. Referred to this 
 standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard 
 of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say 
 if we have to shout. As the conversation began to assume a 
 loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther 
 apart till they touched the Avail in oj^posite corners, and then 
 commonly there was not room enough. 
 
 My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always 
 ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the 
 pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, Avhen 
 distingTiished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic 
 swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in 
 order. 
 
 If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal 
 and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty- 
 
VISITORS 153 
 
 pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread 
 in the ashes, in the meanwhile. But if twenty came and sat in 
 ray house, there was nothing said about dinner, though there 
 might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a 
 forsaken habit; but we naturally practiced abstinence; and this 
 was never felt to be an offense against hospitality, but the most 
 ]n-oper and considerate course. The waste and decay of physical 
 life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded 
 in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its gTound. I could 
 entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever 
 went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they 
 found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized 
 with them, at least. So easy is it, though many housekeepers 
 doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the 
 old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. 
 For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from 
 frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, 
 as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be 
 a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. 
 I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to 
 have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which 
 one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card : 
 
 Arrived there, the little house they fill, 
 
 Ne looke for entertainment where none was; 
 
 Rest is their feast, and all things at their will : 
 The noblest mind the best contentment has. 
 
 When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plj^mouth Colony, 
 went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on 
 foot through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his 
 lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was 
 said about eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote 
 their own words, — "He laid us on the bed with himself and his 
 wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only 
 
154 WALDEN 
 
 plank, laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. 
 Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and 
 upon us ; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of 
 our journey." At one o'clock the next day Massasoit "brought 
 two fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big as a bream; 
 "these being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share 
 in them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had in two 
 nights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, 
 we had taken our journey fasting." Fearing that they would be 
 light-headed for want of food and also sleep, owing to "the 
 savages' barbarous singing (for they used to sing themselves 
 asleep)," and that they might get home Avhile they had strength 
 to travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were 
 but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconve- 
 nience was no doubt intended for an honor; but as far as eating 
 was concerned, I do not see how the Indians could have done 
 better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser 
 than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to 
 their guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing 
 about it. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a 
 season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this 
 respect. 
 
 As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more 
 visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of 
 my life ; I mean that I had some. I met several there under 
 more favorable circumstances than I could anywhere else. But 
 fcAver came to see me upon trivial business. In this respect, my 
 comjDany was winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had 
 withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude, into which 
 the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my 
 needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited 
 around me. Besides, there were wafted to me e\ddences of 
 unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side. 
 
 Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true 
 
VISITORS 155 
 
 Homeric or Paphlagoiiian man, — he had so suitable and poetic 
 a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here, — a Canadian, a 
 wood-chopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, 
 who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog had 
 caug'ht. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, "if it were not for 
 books," would "not know what to do rainy days," though per- 
 haps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. 
 Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to 
 read his verse in the testament in his native parish far away; 
 and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, 
 Achilles' reproof to Patroclus, for his sad countenance. — "Why 
 are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?" — 
 
 Or have you alone heard some news from Phtliia? 
 They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor, 
 And Peleus lives, sou of -^acus, among the Myrmidons, 
 Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve. 
 
 He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of w^hite-oak 
 bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morn- 
 ing. "I suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing 
 today," says he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what 
 his writing was about he did not know. A more simple and 
 natural man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which 
 cast such a somber moral hue over the world, seemed to have 
 hardly any existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years 
 old, and had left Canada and his father's house a dozen years 
 before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm 
 with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was cast in the 
 coarsest mold ; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, 
 with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy 
 blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. He 
 wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and 
 cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually 
 carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my 
 
156 WALDEN" 
 
 house, — for he chopped all summer, — in a tin pail ; cold meats, 
 often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dan- 
 gled by a string from his belt ; and sometimes he offered me a 
 drink. He came along early, crossing my beanfield, though with- 
 out anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. 
 He wasn't a-going to hurt himself. He didn't care if he only 
 earned his board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the 
 bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and 
 go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of 
 the house where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an 
 hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till night- 
 fall, — loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would say, 
 as he went by in the morning: "How thick the pigeons are! 
 If working every day were not ray trade, I could get all the 
 meat I should want by hunting, — pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, 
 partridges, — by gosh ! I could get all I should want for a week 
 in one day." 
 
 He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and 
 ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level and close to the 
 ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be 
 more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and 
 instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he 
 would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could 
 break off with your hand at last. 
 
 He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so 
 happy withal: a well of good humor and contentment which 
 overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Some- 
 times I saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he 
 would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a 
 salutation in Canadian French, though he spoke English as well. 
 When I approached him he would suspend his work, and with 
 half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he 
 had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball 
 and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exubernnce 
 
VISITORS 157 
 
 of animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and 
 rolled on the ground with laughter at anything which made him 
 think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees he would 
 exclaim, — "By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here 
 chopping ; I want no better sport." Sometimes, when at leisure, 
 he amused himself all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, 
 firing salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked. In 
 the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee 
 in a kettle ; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chicka- 
 dees would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and 
 peck at the potato in his fingers ; and he said that he "liked to 
 have the little fellers about him." 
 
 In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical 
 endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the 
 rock. I asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, 
 after working all day; and he answered with a sincere and 
 serious look, "Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life." But 
 the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were 
 slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in 
 that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests 
 teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to 
 the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and 
 reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. 
 When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and con- 
 tentment for his portion, and propped him on every side with 
 reverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore 
 years and ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated 
 that no introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if 
 you introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to 
 find him out as you did. He would not play any part. Men paid 
 him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe him ; but 
 he never exchanged opinions with them. He was so simply iand 
 naturally humble — if he can be called humble who never aspires 
 — that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he 
 
158 WALDEN 
 
 conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to him. If you told 
 him that such a one was coming, he did as if he thought that 
 anything so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take all 
 the responsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still. He 
 never heard the sound of praise. He particularly reverenced 
 the writer and the preacher. Their performances were miracles. 
 When I told him that I wrote considerably, he thought for a long 
 time that it was merely the handwriting which I meant, for he 
 could write a remarkably good hand himself. I sometimes found 
 the name of his native parish handsomely written in the snow 
 by the highway, with the proper French accent, and knew that 
 he had i^assed. I asked him if he ever wished to write his 
 thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters for those 
 who could not, but he never tried to write thoughts, — no, he 
 could not, he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, 
 and then there was spelling to be attended to at the same itime ! 
 
 I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked 
 him if he did not want the world to be changed ; but heanswered 
 with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing 
 that the question had ever been entertained before, "No, I like 
 it well enough." It would have suggested many things to a phi- 
 losopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared 
 to know nothing of things in general ; yet I sometimes saw in 
 him a man whom I had jiot seen before, and I did not know 
 whether he was as wise as Shakspeare or as simply ignorant as 
 a child, whether to susjDect him of a fine poetic consciousness or 
 of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him saun- 
 tering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and 
 whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise. 
 
 His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which 
 last he was considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyelo- 
 pasdia to him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of 
 human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerable extent. 
 I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and he 
 
VISITORS 159 
 
 iiQver failed to look at them in the most simple and practical 
 light. He had never heard of such things before. Could he do 
 without factories? I asked. He had worn the home-made Ver- 
 mont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense with 
 tea and coffee? Did this country aftord any beverage besides 
 water? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and drunk it, 
 and thought that was better than water in warm weather. When 
 I asked him if he could do without money, he showed the con- 
 venience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with 
 the most j^hiiosophical accounts of the origin of this institution, 
 and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were 
 his i3roperty, and he wished to get needles and thread at the 
 store, he thought it would be inconvenient, and impossible soon, 
 to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to 
 that amount. He could defend many institutions better than 
 any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned 
 him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and specula- 
 tion had not suggested to him any other. At another time, hear- 
 ing Plato's definition of a man, — a biped without feathers, — 
 and that one exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato's man, 
 he thought it an important difference that the knees bent the 
 wrong way. He would sometimes exclaim: "How I love to 
 talk! By George, I could talk all day!" I asked him once, 
 when I had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new 
 idea this summer. "Good Lord," said he, "a man that has to 
 work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will 
 do well. Maybe the man you hoe with is inclined to race; then, 
 by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds." He 
 would sometimes ask me first, on such occasions, if I had made 
 any improvement. One winter day I asked him if he was always 
 satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within 
 him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living. 
 "Satisfied !" said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing, and 
 some with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough. 
 
 I 
 
160 WALDEN 
 
 will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his 
 belly to the table, by George !" Yet I never, by any maneuver- 
 ing, could get him to take the spiritual view of things; the 
 highest that he appeared to conceive of was a simple expe- 
 diency^, such as you might expect an animal to appreciate ; and 
 this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested any im- 
 provement in his mode of life, he merely answered, without 
 expressing any regTet, that it was too late. Yet he thoroughly 
 believed in honesty and the like virtues. 
 
 There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to 
 be detected in him, and I occasionally observed that he was 
 thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phe- 
 nomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe 
 it, and it amounted to the reorigination of many of the institu- 
 tions of society. Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to 
 express himself distinctly, he always had a presentable thought 
 behind. Yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed in his 
 animal life, that, though more promising than a merely learned 
 man's, it rarely ripened to anything which can be reported. He 
 suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades 
 of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take 
 their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all ; who are 
 as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though 
 they may be dark and muddy. 
 
 Many a traveler came out of his way to see me and the inside 
 of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of 
 water. I told them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, 
 offering to lend them a dijDper. Far off as I lived, I was not 
 exempted from that annual visitation which occurs, methinks, 
 about the first of April, when everybody is on the move ; and I 
 had my share of good luck, though there were some curious 
 specimens among my visitors. Half-witted men from the alms- 
 house and elsewhere came to see me ; but I endeavored to make 
 
VISITOES 161 
 
 them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions 
 to me ; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation ; 
 and so was compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be 
 wiser than the so-called overseers of the poor and selectmen of 
 the town, and thought it was time that the tables were turned. 
 With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much differ- 
 ence between the half and the whole. One daj^, in particular, an 
 inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with others T had often 
 seen used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the 
 fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and 
 expressed a wish to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost 
 simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to any- 
 thing that is called humility, that he was "deficient in intellect." 
 These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he sup- 
 posed the Lord cared as much for him as for another. "I have 
 always been so," said he, "from my childhood; I never had much 
 mind; I was not like other children; I am weak in the head. 
 It was the Lord's will, I suppose." And there he was to prove 
 the truth of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I 
 have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising ground, — it was 
 so simple and sincere and so true, all that he said. And, true 
 enough, in proportion as he appeared to humble himself was he 
 exalted. I did not know at first but it was the result of a wise 
 policy. It seemed that from such a basis of truth and frank- 
 ness as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse 
 might go forward to something better than the intercourse of 
 sages. 
 
 I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among 
 the town's poor, but who should be ; who are among the world's 
 poor, at any rate; guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, 
 but to your Jiospitalality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and 
 preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved, 
 for one thing, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor 
 that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very 
 
162 WALDEN 
 
 best appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of charity 
 are not guests. Men who did not know when their visit had 
 terminated, though I went about my business again, answering 
 them from greater and greater remoteness. Men of almost every 
 degree of wit called on me in the migrating season. Some who 
 had more wits than they knew what to do with ; runaway slaves 
 with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like 
 the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on 
 their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say, — 
 
 Christian, will you send me backf 
 
 One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to for- 
 ward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like a hen with 
 one chicken, and that a duckling ; men of a thousand ideas, and 
 unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge 
 of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them 
 lost in every morning's dew, — and become frizzled and mang>' 
 in consequence ; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort 'of intellec- 
 tual centipede that made you crawl all over. One man proposed 
 a book in which visitors should write their names, as at the 
 White Mountains ; but, alas, I have too good a memory to make 
 that necessary. 
 
 I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. 
 Girls, and boys and j^oung women generally seemed glad to be 
 in the woods. They looked in the i)ond and at the flowers, and 
 imjiroved their time. Men of business, even farmers, thought 
 only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at 
 which I dwelt from something or other; and though they said 
 that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was 
 obvious that they did not. Restless committed men, whose time 
 was all taken up in getting a living or keeping it; ministers who 
 spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who 
 could not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy 
 housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed when I was 
 
VISITORS 163 
 
 out, — how came Mrs. to know that my sheets were not as 
 
 clean as hers?— young men who had ceased to be young, and 
 had conchided that it was safest to follow the beaten track of 
 the professions, — all these generally said that it was not pos- 
 sible to do so much good in my position. Ay! there was the 
 rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of Avhatever age or sex, 
 thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to 
 them life seemed full of danger, — what danger is there if you 
 don't think of any? — and they thought that a prudent man 
 would carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B. might 
 be on hand at a moment's warning. To them the village was 
 literally a com-munity, a league for mutual defense, and you 
 would suppose that they would not go a-huekleberrying without 
 a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there 
 is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be 
 allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin 
 with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Finally, there were 
 the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, who thought 
 that I was forever singing, — 
 
 This is the house that I built; 
 
 This is the man that lives in the house that I built ; 
 
 but they did not know that the third line was, — 
 
 These are the folks that worry the man 
 That lives in the house that I built. 
 
 I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; but I 
 feared the men-harriers rather. 
 
 I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children come 
 a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning walk in 
 clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers, in 
 short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for free- 
 dom's sake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to 
 greet with, — "Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!'* 
 for I had had communication with that race. 
 
VII 
 THE BEANFIELD 
 
 Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, 
 was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for 
 the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the 
 ground; indeed, they were not easily to be put off. What was 
 the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small 
 Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, 
 though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the 
 earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. But why should I 
 raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor 
 all summer, — to make this portion of the earth's surface, which 
 had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the 
 like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce 
 instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? 
 I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them ; 
 and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. 
 My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, 
 and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most jDart 
 is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most 
 of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an 
 acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the 
 rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, 
 the remaining beans Avill be too tough for them, and go forward 
 to meet new foes. 
 
 When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought 
 from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods 
 and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped 
 
 164 
 
THE BEANFIELD 165 
 
 on my memory. And now tonight my flute has waked the echoes 
 over that very water. The pines still stand here older tlian I ; 
 or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their 
 stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing an- 
 other aspect for new infant eyes. Almost the same johnswort 
 springs from the same perennial root in this pasture, and even 
 I have at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my 
 infant dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influ- 
 ence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines. 
 
 I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and it was 
 only about fifteen years since tlie land was cleared, and I m.yself 
 had got out two or three cords of stumps, I did not give it any 
 manure; but in the course of the summer it aj^peared by the 
 aiTow-heads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation 
 had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white 
 men came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted 
 the soil for this very crop. 
 
 Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, 
 or the sun had got above the shrub-oaks, while all the dew was 
 on, though the farmers warned me against it, — I would advise 
 you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on, — I began 
 to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my beanfield and throw 
 dust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked bare- 
 footed, dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling- 
 sand, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. There the 
 sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and for- 
 ward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green 
 rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub-oak copse 
 where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field 
 where the green berries deepened their tints by the time I had 
 made another bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil 
 about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had 
 sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean 
 leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and 
 
IQQ WALDEN 
 
 millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, — this 
 Avas my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle, 
 or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I 
 was much slower, and became much more intimate with my 
 beans than usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued 
 to the verge of drudgery, is j^erhaps never the worst form of 
 idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the 
 scholar it yields a classic result. A very agricola lahoriosus was 
 I to travelers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland 
 to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, 
 with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I 
 the home-staying laborious native of the soil. But soon my 
 homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only 
 open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of 
 the road ; so they made the most of it ; and sometimes the man 
 in the field heard more of travelers' gossip and comment than 
 was meant for his ears: "Beans so late! peas so late!" — for I 
 continued to plant when others had begun to hoe, — the minis- 
 terial husbandman had not suspected it. "Corn, my boy, for 
 fodder; corn for fodder." "Does he live there?" asks the black 
 bonnet of the gray coat ; and the hard-featured farmer reins up 
 his grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing where he sees 
 no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chij:) dirt, or 
 any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. But here 
 were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart 
 and two hands to draw it, — there being an aversion to other 
 carts and ho.rses, — and chip dirt far* away. Fellow-travelers as 
 they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which they 
 had passed, so that I came to know how I stood in the agi'icul- 
 tural world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman's report. 
 And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which 
 Nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The 
 crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calcu- 
 lated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond 
 
THE BEANFIELD 16? 
 
 holes in the woods and pastures and swamps gi'ows a rich and 
 various crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the 
 connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some 
 states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage 
 or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half- 
 cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their 
 wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe plaj^ed 
 the Bans des Vaches for them. 
 
 Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the 
 brown thrasher — or red mavis, as some love to call him — all the 
 morning, glad of your society, that would find out another 
 farmer's field if yours were not here. "While you are planting 
 the seed, he cries, — "Droj) it, drop it, — cover it up, cover it up, — 
 pull it up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and 
 so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what 
 his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string 
 or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it 
 to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing 
 in which I had entire faith. 
 
 As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I 
 disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval 
 years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of 
 war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. 
 They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore 
 the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by 
 the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the 
 recent cultivators of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the 
 stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an 
 accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and im- 
 measurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I 
 that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, 
 if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the 
 city to attend the oratorios. The night-hawk circled overhead 
 in the sunny afternoons — for I sometimes made a day of it — 
 
168 WALDEN 
 
 like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to 
 time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn 
 at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope re- 
 mained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the 
 ground in bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few 
 have found them; graceful and slender, like ripples caught up 
 from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the 
 heavens; such kindredship is in Nature. The hawk is aerial 
 brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his 
 perfect air-inflated wings ansAvering to the elemental unfledged 
 pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen- 
 hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descend- 
 ing, approaching and leaving one another, as if they were the 
 embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the 
 passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight 
 quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under 
 a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish, portentous, and 
 outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, 
 yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these 
 sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part 
 of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. 
 
 On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like 
 popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occa- 
 sionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there in my bean- 
 field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if 
 a puff ball had burst ; and when there was a military turnout 
 of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense 
 all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon 
 as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scar- 
 latina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff 
 of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, 
 brought me information of the "trainers." It seemed by the 
 distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the 
 neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnab- 
 
THE BEANFIELD 169 
 
 uliim upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were 
 endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. And when 
 the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the 
 most favorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got 
 the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, and 
 that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was 
 smeared. 
 
 I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and 
 of our fatherland were in such safe keeping ; and as I turned to 
 my hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressible confidence, 
 and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future. 
 
 When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if 
 all the village was a vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded 
 and collapsed alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a 
 really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and 
 the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit 
 a Mexican with a good relish, — for why should we always stand 
 for trifles? — and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to 
 exercise my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as far 
 away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders 
 in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of 
 the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. This was one 
 of the great days; thougfi the sky had from my clearing only 
 the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw 
 no difference in it. 
 
 It was a singular experience, that long acquaintance which I 
 cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and har- 
 vesting, and threshing, and picking over, and selling them, — the 
 last was the hardest of all, — I might add eating, for I did taste. 
 I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I 
 used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and com- 
 monly sjDent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider 
 the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes Avith various 
 kinds of weeds, — it will bear some iteration in the account, for 
 
irjQ WALDEN 
 
 there was no little iteration in the labor, — disturbing their deli- 
 cate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious dis- 
 tinctions with his hoe, leveling whole ranks of one species, and 
 sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman wormwood, — 
 that's pigweed, — that's sorrel, — that's piper-grass, — have at him, 
 chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him 
 have a fiber in the shade; if you do, he'll turn himself t'other 
 side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not 
 with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and 
 rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to 
 their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their 
 enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty 
 crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowd- 
 ing comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. 
 
 Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted 
 to the fine arts in Boston and Rome, and others to contempla- 
 tion in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I 
 thus, with the other farmers of New England, devoted to hus- 
 bandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature 
 a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they 
 mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, 
 perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of 
 tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It 
 was on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, 
 might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no 
 manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusually 
 well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, "there 
 being in truth," as Evelyn says, "no compost or Isetation what- 
 soever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and 
 turning of the mold with the spade." "The earth," he adds 
 elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, 
 by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) 
 which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we 
 keep about it, to sustain us ; all dungings and other sordid tem- 
 
THE BEANFIELD 171 
 
 perings being but the vicars suceedaneous to this improvement." 
 Moreover, this being one of those "worn-out and exhausted lay 
 fields which enjoy their sabbath/' had perchance, as Sir Kenelm 
 Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the air. I 
 harvested twelve bushels of beans. 
 
 But to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Cole- 
 man has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen 
 farmers, my outgoes were, — 
 
 For a hoe $ 0.54 
 
 Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing ' 7.50 Too much 
 
 Beans for seed 3.12i^ 
 
 Potatoes for seed '. 1.33 
 
 Peas for seed 40 
 
 Turnip seed 06 
 
 White line for crow fence 02 
 
 Horse cultivator and boy three hours 1.00 
 
 Horse and cart to get crop 75 
 
 In all $14.72i/> 
 
 My income was (patrem familias vendacem, nou emacem esse 
 oportet), from 
 
 Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold $16.94 
 
 Five bushels large potatoes 2.50 
 
 Nine bushels small potatoes 2.25 
 
 Grass 1.00 
 
 Stalks 75 
 
 In all $23.44 
 
 Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said, of . . . .$8.71% 
 
 This is the result of my experience in raising beans. Plant 
 the common small white bush bean about the first of June, in 
 rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select 
 fresh round and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, and 
 supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for wood- 
 chucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the 
 
172 WALDEN 
 
 earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go ; and again, when 
 the young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, 
 and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, sitting 
 erect like a squirrel. But above all, harvest as early as possible, 
 if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop ; you 
 may save much loss by this means. 
 
 This further experience also I gained. I said to myself, I will 
 not plant beans and corn with so much industry another sum- 
 mer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, 
 simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not 
 grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain 
 me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. Alas ! 
 I said this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and 
 another, and another, and I am obliged to say to you. Reader, 
 that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of 
 those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality and so 
 did not come up. Commonly men will only be brave' as their 
 fathers were brave, or timid. This generation is very sure to 
 plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians did 
 centuries ago, and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were 
 a fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to my astonish- 
 ment, making the holes with a hoe for the seventieth time at 
 least, and not for himself to lie down in ! But why should not 
 the New Englander try new adventures, and not lay so much 
 stress on his grain, his potato, and grass crop, and his orchards, 
 — raise other crops than these ? Why concern ourselves so much 
 about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a 
 new generation of men ? We should really be fed and cheered 
 if when we met a man w^e were sure to see that some of the quali- 
 ties which I have named, Avhich we all prize more than those 
 other productions, but which are for the most part broadcast 
 and floating in the air, had taken root and grown in him. Here 
 comes such a subtile and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth 
 or justice, though the slightest amount or new variety of it, 
 
THE BEANFIELD 173 
 
 along the road. Our ambassadors should be instructed to send 
 home such seeds as these, and Congress help to distribute them 
 over all the land. We should never stand upon ceremony 
 with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish 
 one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel 
 of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. 
 Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time ; 
 they are busy about their beans. We would not deal with a 
 man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff 
 between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen out 
 of the earth, something more than erect, like swallows alighted 
 and walking on the ground : — 
 
 And as he spake, his Avings would now and then 
 Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again, 
 
 so that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an 
 angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does 
 us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us 
 supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recog- 
 nize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and 
 heroic joy. 
 
 Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that hus- 
 bandry Avas once a sacred art ; but it is pursued with irreverent 
 haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large 
 farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor pro- 
 cession, nor ceremony, not excepting our Cattle-shows and so- 
 called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of 
 the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. 
 It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacri- 
 fices not to Ceres and the terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal 
 Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, 
 from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, 
 or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is 
 deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads 
 
174 WALDEN 
 
 the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato 
 says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just 
 {maximeque plus qucestus), and according to Varro, the old 
 Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and thought 
 that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and that 
 they alone were left of the race of King Saturn." 
 
 We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated 
 fields and on the jDrairies and forests without distinction. They 
 all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but 
 a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily 
 course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a 
 garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and 
 heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though 
 I value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of 
 the year ? This broad field which I have looked at so long looks 
 not to me as the principal cultivator, but away from me to 
 influences more genial to it, which water and make it green. 
 These beans have results which are not harvested by me. Do 
 they not grow for woodchucks partly? The ear of wheat (in 
 Latin spica, obsoletely speca, from spe, hope) should not be the 
 only hope of the husbandman; its kernel or grain [granum, 
 from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. How, then, can 
 our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance. of 
 the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds ? It matters 
 little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer's barns. 
 The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels 
 manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this 
 year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all 
 claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not 
 only his first but his last fruits also, 
 
VIII 
 
 THE VILLAGE 
 
 After lioeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the fore- 
 noon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one 
 Df its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my 
 person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, 
 and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two 
 E strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is 
 incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to 
 QQouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in 
 homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the 
 rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the 
 w^oods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village 
 to see the men and boys ; instead of the wind among the pines, 
 I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there 
 was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows ; under the grove 
 of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of 
 busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie dogs, 
 each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a 
 neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their 
 habits . The village appeared to me a great news room ; and on 
 one side to support it, as once at Redding & Company's on 
 State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and 
 other groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the former 
 commodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, 
 that they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, and 
 let it simmer and whisper through them like the Etesian winds, 
 or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensi- 
 
 175 
 
 I 
 
176 WALDEN 
 
 bility to pain, — otherwise it would be often painful to hear, 
 without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed, wl^ 
 I rambled through the village, to see a row of such worthier, 
 either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodi- 
 inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this -u 
 and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, 
 else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pocket-, 
 like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly out 
 of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coar- 
 est mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or crackel 
 up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppf- 
 within doors. I observed that the vitals of the village w 
 the grocery, the bar-room, the postoffiee, and the bank ; and, ; - 
 a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gin. 
 and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were ^ ) 
 arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting,' 
 one another, so that every traveler had to run the gantlet, aul 
 every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. Of coursi^, 
 those who were stationed nearest t^ the head of the line, wbeie 
 they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at hin, 
 paid the highest prices for their places; and the few straggling' 
 inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line beganj 
 to occur, and the traveler could get over walls or turn aside intO] 
 cow paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window' 
 tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to 
 catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualing cellar;! 
 some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweler's ; audi 
 others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, tliej 
 shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more ter-j 
 rible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses,! 
 and company expected about these times. For the most part I 
 escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding 
 at once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is recom- 
 mended to those who run the gantlet, or by keeping my thoughts' 
 
THE VILLAGE 177 
 
 on high things, like Orpheus, who, "loudly singing the praises 
 of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and 
 kept out of danger." Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody 
 could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much about grace- 
 fulness, and never hesitated at a gap in the fence. I was even 
 accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was 
 well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last 
 sieve-ful of news, what had subsided, the prospects of war and 
 peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much 
 longer, I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to 
 the woods again. 
 
 It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch 
 myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, 
 and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, 
 with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my 
 snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and 
 withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving 
 only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when 
 it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin 
 r fire "as I sailed." I was never cast away nor distressed in any 
 1^ weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker 
 in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I fre- 
 quently had to look up at the opening between the trees above 
 the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no 
 cart path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, 
 or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt 
 with my hands, passing between two pines, for instance, not 
 more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, 
 invariably in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home 
 thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path 
 which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all 
 the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift 
 the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, 
 and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way 
 
.X78 WALDEN 
 
 home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way 
 to the mouth without assistance. Several times, when a visitor 
 chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was 
 obliged to conduct him to the cart path in the rear of the house, 
 and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and 
 in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his 
 eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their way two 
 young men who had been fishing in the jDond. They lived about 
 a mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. 
 A day or two after one of them told me that they wandered 
 about the greater part of the night, close by their own jDremises, 
 and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as 
 there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the 
 leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have 
 heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the 
 darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the 
 saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town 
 a-shopping in tlieir wagons, have been obliged to put up for the 
 night ; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a 
 mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, 
 and not knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and mem- 
 orable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any 
 time. Often in a snow storm, even by day, one will come out 
 upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which 
 way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has traveled 
 it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is 
 as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of 
 course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. In our most trivial 
 walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like 
 pilots by certain well-known beacons and head-lands, and if we 
 go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bear- 
 ing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely 
 lost, or turned round, — for a man needs only to be turned round 
 once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, — do we appre- 
 
THE VILLAGE 179 
 
 ciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man lias 
 to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, 
 whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in 
 other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find 
 ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our 
 relations. 
 
 One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went 
 to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and 
 put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay 
 a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state, which buys and 
 sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its 
 senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. 
 But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with 
 their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong 
 to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have 
 'resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" 
 against society ; but I j:* referred that society should run "amok" 
 against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was 
 released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned 
 to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on 
 Fair-Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those 
 who represented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the 
 desk which held my pajiers, not even a nail to put over my latch 
 or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though 
 I was to be absent several days ; not even when the next fall I 
 spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house 
 was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of 
 soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my 
 fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, 
 or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of 
 my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though 
 many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered 
 no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed 
 anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which per- 
 
180 WALDEN 
 
 haps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our 
 camp has found by this time. I am convinced that if all men 
 were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would 
 be unknown. These take place only in communities where some 
 have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. 
 The Pope's Homers would soon get properly distributed. — 
 
 Nee bella fiierunt, 
 Faginus astabat diim scyphus ante dapes. 
 
 Nor wars did men molest, 
 When only beechen bowls were in request. 
 
 "You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ 
 punishments'? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. 
 The virtues of a superior man are like the wind ; the virtues of 
 a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind 
 passes over it, bends," 
 
IX 
 
 THE PONDS 
 
 Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, 
 and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther west- 
 ward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts 
 of the town, "to fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the 
 sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blue- 
 berries on Fair-Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. 
 The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of 
 them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but 
 one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know 
 the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge. 
 It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckle- 
 berries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches 
 Boston ; they have not been known there since they grew on her 
 three hills. The ambrosial and essential i^art of the fruit is lost 
 with the bloom which is rubbed oft in the market cart, and they 
 become mere jDrovender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not 
 one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the 
 country's hills. 
 
 Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined 
 some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond 
 since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating 
 leaf, and, after practicing various kinds of philosophy, had con- 
 cluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the 
 ancient sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an excel- 
 lent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased 
 to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience 
 
 181 
 
182 WALDEN 
 
 of fishermen ; and I was equally pleased when be sat in my door- 
 way to arrange his lines. Onee in a while we sat together on 
 the jDond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not 
 many words passed between us, for he had gTOwn deaf in his 
 later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which har- 
 monized well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was 
 thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to 
 remember than if it had been carried on by speech. When, as 
 was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used to 
 raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, 
 filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, 
 stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, 
 until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hill side. 
 
 In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the 
 flute, and saw the jDcrch, which I seemed to have charmed, hover- 
 ing around me, and the moon traveling over the ribbed bottom, 
 which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I 
 had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark 
 summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the 
 water's edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught 
 l^outs with a bunch of worms strung on a thread ; and when we 
 had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into 
 the air like sky-rockets, which, coming down into the pond, were 
 quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping ii\ 
 total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our 
 way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my home 
 by the shore. 
 
 Sometimes, after staying in a village i^arlor till the family 
 had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a 
 view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of midnight fish- 
 ing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and 
 hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown 
 ])ird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable and 
 valuable to me, — anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or 
 
THE PONDS 183 
 
 thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands 
 of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails 
 in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with 
 mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet 
 below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond 
 as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a 
 slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about 
 its extremity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and 
 slow to make up its mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling 
 hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to 
 the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights, 
 when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal 
 themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to 
 interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It 
 seemed as if I might next east my line upward into the air, 
 as well as downward into this element which was scarcely more 
 dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook. 
 
 The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very 
 beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much con- 
 cern one who has not long frequented it, or lived by its shore; 
 yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to 
 merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, 
 half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, 
 and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial 
 spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible 
 inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. The sur- 
 rounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of 
 forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east tliey attain 
 to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respect- 
 ively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclu- 
 sivel}^ woodland. All our Concord waters have two colors at 
 least, one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, 
 close at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows 
 the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a 
 
184 WALDEN 
 
 little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all 
 appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark 
 slate color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and 
 green another without any jDerceptible change in the atmosphere. 
 I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with 
 snow, both water and ice were almost as green as gi-ass. Some 
 consider blue "to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or 
 solid." But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, 
 they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at 
 one time and gi-een at another, even from the same point of 
 view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of 
 the color of both. Viewed from a hill top it reflects the color of 
 the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore 
 where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually 
 deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In 
 some lights, viewed even from a hill top, it is of a vivid green 
 next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the 
 verdure ; but it is equally green there against the railroad sand- 
 bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it 
 may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the 
 yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that 
 portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the 
 heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted 
 through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about 
 the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when much 
 agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may 
 reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light 
 mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue 
 than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, 
 and looking ^vith divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I 
 have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such 
 as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more 
 cerulean tha i the sky itself, alternating with the original dark 
 green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared 
 
THE PONDS 185 
 
 but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous greenish blue, as I 
 remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen through 
 cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of 
 its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity 
 of air. It is well-known that a large plate of glass will have a 
 green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its "body," but a small 
 piece of the same will be colorless. How large a body of 
 Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I have 
 never proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark 
 brown to one looking directly down on it, and like that of most 
 ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish 
 tinge ; but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body 
 of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more 
 unnatural, which, as the • limbs are magnified and distorted 
 withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a 
 Michael Angelo. 
 
 The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be 
 discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling 
 over it, you may see many feet beneath the surface the schools 
 of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former 
 easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that 
 they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in 
 the winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes 
 through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I 
 tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had 
 directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, 
 where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, 
 r lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw 
 the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve 
 erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond ; 
 and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course 
 of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making 
 another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and 
 cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neigh- 
 
186 WALDEN 
 
 borhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached 
 to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob 
 of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so 
 pulled the axe out again. 
 
 The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white 
 stones like paving stones, excepting one or two short sand 
 beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single l6ap will 
 carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its 
 remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its 
 bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bot- 
 tomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would 
 say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable 
 plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which 
 do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect 
 a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only 
 a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a 
 Avater-target or two ; all which however a bather might not per- 
 ceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the element 
 they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, 
 and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, 
 where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay 
 of the leaves, which have been wafted on to it so many succes- 
 sive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors 
 even in midwinter. 
 
 We have one other pond just like this. White Pond in Nine 
 Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly ; but, though 
 I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of 
 this center, I do not know a third of this pure and well-like 
 character. Successive nations perchance have drunk at, ad- 
 mired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is 
 green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Per- 
 haps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven 
 out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even 
 then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist 
 
THE PONDS 187 
 
 and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and 
 geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes 
 sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and 
 had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now 
 wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden 
 Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows 
 in how many unremembered nations' literatures this has been 
 the Castalian Fountain ? or what nymphs presided over it in the 
 Golden Age? It is a gem of the first water which Concord 
 wears in her coronet. 
 
 Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some 
 trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect 
 encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut 
 down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hill 
 side, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding 
 from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, 
 worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to 
 time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. 
 This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the 
 pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as 
 a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, 
 and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places whert 
 in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow 
 reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The 
 ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here 
 may still preserve some trace of this. 
 
 The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and 
 within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many 
 pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and 
 lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general 
 wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two 
 lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when 
 I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, very 
 deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chow- 
 
188 WALDEN 
 
 der, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, 
 which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years ; and 
 on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity 
 when I told them that a few years later I was accustomed to 
 fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods 
 from the only shore they knew, which place was long since con- 
 verted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two 
 years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higher 
 than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, 
 and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a differ- 
 ence of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the 
 water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, 
 and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the 
 deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall 
 again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical 
 or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplish- 
 ment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I 
 expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again 
 be as low as I have ever known it. Flints^ Pond, a mile east- 
 ward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and 
 outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize 
 with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the 
 same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my obser- 
 vation goes, of White Pond. 
 
 This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use 
 at least : the water standing at this great height for a year or 
 more, though it makes it difficult to walk around it, kills the 
 shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the 
 last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others, and, 
 falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many 
 ])onds, and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore 
 is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond 
 next my house, a row of pitch-pines fifteen feet high has been 
 killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to 
 
THE PONDS 189 
 
 their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years 
 have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctu- 
 ation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is 
 shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These 
 are the lips of the lake on which no beard grows. It licks its 
 chaps from time to time. When the water is at its height, the 
 alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red 
 roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, 
 and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the 
 effort to maintain themselves ; and I have known the high blue- 
 berry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, 
 bear an abundant crop under these circumstances. 
 
 Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so reg- 
 ularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition, the 
 oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth, that 
 anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, 
 which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep 
 into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, 
 though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, 
 and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly 
 sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and 
 from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that 
 when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became 
 the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there 
 was no pond here, and now there is one ; and this Indian fable 
 does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient 
 settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he 
 first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vapor rising 
 from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and 
 he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still 
 think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of 
 the waves on these hills ; but I observe that the surrounding hills 
 are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have 
 been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the rail- 
 
190 WALDEN 
 
 road cut nearest the pond ; and, moreover, there are most stones 
 where the shore is most abrupt ; so that, unfortunately, it is no 
 longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was 
 not derived from that of some English locality, — Saffron , 
 Walden, for instance, — one might suppose that it was called, 
 originally, Walled-in Pond. 
 
 The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the 
 year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and I think 
 that it is then as good as any, if not the best, in the town. In the 
 winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colder than 
 springs and wells which are protected from it. The tempera- 
 ture of the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat 
 from five o'clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the 
 sixth of March, 1846, the thermometer having been up to 65° or 
 70° some of the time, owing j^artly to the sun on the roof, was 
 42°, or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest 
 wells in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling 
 Spring the same day was 45°, or the warmest of any water tried, 
 though it is the coldest that I know of in summer, when, besides, 
 shallow and stagnant surface water is not mingled with it. 
 Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most 
 water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In 
 the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, 
 where it became cool in the night, and remained so during the 
 day ; though I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It 
 was as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had 
 no taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by 
 the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet 
 deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the luxury 
 of ice. 
 
 There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one weighing 
 seven pounds, to say nothing of another which carried off a reel 
 with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight 
 pounds because he did not see him, perch and pouts, some of 
 
THE PONDS 191 
 
 each weighing over two pounds, shiners, ehivins or roach 
 {Leuciscus pulchellus), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, 
 one weighing four pounds, — I am thus particular because the 
 weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are 
 the only eels I have heard of here; — also, I have a faint recol- 
 lection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides 
 and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which 
 I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, 
 this i^ond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not 
 abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one time lying on 
 the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds : a long and shal- 
 low one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the river; a 
 bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably 
 deep, which is the most common here; and another, golden- 
 colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with 
 small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint 
 blood-red ones very much like a trout. The specific name reticu- 
 latus would not apply to this; it should be guttatus rather. 
 These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size 
 promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch, also, and indeed all the 
 fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, 
 and firmer fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, 
 as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from 
 them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties 
 of some of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tor- 
 toises, and a few mussels in it ; muskrats and minks leave their 
 traces about it, and occasionally a traveling mud-turtle visits it. 
 Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I dis- 
 turbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the 
 boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring 
 and fall, the white-bellied swallows {Hirundo bicolor) skim over 
 it, and the peetweets {Totanus macularius) "teter" along its 
 stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fish- 
 hawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it 
 
1^2 WALDEN 
 
 is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At 
 most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals 
 of consequence which frequent it now. 
 
 You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy 
 eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also 
 in some other jDarts of the pond, some circular heaps half a 
 dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, ' consisting of small 
 stones less than a hen's eog in size, where all around is bare 
 sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed 
 them on the ice for anj^ purpose, and so, when the ice melted, 
 they sank to the bottom ; but they are too regular and some of 
 them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar to those found 
 in rivers ; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know 
 not by Avhat fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the 
 nests of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery' to the 
 bottom. 
 
 The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have 
 in my mind's eye the western indented with deep bays, the 
 bolder northern, and the beautiful scalloped southern shore, 
 where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unex- 
 plored coves between. The forest has never so good a setting. 
 nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a ] 
 small lake amid hills which rise from the water's edge ; for the ] 
 water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground 
 in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and 
 agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfec- 
 tion in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a 
 cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to 
 expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most vigor- 
 ous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a natural 
 selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the lowj 
 shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces^, 
 of man^s hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did^ 
 a thousand years ago. 
 
THE PONDS 193 
 
 A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive 
 feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder 
 measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next 
 the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the 
 wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. 
 
 Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the 
 pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze 
 makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence 
 came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you 
 invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer 
 stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant 
 pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from 
 another. You would think that you could walk dry under it to 
 the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over might 
 perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below the line, as it 
 were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the 
 pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to 
 defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, 
 for they are equally bright ; and if, between the two, you survey 
 its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except 
 '^M^here the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its 
 i'whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest 
 ^imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, 
 I or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. It may 
 ' be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four 
 feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, 
 and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole 
 I silvery are is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle- 
 ! down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so 
 dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not con- 
 gealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the 
 imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother 
 and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible 
 cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a hill 
 
.;[94 WALDEN 
 
 top you can see a fish leap in almost any part ; for not a pickerel 
 or sinner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it mani- 
 festly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonder- 
 ful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised, — 
 this piscine murder will out, — and from my distant perch I dis- 
 tinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen 
 rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) 
 ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a 
 mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicu- 
 ous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide 
 over it without rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is 
 considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, 
 but apparently, in calm daj^s, they leave their havens and adven- 
 turously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they 
 completely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of 
 those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully 
 a;ipreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlook- 
 ing the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are inces- 
 santly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the 
 reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no 
 disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and 
 assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling 
 circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. iSTot a fish can 
 leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in 
 circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant 
 welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the 
 heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are 
 undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! 
 Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf 
 and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon 
 as when covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion 
 of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light ; and if an oar 
 falls, how sweet the echo ! 
 
 In such a day in September or October, Walden is a ])erfect 
 
THE PONDS 195 
 
 forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as 
 if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same 
 time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the 
 earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go 
 without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, 
 whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature con- 
 tinually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever 
 fresh; — a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, 
 swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush, — this the light dust- 
 cloth, — which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends 
 its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected 
 in its bosom still. 
 
 A field of w^ater betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is con- 
 tinually receiving new life and motion from above. It is inter- 
 mediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the 
 grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. 
 I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of 
 light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. 
 We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at 
 length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. 
 
 The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter 
 part of October, when the severe frosts have come; and then 
 and in November, usually, in a calm day, there is absolutely 
 nothing to ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the 
 calm at the end of a rain storm of several days' duration, when 
 the sky was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, 
 I observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was 
 difficult to distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected 
 the bright tints of October, but the somber November colors of 
 the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as gently as pos- 
 sible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended 
 almost as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the 
 reflections. But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw here 
 and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some skater insects 
 
196 WALDEN 
 
 wliieli had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, per- 
 chance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring 
 welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these 
 places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads 
 of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in 
 the green water, sporting there and constantly rising to the 
 surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In 
 such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the 
 clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, 
 and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hover- 
 ing, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just be- 
 neath my level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all 
 around them. There were many such schools in the pond, 
 apparently improving the short season before winter would 
 draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight, sometimes giving 
 to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or 
 a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and 
 alarmed them, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their 
 tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and 
 instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wand rose, 
 the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch 
 leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred 
 black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. Even 
 as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples 
 on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immedi- 
 ately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place 
 at the oars and row homeward ; already the rain seemed rapidly 
 increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated 
 a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they 
 were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had 
 scared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly disap- 
 pearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all. 
 
 An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years 
 ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that 
 
THE PONDS ^ 197 
 
 in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other 
 Wiiter fowl, and that there were many eagles about it. He came 
 , here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on the 
 shore. It was made of two white-pine log's dug out and pinned 
 together, and was cut off square at the ends. It was very 
 clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it became water- 
 logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose 
 ,it was; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for 
 his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man, 
 a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolution, told him 
 once that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that he had 
 seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the shore ; but 
 when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and 
 disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which 
 took the place of an Indian one of the same material but more 
 graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on 
 the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there 
 for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remem- 
 ber that when I first looked into these depths there were many 
 large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which 
 I had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the 
 jilast cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly 
 I disappeared. 
 
 j When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely 
 
 surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some 
 
 of its coves grape vines had run over the trees next the water 
 
 - and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. This hills' 
 
 'which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on thenl were 
 
 i then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had 
 
 ! the appearance of an amphitheater for some kind of sylvan 
 
 [spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, 
 
 j floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled 
 
 'my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, 
 
 in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by 
 
298 WALDEN 
 
 the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my 
 fates had impelled me to; days when idleness Avas the most 
 attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I 
 stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of 
 the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and 
 summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I 
 did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's 
 desk. But since I left those shores the wood-choppers have 
 still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there 
 will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with 
 occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse 
 may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect 
 the birds to sing when their groves are cut down ? 
 
 Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, 
 and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, 
 who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to 
 bathe or drink, are thinking to bnng its water, which should 
 be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to 
 wash their dishes with ! — to earn their Walden by the turning 
 of a cock or drawing of a plug! That devilish Iron Horse, 
 whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has 
 muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has 
 browsed off all the woods on Walden shore; that Trojan horse, 
 with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary 
 Greeks ! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore 
 Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance 
 between the ribs of the bloated pest. 
 
 Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps 
 Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men 
 have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though 
 the wood-choppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, 
 and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has 
 infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, 
 it is itself unchanged, the same water which mv vouthful eves 
 
THE PONDS 199 
 
 fell on; '»») Uie change is in me. It has not acquired one per- 
 manent wriijkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young, 
 and I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an 
 insect from its surface as of yore. It struck me again tonight, 
 as if I had not seen it almost daily for more than twenty 
 years, — Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I 
 discovered so many years ago ; where a forest was cut down last 
 winter another is sj"^ ringing up by its shore as lustily as ever ; the 
 same thought is welling uji to its surface that was then ; it is the 
 same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and 
 it may be to me. It is the work of a brave man, surely, in whom 
 there was no guile ! He rounded this water with his hand, deep- 
 ened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed 
 it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by the same 
 reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you? 
 
 It is no dream of mine, 
 
 To ornament a line; 
 
 I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven 
 
 Than I live to Walden even. 
 
 I am its stony shore, 
 
 And the breeze that passes o 'er ; 
 
 In the hollow of my hand 
 
 Are its water and its sand, 
 
 And its deepest resort 
 
 Lies high in my thought. 
 
 The cars never j^ause to look at it ; yet I fancy that the engi- 
 neers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have 
 a season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. 
 The engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, 
 that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at 
 least during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash 
 out State-street and the engine's soot. One proposes that it 
 be called "God's Drop." 
 
 I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it 
 
200 WALDEN 
 
 is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's 
 Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming- 
 from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to 
 Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds 
 through which in some other geological period it may have 
 flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made 
 to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, 
 like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonder- 
 ful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure 
 waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself 
 should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave? 
 
 Flint's or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake and 
 inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is much larger, 
 being said to contain one hundred and ninety-seven acres, and 
 is more fertile in fish ; but it is comparatively shallow, and not 
 remarkably pure. A walk through the woods thither was often 
 my recreation. It was worth'the while, if only to feel the wind 
 blow on your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remem- 
 ber the life of mariners. I went a-chestnutting there in the fall, 
 on windy days, when the nuts were dropping into the water and 
 were washed to my feet ; and one day, as I crept along its sedgy 
 shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I came upon the 
 moldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more 
 than the impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes ; yet 
 its model was sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, 
 with its veins. It was as impressive a wreck as one could 
 imagine on the sea-shore, and had as good a moral. It is by this 
 time mere vegetable mold and undistinguishable pond shore, 
 through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to 
 admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end 
 uf this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the 
 pressure of the water, and the rushes which grew in Indian file, 
 i"». waving lines, corresponding to these marks, rank behind 
 
THE PONDS 201 
 
 rank, as if the waves had planted them. There also I have 
 found, in considerable quantities, curious balls, composed 
 apparently of fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from 
 half an inch to four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. 
 These wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom, 
 and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either solid 
 grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first you would 
 say that they were formed by the action of the waves, like a 
 j:)ebble; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, 
 half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season of 
 the year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do not so much con- 
 struct as wear down a material which has already acquired con- 
 sistency. They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite 
 l)eriod. 
 
 Flint's Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. 
 What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm 
 abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid 
 bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better 
 the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he 
 could see his own brazen face ; who regarded even the wild ducks 
 which settled in it as trespassers ; his fingers grown into crooked 
 and horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like; 
 ---so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to 
 hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who 
 never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good 
 v;ord for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let 
 it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or 
 quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by 
 its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history 
 is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no 
 title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legisla- 
 ture gave him, — him who thought only of its money value; 
 Avhose presence perchance cursed all the shore; who exhausted 
 the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters 
 
202 WALDEN 
 
 within it, who regretted only that it was not English hay or 
 cranberry meadow, — there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in 
 his eyes, — and would have drained and sold it for the mud at 
 its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to 
 him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm where every- 
 thing has its price; who would cany the landscape, who would 
 carry his God to market if he could get anything for Him ; who 
 goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing 
 grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no 
 flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the 
 beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they 
 are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true 
 wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in pro- 
 portion as they are poor, — poor farmers. A model farm ! where 
 the house stands like a fungus in a muck-heap, chambers for 
 men, horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all con- 
 tiguous to one another. Stocked with men! A great gTease- 
 spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk! Under a high 
 state of cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains 
 of men ! As if you were to raise your potatoes in the church- 
 yard! Such is a model farm. 
 
 No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be 
 named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men 
 alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at least as the 
 Icarian Sea, where "still the shore" a "brave attempt resounds." 
 
 Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint's; Fair- 
 Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to contain some 
 seventy acres, is a mile southwest; and White Pond, of about 
 forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond Fair-Haven. This is 
 my lake country. These, with Concord River, are my water 
 privileges; and night and day, year in and year out, they giind 
 such grist as T carry to them. 
 
 Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and I myself have 
 
THE PONDS 203 
 
 profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most 
 beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White 
 Pond; — a poor name from its commonness, whether derived 
 from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its 
 sands. In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin 
 of Walden. They are so much alike that you would say they 
 must be connected under ground. It has the same stony shore, 
 and its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry 
 dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some of 
 its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection from the 
 bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluish green or 
 glaucous color. Many years since I used to go there to collect 
 the sand by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I have 
 continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proj^oses 
 to call it Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow-Pine 
 Lake, from the following circumstance. About fifteen years ago 
 you could see the top of a pitch-pine of the kind called yellow- 
 pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct species, projecting 
 above the surface in deep water, many rods from the shore. It 
 was even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this 
 was one of the primitive forests that formerly stood there. I find 
 that even so long ago as 1792, in a "Topographical Description 
 of the Town of Concord," by one of its citizens, in the Collec- 
 tions of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the author, after 
 speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds : "In the middle of 
 the latter may be seen, when the water is very low, a tree which 
 appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands, although 
 the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the water; the top 
 of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteen 
 inches in diameter." In the spring of '49 I talked with the man 
 who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was 
 he who got out this tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as 
 he could remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the 
 shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was 
 
204 WALDEN 
 
 in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, 
 and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neigh- 
 bors, he would take out the old yellow pine. He sawed a chan- 
 nel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along and 
 out on to the ice with oxen ; but, before he had gone far in his 
 work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong end upward, 
 with the stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small 
 end firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot in 
 diameter at the big end, and he had expected to get a good saw- 
 log, but it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. 
 He had some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an 
 axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might 
 have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over 
 into the pond, and after the top had become water-logged, while 
 the butt-end was still dry and light, had drifted out and sunk 
 wrong end up. His father, eighty years old, could not remem- 
 ber when it was not there. Several pretty large logs may still 
 be seen Ijdng on the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of 
 the surface, they look like huge water snakes in motion. 
 
 This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is 
 little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily, 
 which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue flag 
 {Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, rising from the 
 stony bottom all around the shore, where it is visited by hum- 
 ming birds in June, and the color both of its bluish blades and 
 its flowers, and especially their reflections, are in singular har- 
 mony with the glaucous water. 
 
 White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface 
 of the earth. Lakes of Light. If they were permanently con- 
 gealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, 
 be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads 
 of emperors ; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and 
 our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the 
 diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a marke^/ 
 
THE PONDS 205 
 
 value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than 
 our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are 
 they ! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer 
 than the pool before the farmer's door, in which his ducks swim ! 
 Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhab- 
 itant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and 
 their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or 
 maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? 
 She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. 
 Talk of heaven ! ye disgrace earth. 
 
BAKER FARM 
 
 Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, 
 or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rip- 
 pling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids 
 would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the 
 cedar wood beyond Flint's Pond, where the trees, covered 
 with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to 
 stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the 
 ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the 
 usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white-spruce trees, and 
 toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, 
 and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or 
 shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood 
 gTow, the red alder-berry glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork 
 grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild- 
 holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their 
 beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild 
 forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling 
 on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds 
 which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the 
 middle of some jDasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or 
 on a hill top : such as the black-birch, of which we have some 
 handsome specimens two feet in diameter ; its cousin the yellow- 
 birch, with its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first; the 
 beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, 
 perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered speci- 
 mens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the 
 
 206 
 
BAKER FARM 207 
 
 township, supposed by some to have been planted by the 
 pigeons that were once baited with beech nuts near by; it is 
 worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split 
 this wood ; the bass ; the hornbeam ; the celtis occidentalis, or 
 false elm, of which we have but one well-grown ; some taller 
 mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than 
 usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods; and 
 many others I could mention. These were the shrines I visited 
 both summer and winter. 
 
 Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rain- 
 bow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, 
 tingeing the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if 
 I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow 
 light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it 
 had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and 
 life. As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder 
 at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy 
 myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the 
 shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, 
 that it was only natives that were so distinguished. Benvenuto 
 Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible 
 dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the 
 castle of St. Angelo, a resplendent light appeared over the 
 shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was^in 
 Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the 
 grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phe- 
 nomenon to which I have referred, which is especially observed 
 in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. 
 Though a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the 
 case of an excitable imagination like Cellini's, it would be basis 
 enough for superstition. Besides, he tells us that he showed it 
 to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished who are 
 conscious that they are regarded at all? 
 
 I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair-Haven, through 
 
208 WALDEN 
 
 the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led 
 throug'h Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that 
 retreat of which a poet has since sung-, beginning, — 
 
 Thy entry is a pleasant field, 
 
 Which some mossy fruit trees yield 
 
 Partly to a ruddy brook, 
 
 By gliding musquash undertook, 
 
 And mercurial trout, 
 
 Darting about. 
 
 I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I "hooked" 
 the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the 
 trout. It was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely 
 long before one, in which many events may happen, a large 
 portion of our natural life, though it was already half spent 
 when I started. By the way there came up a shower, which 
 compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine, piling boughs 
 over my head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed; and 
 when at length I had made one cast over the pickerel-weed, 
 standing up to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly 
 in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble 
 with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it. 
 The gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked flashes 
 to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for shelter 
 to the nearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but 
 so much the nearer to the pond, and had long been unin- 
 habited : — 
 
 And here a poet builded, 
 In the completed years, 
 
 For behold a trivial cabin 
 That to destruction steers. 
 
 So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John 
 Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from 
 the broad-faced bov who assisted his father at his work, and 
 
BAKER FARM 209 
 
 now came riinniiig by bis side from tbe bog to escape tbe rain, 
 to tbe wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its 
 father's knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from 
 its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the 
 stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was 
 the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world, 
 instead of John Field's poor starveling brat. There we sat 
 together under that jDart of the roof "which leaked the least, 
 while it showered and thundered without. I had sat there many 
 times of old before the ship was built that floated this family to 
 America. An honest, hard-working, but shiftless man plainly 
 was John Field; and his wife, she too was brave to cook so 
 many successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove ; with 
 round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve her 
 condition one day ; with the never absent mop in one hand, and 
 yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens, which had 
 also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room 
 like members of the family, too humanized methought to roast 
 well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe 
 significantly. Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard 
 he worked "bogging" for a neighboring farmer, turning up a 
 meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an 
 acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and his 
 little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father's side the 
 while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. T 
 tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was 
 one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing 
 here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like him- 
 self ; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly 
 cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly 
 amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two 
 build himself a palace of his own ; that I did not use tea, nor 
 coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so ^id not have 
 to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not 
 
210 WALDEN 
 
 have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food ; but as 
 he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, 
 he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked 
 hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his sys- I 
 tem, — and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was ! 
 broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted 
 his life into the bargain ; and yet he had rated it as a gain, in 
 coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and 
 meat every day. But the only true America is that country 
 where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may 
 enable you to do without these, and where the state does not 
 endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other 
 superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from 
 the use of such things. For I purposely talked to him as if he 
 were a philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all 
 the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were 
 the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. A 
 man will not need to study history to find out what is best for 
 his own culture. But alas! the culture of an Irishman is an 
 enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told 
 him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick 
 boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn 
 out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half 
 so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a gentle- 
 man (which, however, was not the case), and in an hour or two, 
 without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as 
 many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money 
 to support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, 
 they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their 
 amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with 
 arms akimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had 
 capital enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough 
 to carry it through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, 
 and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I 
 
BAKER FARM 211 
 
 suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to 
 face, giving it tooth and nail, not having" skill to split its mas- 
 sive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail ; 
 — thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a 
 thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage, — 
 living, John Field, alas ! without arithmetic, and failing so. 
 
 "Do you ever fish*?" I asked. "Oh, yes, I catch a mess now 
 and then when I am lying by; good perch I catch." "What's 
 your bait?" "I catch shiners with fish-worms, and bait the 
 perch with them." "You'd better go now, John," said his wife, 
 with glistening and hoj^eful face ; but John demurred. 
 
 The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern 
 woods promised a fair evening ; so I took my departure. When 
 I had got without I asked for a dish, hoping to get a sight of 
 the well bottom, to complete my survey of the premises; but 
 there, alas! are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken 
 withal, and bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary 
 vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after 
 consultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty one, — 
 not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel sustains 
 life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the 
 motes by a skilfully directed under-current, I drank to genuine 
 hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish 
 in such cases when manners are concerned. 
 
 As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending 
 my steps again to the pond, my hasto to catch pickerel, wading 
 in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, in forlorn and 
 savage places, appeared for an instant trivial to me who had 
 been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hill 
 toward the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, 
 and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the 
 cleansed air, from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius 
 seemed to say, — Go fish and hunt far and wide day by daj^, — 
 farther and wider, — and rest thee by many brooks ?nr' hearth- 
 
212 WALDEN 
 
 sides without misgiving'. Remember thy Creator in the days of 
 thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek 
 adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night 
 overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields 
 than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow 
 wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which 
 will never become English hay. Let the thunder rumble; what 
 if it threaten ruin to farmers' crops'? that is not its errand to 
 thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and 
 sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. 
 Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise 
 and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and 
 spending their lives like serfs. 
 Baker Farm ! 
 
 Landscape where the richest element 
 Is a little sunshine innocent. ... 
 
 No one runs to revel 
 
 On thy rail-fenced lea. ... 
 
 Debate with no man hast thou, 
 
 With questions art never perplexed, 
 
 As tame at the first sight as now, 
 
 In thy plain russet gabardine dressed. ... 
 
 Come ye who love, 
 
 And ye who hate, 
 
 Children of the Holy Dove, 
 
 And Guy Faux of the state, 
 And hang conspiracies 
 From the tough rafters of the trees! 
 
 Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or 
 street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life })ines 
 because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows 
 morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We 
 
BAKER FARM 213 
 
 should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and 
 discoveries every day, with new experience and character. 
 
 Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had 
 brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go "bogging" 
 ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of 
 fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was his 
 luck ; but when he changed seats in the boat luck changed seats 
 too. Poor John Field! — I trust he does not read this, unless 
 he will improve by it, — thinking to live by some derivative old 
 country mode in this primitive new country, — to catch perch 
 wdth shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow\ With his 
 horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his 
 inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam's grandmother 
 and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity. 
 till their wading, webbed, bog-trotting feet* get talaria to their 
 heels. 
 
XI 
 
 HIGHER LAWS 
 
 As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, 
 trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of 
 a woodehuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of 
 savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour 
 him raw ; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness 
 which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at 
 the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half -starved 
 hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of veni- 
 son which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too 
 savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably 
 familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a 
 higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and 
 another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence 
 them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wild- 
 ness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to 
 me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my 
 day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this em- 
 plovment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaint- 
 ance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in 
 scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little 
 acquaintance. Fishermen. Ininters, wood-choppers, and others, 
 spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense 
 a ]^art of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable 
 mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than 
 philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. 
 She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveler on 
 
 214 
 
HIGHER LAWS 215 
 
 the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the 
 Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a 
 fisherman. He who is only a traveler learns things at second- 
 hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most 
 interested when science reports what those men already know 
 practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, 
 or account of human experience. 
 
 They mistake who assert that tlie Yankee has few amusements, 
 because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys 
 do not play so many games as they do in England, for here the 
 more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and 
 the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every 
 New England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a 
 fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his 
 hunting and fishing grounds were not limited like the preserves 
 of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than 
 those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener 
 stay to play on the common. But already a change is taking 
 place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased 
 scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend 
 of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society. 
 
 Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish 
 to my fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same 
 kind of necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity 
 I might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned 
 my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only 
 now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my 
 gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane 
 than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much 
 affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was 
 habit. As for fowling, during the last years that 1 carried a 
 gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought 
 only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined 
 to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than 
 
216 WALDEN 
 
 this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the 
 birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit 
 the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of 
 humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports 
 are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends 
 have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should 
 let them hunt, I have answered, yes, — remembering that it was 
 one of the best parts of my education, — make them hunters, 
 though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at 
 last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in 
 this or any vegetable wilderness, — hunters as well as fishers of 
 men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who 
 
 yave not of the text a pulled hen 
 That salth that hunters ben not holy men. 
 
 There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, 
 when the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called 
 them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun ; 
 he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neg- 
 lected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who 
 were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow 
 it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will 
 wantonly murder any creature which ho'lds its life by the same 
 tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. 
 I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make 
 the usual philanthropic distinctions. 
 
 Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, 
 and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first 
 as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better 
 life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or 
 naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. 
 The mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In 
 some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such 
 
HIGHER LAWS ^ 217 
 
 a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being 
 the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the 
 only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, 
 or the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at 
 Walden Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens, 
 whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, 
 was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they were lucky, 
 or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish, 
 though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the 
 while. They might go there a thousand times before the sedi- 
 ment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose 
 pure ; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on 
 all the while. The governor and his council faintly remember 
 the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; 
 but now they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so 
 they know it no more forever. • Yet even they expect to go to 
 heaven at last. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to 
 regulate the number of hooks to be used there ; but they know 
 nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the 
 pond itself, empaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in 
 civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the 
 hunter stage of development. 
 
 I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish 
 without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and 
 again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain 
 instinct for it, which revives from time to time ; but always when 
 T have done I feel that it would have been better if I had not 
 fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, 
 yet so are the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably 
 this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation ; 
 yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though without more 
 humanity or even wisdom ; at present I am no fisherman at all. 
 But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should again be 
 tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Besides, 
 
218 . WALDEN 
 
 there is something essentially unclean about this diet, and all 
 flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and 
 whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and 
 respectable appearance, each day, to keep the house sweet and 
 free from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher 
 and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the 
 dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually complete 
 experience. The practical objection to animal food in my ease 
 was its uneleanness; and, besides, when I had caught and 
 cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have 
 fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and 
 cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes 
 would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many 
 of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal 
 food, or tea, or coffee, &c. ; not so much because of any ill effects 
 w^hich I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable 
 to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the 
 effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beau- 
 tiful to live low and fare hard in many respects ; and though I 
 never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I 
 believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve 
 his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been par- 
 ticularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much 
 food of any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by entomolo- 
 gists, I find it in Kirby and Spence, that "some insects in their 
 perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no 
 use of them"; and they lay it down as "a general rule, that 
 almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of 
 larvae. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a but- 
 terfly," . . . "and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly," 
 content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other 
 sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly 
 still represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts his 
 insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; 
 
HIGHER LAWS 219 
 
 and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without 
 fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them. 
 
 It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as 
 will not offend the imagination ; but this, I think, is to be fed 
 when we feed the body ; they should both sit down at the same 
 table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten tem- 
 perately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor inter- 
 rupt the worthiest i:)ursuits. But put an extra condiment into 
 your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to 
 live by rich cooker3\ Most men would feel shame if caught pre- 
 ])aring with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of 
 animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by 
 others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if 
 gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This cer- 
 tainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to 
 ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. 
 I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a 
 carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great 
 measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable 
 way, — as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughter- 
 ing lambs, may learn, — and he will be regarded as a benefactor 
 of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more 
 innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may 
 be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human 
 race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as 
 surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when 
 they came in contact with the more civilized. 
 
 If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his 
 genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, 
 or even insanity, it may lead him ; and yet that way, as he grows 
 more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured 
 objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail 
 over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever 
 followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were 
 
220 WALDEN 
 
 bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the conse- 
 quences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity 
 to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you 
 greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and 
 sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, 
 — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and 
 you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest 
 gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. "We 
 easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. 
 They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astound- 
 ing and most real are never communicated by man to man. The 
 true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and inde- 
 scribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star- 
 dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. 
 
 Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish ; I could 
 sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. 
 I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that 
 I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would 
 fain keep sober always ; and there are infinite degrees of drunk- 
 enness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man ; 
 wine is not so noble a liquor ; and think of dashing the hopes of 
 a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a 
 dish of tea ! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them ! 
 Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes 
 destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and 
 America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated 
 by the air he breathes? I have found it to be the most serious 
 objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled 
 me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I find 
 myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects. 
 I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing ; not because I 
 am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, how- 
 ever much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more 
 coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained 
 
HIGHER LAWS 221 
 
 only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is "no- 
 where," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regard- 
 ing myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved 
 refers when it says that "he who has true faith in the Omnipres- 
 ent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound 
 to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in 
 their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has 
 remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of 
 distress." 
 
 Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction 
 from his food in which appetite had no share? I have been 
 thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception to the com- 
 monly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the 
 palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed 
 my genius. "The soul not being mistress of herself," says 
 Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one listens, and 
 one does not hear ; one eats, and one does not know the savor of 
 food." He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never 
 be a glutton ; he w^ho does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan 
 may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as 
 ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth 
 into the moutb defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is 
 eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devo- 
 tion to sensual savors ; when that which is eaten is not a viand to 
 sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the 
 worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud- 
 turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady 
 indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sardines 
 from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, 
 she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and 
 I, can live this slimy beastly life, eating and drinking. 
 
 Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an in- 
 stant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only 
 investment that never fails. In the music of 'the harp which 
 
222 WALDEN 
 
 trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills 
 us. The harp is the traveling patterer for the Universe's Insur- 
 ance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness 
 is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last 
 .grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, 
 but are forever on the side of the mpst sensitive. Listen to 
 every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is 
 unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or 
 move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an 
 irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud 
 sweet satire on the meanness of our lives. 
 
 We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in pro- 
 portion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, 
 and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled ; like the worms which, 
 even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may 
 withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it 
 may enjoy a certain health of its own ; that we may be well, yet 
 not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, 
 with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that 
 there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. 
 This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and 
 purity. "That in which men differ from brute beasts," says 
 Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable ; the common herd lose 
 it very soon ; superior men preserve it carefully." Who knows 
 what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If 
 I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to 
 seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over 
 the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by 
 the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to 
 God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control 
 every member and function of the body, and transmute what in 
 form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The 
 generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and 
 makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and in- 
 
HIGHER LAWS 223 
 
 spires us. Chastity is th^ flowering of man ; and what are called 
 Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits 
 which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel 
 of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impur- 
 ity easts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal 
 is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. 
 Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the 
 inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we 
 are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine 
 allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some 
 extent, our very life is our disgrace. — 
 
 How happy 's he who hath due place assigned 
 To his beasts and disaf ©rested his mind! 
 
 ****** 
 
 Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast, 
 
 And is not ass himself to all the rest! 
 
 Else man not only is the herd of swine. 
 
 But he's those devils too which did incline 
 
 Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse. 
 
 All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms ; all j^ui'ity 
 is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, 
 or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need 
 to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a 
 sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with 
 purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his bur- 
 row, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you 
 must be temperate. What is chastity ? How shall a man know 
 if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this 
 virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to 
 the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom 
 and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the stu- 
 dent sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person 
 ris universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the 
 
224 WALDEN 
 
 snn shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. 
 If YOU would avoid uncleanliness, and all the sins, work ear- 
 nestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be 
 overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you 
 are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny 
 yourself no more, if you are not more religious'? I know of 
 many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts 
 fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, 
 though it be to the performance of rites merely. 
 
 I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the sub- 
 ject, — I care not how obscene my words are, — but because I 
 cannot speak of them without betraying mj^ impurity. We dis- 
 course freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are 
 silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak 
 simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier 
 ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of 
 and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo 
 lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He 
 teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and 
 the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse 
 himself by calling these things trifles. 
 
 Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the 
 god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off 
 by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and paint- 
 ers, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. 
 Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any 
 meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. 
 
 John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a 
 hard day's work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. 
 Having bathed he sat down to recreate his intellectual man. It 
 was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were 
 apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his 
 thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and 
 that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his 
 
HIGHER LAWS 225 
 
 work; but the burden of his thought was that though this kept 
 running in his head, and he found himself planning and con- 
 triving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It 
 was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly 
 shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears 
 out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested 
 work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently 
 did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which 
 he lived. A voice said to him, — Why do you stay here and live 
 this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for 
 you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these. — 
 But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate 
 thither? All that he could think of was to practice some new 
 austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, 
 and treat himself with ever increasing respect. 
 
XII 
 
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS 
 
 Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came 
 tlirough the village to my house from the other side of the 
 town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exer- 
 cise as the eating of it. 
 
 Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not 
 lieard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. 
 The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, — no flutter from 
 them. Was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from 
 beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled 
 salt beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry 
 themselves so? He that does not eat need not work. I wonder 
 how much they have reaped. Who would live there where a 
 body can never think for the barking of Bose? And oh, the 
 housekeeping ! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs, and scour 
 his tubs this bright day ! Better not keep a house. Say, some 
 hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! 
 Only a wood-pecker tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is too 
 Avarm there: they are born too far into life for me. I have 
 water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. — 
 Hark ! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village 
 hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig 
 which is said to be in these woods, w^hose tracks I saw after the 
 rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers trem- 
 ble. — Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world 
 today? 
 
 226 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 227 
 
 Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the greatest 
 thing I have seen today. There's nothing like it in old paint- 
 ings, nothing like it in foreign lands, — unless when we were oif 
 the coast of Spain. That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, 
 as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I 
 might go a-fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is 
 the only trade I have learned. Come, let's along. 
 
 Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. 
 I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a seri- 
 ous meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me 
 alone, then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you 
 shall be digging the bait meanwiiile. Angle-worms are rarely 
 to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened 
 with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging 
 the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's 
 appetite is not too keen ; and this you may have all to yourself 
 today. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder 
 among the ground-nuts, where j^ou see the johnswort waving. 
 I think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods 
 you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, 
 as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will 
 not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be 
 very nearly as the squares of the distances. 
 
 Hermit alone. Let me see, where was I? Methinks I Avas 
 nearly in this frame of mind ; the world lay about at this angle. 
 Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bring this 
 meditation to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likely 
 to offer ? I was as near being resolved into the essence of things 
 as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come back 
 to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for them. 
 When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of 
 it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find the path 
 again. What was it that I was thinking of? It was a vers^ 
 hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Con-f ut-see ; 
 
228 WALDEN 
 
 iliey may fetch that state about again. I know not whetlier it 
 Avas the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but 
 one opportunity of a kind. 
 
 Poet. How noF, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just 
 thirteen whole ones, besides several which are imperfect or 
 undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not 
 cover up the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too 
 large; a shiner may make a meal off one without finding the 
 skewer. 
 
 Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we to the Concord? 
 There's good sport there if the water be not too high. 
 
 AVhy do precisely these objects which we behold make a 
 world? Why has man just these species of animals for his 
 neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this 
 crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their 
 best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to 
 carry some portion of our thoughts. 
 
 The mice w^hich haunted my house were not the common ones, 
 which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a 
 Avild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a dis- 
 tinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was 
 building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and 
 before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, 
 Avould come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs 
 at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it 
 soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and 
 up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by 
 short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. 
 At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it 
 ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round 
 the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, 
 and dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I 
 held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 229 
 
 came and nibbled it, sitting' in my hand, and afterward cleaned 
 its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. 
 
 A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in 
 a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge 
 {Tetrao umhellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past 
 my windows, from the w^oods to the rear to the front of my 
 house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her 
 behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young sud- 
 denly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, 
 as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly 
 resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has 
 placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of 
 the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, 
 or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without sus- 
 pecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll 
 and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, 
 for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The 
 young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a 
 leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a dis- 
 tance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray 
 themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on 
 them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them 
 in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedi- 
 ent to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without 
 fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when 
 I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on 
 its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position 
 ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of 
 most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even 
 than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression 
 of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelli- 
 gence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the 
 purity of infancy, but a w^isdom clarified by experience. Such 
 an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the 
 
230 WALDEN 
 
 sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such gem. The 
 traveler does not often look into such a limpid well. The igno- 
 rant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a 
 time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling 
 beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves 
 which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a 
 lieii they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, 
 for they never hear the mother's call which gathers them again. 
 These were my hens and chickens. 
 
 It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free 
 though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the 
 neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How re- 
 tired the otter manages to live here ! He grows to be four feet 
 long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being- 
 getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the 
 woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard 
 their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two 
 in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read 
 a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a 
 brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my 
 field. The approach to this was through a succession of de- 
 scending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines, into a larger 
 wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded 
 s))ot, under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean firm 
 sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of 
 clear gi'ay water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling 
 it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in mid- 
 summer, when the pond was warmest. Thither too the wood- 
 cock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a 
 foot above them down the bank, while thej^ ran in a troo}") 
 beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young 
 and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within 
 four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract 
 my attention, and get off her young, who would already have 
 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 231 
 
 taken up their march, with faint wiry peep, single file through 
 the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young 
 when I could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle- 
 doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of 
 the soft white-pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing 
 down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisi- 
 tive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive 
 spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves 
 to you by turns. 
 
 I was witness to events of a less jieaceful character. One day 
 when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I 
 observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, 
 nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one 
 another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled 
 and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking far- 
 ther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with 
 such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a helium, a war 
 between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the 
 black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions 
 of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood- 
 yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and 
 dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have 
 ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle 
 was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one 
 hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side 
 they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that 
 I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. 
 I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's em- 
 braces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday 
 prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The 
 smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his 
 adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field 
 never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near 
 the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; 
 
232 WALDEN 
 
 while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, 
 as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several 
 of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull- 
 dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It 
 was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the 
 meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hill side of 
 this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had dis- 
 patched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle ; prob- 
 ably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs ; whose mother 
 had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or per- 
 chance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath 
 apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. 
 He saw this unequal combat from afar, — for the blacks were 
 nearly twice the size of the red, — he drew near with rapid pace 
 till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants ; 
 then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black war- 
 rior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right 
 fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members ; and 
 so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attrac- 
 tion had been invented w^iich put all other locks and cements to 
 shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that 
 they had their respective musical bands stationed on some emi- 
 nent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite 
 the slow and cheer the dying combatants, I was myself excited 
 somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think 
 of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the 
 fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of 
 America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, 
 whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism 
 and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was 
 an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight ! Two killed on the 
 patriots' side, and Luther Blanehard wounded ! Wliy, here 
 every ant was a Buttrick, — "Fire! for God's sake fire!" — and 
 thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was 
 
BKUTE NEIGHBOES 233 
 
 not one hireling there. I have no doiibt that it was a principle 
 they fought for, as much ?3 our ancestors, and not to avoid a 
 three-penny tax on their tea ; and the results of this battle will 
 be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as 
 those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. 
 
 I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly 
 described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed 
 it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. 
 Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw 
 that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg 
 of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, Jhis own 
 breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to 
 the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-jilate was appa- 
 rently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of 
 the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could 
 excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, 
 and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads 
 of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were 
 hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle- 
 bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was 
 endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and 
 with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other 
 wounds, to divest himself of them ; which at length, after half 
 an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went 
 off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he 
 finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his 
 days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought 
 that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never 
 learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; 
 but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings 
 excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity 
 and carnage, of a human battle before my door. 
 
 Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long 
 been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say 
 
234 WALDEN 
 
 that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have 
 witnessed them. "^ILneas Sylvius/' say they, "after giving a 
 very circumstantial account of one contested with great obsti- 
 nacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," 
 adds that " ^This action w^as fought in the pontificate of Eu- 
 genius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an 
 eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle 
 with the greatest fidelity/ A similar engagement between great 
 and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small 
 ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of 
 their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey 
 to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of 
 the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle 
 which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five 
 years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. 
 
 Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a 
 victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, 
 without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled 
 at old fox burrows and wood-chucks' holes; led perchance by 
 some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still 
 inspire a natural terror in its denizens; now far behind his 
 guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel 
 which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending 
 the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of 
 some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised 
 to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they 
 rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. 
 Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all 
 her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and by her sly 
 and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than 
 the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a 
 cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, 
 like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting 
 at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what 
 
BEUTE NEIGHBOKS 235 
 
 was called a "winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln 
 nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her 
 in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her 
 wont (I am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so 
 use the more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that 
 she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year before, 
 in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was 
 of a dark brownish gray color, with a white spot on her throat, 
 and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in 
 the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, 
 forming strips ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, 
 and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under 
 matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. 
 They gave me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There 
 is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it 
 was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not 
 impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hj'brids have 
 been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. 
 This would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if 
 I had kept any ; for why should not a poet's cat be winged as 
 well as his horse? 
 
 In the fall the loon {Colymhus glacialis) came, as usual, to 
 moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his 
 wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all 
 the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, 
 two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical 
 balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through the woods 
 like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station 
 themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor 
 bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up 
 there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves 
 and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be 
 heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, 
 and make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves 
 
236 WALDEN 
 
 generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water- 
 fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop 
 and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When 
 I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently 
 saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. 
 If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how 
 he would maneuver, he would dive and be completely lost, so 
 that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter 
 part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the 
 surface. He commonly went off in a rain. 
 
 As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm 
 October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to 
 the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over 
 the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore 
 toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild 
 laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he 
 dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He 
 dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, 
 and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this 
 time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he 
 laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. 
 He maneuvered so cunningly that I could not get within half 
 a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, 
 turning his head this way and that, he coolly surveyed the 
 water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that 
 he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water 
 and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising 
 how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into 
 execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, 
 and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one 
 thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought 
 in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface 
 of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary's 
 checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to 
 
BJIUTE NEIGHBORS 237 
 
 place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes 
 he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, 
 having- apparently passed directly under the boat. So long% 
 winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum 
 farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; 
 and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath 
 the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, 
 for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond 
 in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in 
 the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with 
 hooks set for trout, — though Walden is deeper than that. How 
 surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from 
 another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he 
 appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the 
 surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a 
 ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head 
 out to reconnoiter, and instantly dived again. I found that it 
 was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing 
 as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again 
 and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one 
 way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh 
 behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did 
 he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that 
 loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? 
 He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear 
 the plash of the water when he came up, and so also detected 
 him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as 
 willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising 
 to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he 
 came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet 
 beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet 
 somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he 
 had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, 
 he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like 
 
238 WALDEN 
 
 that of a wolf than any bird ; as when a beast puts his muzzle 
 to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, — 
 perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the 
 woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in 
 derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though 
 the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that 
 I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear 
 him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smooth- 
 ness of the water were all against him. At length, having 
 come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, 
 as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately 
 there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and 
 filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if 
 it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry 
 with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the 
 tumultuous surface. 
 
 For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack 
 and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sports- 
 man; tricks which they will have less need to practice in 
 Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would some- 
 times circle round and round and over the pond at a consider- 
 able height, from which they could easily see to other ponds 
 and the river, like black motes in the sky ; and when I thought 
 they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down 
 by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part 
 which was left free ; but what besides safety they got by sailing 
 in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its 
 water for the same reason that I do. 
 
XIII 
 
 HOUSE-WARMING 
 
 In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and 
 loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty 
 and fragrance than for food. There too I admired, though I 
 did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants 
 of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks 
 with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, 
 heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, 
 and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; 
 destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature 
 there. So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie 
 grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. The bar- 
 berry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; 
 but I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which 
 the proprietors and travelers had overlooked. When chestnuts 
 were ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very 
 exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut 
 woods of Lincoln, — they now sleep their long sleep under the 
 railroad, — with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open 
 burrs with in my hand, for I did not always wait for the 
 frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the 
 red squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I some- 
 times stole, for the burrs which they had selected were sure 
 to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the 
 trees. They grew also behind my house, and one large tree 
 which almost overshadowed it was, when in flower, a bouquet 
 which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and 
 
 239 
 
240 WALDEN 
 
 the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks early 
 in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burrs before 
 they fell. I relinquished these trees to them- and visited the 
 more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. These nuts, 
 as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread. Many 
 other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. Digging one day 
 for fishworms I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuherosa) 
 on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous 
 fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten 
 in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it. I had 
 often since seen its crimpled red velvety blossom supported 
 by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. 
 Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish 
 taste, much like that of a frostbitten potato, and I found it 
 better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint 
 ]>romise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them 
 simply here at some future period. In these days of fatted 
 cattle and waving grain-fields, this humble root, which was 
 once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known 
 only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once 
 more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably 
 disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of 
 man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to 
 the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence 
 he is said to have brought it ; but the now almost exterminated 
 ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts 
 and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient 
 importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some 
 Indian Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and 
 bestower of it ; and when the reign of poetry commences here, 
 its leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works 
 of art. 
 
 Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three 
 small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 241 
 
 the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a 
 promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told ! 
 And gradually from week to week the character of each tree 
 came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror 
 of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery sub- 
 stituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or 
 harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls. 
 
 The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October, as to 
 winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on 
 the walls overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. 
 Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept 
 some of them out, but I did not trouble myself much to get rid 
 of them ; I even felt complimented by their regarding my house 
 as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seriously, 
 though they bedded with me ; and they gradually disappeared, 
 into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeak- 
 able cold. 
 
 Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in 
 November, I used to resort to the northeast side of Walden, 
 w^hich the sun, reflected from the pitch-pine woods and the 
 stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much 
 pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you 
 can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the 
 still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, 
 had left. 
 
 When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My 
 bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a 
 trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of 
 bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, 
 and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of 
 those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true 
 or not. Such sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more 
 firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel 
 
242 WALDEN 
 
 to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of 
 Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a ver}^ good 
 quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement 
 on them is older and probably harder still. However that 
 may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel 
 Avhich bore so many violent blows without being worn out. 
 As my bricks had been in a chimney before, though I did not 
 read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out as 
 many fireplace bricks as I could find, to save work and waste, 
 and I filled the spaces between the bricks about the fireplace 
 with stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortar 
 wdth the white sand from the same place. I lingered most 
 about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, 
 I worked so deliberately, that though I commenced at the ground 
 in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches above 
 the floor served for my pillow at night; yet I did not get a 
 stiff neck for it that I remember ; my stiff neck is of older date. 
 I took a poet to board for a fortnight about those times, which 
 caused me to be put to it for room. He brought his own knife, 
 though I had two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them 
 into the earth. He shared with me the labors of cooking. I was 
 pleased to see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, 
 and reflected that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to 
 endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent an inde- 
 pendent structure, standing on the ground and rising through 
 the house to the heavens ; even after the house is burned it still 
 stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are 
 apparent. This was toward the end of summer. It was now 
 November. 
 
 The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though 
 it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it, it is so 
 deep. When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered 
 my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 243 
 
 of the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some 
 cheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded 
 by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the 
 bark on high overhead. My house never pleased my eye so 
 much after it was plastered, though I was obliged to confess 
 that it was more comfortable. Should not every apartment 
 in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity 
 overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about 
 the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and 
 imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive 
 furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, 
 when I began to use it for w^armth as well as shelter. I had 
 got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, 
 and it did me good to see the soot form on the back of the 
 chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire with more 
 right and more satisfaction than usual. My dwelling was 
 small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it ; but it seemed 
 larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. 
 All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; 
 it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and what- 
 ever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive 
 from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master 
 of a family (paterfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam 
 oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, 
 et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, 
 many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; 
 it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in 
 my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with 
 the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of 
 molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. 
 
 I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, 
 standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without 
 gingerbread-work, which shall still consist of only one room, 
 a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or 
 
244 WALDEN 
 
 plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of 
 lower heaven over one's head, — useful to keep off rain and 
 snow; where the king and queen posts stand out to receive 
 your homage,' when you have done reverence to the prostrate 
 Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill ; a caver- 
 nous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole 
 to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, come in 
 the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end 
 of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the 
 spiders, if they choose ; a house which you have got into when 
 you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; 
 where the weary traveler may wash, and eat, and converse, and 
 sleep, without further journey ; such a shelter as you would be 
 glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essen- 
 tials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping, where you 
 can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and every- 
 thing hangs upon its peg that a man should use ; at once kitchen, 
 pantry, parlor, chamber, store-house, and garret; where you 
 can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so con- 
 venient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay 
 your resjDects to the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven 
 that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils 
 are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor 
 the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes 
 requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would 
 descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is 
 solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A' house whose 
 inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you can- 
 not go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing 
 some of its inhabitants ; where to be a guest is to be jd resented 
 with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded 
 from seven-eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told 
 to make yourself at home there, — in solitary confinement. Now- 
 adays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 245 
 
 mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and 
 hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. 
 There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a 
 design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many 
 a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, 
 but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. 
 I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived 
 simply in such a house as I have described, if I were 
 going their w^ay; but backing out of a modern palace will 
 be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in 
 one. 
 
 It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would 
 lose all its nerve and degenerate into parlaver wholly, ou.r lives 
 pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors 
 and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and 
 dumb-waiters, as it were; in other w^ords, the parlor is so far 
 from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the 
 parable of a dinner, commonly. As if only the savage dwelt 
 near enough to Nature and Truth to borrow a trope from them. 
 How can the scholar, who dwells away in the North West Ter- 
 ritory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parliamentary in the 
 kitchen ? 
 
 However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough 
 to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but when they saw 
 that crisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, as it 
 would shake the house to its foundations. Nevertheless, it 
 stood through a great m'any hasty-puddings. 
 
 I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought 
 over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the 
 opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance 
 which would have tempted 'me to go much farther if necessary. 
 My house had in the meanwhile been shingled down to the 
 ground on every side. In lathing I was pleased to be able to 
 send home each nail with a single blow of the hammer, and 
 
246 WALDEN 
 
 it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to 
 the wall neatly and rajjidly. I remembered the story of a 
 conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about 
 the village once, giving advice to workmen. Venturing one 
 day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized 
 a plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel without mis- 
 lia]), with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made 
 a bold gesture thitherward ; and straightway, to his complete 
 discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. 
 I admired anew the economy and convenience of plastering, 
 which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome 
 finish, and I learned the various casualties to which the plas- 
 terer is liable. I was suri)rised to see how thirsty the bricks 
 were, which drank up all the moisture in my plaster before I 
 had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water it takes to 
 christen a new hearth. I had the previous winter made a small 
 quantity of lime by burning the shells of the Unio fluviatilis, 
 which our river affords, for the sake of the experiment ; so that 
 I knew where my materials came from. I might have got good 
 limestone within a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had 
 cared to do so. 
 
 The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest 
 and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the 
 general freezing. The first ice is especially interesting and 
 perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the 
 best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom 
 where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only 
 an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, 
 and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches 
 distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water is neces- 
 sarily always smooth then. There are many furrows in the 
 sand where some creature has traveled about and doubled on 
 its tracks ; and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of cadis 
 worms made of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps these 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 247 
 
 have creased it, for you find some of their cases in the furrows, 
 though they are deep and broad for them to make. But the 
 ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve 
 the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely 
 the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of 
 the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against 
 the under surface, and that more are continually rising from 
 the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and 
 dark, that is, you see the water through it. These bubbles are 
 from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter, very 
 clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them 
 through the ice. There may be thirty or forty of them to a 
 square inch. There are also already within the ice narrow 
 oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp 
 cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite 
 fresh, minute spherical bubbles, one directly above another, 
 like a string of beads. But these within the ice are not so 
 numerous nor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to 
 east on stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which 
 broke through carried in air with them, which formed very 
 large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. One day when 
 I came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found 
 that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch 
 more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam 
 in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been very 
 warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, 
 showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, 
 but opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick 
 was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly 
 expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regu- 
 larity ; they were no longer one directly over another, but often 
 like silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, 
 or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty 
 of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. 
 
248 * WALDEN 
 
 Being curious to know what position my great bubbles occupied 
 with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake containing a 
 middling-sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The new 
 ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was 
 included between the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, 
 but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly 
 lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by 
 four inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find that 
 directly under the bubble the ice was melted with great regu- 
 larity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five- 
 eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there 
 between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch 
 thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition 
 had burst out downward, and probably there was no ice at 
 all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. 
 I inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which 
 I had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now 
 frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated 
 like a burning-glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. 
 These are the little air guns which contribute to make the ice 
 crack and whoop. 
 
 At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had 
 finished jDlastering, and the wdnd began to howl around the 
 house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. Night 
 after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark w^ith a 
 clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was 
 covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying 
 low over the woods toward Fair-Haven, bound for Mexico. 
 Several times, when returning from the village at ten or eleven 
 o'clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else 
 ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind 
 my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint 
 honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 249 
 
 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of 
 the 22d of December, Flint's and other shallower ponds and 
 the river having been frozen ten days or more ; in '46, the 16th ; 
 in '49, about the 31st ; and in '50, about the 27th of December ; 
 in '52, the 5th of January ; in '53, the 31st of December. The 
 snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of Novem- 
 ber, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. 
 I Avithdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep 
 a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My 
 employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood 
 in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or 
 sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my 
 shed. An old forest fence which had seen its best days was a 
 great haul for me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past 
 serving the god Terminus. How much more interesting an 
 event is that man's supper who has just been forth in the snow 
 to hunt, nay, you may say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! 
 His bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots and 
 waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns 
 to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, 
 some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There was 
 also the drift-wood of the pond. In the course of the summer 
 I had discovered a raft of pitch-pine logs with the bark on, 
 pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was built. This 
 I hauled up j)artly on the shore. After soaking two years 
 and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though 
 waterlogged past .drying. I amused myself one winter day 
 vvith sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, 
 skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my 
 shoulder, and the other on the ice ; or I tied several logs together 
 with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder 
 which had a hook at the end, dragged them across. Though 
 completely waterlogged and almost as heavy as lead, they not 
 only burned long, but made a very hot fire; nay, I thought 
 
250 WALDEN 
 
 that they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being 
 confined by the water, burned longer as in a lamp. 
 
 Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, 
 says that "the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses 
 and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," were 
 "considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were 
 severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending 
 ad terrorem fcrarum — ad nocumentum forestce, etc.,'' to the 
 frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest. But 
 I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the 
 vert more tlian the hunters or wood-choppers, and as much as 
 though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part 
 was burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved 
 with a grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than 
 that of the proprietors; nay, I grieved when it was cut down 
 by the ])roprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when 
 they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old 
 Romans did when they camo to thin, or let in the light to, a 
 consecrated grove {lucum conlucare), that is, would believe 
 that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory 
 offering, and prayed. Whatever god or goddess thou art to 
 whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, 
 and children, etc. 
 
 It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even 
 in this age and in this new country, a value more j^ermanent 
 and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and 
 inventions no man will go by a jiile of wood. It is as precious ' 
 to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they 
 made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Miehaux, 
 more than thirty years ago, says that the j^rice of wood for 
 fuel in New York and Philadelphia "nearly equals, and some- 
 times exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this 
 immense capital annually requires more than three hundred 
 thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three 
 
HOUSE-WARMING • 251 
 
 hundred miles by cultivated j^lains." In this town the price 
 of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how 
 much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics 
 and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other 
 errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a 
 liigh price for the privilege of gleaning after the wood-chopper. 
 It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for 
 fuel and the materials of the arts; the New Englander and 
 the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and 
 Robinhood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, in most parts of 
 the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the 
 savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to 
 warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without 
 them. 
 
 Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. 
 I loved to have mine before my window, and the more chips 
 the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old 
 axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, 
 on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps 
 which I had got out of my beanfield. As my driver prophesied 
 when I was plowing, they warmed me twice, once while I was 
 splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that 
 no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised 
 to get the village blacksmith to "jump" it; but I jumped him, 
 and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made 
 it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true. 
 
 A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is inter- 
 esting to remember how much of this food for fire is still 
 concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous years I 
 had often gone "prospecting" over some bare hill side, where 
 a i)iteh-pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat 
 pine roots. They are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty 
 or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though 
 the sapwood has all become vegetable mold, as appears by 
 
252 WALDEN 
 
 the scales of the thick bark forming' a ring level with the earth 
 four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel 
 you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow 
 as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep 
 into the earth. But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry 
 leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shed before 
 the snow came. Green hickory finely sjDlit makes the wood- 
 chopper's kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once 
 in a while I got a little of this. When the villagers were 
 lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to 
 the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky 
 streamer from my chimney, that I was awake. — 
 
 Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, 
 Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, 
 ' Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, 
 Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; 
 Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form 
 Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; 
 By night star-veiling, and by day 
 Darkening the light and blotting out the sun ; 
 Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, 
 And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. 
 
 Hard gTeen wood just cut, though I used but little of that, 
 answered my purpose better than any other. I sometimes left 
 a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; 
 and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it would 
 be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though 
 I was gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper 
 behind. It was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly 
 my housekeeper proved trustworthy. . One day, however, as I 
 was splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at 
 the window and see if the house was not on fire; it was the 
 only time I remember to have been particularly anxious on 
 this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my 
 
HOUSE-WARMING 253 
 
 bed, and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a 
 place as big as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny 
 and sheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that I could 
 afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter 
 day. 
 
 The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, 
 and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after 
 plastering and of brown paper ; for even the wildest animals 
 love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive 
 the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. 
 Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods 
 on i^urpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a bed, 
 w^hich he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, 
 having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apart- 
 ment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that 
 his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous 
 clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, 
 and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a 
 lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond 
 instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts. Though, 
 when I had been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my 
 whole body began to gi'ow torpid, when I reached the genial 
 atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and 
 prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously housed has little 
 to boast of in this respect, nor need Ave trouble ourselves to 
 speculate how the human race may be at last destroyed. It 
 would be easy to cut their threads any time with a little sharper 
 blast from the north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays 
 and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow, 
 would put a iDcriod to man's existence on the globe. 
 
 The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for economy, 
 since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well 
 as the open fire place. Cooking was then, for the most part, 
 no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic, process. It will soon 
 
254 wAlden 
 
 be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast 
 potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion. The stove not 
 only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the 
 fire, and I felt as if I had lost a companion. You can always 
 see a face in the fire. The laborer, looking into it at evening, 
 purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they 
 have accumulated during the day. But I could no longer sit 
 and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet 
 ^ecurred to me with new force. — ■ 
 
 Never, bright flame, may be denied to me 
 Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. 
 What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright? 
 "What but my fortunes sunk so low in night? 
 
 Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, 
 Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? 
 Was thy existence then too fanciful 
 For our life 's common light, who are so dull ? 
 
 Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold 
 With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? 
 Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit 
 Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit. 
 Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire 
 Warms feet and hands — nor does to more aspire ; 
 By whose compact utilitarian heap 
 The present may sit down and go to sleep. 
 Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, 
 And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire 
 talked. 
 
XIV 
 
 FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 
 
 I weathered some merry snow-storms, and spent some cheer- 
 ful winter evenings by my fireside, wkile the snow whirled 
 wildly without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. 
 For many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who came 
 occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village. The elements, 
 however, abetted me in making a path through the deepest 
 snow in the woods, for when I had once gone through the 
 wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, 
 and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so 
 not only made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night their 
 dark line was my guide. For humaji society I was obliged 
 to conjure up the former occupants of these woods. Within 
 the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which 
 my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of 
 inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and 
 dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, 
 though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. 
 In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would 
 scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children 
 who were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on 
 foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. 
 Though mainly but a humble route to neighboring villages, or 
 for the Avoodman^s team, it once amused the traveler more 
 than now by its variety, and lingered longer in his memory. 
 Where now firm open fields stretch from the village to the 
 woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on a foundation of 
 logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present 
 
 255 
 
25G WALDEX 
 
 dusty highway, from the Stratten, now the Alms House, Farm, 
 to Brister's Hill. 
 
 East of my beanfield, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, 
 slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman of Concord 
 village; who built his slave a house, and gave him permission 
 to live in Walden Woods; — Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordi- 
 ensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a 
 few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which 
 he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a 
 younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He, too, 
 however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato's 
 half-obliterated cellar hole still remains, though known to 
 few, being concealed from the traveler by a fringe of pines. 
 It is now filled with the smooth sumach {Rhus glabra), and 
 one of the earliest species of goldenrod {Solidago stricta) 
 grows there luxuriantly. 
 
 Here, by the very covner of my field, still nearer to town, 
 Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun 
 linen for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with 
 her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At 
 length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by 
 English soldiers, prisoners on j^arole, when she was away, and 
 her cat and dog and hens were all burned up together. She 
 led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. One old frequenter 
 of these woods remembers that as he passed her house one noon 
 he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling joot, — "Ye 
 are all bones, bones!" I have seen bricks amid the oak copse 
 there. 
 
 Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister's Hill, lived 
 Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave of Squire Cummings 
 once, — there where grow still the apple trees which Brister 
 planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still 
 wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his 
 epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 257 
 
 side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who 
 fell in the retreat from Concord, — where he is styled "Sippio 
 Brister," — Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called, — 
 "a man of color," as if he were discolored. It also told me, 
 with staring emphasis, when he died ; which was but an indirect 
 way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt 
 Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly, — 
 large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of 
 of the night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before 
 or since. 
 
 Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the 
 woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family; 
 whose orchard once covered all the slope of Brister's Hill, but 
 was long since killed out by pitch-pines, excepting a few stumps, 
 whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty 
 village tree. 
 
 Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location, on the 
 other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground 
 famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly, named in 
 old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part 
 in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mytho- 
 logical character, to have his biography written one day; who 
 first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs 
 and murders the whole family, — New England Rum. But 
 history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time 
 intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tinjt 
 to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says 
 that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered 
 the traveler's beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then 
 men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and 
 went their ways again. 
 
 Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it 
 had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. 
 It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if 
 
258 WALDEN 
 
 I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and 
 iiad just lost myself over Davenant's Gondibert, that winter 
 that I labored with a lethargy, — which, by the way, I never 
 knevi^ whether to regard as a family complaint, having an 
 nncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to 
 sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake 
 and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt 
 to read Chalmers' collection of English poetry without skip- 
 l^ing. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my 
 head on this when the bells rang fire, and in hot haste the 
 engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and 
 boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. 
 We thought it was far south over the woods, — we who had 
 run to fires before, — barn, shoj), or dwelling-house, or all 
 together. "It's Baker's barn," cried one. "It is the Codman 
 Place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up 
 above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted 
 "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons shot past with furious 
 speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, 
 the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go 
 however far ; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, 
 more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was afterward 
 whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus 
 we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our 
 senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and 
 actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, 
 alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but 
 cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond 
 on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and 
 so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one 
 another, expressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, 
 or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which 
 the world had witnessed, including Bascom's shop, and, between 
 ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 259 
 
 "tub" and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened 
 last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated 
 without doing any mischief, — i-eturned to sleep and Gondibert. 
 But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface 
 about wit being the soul's powder, — "but most of mankind are 
 strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder." i 
 
 It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the 
 following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low 
 moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered 
 the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both 
 its virtues and its Adces, who alone Avas interested in this 
 burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall 
 at the still smoldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, 
 as is his wont. He had been working far off in the river 
 meadow all day, and had improved the first moments that he 
 could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his 
 youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of 
 view by turns, alw^ays lying down to it, as if there was some 
 treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, 
 where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and 
 ashes. The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. 
 He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence 
 implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, 
 where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could 
 never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find 
 the well-sw^eep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling 
 for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened 
 to the heavy end, — all that he could now cling to, — to convince 
 me that it was no common "rider." I felt it, and still remark 
 it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a 
 family. 
 
 Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac 
 bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and 
 Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln. 
 
260 WALDEN 
 
 Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road 
 approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, 
 and furnished his townsmen with earthen ware, and left 
 descendants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly 
 goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and 
 there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and 
 '^attached a chip," for form's sake, as I have read in his 
 accounts, there being nothing else that he could lay his hands 
 on. One day in midsummer, when I w^as hoeing, a man who 
 was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse 
 against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. 
 He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of him, and wished 
 to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter's 
 clay and wheel in Scripture, but it had never occurred to me 
 that the pots we use were not such as had come down unbroken 
 from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, 
 and I was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever prac- 
 ticed in my neighborhood. 
 
 The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irish- 
 man, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with coil enough), 
 who occupied Wyman's tenement, — Col. Quoil, he was called. 
 Rumor said that he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had 
 lived I should have made him fight his battles over again. 
 His trade here was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to 
 St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of 
 him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who had 
 seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you 
 could well attend to. He Avore a great coat in midsummer, 
 being affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was 
 the color of carmine. He died in the road at the foot of 
 Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have 
 not remembered him as a neighbor. Before his house was 
 pulled down, when his comrades avoided it as "an unlucky 
 castle," I visited it. There lay his old clothes curled up by 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 261 
 
 use, as if they were himself, ui^on his raised plank bed. His 
 pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at 
 the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol of 
 his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of 
 Brister's Spring, he had never seen it ; and soiled cards, kings 
 of diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. 
 One black chicken which the administrator could not catch, 
 black as night and as silent, not even croaking, awaiting Rey- 
 nard, still went to roost in the next apartment. In the rear 
 there was the dim outline of a garden, which had been planted 
 but had never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible 
 shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. It was overrun 
 with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last stuck to 
 my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly 
 stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last 
 Waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens would he want more. 
 
 Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, 
 with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimble- 
 berries, hazel bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward 
 there; some pitch-pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the 
 chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black-birch, perhaps, wave^ 
 where the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible^ 
 where once a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it 
 was covered deep, — not to be discovered till some late day, — 
 with a flat stone under the sod, when the last of the race 
 departed. AVhat a sorrowful act must that be, — the covering 
 up of wells ! coincident with the opening of wells of tears. 
 These cellar dents, like deserted fox burrows, old holes, are all 
 that is left where once were the stir and bustle of human life, 
 and "fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," in some form 
 and dialect or other were by turns discussed. But all I can 
 learn of their conclusions amounts to just this, that "Cato and 
 Brister pulled wool"; which is about as edifying as the history 
 of more famous schools of philosophy. 
 
262 WALDEN 
 
 Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door 
 and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented 
 flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveler; 
 planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard 
 plots, — now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and 
 giving place to new-rising forests ; — the last of that stirp, sole 
 survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think 
 that the puny slip Avith its two eyes only, w^hich they stuck 
 in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, 
 would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the 
 rear that shaded it, and grow man's garden and orchard, and 
 tell their story faint Ij^ to the lone wanderer a half centuiy 
 after they had grown up and died, — blossoming as fair, and 
 smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, 
 civil, cheerful, lilac colors. 
 
 But this small village, germ of something more, why did it 
 fail while Concord keeps its ground? Were there no natural 
 advantages, — no water j^rivileges, forsooth? Ay, the deep 
 Walden Pond and cool Brister's Spring, — privilege to drink 
 long and healthy draughts at these, all unimproved by these 
 men but to dilute their glass. They were universally a thirsty 
 race. Might not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn- 
 parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business have thrived 
 here, making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a 
 numerous posterity have inherited the land of their fathers? 
 The sterile soil would at least have been proof against a low- 
 land degeneracy. Alas! how little does the memory of these 
 human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! 
 Again, perhaps, Nature will tiy, with me for a first settler, and 
 my house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. 
 
 I am not aware, that any man has ever built on the spot 
 which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of 
 a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens 
 cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before 
 
FORMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 263 
 
 that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. With 
 such reminiscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself 
 asleep. 
 
 At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay 
 deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or 
 a fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow 
 mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived 
 for a long time buried in drifts, even without food; or like 
 that early settler's family in the town of Sutton, in this state, 
 whose cottage was comjiletely covered by the great snow of 
 1717 when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the 
 hole which the chimney's breath made in the drift, and so 
 relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned himself 
 about me; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at 
 home. The Great Snow ! How cheerful it is to hear of ! When 
 the farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with their 
 teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before 
 their houses, and when the crust was harder cut off the trees 
 in the swamps ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the 
 next spring. 
 
 In the deepest snow^s, the path Avhich I used from the high- 
 way to my house, about half a mile long, might have been 
 represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals 
 between the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly 
 the same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and 
 going, stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pair 
 of dividers in my own deep tracks, — to such routine the winter 
 reduces us, — yet often they were filled with heaven's own blue. 
 But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my 
 going abroad, for I frequently tramjied eight or ten miles 
 through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a 
 l)eech tree, or a j^ellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among 
 the pines ; when the ice and^ snow, causing their limbs to droop, 
 
264 
 
 WALDEN 
 
 and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir 
 trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the snow 
 was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another 
 snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creej^ing 
 and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the 
 hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon I amused 
 myself by watching a barred owl {Strix nehulosa) sitting on 
 one of the lower dead limbs of a white-pine, close to the trunk, 
 in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could 
 hear me when I moved and crouched the snow with my feet, 
 but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he 
 would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and 
 open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began 
 to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him 
 half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a 
 cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit 
 left between their lids, by which he preserved a peninsular 
 relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from 
 the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object 
 or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder 
 noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and 
 sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having 
 his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and 
 flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected 
 breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, 
 guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their 
 neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way as it were 
 with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he 
 might in peace await the dawning of his day. 
 
 As I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad 
 through the meadows, T encountered many a blustering and 
 nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the 
 frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I turned 
 to it the other also. Nor was it much better by the carriage 
 
FOKMER INHABITANTS AND WINTER VISITORS 265 
 
 road from Brister's Hill. For I came to town still, like a 
 friendly Indian, when the contents of the broad, open fields 
 were all piled up between the walls of the Walden road, and 
 half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveler. 
 And when I returned new drifts would have formed through 
 which I floundered, where the busy northwest wind had been 
 depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, 
 and not a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print, the small type, 
 of a meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, 
 even in mid-winter, some warm and springy swamp where the 
 grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial 
 verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return 
 of spring. 
 
 Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from 
 my walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper 
 leading from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the 
 hearth, and my house filled w^ith the odor of his pipe. Or on 
 a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the 
 crouching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed 
 farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to 
 have a social "crack"; one of the few of his vocation who are 
 "men on their farms"; who donned a frock instead of a pro- 
 fessor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of 
 church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. 
 We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large 
 fires in cold bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other 
 dessert failed, we tried our teeth on maiiy a nut which wise 
 squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the 
 thickest shells are commonly empty. 
 
 The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest 
 snows and most dismal tempests, • was a poet. A farmer, a 
 hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be 
 daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by 
 pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings'? His 
 
266 WALDEN 
 
 business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. 
 AVe made that small house ring with boisterous mirth and 
 resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amends 
 then to Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway was 
 still and deserted in comparison. At suitable intervals there 
 were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been referred 
 indifferently to the last-uttered or the forthcoming jest. We 
 made many a "bran new" theory of life over a thin dish of 
 gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the 
 clearheadedness which philosophy requires. 
 
 I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond 
 there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came 
 through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till 
 he saw my lamp through the' trees and shared with me. some 
 long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers, — 
 Connecticut gave him to the world, — he peddled first her wares, 
 afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, 
 prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain 
 only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man 
 of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always 
 suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted 
 with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the 
 ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though 
 comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws 
 unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families 
 and rulers will come to him for advice. — 
 
 How blind that cannot see serenity! 
 
 A true friend of man ; almost the only friend of human 
 progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with 
 unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engTaven 
 in men's bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and 
 leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces 
 
FORMER INHABITA>^TS AND WINTER VISITORS 267 
 
 children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the 
 thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and^ 
 elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary on the 
 world's highway, where philosophers of all nations might j^ut 
 up, and on his sign should be printed : "Entertainment for 
 man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and 
 a quiet miqd, who earnestly seek the right road." He is 
 perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any 
 I chance to know ; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore 
 we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world 
 behind us ; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, 
 ingenuus. "Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens 
 and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty 
 of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the 
 overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how 
 he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him. 
 
 Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat 
 and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear 
 yellowish grain of the pumjikin jiine. We waded so gently 
 and reverently, or we i:>ulled togetlier so smoothly, that the 
 fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared 
 any angler on the bank, but came and went gi'andly, like the 
 clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o'- 
 pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There 
 we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and 
 there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered 
 no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to 
 converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. 
 Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the 
 old settler I have spoken of, — we three, — it expanded and 
 racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many 
 ])Ounds' weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on 
 every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to 
 be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent 
 
268 WALDEN 
 
 leak; — but I had enough of that kind of oakum ah'eady 
 picked. 
 
 There was one other with whom I had "solid seasons," long- 
 to be remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked 
 in upon me from time to time; but I had no more for society 
 there. 
 
 There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor 
 who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "The house-holder 
 is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to 
 milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a 
 guest." I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited 
 long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see tlie 
 man approaching from the town. 
 
XV 
 
 WINTER ANIMALS 
 
 Wlien the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only 
 new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from 
 their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When 
 I crossed Flint's Pond, after it was covered with snow, though 
 I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unex- 
 pectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing 
 but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the 
 extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to 
 have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable 
 distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish 
 dogs, passed for sealers or Esquimos, or in misty weather 
 loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether 
 they were giants or i^ygTiiies. I took this course when I went 
 to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, traveling in no road and 
 ]iassing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. 
 In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats 
 dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none 
 could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like 
 the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and inter- 
 rupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freely 
 when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere 
 and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far 
 from the village street, and, except at very long intervals, from 
 the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose- 
 yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines 
 bent down with snow or bristling with icicles. 
 ■ 269 
 
270 WALDEN 
 
 For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I-^ 
 heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefi- 
 nitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if 
 struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of 
 Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never 
 saw the bird while it was making it. I seldom opened my door 
 in a winter evening without hearing it ; Hoo Jioo Jioo, Jioorer hoo, 
 sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented some- 
 what like how der do; or sometimes hoo hoo only. One night 
 in the beginning of w^inter, before tlie pond froze over, about 
 nine o'clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose, 
 and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like 
 a tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. They 
 passed over the pond toward Fair-Haven, seemingly deterred 
 from settling by my light, their commodore honking all the 
 while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl 
 from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice 
 I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at 
 regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and 
 disgTace this intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a 
 greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and hoo-hoo 
 him out of Concord horizon. "VYhat do you mean by alarming 
 the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you 
 think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I 
 have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, 
 hoo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the most thrilling discords 
 T ever heard. And yet, if you had a discrimin-ating ear, there 
 were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains never 
 saw nor heard. 
 
 I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great 
 bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its 
 bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency 
 and bad dreams ; or I was waked by "I^he cracking of the ground 
 by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door. 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 271 
 
 and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter 
 of a mile long and a third of an inch wide. 
 
 Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow 
 crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other 
 game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as 
 i*f laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling 
 for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets ; 
 for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a 
 civilization going on among brutes as well as men? They 
 seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing 
 on their defense, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes 
 one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked 
 a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. 
 
 Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me 
 in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides 
 of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. 
 In the course of the winter I threw out half a bushel of ears 
 of sweet-corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow crust by 
 my door, and was amused by watching the motions of the 
 various animals which were baited by it. In the twilight and 
 the night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. 
 x\ll day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me 
 much entertainment by their maneuvers. One would approach 
 at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow 
 crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a 
 few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, 
 making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for 
 a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting 
 on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing 
 with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all 
 the eyes in the universe were fixed on him, — for all the motions 
 of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, 
 imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl, — wasting 
 more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed 
 
272 WALDEN 
 
 to walk the whole distance, — I never saw one walk, — and then 
 suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in 
 the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding 
 all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the 
 universe at the same time, — for no reason that I could ever 
 detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he 
 would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, brisk about 
 in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick 
 of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the 
 face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear 
 from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the 
 half-naked cobs about ; till at length he grew more dainty still 
 and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, 
 and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, 
 slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he 
 would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncer- 
 tainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made 
 ujD whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now think- 
 ing of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So 
 the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a fore- 
 noon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, con- 
 siderably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he 
 would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, 
 by the same zigzag course and frequent pauses, scratching 
 along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the 
 while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and 
 horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate ; — a 
 singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow; — and so he would 
 get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a 
 ]iine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards 
 find the cobs strewed about the woods in various directions. 
 
 At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were 
 heard long before, as they were warily making their approach 
 an eighth of a mile off; and in a stealthy and sneaking manner 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 273 
 
 they tlit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the 
 kernels which the squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a 
 pitch-pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a 
 kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes them ; and 
 after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the 
 endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They 
 were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them ; 
 but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they 
 were taking what was their own. 
 
 Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking 
 up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest 
 twig, and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at 
 them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, 
 till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A 
 little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of 
 my wood-pile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisp- 
 ing notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with 
 sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a 
 wiry summery phe-be from the wood-side. They were so famil- 
 iar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I 
 was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once 
 had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I 
 was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more dis- 
 tinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any 
 epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be 
 quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when 
 that was the nearest way. 
 
 When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near 
 the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hill 
 side and about my wood-pile, the partridges came out of the 
 woods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you 
 walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, 
 jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which 
 comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust; for this 
 
274 WALDEN 
 
 brave bird is not to be seared by winter. It is frequently cov- 
 ei-ed up by drifts, and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on 
 wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day 
 or two." I used to start them in the open land also, where they 
 liad come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the wild apple 
 trees. They will come regularly every evening to particular 
 trees, where the cunning si:)ortsman lies in wait for them, and 
 the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I 
 am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature's 
 own bird which lives on buds and diet-drink. 
 
 In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I 
 sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with 
 hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the 
 chase, and the note of the hunting horn at intervals, proving that 
 man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox 
 bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following 
 pack pursuing their Actseon. And perhaps at evening I see 
 the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their 
 sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the 
 fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be 
 safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no fox-hound 
 could overtake him ; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he 
 stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he 
 circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. 
 Sometimes, however, he w^ill run upon a wall manj^ rods, and 
 then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water 
 will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw 
 a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice 
 Avas covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and 
 then return to the same shore. Erelong the hounds arrived, but 
 here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by them- 
 selves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp 
 and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of 
 madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 275 
 
 Thus tliey circle until tliey fall upon the recent trail of a fox, 
 for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One day 
 a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his 
 hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for a weelv 
 by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told 
 him, for every time I attempted to answ^er his questions, he 
 interrupted me by asking, "What do you do heref He had 
 lost a dog, but found a man. 
 
 One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to 
 bathe in Walden once every year when the water was warmest, 
 and at such times looked in upon me, told me that many years 
 ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in 
 Walden Wood, and as he walked the Wayland road he heard 
 the cry of hounds approaching, and erelong a fox leaped the 
 wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall 
 out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some 
 way behind came an old hound and her three pups in full pur- 
 suit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in 
 the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick 
 woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far 
 over toward Fair-Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they 
 came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sound- 
 ing nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, now from the 
 Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and listened to 
 their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox 
 appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing 
 pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the 
 leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers 
 far behind ; and leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect 
 and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment com- 
 passion restrained the latter's arm; but that was a short-lived 
 mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was 
 leveled, and whang! — the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on 
 the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the 
 
276 WALDEN 
 
 hounds. Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded 
 through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the 
 old hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snap- 
 ping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock ; but 
 spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her hounding, as if 
 struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him 
 in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their 
 mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the 
 hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery 
 was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, 
 then followed the brush awhile, and at length turned off into 
 the woods again. That evening a Weston Squire came to the 
 Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told 
 how for a week they had been hunting on their own account 
 from Weston woods. The Concord hunter told him what he 
 knew and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and 
 departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the next 
 day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a 
 farm-house for the night, whence, having been well fed, they 
 took their departure early in the morning. 
 
 The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nut- 
 ting, who used to hunt bears on Fair-Haven Ledges, and ex- 
 change their skins for rum in Concord village; who told him, 
 even, that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had a famous 
 fox-hound named Burgoyne, — he pronounced it Bugine, — which 
 my informant used to borrow. In the "Wast Book" of an old 
 trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and 
 representative, I find the following entry: Jan. 18th, 1742-3, 
 "John Melven Cr. by 1 Gray Fox 0—2—3" ; they are not found 
 here; and in his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has 
 credit "by Yz a Catt skin — 1 — 4V2" ; of course a wild-cat, for 
 Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war, and would not 
 have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given for 
 deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One man still pre- 
 
WINTER ANIMALS 277 
 
 serves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, 
 and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his 
 uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and 
 merry crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who 
 would catch up a leaf by the road-side and play a strain on it 
 wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any 
 hunting horn. 
 
 At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with 
 liounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk 
 out of my w^ay, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes 
 till I had passed. 
 
 Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There 
 were scores of jntch-pines around my house, from one to four 
 inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous 
 winter,- — a Norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long 
 and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of 
 pine bark with their other diet. These trees were alive and 
 apparently flourishing at mid-summer, and many of them had 
 grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another 
 winter such were without exception dead. It is remarkable 
 that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole x-)ine tree for 
 its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but per- 
 haps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont 
 to grow up densely. 
 
 The hares {Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One had 
 her form under vay house all wmter, separated from me only by 
 the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty 
 departure when I began to stir, — thump, thump, thump, strik- 
 ing her head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used 
 to come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings 
 which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the 
 ground that they could liardly be distinguished when still. 
 Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight 
 of one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my 
 
278 WALDEN 
 
 door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a 
 bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening 
 one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with 
 fear, yet unwilling to move ; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, 
 with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. 
 It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler 
 bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared 
 young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, 
 away it scudded with an elastic spring over the snow crust, 
 straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and 
 soon jDut the forest between me and itself, — the wild free veni- 
 son, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without 
 reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus, 
 levipeSf lightfoot, some think.) 
 
 What is a country without rabbits and partridges'? They 
 are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; 
 ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern 
 times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied 
 to leaves and to the ground, — and to one another; it is either 
 winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild 
 creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a nat- 
 ural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. The iiar- 
 tridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of 
 the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the 
 sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, 
 and they become more numerous than ever. That must be a 
 poor country indeed that does not support a hare. Our woods 
 teem with them both, and around every swamp may be seen the 
 jiartridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse- 
 hair snares, which some cowboy tends. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE POND IN WINTER 
 
 After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that 
 some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavor- 
 ing in vain to answer in my sleep, as what — how — when — 
 where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures 
 live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied 
 face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered ques- 
 tion, to Nature and daylight. The snow hdng deep on the earth 
 dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which 
 my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward ! Nature puts no 
 question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long 
 ago taken her resolution. "0 Prince, our eyes contemplate with 
 admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied 
 spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part 
 of this glorious creation ; but day comes to reveal to us this 
 great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of 
 the ether." 
 
 Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and 
 go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and 
 snowy night it needed a divining rod to find it. Every win- 
 ter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was 
 so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and 
 shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, 
 so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the 
 snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished 
 from anj' level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, 
 
 279 
 
280 WALDEN" 
 
 it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or " 
 more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture 
 amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and 
 then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, 
 kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the 
 fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of 
 ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer ; 
 there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twi- 
 light sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of 
 the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our 
 heads. 
 
 Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, 
 men come with fishing reels and slender lunch, and let down 
 their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and 
 perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and 
 trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings 
 and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would 
 be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear- 
 naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural 
 lore as the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with 
 books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. 
 The things which they practice are said not yet to be known. 
 Here is one- fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. 
 You look into his pail with w^onder as into a summer pond, as 
 if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had 
 retreated. How, pray, did he get these in mid-winter? Oh, he 
 got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he 
 caught them. His life itself passes deeper in Nature than the 
 studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the 
 naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his 
 knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their 
 core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets 
 his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, 
 and I love to see Nature carried out in him. The perch swal- 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 281 
 
 lows the gTiib-worm, the pickert 1 swallows the perch, and the 
 fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the 
 scale of being are filled. 
 
 When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was 
 sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruder 
 fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder 
 branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or 
 five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having 
 fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled 
 through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a 
 foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, 
 being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These 
 alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you 
 Avalked halfway round the pond. 
 
 Ah, the pickerel of Walden ! when I see them lying on the 
 ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a 
 little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their 
 rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign 
 to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Con- 
 cord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent 
 beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the 
 cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumjieted in our 
 streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the 
 stones, nor blue like the sky ; but they have, to my eyes, if pos- 
 sible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if 
 they were the pearls, and animalized nuclei or crystals of the 
 Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all 
 through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, 
 Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here, — that 
 in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams 
 and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, 
 this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see 
 its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes 
 there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their 
 
282 AVALDEN 
 
 watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the 
 thin air of heaven. 
 
 As I was desirous to recover the long-lost bottom of Walden 
 Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in 
 '46, with compass and chain and sounding line. There have 
 been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, 
 of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. 
 It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness 
 of ?. pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited 
 two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. 
 Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the 
 other side of the globe. Some who have lain fiat on the ice for 
 a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, per- 
 chance Avith watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty 
 conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have 
 seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might be driven,'' if 
 there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source of the 
 Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. 
 Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" and 
 a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bot- 
 tom ; for while the "fifty-six" was resting by the w^ay, they w^ere 
 paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly 
 immeasurable capacity for marvelousness. But I can assure 
 my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not 
 unreasonable, though at an unusual depth. I fathomed it easily 
 with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a hal f, 
 and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by 
 having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath 
 to help me. The greatest "depth was exactly one hundred and 
 two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has 
 risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remark- 
 able depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be 
 spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 283 
 
 Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that 
 this i)ond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men 
 believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be 
 bottomless. 
 
 A factory owner, hearing what depth I had found, thought 
 that it could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance 
 Avith dajns, sand would not lie at so steep an angle. But the 
 deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as 
 most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable 
 valleys. They are not like cups between the hills ; for this one, 
 which is so unusually deep for its area, appears in a vei'tical 
 section through its center not deeper than a shallow plate. 
 Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow 
 than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in 
 all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing 
 at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as "a 
 bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in 
 breadth," and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, 
 observes, "If Ave could haA^e seen it immediately after the 
 diluvian crash, or Avhatever convulsion of Nature occasioned it, 
 before the Avaters gushed in, what a horrid chasm it must have 
 appeared ! 
 
 So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
 Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad, and deep, 
 Capacious bed of waters 
 
 But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, Ave apply 
 these proportions to Walden, Avhich, as we have seen, appears 
 already in a vertical section only like a shalloAV plate, it will 
 appear four times as shallow. So much for the increased hor- 
 rors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many 
 a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly 
 such a "horrid chasm," from which the waters have receded, 
 though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist 
 
284 WALDEN 
 
 to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an 
 inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the 
 low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain have 
 been necessary to conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they 
 who work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the 
 l^uddles after a shower. The amount of it is, the imagination, 
 give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than 
 Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be 
 found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth. 
 
 As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of 
 the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying 
 harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its 
 general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres 
 more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, 
 wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, 
 the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods ; and 
 generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for 
 each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three 
 or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and 
 dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the 
 effect of water under these circumstances is to level all inequali- 
 ties. The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the 
 shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect 
 that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite 
 across the pond, and its direction could be determined by 
 obser\-ing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain 
 shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel. 
 
 When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an 
 inch, and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, 
 I observed this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that 
 the number indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the 
 center of the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then 
 breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest 
 length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 285 
 
 point of greatest G3ptli, notwithstanding that the middle is so 
 nearly level, the outline of the pond far from regular, and the 
 extreme length and breadth were got by measuring into the 
 coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but this hint would 
 conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond 
 or puddle ? Is not this the rule also for the height of mountains, 
 regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill is not 
 highest at its narrowest part. 
 
 Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were 
 observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper 
 water within, so that the hscy tended to be an expansion of 
 water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and 
 to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two 
 capes showing the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea- 
 coast, also, has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the 
 mouth of the cove was Avider compared with its length, the 
 water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the basin. 
 Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the char- 
 acter of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements 
 enough to make out a formula for all cases. 
 
 In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, 
 at the deepest jioint in a pond, by observing the outlines of its 
 surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of 
 \Mnte Pond, which contains about forty-one acres, and, like 
 this, has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet ; and as 
 the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least 
 breadth, where two opjDosite capes approached each other and 
 two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point a short 
 distance from the latter line, but still on the line of greatest 
 length, as the deepest. The deepest part was found to jv. 
 within one hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to 
 which I had inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely 
 sixty feet. Of course, a stream running through, or an island 
 in the pond, would make the problem much more complicated. 
 
286 WALDEN 
 
 If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one 
 fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all 
 the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few 
 laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion 
 or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential 
 elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony 
 are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but 
 the harmony which results from a far greater number of seem- 
 ingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not 
 detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as 
 our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies 
 with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though 
 absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it 
 is not comprehended in its entireness. 
 
 What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. 
 It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not 
 only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in 
 man; but draw lines through the length and breadth of the 
 aggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors and waves of 
 life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be 
 the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to 
 know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circum- 
 stances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is sur- 
 rounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, 
 whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they 
 suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and smooth 
 shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold 
 projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth 
 of thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every 
 cove, or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, 
 in which we are detained anS partially land-locked. These 
 inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and 
 direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the 
 ancient axes of elevation. Wlien this bar is gradually increased 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 287 
 
 by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the 
 waters, so that it reaches to tlie surface, that which was at first 
 but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was har- 
 bored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, 
 wherein the thought secures its own conditions, changes, per- 
 haps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a 
 marsh. At the advent of each individual into this life, may we 
 not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere ? 
 It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for 
 the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are 
 conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer 
 for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of 
 science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural 
 currents concur to indi\d dualize them. 
 
 As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered 
 any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, Avith a 
 thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where 
 the Avater flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in 
 summer and warmest in winter. When the ice-men were at 
 work here in '46-7, the cakes sent to the shore were one day 
 rejected by those who were stacking them up there, not being 
 thick enough to lie side by side with the rest; and. the cutters 
 thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two or three 
 inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there 
 was an inlet there. They also showed me in another place 
 what they thought was a "leach hole," through which the jDond 
 leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me 
 out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten 
 feet of water ; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to 
 need soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has 
 suggested that if such a "leach hole" should be found, its con- 
 nection with the meadow, if any existed, might be proved by 
 conveying some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the 
 hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, 
 
288 WALDEN 
 
 which would catch some of the particles carried through by the 
 current. 
 
 While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches 
 thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well 
 known that a level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from the 
 shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a 
 level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was 
 three quarters of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly at- 
 tached to the shore. It was probably greater in the middle. 
 Who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we 
 might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? When 
 two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, 
 and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the 
 ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of sev- 
 eral feet on a tree across the pond. When I began to cut holes 
 for sounding, there were three or four inches of water on the 
 ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water 
 began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run 
 for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every 
 side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the sur- 
 face of the pond ; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated 
 the ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of 
 ~a ship to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain 
 succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice 
 over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, 
 shaped somewhat like a spider's web, what you may call ice 
 rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing 
 from all sides to a center. Sometimes, also, when the ice was 
 covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, 
 one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other 
 on the trees or hill side. 
 
 While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and 
 solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 289 
 
 cool his summer drink ; impressively, even pathetically wise, to 
 foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January, — wearing 
 a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not pro- 
 vided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world 
 which will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts and 
 saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off 
 their very element and air, held fast by chains and stakes like 
 corded wood, through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, 
 to underlie the summer there. It looks like solidified azure, as, 
 far off, it is drawn through the streets. These ice-cutters are a 
 merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went among them 
 they were w^ont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I 
 standing underneath. 
 
 In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of Hyper- 
 borean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, 
 with many car-loads of ungainly-looking farming tools, sleds, 
 plows, drill-borrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and 
 each man was armed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as 
 is not described in the New England Farmer or the Cultivator. 
 I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter 
 rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Ice- 
 land. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim 
 the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain 
 fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who 
 was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I 
 understood, amounted to half a million already; but, in order 
 to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the 
 only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a 
 hard winter. They went to work at once, plowing, harrowing, 
 rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on 
 making this a model farm ; but when I was looking sharp to see 
 what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of 
 fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mold 
 itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather 
 
290 WALDEN 
 
 the water, — for it was a very springy soil, — indeed, all the 
 lerra firma there was, — and haul it away on sleds, and then I 
 ^,a8ssed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. So they came 
 and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, 
 from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, 
 like a flock of arctic snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Walden 
 had her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his team, 
 slipped through a crack in the gi'ound down toward Tartarus, 
 and he who was so brave before suddenly became but the ninth 
 part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad 
 to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was 
 some virtue in a stove ; or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece 
 of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and 
 had to be cut out. 
 
 To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee over- 
 seers, came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They 
 divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require 
 description, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly 
 hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons 
 and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely 
 as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by 
 side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an 
 obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a 
 good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the 
 yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and "cradle holes" were 
 worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds 
 over the same track, and the horses invariably ate their oats 
 out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. They stacked up 
 the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on 
 one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between the 
 outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though 
 never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavi- 
 ties, leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and 
 finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 291 
 
 or Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow 
 hay into the crevices, and this became covered with rime and 
 icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, 
 built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, that old 
 man we see in the almanac, — his shanty, as if he had a 
 design to estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty- 
 five per cent of this would reach its destination, and that two 
 or three per cent would be wasted in the cars. However, a 
 still greater part of this heap had a different destiny from what 
 was intended; for, either because the ice was found not to 
 keep so well as was expected, containing more air than usual, 
 or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap, 
 made in the winter of '46-7 and estimated to contain ten thou- 
 sand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards ; and though 
 it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, 
 the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that sum- 
 mer and the next winter, and was not quite melted till Septem- 
 ber, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greater part. 
 
 Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a 
 green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can 
 easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely green- 
 ish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one 
 of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village 
 street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object 
 of interest to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of 
 Walden which in the state of water was green will often, when 
 frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. So the hol- 
 lows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled 
 with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day 
 will have frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of water and ice 
 is due to the light and air they contain^ and the most trans- 
 parent is the bluest. Ice is an interesting subject for contem- 
 plation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at 
 Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is 
 
292 WALDEN 
 
 it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen 
 remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the 
 difference between the affections and the intellect. 
 
 Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred 
 men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and 
 apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we 
 see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as I looked 
 out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or 
 the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all 
 gone, and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the 
 same window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflect- 
 ing the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in 
 solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood 
 there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives 
 and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like 
 a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where 
 lately a hundred men securely labored. 
 
 Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston 
 and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink 
 at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupen- 
 dous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since 
 whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in com- 
 parison with which our modern world and its literature seem 
 puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be 
 referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sub- 
 limity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my 
 well for water, and lo ! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, 
 priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his 
 temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root 
 of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come 
 to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate 
 together in the same Avell. The joure Walden water is mingled 
 with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it 
 is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and 
 
THE POND IN WINTER 293 
 
 the Hesperides, makes the peripkis of Hanno, and, floating by 
 Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts 
 in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of 
 which Alexander only heard the names. 
 
XVII 
 
 SPRING 
 
 The opening of large tracts by the iee-cutters commonly 
 causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by 
 the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. 
 But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had 
 soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. This 
 pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, 
 on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream 
 passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew 
 it to open in the course of a Avinter, not excepting that of '52-3, 
 which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens 
 about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint's 
 Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and 
 in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates 
 better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the 
 season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. 
 A severe cold of a few days' duration in March may very much 
 retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature 
 of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer 
 thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, 
 stood at 32°, or freezing point; near the shore at 33°; in the* 
 middle of Flint's Pond, the same day, at 32i/2° ; at a dozen rods 
 from the shore, in shallow water, nnder ice a foot thick, at 36°. 
 This difference of three and a half degrees between the tem- 
 l)erature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, 
 and the fact that a great })roportion of it is comparatively 
 shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than 
 
 294 
 
SPRING 295 
 
 Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several 
 inches thinner than in the middle. In mid-winter the middle 
 had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, 
 every one who has waded about the shores of a pond in summer 
 must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to 
 the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little 
 distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the 
 bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through 
 the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat 
 passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from 
 the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and 
 melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melt- 
 ing it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the 
 air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and 
 downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last dis- 
 appears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain as 
 well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or "comb," that is, 
 assume the appearance of honey-comb, whatever may be its 
 position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the 
 water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near to 
 the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently 
 quite dissolved by this reflected heat ; and I have been told that 
 in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow 
 wooden jDond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so 
 had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bot- 
 tom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a Avarm 
 rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from 
 Walden, and leaves a hard, dark, or transjDarent ice on the 
 middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, 
 a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected 
 heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the 
 ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath. 
 
 The phenomena of the year take place every day in a i>ond 
 on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shal- 
 
296 WALDEN 
 
 low water is being warmed more rapidly than the d^ep, though 
 it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is 
 being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an 
 epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and 
 evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. 
 The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of tem- 
 perature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February 
 "^Ith, 1850, having gone to Flint's Pond to spend the day, I 
 noticed with surprise that when I struck the ice with the head 
 of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or 
 as if I had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began to 
 boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of 
 the sun's rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched 
 itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increas- 
 ing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a 
 short siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as 
 the sun was withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the 
 weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. But 
 in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also 
 being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and 
 probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned 
 by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the "thundering of the 
 pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond 
 does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when 
 to jxpeet its thundering; but though I may perceive no differ- 
 ence in the weather, it does. Who would have suspected so 
 large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive ? Yet 
 it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as 
 surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive 
 and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as sensitive to 
 atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube. 
 
 One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I 
 should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. 
 
SPRING 297 
 
 The ice in the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and 1 
 can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer 
 suns are gradually melting the snow ; the days have grown sen- 
 sibly longer ; and I see how I shall get through the winter with- 
 out adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer neces- 
 sary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the 
 chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, 
 for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the wood- 
 chuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of 
 March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red- 
 wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew 
 warmer, it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken 
 up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely 
 melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was 
 merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that you 
 could put your foot through it when six inches thick ; but by the 
 next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, 
 it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, 
 spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five 
 5ays before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first 
 completely open on the 1st of April ; in '46, the 25th of March ; 
 in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; in '52, the 
 18th of April; in '53, the 23rd of March; in '54, about the 7th 
 of April. 
 
 Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers 
 and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly inter- 
 esting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. "When 
 the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the 
 ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, 
 as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a 
 few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out 
 of the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who has 
 been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise 
 in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the 
 
298 WALDEN 
 
 stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel, — 
 who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of 
 natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah, — told 
 me, and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of 
 Nature's operations, for I thought that there were no secrets 
 between them, that one spring day he took his gun and boat, 
 and thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. 
 There was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of 
 the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sud- 
 bury, where he lived, to Fair-Haven Pond, which he found, 
 unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. 
 It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a body 
 of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the 
 north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed 
 himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice 
 was melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there 
 was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, 
 such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that 
 some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there 
 about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, 
 but singularly grand and impressive, unlike anything he had 
 ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing as if it would 
 have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, 
 which seemed to him all at once like tlie sound of a vast body of 
 fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started 
 up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the 
 whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted 
 in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its 
 edge grating on the shore, — at first gently nibbled and crumbled 
 off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along 
 the island to a considerable height before it came to a standstill. 
 At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and 
 warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow-banks, 
 and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape 
 
SPRING 299 
 
 of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the 
 traveler picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music 
 of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled 
 with the blood of winter which they are bearing off. 
 
 Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the 
 forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the 
 sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on 
 my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so 
 large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of 
 the right material must have been greatly multiplied since 
 railroads were invented. The material was sand of every degree 
 of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with 
 a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and even 
 in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down 
 the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow 
 and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. 
 Innumerable little streams overlaj^ and interlace one with 
 another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys 
 halfway the law of currents, and halfway that of vegetation. 
 As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making 
 heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, 
 as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated 
 thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of 
 leopards' paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, 
 and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vege- 
 tation, whose forms and color we see imitated in 'bronze, a 
 sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than 
 acanthus, chicory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined 
 perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to 
 future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were 
 a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various 
 shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing 
 the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. 
 Wh^n the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the 
 
300 WALDEN 
 
 bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams 
 losing their semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more 
 flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till 
 they form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully 
 shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of vege- 
 tation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted 
 into hanks, like those formed ofl" the mouths of rivers, and 
 the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on the 
 bottom. 
 
 The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, 
 is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or 
 sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, 
 the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage 
 remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When 
 I see on the one side the inert bank, — for the sun acts on one 
 side first, — and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation 
 of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in 
 the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me — 
 had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, 
 and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. 
 I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this 
 sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the 
 vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands 
 an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the 
 earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with 
 the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, 
 and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its 
 prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, 
 it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver 
 and lungs and the leaves of fat (Act^co, labor, lapsus, to flow 
 or slip downward, a lapsing; Xopo^, globus, lobe, globe; also 
 lap, flap, and many other words), externally a dry thin leaf, 
 even as the / and v are a pressed and dried h. The radicals 
 of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the h (single lobed, or B, double 
 
SPRING 301 
 
 lobed), with a liquid I behind it pressing it forward. In globe, 
 gib, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the 
 throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and 
 thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub 
 in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe 
 continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged 
 in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as 
 if it had flowed into molds which the fronds of water plants 
 have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is 
 but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is 
 intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects 
 in their axils. 
 
 When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the 
 morning the streams will start once more and branch and 
 branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance 
 how blood vessels are formed. If you look closely you observe 
 that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream 
 of softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the 
 finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at 
 last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the 
 most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the 
 most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms 
 for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which 
 is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from 
 one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever 
 and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how 
 rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using 
 the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of 
 its channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious 
 matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, 
 and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fiber 
 or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? 
 The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The 
 fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass 
 
302 WALDEN 
 
 of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand 
 and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand 
 a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may 
 be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umhilicaria, on the side 
 of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip — labium, from 
 labor (?) — laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous 
 mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. 
 The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the 
 face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley 
 of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each 
 rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now 
 loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of 
 the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions 
 it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would 
 have caused it to flow yet farther. 
 
 Thus it seemed that this one hill side illustrated the principle 
 of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but 
 patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hiero- 
 glyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? 
 This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than tl o luxuriance 
 and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excremen- 
 titious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of 
 liver, lights, and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side 
 outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, 
 and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming- 
 out of the ground; this is Siting. It precedes the green and 
 flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know- 
 of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestionsM 
 It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, 
 and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls 
 spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. 
 These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a 
 furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The 
 earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon 
 
SPEING 303 
 
 stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists 
 and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of 
 a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, — not a fossil earth, 
 but a living earth; comj^ared with whose great central life all 
 animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will 
 heave our exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals 
 and cast them into the most beautiful molds you can"; they will 
 never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows 
 out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are 
 plastic like clay in the hands of the potter. 
 
 Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain 
 and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a 
 dormant quadruj^ed from its burrow, and seeks the sea with 
 music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his 
 gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. 
 The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces. 
 
 When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few 
 warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant 
 to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping 
 forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which 
 had withstood the winter, — life-everlasting, goldenrods, pin- 
 weeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting 
 frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty w^as not 
 ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cattails, mulleins, Johnswort, 
 hardback, meadow-sweet, and other strong stemmed plants, 
 those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds, — 
 decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am 
 l^articularly attracted b^' the arching and sheaf-like top of 
 the wool-gTass; it brings back the summer to our winter mem- 
 ories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and 
 which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to 
 types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is 
 an antique style older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of 
 the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible 
 
304 WALDEN 
 
 tenderness and fragile delicacy. AYe are accustomed to hear 
 this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with 
 the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer. 
 
 At the approach of spring tlie red squirrels got under my 
 house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading 
 or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping 
 and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were 
 heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, 
 as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying 
 humanity to stop them. No you don't — chickaree — chickaree. 
 They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive 
 their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irre- 
 sistible. 
 
 The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with 
 younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard 
 over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the 
 song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter 
 tinkled as they fell ! What at such a time are histories, chro- 
 nologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks 
 sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing 
 low over the meadow is already seeking the first slimy life 
 that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in 
 all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass 
 flames up on the hill sides like a spring fire, — "et i3rimitus 
 orbitur herba imbribus primoribus evocata," — as if the earth 
 sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not 
 yellow but green is the color of its flame; — the symbol of 
 ])erpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long gi-een ribbon, 
 streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the 
 frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's 
 hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill 
 oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for 
 in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass- 
 blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds 
 
SPRING 305 
 
 drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws 
 from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but dies 
 down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. 
 
 Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide 
 along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the 
 east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main 
 body. I hear a song-sparrow singing from the bushes on the 
 shore, — olit, oUt, olit, — chip, chip, chip, che, char, — che tuiss, 
 wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome 
 the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering 
 somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is 
 unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, 
 and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind 
 slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches 
 the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon 
 of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full 
 of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within 
 it, and of the sands on its shore, — a silvery sheen as from 
 the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such 
 is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead 
 and is alive again. But this sjDring it broke up more steadily, 
 as I have said. 
 
 The change from storm and winter to serene and mild 
 weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic 
 ones, is a memorable crisis which all things j^roclaim. It is 
 seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light 
 filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds 
 of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were drij^ping with 
 sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo ! where yesterday 
 was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm 
 and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer 
 evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, 
 as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard 
 a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a 
 
306 WALDEN 
 
 thousand years, methouglit, whose note I shall not forget for 
 many a thousand more, — the same sweet and powerful song 
 as of yore. the evening robin, at the end of a New England 
 summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! 
 I mean he; I mean the twig. This at least is not the Turdus 
 migratorius. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my house, 
 which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several 
 characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, 
 as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew 
 that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking 
 at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether 
 its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled 
 by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary 
 travelers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging 
 at last in unrestrained comjDlaint and mutual consolation. 
 Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; 
 when, driving toward my house, they suddenh'' spied my light, 
 and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I 
 came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night 
 in the woods. 
 
 In the morning I watched the geese from the door through 
 the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so 
 large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial 
 ]iond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore 
 they at once rose up with a gi^eat flapping of wings at the 
 signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank, 
 cii'cled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then 
 steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader- 
 at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. 
 A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took the route 
 to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. 
 
 For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of some 
 solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, 
 and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life 
 
SPRING 307 
 
 than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again 
 flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the 
 martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed 
 that the township contained so many that it could afford me 
 any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient 
 race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost 
 all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors 
 and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing 
 plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to 
 correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the 
 equilibrium of Nature. 
 
 As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming 
 in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and 
 the realization of the Golden Age. — 
 
 Eurus ad Auroram, Nabathacaque regna recessit, 
 Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis. 
 
 The East-Wmd withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathasan kingdom, 
 And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things. 
 The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed-; 
 Or the earth being recent and lately sundered from the high 
 Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven. 
 
 A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. 
 So our jDrospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. 
 We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and 
 took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass 
 which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls 
 on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect 
 of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter 
 in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring 
 morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to 
 
308 WALDEN 
 
 vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner 
 may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern 
 the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your 
 neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, 
 and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world ; 
 })ut the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, 
 recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, 
 and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with 
 still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with 
 the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. 
 There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but 
 even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and 
 ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short 
 hour the south hill side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some 
 innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and 
 try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. 
 P'ven he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer 
 does not leave open his prison doors, — why the judge does 
 not dismiss his case, — why the preacher does not dismiss his 
 congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which 
 God gives them, nor accei>t the pardon which he freely offers 
 to all. 
 
 "A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil 
 and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to 
 the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a 
 little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest 
 which has been felled. In like manner the evil which one 
 does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues 
 which began "to spring up again from developing themselves 
 and destroys them. 
 
 "After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many 
 times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath 
 of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the 
 breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, 
 
SPEING 309 
 
 then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the 
 brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the 
 brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of 
 reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?'^ 
 
 The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger 
 Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. 
 Punishment and fear were not; nor Avere threatening words read 
 On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear 
 The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. 
 Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended 
 To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, 
 And mortals knew no shores but their own. 
 
 ****** 
 
 There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm 
 Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed. 
 
 On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of 
 the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the 
 quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I 
 heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks 
 which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I obsei-ved 
 a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately 
 soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, 
 showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin 
 ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This 
 sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry 
 are associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me 
 it might be called: but I care not for its name. It was the 
 most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply 
 flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it 
 sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting 
 again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free 
 and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then 
 recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its 
 foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the 
 
310 WALDEN 
 
 universe, siDorting there alone, — and to need none but the 
 morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, 
 but made all the earth lonely beneath it. Where was the 
 parent whieh hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the 
 heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth 
 but by an egg hatched sometime in the crevice of a crag; — or 
 was its native i>est made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the 
 rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some 
 soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now 
 some cliffy cloud. 
 
 Besides this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and 
 bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. 
 Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of 
 many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, 
 from willow root to willow root, w^hen the wild river valley 
 and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as 
 would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in 
 their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof 
 of immortality. All things must live in such a light. Death, 
 w^iere was thy sting? Grave, where was thy victory, then? 
 
 Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unex- 
 plored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the 
 tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the 
 bittern and the meado^v-hen lurk, and hear the booming of 
 the snipe ; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wulder 
 and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls 
 with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that wo 
 are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that 
 all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and cea 
 be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because 
 unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. W^e 
 must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and 
 Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness 
 with its living and its decaying trees, the thundercloud, and 
 
SPRING 311 
 
 the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We 
 need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life 
 pasturing- freely where we never wander. We are cheered 
 when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which 
 disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and strength 
 from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the 
 path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out 
 of my way, especially in the night when the air Avas heavy, 
 but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and 
 inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. 
 I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can 
 be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; 
 that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of 
 existence like pulp, — tadpoles which herons gobble up, and 
 tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes 
 it has rained flesh and blood ! With the liability to accident, 
 we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impres- 
 sion made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison 
 is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Com- 
 passion is a very untenable ground. It must be .expeditious. 
 Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped. 
 
 Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, 
 just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, 
 imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially 
 in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and 
 shining faintly on the hill sides here and there. On the third 
 or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the 
 first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown 
 thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, chewink, and other birds. 
 I had heard the wood-thrush long before. The j^hoebe had 
 already come once more and looked in at my door and window, 
 to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining 
 herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held 
 by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur- 
 
312 
 
 WALDEN 
 
 like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the pond and the 
 stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could 
 have collected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we 
 hear of. Even in Calidasa's drama of Sacontala, we read of 
 "rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus." And 
 so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles 
 into higher and higher grass. 
 
 Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and 
 the second year was similar to it. I finally left Waldeii 
 September 6th, 1847. 
 
I 
 
 XVIII 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air 
 and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The 
 buckeye does not groAv in New England, and the mocking-bird 
 is rarely heard here. The wild goose is more of a cosmopolite 
 than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in 
 the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. 
 Even the bison to some extent keeps pace with the seasons, 
 cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and 
 sweeter grass aAvaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think 
 that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up 
 on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our 
 fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you 
 cannot go to Terra del Fuego this summer: but you may go 
 to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider 
 than our views of it. 
 
 Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, 
 like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid 
 sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the 
 home of our correspondent. Our voyage is only great circle- 
 sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. 
 One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely 
 that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would 
 a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also 
 may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game to 
 shoot one's self. — 
 
 313 
 
314 WALDEN 
 
 Direct your eye right inward, and you '11 find 
 A thousand regions in your mind 
 Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be 
 Expert in home-cosmography. 
 
 What does Africa, — what does the West stand for? Is not 
 our own interior white on the chart ? black though it may prove, 
 like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, 
 or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around 
 this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems 
 which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who 
 is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does 
 Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo 
 Park, the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher, of your own streams 
 and oceans ; explore your own higher latitudes, — with shiploads 
 of jDreserved meats to support you, if thej^ be necessary; and 
 pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved 
 meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus 
 to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new 
 channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord 
 of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but 
 a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be 
 patriotic who have no seZ/-respect, and sacrifice the greater 
 to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but 
 have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their 
 clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the 
 meaning of that South-Sea ExjDloring Expedition, with all 
 its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the 
 fact that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to 
 which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by 
 him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through 
 cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five 
 hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the 
 private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being, 
 alone. — 
 
CONCLUSION 315 
 
 Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. 
 Plus habet hie vitae, plus habet ille viae. 
 
 Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. 
 I have more of God, they more of the road. 
 
 It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the 
 eats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and 
 you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get 
 at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, 
 Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but 
 no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it 
 is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn 
 to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, 
 if you would travel farther than all travelers, be naturalized 
 in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against 
 a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and 
 Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. 
 Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that 
 run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, 
 which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor 
 conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct 
 a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, 
 sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too. 
 
 It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascer- 
 tain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place 
 one's self in formal opposition to the most sacred' laws of 
 society." He declared that "a soldier who fights in the ranks 
 does not require half so much courage as a foot-pad," — "that 
 honor and religion have never stood in the way of a well- 
 considered and a firm resolve." This was manly, as the world 
 goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man 
 Avould have found himself often enough "in formal opposition" 
 to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of society," through 
 obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his 
 
316 WALDEN ^ 
 
 resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a man 
 to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain 
 himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience 
 to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposi- 
 tion to a just government, if he should chance to meet with| 
 such. I 
 
 I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. I 
 Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, ' 
 and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remark- ■ 
 able how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, i 
 and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there \ 
 a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond- | 
 side ; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still ' 
 quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen 
 into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the 
 earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with 
 the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, 
 must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of 
 tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin 
 passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of 
 the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the 
 mountains. I do not wish to go below now. 
 
 I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one 
 advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and 
 endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet 
 with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put 
 some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, 
 universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish them- 
 selves around and within him ; or the old laws be expanded, and 
 interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will 
 live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion 
 as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear 
 less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty 
 poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in 
 
CONCLUSION 317 
 
 the air, your work need not be lost ; that is where they should 
 be. Now put the foundations under them. 
 
 It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, 
 that you shall speak so that they can understand you.' Neither 
 men nor toadstools gTow so. As if that were important, and 
 there were not enough to understand you without them. As if 
 Nature could support but one order of understandings, could 
 not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as 
 creeping things, and hush and who, which Bright can under- 
 stand, were the best English. As if there were safety in 
 stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be 
 extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the 
 narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate 
 to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! 
 it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo 
 which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant 
 like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, 
 and runs after her calf, in milking-time. I desire to speak 
 somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, 
 to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I 
 cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true 
 expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then 
 lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? In 
 view of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and 
 I undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side; 
 I as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the 
 • sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray 
 ithe inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is 
 i instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The 
 •words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet 
 I they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior 
 ' natures. 
 
 Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and 
 i praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the 
 
318 WALDEN 
 
 sense of men asleep, -wbicli the}' express by snoring. Some- 
 times we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half- 
 witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third 
 part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning- 
 red, if they ever got up early enough. "They pretend," as I 
 hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four different senses: 
 illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the 
 Yedas" ; but in this part of the world it is considered a ground 
 for complaint if a man's writings admit of more than one 
 interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato- 
 rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails 
 so much more widely and fatally? 
 
 I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I 
 should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my 
 pages on this score than was found with the Walden ice. 
 Southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the 
 evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and preferred the 
 Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds. The purity 
 men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not 
 like the azure ether beyond. 
 
 Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns 
 generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, 
 or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? 
 A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and 
 hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and 
 not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind 
 his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. 
 
 Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and 
 in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace 
 with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different 
 drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however 
 measured or far away. It is not important that he should 
 mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his 
 spring into summer? If the condition of things which we 
 
CONCLUSION 319 
 
 were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can 
 substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. 
 Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, 
 though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true 
 ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? 
 
 There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed 
 to strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to 
 make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work 
 time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not 
 enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, 
 though I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded 
 instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should 
 not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for 
 and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted 
 him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew 
 not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and reso- 
 lution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowl- 
 edge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with 
 Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance 
 because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a 
 stock in all respects suitable, the city of Kouroo was a hoary 
 ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to j^eel the stick. Before 
 he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars 
 was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the 
 name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed 
 his work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff 
 Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on 
 the ferrule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma 
 had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay 
 to mention these things ? When the finishing stroke was put 
 to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the 
 astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. 
 He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with 
 full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and 
 
320 WALDEN 
 
 dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had 
 taken their places. And now he saw by the heap of shavings 
 still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former 
 lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had 
 elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the 
 brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal i 
 brain. The material was pure, and his art was pure; how ! 
 could the result be other than wonderful? 
 
 No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well , 
 at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, j 
 we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an 
 infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves | 
 into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is 
 'doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only i 
 the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what j 
 you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom 
 Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he I 
 had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember | 
 to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." | 
 His companion's prayer is forgotten. | 
 
 However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; do not shun I 
 it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It | 
 looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find | 
 faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You I 
 may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, i 
 even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the i 
 windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's 
 abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. 
 I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, 
 and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor 
 seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. 
 Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without mis- 
 giving. Most think that they are above being supported by the 
 town ; but it oftener happens that they are not above support- 
 
CONCLUSION 321 
 
 ing themselves by dishonest means, which should be more dis- 
 reputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do 
 not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or 
 friends. Turn the old ; return to them. Things do not change ; 
 we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God 
 will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a 
 corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would 
 be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The 
 johilosopher said: "From an army of three divisions one can 
 take away its general, and put it in disorder : from the man the 
 most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do 
 not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to 
 many influences to be jilayed on ; it is all dissipation. Humil- 
 ity like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of 
 poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo ! creation 
 widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were 
 bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the 
 same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are 
 restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books 
 and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most 
 significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal 
 with the material which yields the most sugar and the most 
 starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are 
 defended from being a trifler. .No man loses ever on a lower 
 level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy 
 superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary 
 of the soul. 
 
 I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition 
 was poured a little alloy of bell metal. Often, in the repose of 
 my midday, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum 
 from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My 
 neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen 
 and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table ; but I 
 am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the 
 
322 WALDEN 
 
 Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about cos- 
 tume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it 
 as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England 
 
 and the Indies, of the Hon, Mr. of Georgia or of Massa 
 
 chusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am read) 
 to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight 
 to come to my bearings,— not walk in procession with pomp and 
 parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the 
 Builder of the universe, if I may, — not to live in this restless, 
 nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit 
 thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? 
 They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect 
 a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, 
 and Webster is His orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravi- 
 tate toward that which most stronglj^ and rightfully attracts 
 me ; — not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less, — 
 not suppose a case, but take the case that is ; to travel the only 
 path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. . It affords 
 me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have 
 got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittlybenders. There 
 is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveler asked 
 the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy 
 replied that it had. But presently the traveler's horse sank in 
 up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "I thought you 
 said that this bog had a hard bottom." "So it has," answered 
 the latter, "but you have not got half way to it yet." So it is 
 with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy 
 that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain 
 rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will 
 foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed 
 would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me 
 feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail 
 home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the 
 night and think of your work with satisfaction, — a work at 
 
CONCLUSION 323 
 
 which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will 
 help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as 
 another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on 
 the work. 
 
 Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I 
 sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and 
 obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I 
 went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospital- 
 ity was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need 
 of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine 
 and the fame of the vintage ; but I thought of an older, a newer, 
 and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not 
 got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and 
 "entertainment," pass for nothing with me. I called on the 
 king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a 
 man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my 
 neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were 
 truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him. 
 
 How long shall we sit in our porticos practicing idle and 
 musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if 
 one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man 
 to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practice 
 Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! 
 Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of 
 mankind. This generation reclines a little to congratulate itself 
 on being the last of an illustrious line ; and in Boston and Lon- 
 don and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks 
 of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfac- 
 tion. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and 
 the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam eon-" 
 templating his own virtue. "Yes, we have done great deeds, 
 and sung divine songs, which shall never die," — that is, as long 
 as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men 
 of Assyria, — where are they ? What youthful philosophers and 
 
324 WALDEN 
 
 experimentalists we are I There is not one of my readers who 
 has yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring 
 months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years* 
 itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. 
 We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which 
 we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor 
 leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Besides, 
 we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem our- 
 selves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, 
 we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits ! As I stand over 
 the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, 
 and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself 
 why it will cherish those humble thoughts and hide its head 
 from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor and impart to 
 its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the 
 greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me, the 
 human insect. 
 
 There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and 
 yet we tolerate incredible dullness. I need only suggest what 
 kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened 
 countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are 
 only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we 
 believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change 
 our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very 
 large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate 
 power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind 
 every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he 
 should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of 
 seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The 
 government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of 
 Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine. 
 
 The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this 
 year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched 
 uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown 
 
 \ 
 
 il 
 
CONCLUSION 325 
 
 out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we 
 dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently 
 washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one 
 has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, 
 of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf 
 of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's 
 kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut and afterward in 
 Massachusetts, — from an egg deposited in the living tree many 
 years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers 
 beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, 
 hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel 
 his faith in a resui-rection and immortality strengthened by 
 hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, 
 whose egg has been buried for ages under man concentric layers 
 of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at the 
 first in the alburnum of the green and Kving tree, which has 
 been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned 
 tomb, — heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the 
 astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, — 
 may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial 
 and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at 
 last! 
 
 I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this ; but 
 such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time 
 can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is 
 darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. 
 There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Page 27. Two years and three months. Beginning July 4, 1845. Thoreau 
 did not publish Walden, however, until 1854. 
 
 28. Traveled a good deal in Concord. Thoreau believed in Emerson's 
 maxim: "Traveling is the fool's paradise." Alcott said: "Thoreau 
 thought he lived in the center of the Universe and would annex the rest 
 of the planet to Concord." 
 
 28. Brahmins. The religious i:pper caste of the Hindoos. The reference 
 here is to the various tortures which they underwent in order to gain 
 favor with their gods. 
 
 28. Twelve labors of Hercules. A succession of desperate undertakings 
 enjoined by Eurystheus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths (revised edition), 
 pp. 216-221. 
 
 29. Augean Stables. The cleansing of these was one of the. twelve 
 labors of Hercules. 
 
 29. Deucalion and Pyrrha. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 16. 
 
 29. Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552? -1618). The passage is from Ovid. Thoreau 
 enjoyed the vigor of Raleigh's style. 
 
 '31. Wilberforce, William (1759-1833). An English anti-slavery leader, 
 
 33. Evelyn, John (1620-1706). Famous principally as a diarist. He was 
 also the author of a learned work on trees entitled Sylva. 
 
 33. Hippocrates. Considered "the father of medicine" by the ancient 
 world. 
 
 34. Confucius (550-478 b. c). A celebrated Chinese philosopher. The 
 founder of the chief Chinese religion. 
 
 36. Liebig, Baron Justus von (1803-1873). A famous German chemist. 
 
 37. Elysian. In Greek mythology, Elysium was the abode of the blessed 
 after death. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 51, 52. 
 
 39. I long ago lost a hound, etc. This is perhaps Thoreau's best state- 
 ment of his transcendental search for the unfindable, for the ideal. 
 
 42. To transact some private business. Thoreau desired to study books 
 and nature, and to learn to write. 
 
 42. Celestial Empire. China; used here figuratively for the spiritual 
 world. The reference is to the extensive trade which was being carried on 
 between China and the United States through the port at Salem, Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 43. La Perouse. A famous French navigator who made discoveries in 
 the Far East. He was supposedly lost at sea in 1788. 
 
 327 
 
328 WALDEN 
 
 43. Hanno. A Carthaginian navigator of the fifth century B. c. who 
 explored the west coast of Africa. 
 
 43. Neva. A river at whose mouth Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) 
 is situated. 
 
 44. If they were divested of their clothes. Thoreau in this passage is 
 influenced by Carlyle. Read "The World out of Clqthes," Chapter 8, 
 Book I of Sartor Resartus. 
 
 44. Madam Pfeiffer (1797-1858). A celebrated Viennese traveler who 
 journeyed twice around the world. She published in 1850, A Woman's 
 Journey Round the World. 
 
 46. New wine in old bottles. The allusion is to Matthew, ix, 17. 
 
 46. The old philosopher. Bias, who was one of the Seven Wise Men of 
 Greece. 
 
 46. Fates. According to Greek mythology the three Fates, Clotho, 
 Lachesis, and Atropos, spun, measured, and cut the thread of human 
 destiny, Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 38. 
 
 47. Egyptian wheat. Reference to stories — now discredited — of the 
 germination of wheat which had lain thousands of years in the tombs of 
 Egypt. 
 
 48. Harlequin. The conventional clown of Italian comedies and puppet 
 shows. 
 
 48. Samuel Laing (1/80-1868). A Scottish traveler; publisher of several 
 works on Xorway and Sweden. 
 
 49. Domestic. See origin of the word. From the Latin, domus, house. 
 
 51. Goodkin, Daniel (1612-1678). The quotation is from Historical Collec- 
 tions of the Indians of Massachusetts. 
 
 52. Rumford fireplace. An improved fireplace, the principles of which 
 were first discovered by Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814). 
 
 53. The fathers have eaten sour grapes. This and the two following 
 verses are taken from Esekicl, xviii, 2-4. 
 
 54. Suent. A dialectal word; here used in the sense of working smoothly. 
 54. Chapman, George. Elizabethan dramatist. The quotation is from 
 
 his tragedy, Caesar and Pompey, Act V, scene ii. 
 
 54. Momus. The Greek god of censure and faultfinding. 
 
 57. Aurora. The goddess of dawn. 
 
 57. Memnon. The son of Aurora. The "column of Memnon," which was 
 a colossal statue at Thebes, Egypt, was supposed to give forth music 
 when the rays of the rising sun fell upon it. 
 
 57. Sardanapalus (668-626 B. c). A king of Assyria whose reign was 
 celebrated for its material prosperity. Cf. Byron's Sardanapalus. 
 
 57. Jonathan. "Brother Jonathan," the American people as a whole. 
 
 57. Malaria. Italian, mal' aria, bad air. 
 
 58. Agri-culture. Latin, agri cultura, the tilling of a field. 
 
 59. Old Johnson. Edward Johnson (1599-1672). The author of a History 
 of New England entitled The Wonder-Working Providence of Zion's 
 Saviour in New England. 
 
NOTEJS 329 
 
 60. I borrowed an axe. Of his friend, A. Bronson Alcptt, one of the 
 leaders of the Brook Farm experiment and the father of Louisa May 
 Alcott. 
 
 62. Singing to myself. Thoreau here quotes from his own verses. 
 
 64. The removal of the gods of Troy. Cf. ^neidj Book ii. 
 
 64. The character of his raisers. Among these "raisers" were Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, George William Curtis, William Ellery Channing, and 
 A. Bronson Alcott. Cf. Homes of American Authors. 
 
 66. The ninth part of a man. The allusion is to the familiar saying, "It 
 takes nine tailors to make a man." 
 
 66. Trinity Church. The reference is to the church which stands oppo- 
 site the head of Wall Street, New York City. 
 
 68. Squatter's right. "Thoreau delighted to call himself a 'squatter' 
 on Emerson's land, for this nomadic term well suited his mood." — Marble. 
 
 69. Cambridge College. Harvard College. Thoreau lived in Hollis Hall 
 during his undergraduate days, where he had "many and noisy neighbors, 
 and a residence in the fourth story." Cf. F. B. Sanborn's Henry D. 
 Thoreau, p. 55. 
 
 71. Rogers. Joseph Rogers and Sons, cutlers of Shefifield, England. 
 
 71. Adam Smith (1723-1790), Ricardo, David (1772-1823), and Say, Jean 
 Baptiste (1767-1823) were leading economists. 
 
 72. Flying Childers. A famous English race horse of the eighteenth 
 century that was never beaten. 
 
 72. Fitchburg. A town thirty miles west from Concord; at the time, 
 the terminus of the Fitchburg Railroad. 
 
 74. Arthur Young (1741-1820). An Englishman, the author of many 
 books dealing with scientific agriculture. 
 
 76. Bhagvat-Geeta. A sacred book of the Hindoos, supposed to date 
 from the first or second century of our era. 
 
 76. Thebes. This reference is to the Egyptian Thebes. Cf. Iliad, Book 
 ix, line 383, "the hundred gated." 
 
 76. Vitruvius. Marcus Vitruvius Pollia, a Roman architect of the age 
 of Augustus. 
 
 77. Thirty centuries. Perhaps an inexact reference to the words of 
 Napoleon to his soldiers when in Egypt: "From the summit of those 
 monuments forty centuries look down upon you." 
 
 77. As many trades as fingers. In 1847, Thoreau wrote to the secretary 
 of his Harvard class: "I am a Schoolmaster, a private Tutor, a Surveyor, 
 a Gardener, a Farmer, a Painter (I mean House Painter), a Carpenter, a 
 Mason, a Day-laborer, a Pencil-maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer, 
 and sometimes a Poetaster." 
 
 78. Their bills have not yet been received. The washing and mending 
 were done at his home. Channing writes: "Some have fancied because 
 he moved to Walden he left his family. He bivouacked there, and really 
 lived at home, where he went every day." 
 
 81. Cato. The quotation is from De Agri Cultura, chap. 74. 
 
330 WALDEN 
 
 82. Forefathers sang. The quotation is from "New England Annoy- 
 ances," one of the earliest pieces of verse produced in America, 
 
 82. Indicms. Burroughs writes: "Doubtless the wildest man New Eng- 
 land has turned out since the red aborigines vacated her territory was 
 Henry Thoreau, — a man in whom the Indian re-appeared on the plane of 
 taste and morals. . . . His whole life was a search for the wild, not 
 only in nature, but in literature, in life, in morals. ... He, for the 
 most part, despised the white man; but his enthusiasm kindled at the 
 mention of the Indian; he coveted his knowledge, his arts, his wood- 
 craft. He credited him with a more 'practical and vital science' than 
 was contained in the books," Read also Arthur Rickett on this point in 
 The Vagabond in Literature. 
 
 83. Experiments. Thoreau lived in an age of experimentation. In 
 1840 Emerson wrote to Carlyle: "We are all a little wild with numberless 
 projects of social reform; not a reading-man but has a draft of a new 
 community in his waistcoat pocket." 
 
 85. The evil that men do. The quotation is from Julius Caesar, III, ii, 80. 
 
 85. Bartram, William (1739-1823). An early American botanist. The 
 Mucclasse Indians are described in Part III, chap. 8, of his Travels through 
 North and South Carolina, Georgia, etc. 
 
 86. Mexicans. Cf. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Book I, chap. iv. 
 
 87. Keep the flocks of Admetus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 104, 105. 
 
 88. Each one ... his own way. In another place, Thoreau says: 
 "But I say that I have no scheme about it, — no designs on man at all." 
 
 90. Robin Goodfellow. "Puck." Cf. Shakspere's Midsummer-Night's 
 Dream. II, i, 32-57. 
 
 91. Phaeton. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 94-98. 
 
 91. Howard, John. A famous prison reformer of the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century. He published in 1777 his work, State of the Prisons. 
 
 91. Jesuits. "The Society of Jesus." The Jesuits were zealous mission- 
 aries among the Indians. 
 
 93. Penn, William (1644-1718) and Fry, Elizabeth (1780-1845), were promi- 
 nent Quakers. 
 
 95. Our manners have been corrupted. The allusion is to 1 Corinthians, 
 XV, 33. 
 
 95. Cursing of God and enduring him forever. A sarcastic reference to 
 the article in the Westminster Catechism, which, in answer to the ques- 
 tion, "What is the chief end of man?" reads, "To glorify God and to 
 enjoy him forever." 
 
 95. Sheik Sadi of Shiraz (1190-1291). A famous Persian poet. 
 
 96. Thomas Carew (1598-1639). An English poet; the earliest of the 
 Cavalier singers. 
 
 98. I bought the Hollowell place. It is reported that Thoreau was some- 
 what disappointed when the owner changed his mind about the bargain. 
 Thoreau had intended at that time to use this farm for a place of retreat. 
 Later, when this failed, he chose Walden Pond, 
 
 II 
 
NOTES 331 
 
 98. I am monarch of all I survey. Quoted from Cowper's Verses sup- 
 posed to be written by Alexander Selkirk. 
 
 99. Atlas. According to Greek mythology, Atlas held the pillars of the 
 sky on his shoulders. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 57. 
 
 99. Old Cato. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 b. c). Author of De Re 
 Riistica (Concerning Agriculture). 
 
 99. "Cultivator." The Boston Cultivator, an agricultural journal. 
 
 100. Experiment. Thoreau regards his life at Walden an experimcn 
 He had no intention of becoming permanently a hermit. See note, 83. 
 
 100. Ode to dejection. An allusion to Coleridge's Ode to Dejection. 
 Thoreau here explains why he consciously exaggerates his experience. 
 
 101. A boat. The boat which Thoreau and his brother John built and 
 which they used during their journey which is recorded in A Week on 
 the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The boat was later owned by Haw- 
 thorne. 
 
 101. The Harivansa. A Sanskrit poem. 
 
 103. Damodara. A name for Krishna, a divine hero of Hindoo mythol- 
 ogy. 
 
 103. Pleiades or the Hyades. These are constellations. 
 
 103. Aldebaran or Altair. These are fixed stars of the first magni- 
 tude. 
 
 104. Aurora. The Greek Goddess of Dawn. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths. 
 pp. 39, 95. 
 
 105. The Vedas. The early religious books of India. 
 105. Memnon. See note, p. 57. 
 
 105. I went to the woods, etc. "The writer in this surely ranges himself 
 with the prophets, — with Ruskin and Emerson and Carlyle; in the very 
 essence of the matter with Goethe, the clearest sighted of all modern 
 men." — Payne. 
 
 106. Spartan-like. The Spartans trained themselves in hardy simplicity 
 for the service of the State. 
 
 106. Next excursion. The next or future life. 
 
 106. Glorify God and enjoy him forever. See note, p. 95. 
 
 106. Let your affairs be as two or three. The entire passage is broadly 
 parallel to The Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 108. Setting the bell. Ringing a bell so hard that it balances in an in- 
 verted position. 
 
 108. Wachito River. Rises in Arkansas and empties into the Red River 
 in Louisiana. 
 
 108. Rudiment of an eye. The fishes in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky 
 are blind. 
 
 111. Mill-dam. "The center of Concord village, where the postoffice 
 and shops are — so called from an old mill-dam where now is a street." — 
 F. B. Sanborn. 
 
 112. Tied to the mast like Ulysses. In passing the Sirens, Ulysses had 
 
332 WALDEN 
 
 the ears of the sailors stopped with wax, and had himself tied to the 
 mast. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 328, 329. 
 
 112. Point d* appui. French, meaning "basis, support." 
 
 112. Nilometer. An instrument for gauging the height of the water in 
 the Nile River. Thoreau here makes a pun on the word as though it 
 were derived from the Latin nil, and in this meaning, sets the word in 
 contrast with Rezdometer, a word of his own coining. 
 
 lis. Noblest recorded thoughts of man. Matthew^ Arnold called the 
 classics "the best that has been thought and said in the world." 
 
 115. Delphi and Dodona. The oracle of Apollo was at Delphi; the oracle 
 of Zeus, at Dodona. 
 
 117. Alexander. Alexander the Great. There is a tradition that he 
 slept nightly with his sword and with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. 
 
 118. Vedas. See note, p. 105. 
 
 118. Zendavestas. The bible of Zoroastrianism, the ancient national 
 religion of Persia. 
 
 119. Referred to a town. Reading and North Reading are towns in 
 Massachusetts, not far from Concord. 
 
 120. A woodchopper. Alek Therien. He is described at length in chap- 
 ter VI. 
 
 121. Tit-men. Small men, pygmies. 
 
 122. Zoroaster. The founder of Zoroastrianism. See note above. 
 
 123. Abelard (1079-1142). A learned French scholar. 
 
 123. Utopian. Ideal but impracticable. An adjective from Utopia, a 
 book by Sir Thomas More. 
 
 123. "Olive Branches." The Olive Branch was a Methodist weekly 
 magazine which was published in Boston. 
 
 123. Redding and Co. Of Boston. Publishers of popular fiction. 
 
 126. Puri Indians. A Brazilian tribe. See previous note on Indians, 
 I.. 82. 
 
 128. Partridge. The ruffed grouse, commonly called a partridge in 
 America. 
 
 128. In truth, our village has become a butt. The quotation is from 
 William Ellery Channing's poem entitled IValden Spring. 
 
 131. Atropos. The Fate whose business it was to cut the thread of 
 man's life. 
 
 132. Buena Vista. A battle fought February 22 and 23, 1847, in which 
 the Americans had a great victory over the Mexicans. 
 
 132. Daisies and the nests of fieldmice. The reference is to Robert 
 IJurns's poems, To a Mountain Daisy and To a Mouse. 
 
 132. Long Wharf. In Boston. 
 
 133. Thomaston lime. Lime from Thomaston, Maine. 
 
 134. To be the mast. Quoted from Milton's Paradise Lost, Bk. i, 293, 294. 
 
 134. Cattle of a thousand hills. The allusion is to Psalms, 1, 10. 
 
 135. Mountains do indeed skip like rams. The allusion is to Psalms, 
 cxiv, 4. 
 
NOTES 333 
 
 135. Peterboro* Hills. These are visible on the northwestern horizon, 
 from Concord. 
 
 137. Ben Jonsonism. Thoreau perhaps had in mind the witches' scene 
 in Ben Jonson's Masque of Queens. 
 
 138. Illustrates. Illuminates. 
 
 138. Stygian. Of the lower world. From the River Styx. 
 
 139. Aldermanic. The conventional alderman is noticeably corpulent. 
 139. DoMm to his mark. The reference is to the peg- tankard. A series 
 
 of marks was placed on the inside of the cup in order to gauge the 
 draughts, as it was passed from hand to hand. 
 142. Pouts. Hornpouts, bullheads. 
 
 142. "The world to darkness and to me." Quoted from Gray's Elegy in 
 A Country Churchyard. 
 
 143. /Eolian. Wind music. From .^Eolus, god of the winds. Cf. Gayley's 
 Classic Myths, p. 39. 
 
 144. Mourning untimely consumes the sad. Quoted from Macpherson's 
 alleged translation of Ossian's Gaelic poem, Croma. 
 
 145. Beacon Hill. In Boston. The State House now occupies the sum- 
 mit of this hill. 
 
 145. The Five Points. In New York City. Named because of the 
 peculiar intersection of the streets. 
 
 145. Brighton. Now a part of Boston. In Thoreau's day it was the 
 center of the local cattle market. Concord was situated on the direct 
 trade route between New Hampshire and Boston. 
 
 146. Indra. In Hindoo Mythology, Indra was the chief of the gods of 
 the air. 
 
 148. Blue devils. Apparitions supposed to be seen by persons suffering 
 with delirium tremens; hence, very low spirits. 
 148. Mock sun. Sun-dog. 
 148. Legion. The allusion is to Mark v, 9. 
 148. Mill Brook. A brook which flowed through Concord. 
 
 148. Go£fe or Whalley. These Englishmen were members of the Court 
 which condemned King Charles I. They escaped to Cambridge, Massa- 
 chusetts, and from there fled to New Haven, Connecticut, and later to 
 Hadley, Massachusetts, in both of which places they lived in concealment. 
 See Hawthorne's The Gray Champion. 
 
 149. Simples. Medicinal herbs. 
 
 149. Old Pau-rs. Thomas Parr. At his death in 1635, he was reputed to 
 be one hundred and fifty-two years of age. 
 149. Acheron. A river in Hades. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 47. 
 
 149. Dead Sea. In Palestine. This is one of the saltiest bodies of water 
 in the world. 
 
 150. Wild lettuce. The reference is to the myth that the birth of Hebe 
 was due to the fact that Juno, her mother, at a banquet given by Jupiter, 
 ate heartily of wild lettuce. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX. 
 
334 WALDEN 
 
 151. Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House. The Tremont House was in 
 Boston; the Astor, in New York City; the Middlesex, in Concord. 
 
 152. Ricochet motion. The motion such as a skipping stone makes over 
 the surface of the water. 
 
 153. Cerberus. The three-headed, serpent-tailed watch dog that stood 
 guard at the entrance to Hades. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 47. 
 
 153. Arrived there, etc. The quotation is from the Faerie Queen, I, 1, o:. 
 
 153. Winslow, Edward (1595-1655). One of the settlers who came in the 
 Mayflower. The quotation is from Alexander Young's Chronicles of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth. 
 
 153. Visit of ceremony. This visit was made in 1621. 
 
 155. Paphlagonian man. Paphlagonia was an ancient mountainous dis- 
 trict of Asia Minor, incorporated into the Roman Empire in 65 B.C. The 
 rulers of the country bore the name Pylaemenes to show that they claimed 
 descent from the chieftain of that name who figures in Homer's Iliad as 
 the leader of the Paphlagonians. 
 
 155. Wood-chopper. In his Journal Thoreau writes: "Who should come 
 to my lodge but a true Homeric boor, one of those Paphlagonian men. 
 Alek Therien, he called himself." (Vol. I, p. 365.) 
 
 155. Why are you in tears. Iliad, opening verse of Book XVI. 
 
 159. Pecunia. From the Latin pecus, cattle. 
 
 162. Proposed a book. In his Jourtial (Vol. Ill, pp. 215, 216), Thoreau 
 writes: "As if it were any use, when a man failed to make any memorable 
 
 impression on you, for him to leave his name No! I kept a 
 
 book to keep their fames in." 
 
 163. Com-munity. Thoreau infers that the origin of the word is from 
 the Latin munire, to fortify. 
 
 163. "Welcome Englishmen." These words were uttered by the Indian 
 Chief, Samoset, when he entered Plymouth, March 16, 1621. 
 
 164. Antaeus. Antaeus received his strength from contact with the 
 Earth. For Hercules's contest with him cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 220. 
 
 164. Brought from Boston. Thoreau's father moved from Boston to 
 Concord in 1823. See Sanborn's Henry D. Thoreau, p. 4. 
 
 165. My flute. Thoreau played skilfully on the flute. Cf. Louisa M. 
 Alcott's poem, Thoreau's Flute. 
 
 166. Agricola laboriosus. Hardworking farmer. 
 
 166. Lincoln and Wayland. Small towns within five or ten miles of 
 Concord. 
 
 166. Mr. Coleman's report. The Reverend Henry Coleman (1785-1849), was 
 State Commissioner for the Agricultural Survey of Massachusetts. He 
 published four reports. 
 
 167. Rans des Vaches. Literally, "chime of the cows." A Swiss air 
 played by herdsmen to call the cattle. 
 
 167. Paganini, Nicolo (1784-1840). A celebrated Italian violinist. Espe- 
 cially famous for making music on a single string. 
 
NOTES 335 
 
 168. Tintinnabulum. Virgil's word is tinnitus, jingling. Cf. Georgia. 
 Book IV. 
 
 169. Spit a Mexican. Impale a Mexican soldier. Thoreau was living 
 at Walden during the timfe the Mexican War w^s in progress (1846-1847). 
 
 170. Not with cranes. An allusion to the annual struggle between the 
 pygmies and the cranes. See Classical Dictionary. 
 
 170. A Pythagorean. Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher of the sixth 
 century B.C., who prohibited his followers from eating meat and fish and 
 beans. 
 
 170. Evelyn, John. See note p. Zi. 
 
 171. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-166S), was the first to observe the im- 
 portance of atmospheric oxygen to the growth of plants. His work. Con- 
 cerning the Vegetation of Plants, was published in 1661. 
 
 171. Patrem familias ... esse oportet. A householder must be a 
 seller, not a buyer. The quotation is from Cato's De Re Rustica, chap. 2. 
 
 171. Plant the common small white bush bean. This paragraph is a 
 half-playful imitation of the kind of advice that was given in farm 
 journals. 
 
 173. Ceres. The goddess of agriculture. Cf. Gzyl&y's Classic Myths, -^.AZ. 
 
 173. Terrestrial Jove. Thus designated to distinguish him from Pluto, 
 the Infernal Jove. 
 
 173. Plutus. God of wealth. 
 
 174. Varro. Marcus Terentius (116-28 B.C.), wrote Rerum Rusticarum. 
 
 175. State Street. In Boston. 
 
 175. Etesian winds. The regular northerly summer winds. The refer- 
 ence is from ancient Greek and Latin literature. 
 
 176. The vitals of the village were the grocery, etc. *'A11 this does not 
 mean that Thoreau was a shy and faun-like creature; still less that he 
 was a victim of misanthropy; it means only that often he found himself 
 his own best companion, and was determined to resist those social im- 
 portunities which, if a man submit to them, leave him no time for the 
 development of the inner life and for quiet intellectual growth." — Payne. 
 
 177. Orpheus. This incident occurred while Orpheus was sailing home 
 with the Argonauts from capturing the golden fleece. Cf. The Life and 
 Death of Jason by Morris. 
 
 179. Elsewhere related. In "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849). 
 
 179. Amok. Amuck. , ^ 
 
 • 180. Nee bella fuerunt. Quoted from the elegies of Tribullus, I, x 7. 
 
 181. To fresh woods and pastures new. Quoted from Milton's Lycidas. 
 
 181. Coenobites. Members of religious orders living in conrents or 
 communities. A pun. 
 
 185. Michael Angelo. Referring to the characteristic over-develoiaaent 
 of the muscles in this artist's figures. 
 
 187. Castalian Fountain. A spring sacred to Apollo and the Muses. 
 
 189. Divining-rod. A forked stick which was used to discover the 
 presence of an underground vein of water. 
 
336 WALDEN 
 
 Wt. The paver. The glacier which deposited the rocks. 
 
 192. Fair-Haven. Fairhaven Pond, which is a widening of the Sudbury 
 Kivcr in GDncord. 
 
 19S. Invert your head. Thoreau was fond of this method of viewing 
 landscape. 
 
 198. Moore of Moore Hall. According to the old ballad, the knight who 
 slew the Dragon of Wantley. 
 
 202. Icarian Sea. Named from the flight of Icarus. Cf. Gayley's 
 Classic Myths, p. 246. 
 
 204. Kohinoor. A large diamond belonging to the British Crown. 
 
 208. Vadhalla. The hall of Odin the abode of the Norse gods. 
 
 207. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571). A celebrated Italian goldsmith and 
 sculptor. 
 
 208. Thy entry is a pleasant field, etc. Quoted from William Ellery 
 Channing's poem, Baker Farm. 
 
 208. Musquash. Muskrat. 
 
 208. And here a poet builded, etc. This quotation is also from Chan- 
 ning's Baker Farm. 
 
 212. Landscape where, etc. The quotation is again from Channing's 
 Baker Farm. 
 
 213. Talaria. Wings. 
 
 214. Except for that wildness. For a discussion of this side of Thoreau's 
 nature, read John Burrough's essay, Thoreau's Wildness. 
 
 215. A finer way of studying ornithology. Read in this connection 
 Emerson's Forbearance. 
 
 216. Chaucer's nun. Should be Chaucer's monk. The quotation is from 
 the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, lines 177, 178. 
 
 216. Algonquins. A number of tribes of Indians that roved over the 
 country north of the St. Lawrence River. 
 
 216. Philzmthropic. Characterized by love of mankind. Thoreau here 
 TQcang to indicate that he does not distinguish between his love for man 
 and his lov'e for animals. 
 
 218. Kirby and Spence. William Kirby and William Spence. Authors 
 of an Introdxiction to Entomology, which was published 1826 
 
 221. Ved. Veda. Cf. note, p. 105. 
 
 221. Vedant, or Vedanta. The philosophy founded on the Veda. 
 
 221. Thseng-tseu. A follower of Confucius. 
 
 221. Not that food . . . defileth. An inexact quotation from Matthew 
 \v, 11. 
 
 222. Mencius. Latinized from Meng-Tse. A Chinese philosopher of 
 the third century B.C. He was a leading teacher of Confucianism. 
 
 223. How happy *s he, etc. Quoted from Dr. John Donne's Epistle 
 To Sir Edward Herbert, since Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 
 
 Z2S. A companion. William Ellery Channing, the poet, an intimate 
 friend of Thoreau. 
 226. Hermit. Thoreau himself. 
 
NOTES 337 
 
 226. Bose. The farm dog. 
 
 227. Con-fut-see. Confucius. 
 
 228. Mem. Memorandum. 
 
 228. Pilpajr & Co. Pilpay and other makers of fables. Pilpay (or Bidpai) 
 is not a proper name but a title applied to a scholar and teller of tales in 
 an Indian court. 
 
 228. A wild native kind. White- footed or deer mouse. 
 
 231. Not a duellum but a bellum. Not a duel but a war. 
 
 231. Myrmidons. The followers of Achilles. 
 
 232. Achilles . . . Patroclus. Because of a quarrel with Agamemnon, 
 Achilles sulked in his tent. When he heard that Patroclus was killed, 
 however, he hastened into the thick of the battle to avenge him. 
 
 232. Austerlitz. In this battle, which was fought December 2, 1805, 
 Napoleon defeated the forces of Russia and Austria. 
 
 232. Dresden. In this battle, which was fought August 26, 27, 1813, 
 Napoleon defeated the combined forces of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. 
 
 233. Hotel des Invalides. A home for disabled soldiers, which is main- 
 tained by the government of France. 
 
 233. Kirby and Spence. See note, p. 218. 
 
 234. Huber, Francois (1750-1831). A Swiss naturalist who was cele- 
 brated for his observations on the honey bee. 
 
 234. /EneeiS Sylvius (1405-1464). Occupied the Papal throne as Pius II. 
 234. Olaus Magnus (1490-1558). A Swedish historian. 
 
 234. Christiern the Second (1481-1559). King of Denmark and Norway, 
 Often called Christian the Cruel. 
 
 234. Fugitive-Slave Bill. Was made a law as a part of Clay's "Com- 
 promise Bill" in 1850. This Bill had the support of Daniel Webster, to 
 the great disgust of his friends. 
 
 235. Horse. Pegasus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 214, 215. 
 
 240. Totem. Each Indian tribe had its distinguishing symbolical natural 
 objects and animals. These the tribe carved on its totem poles. 
 
 240. Ceres. The Roman goddess of agriculture. 
 
 240. Minerva. The Greeks received through this Goddess the olive tree 
 and the plow. 
 
 242. A poet to board for a fortnight. Channing. Cf. note, p. 226. 
 
 243. Keeping-room. Sitting-room. 
 
 245. Parlaver. Flattery, deception. 
 
 246. Unio fluviatilis. A variety of fresh-water clam. 
 
 24i9. Vulcan. The god of fire, especially of terrestrial fire, Cf. Gayley's 
 Classic Myths, p. 24-26, 
 
 249. Terminus. The god of boundaries. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 89. 
 
 250. Gilpin, William (1724-1804), An English clergyman who wrote ex- 
 tensively on the natural scenery of England, 
 
 250. Vert- "woods, lawns," etc, 
 
 250. Michaux, Andre (1746-1802). A French botanist who traveled in 
 America and wrote a work on forest trees of the United States. 
 
338 WALDEN 
 
 251. Goody Blake and Harry Gill. The reference is to the characters 
 of Wordsworth's poem of the same name. 
 
 251. Jump it. Hammer out the blade to a sharper edge. 
 
 252. Light-winged Smoke. This is one of Thoreau's best poems. It was 
 first published in the Dial for April, 1843. 
 
 254. Never, bright flame. Quoted from Ellen II. Hooper's poem. 
 The Wood-Fire. 
 
 257. Scipio Africanus (237-183 B.C.). One ot Rome's greatest generals. 
 After his defeat of Hannibal, the surname Africanus was bestowed upon 
 him by the Roman people. 
 
 258. Gond.bert. A long, tedious, epic poem, published in 1651. 
 
 258. An uncle who goes to sleep shaving. See description in Chan- 
 ning's Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, pp. 22, 23. 
 
 258. Chsdmers' collection. An enlarged edition of Johnson's Collection 
 of the English Poets, with some additional lives, 21 vols., published in 
 1810. Thoreau mastered this collection of poetry while in college. 
 
 258. Nervii. The warlike inhabitants of Ancient Belgic Gaul conquered 
 by Caesar. 
 
 261. Bowl broken at the fountain. An allusion to Ecclesiastes, xii, 6. 
 
 261. Reynard. The fox; the hero of the beast epics. 
 
 261. Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute. Quoted from Milton's 
 Paradise Lost, Bk. ii, line 560. 
 
 265. Woodchopper. Alek Therien. Cf. note, p. 120. 
 
 265. Lon._ -headed farmer. Edmond Hosmer of Concord, a good friend 
 of both Thoreau and Emerson. A descendant of one of the oldest families 
 of Concord. 
 
 265. Crack. A cozy, comfortable chat. 
 
 265. Tried our teeth on many a nut. Tried to find a solution for some of 
 the unsolved problems of the world. 
 
 265. A poet. The reference is still to Channing. 
 
 266. Last of the philosophers. Amos Bronson Alcott. See note, p. 60. 
 
 267. Ingenuus. Latin, ' .e-born, candid, ingenuous. 
 
 267. Pumpkin pine. Used in Maine to designate a certain quality of 
 
 white pine which is clear and soft and destitute of resin. 
 
 267. Flocks. Of wool. 
 
 267. The old settler. Dame Nature. 
 
 268. One other. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 268. The Visitor who never comes. A vague, mystical, ideal person 
 for whom Thoreau was ev r senrching. 
 
 268. Vishnu Purana. The best known of the later writings of the 
 Hindoos. An illuminating manual of sectarian Brahmanism. 
 
 269. Moose-yard. When the snow is deep the moose come together in 
 herds, and trample the snow down so that they may the easier feed. 
 
 270. Lingua vernacula. The language of the common people. 
 
 276. Alarming the citadel. An allusion to the cackling of the geese, 
 when the Gauls captured Rome in 390 B.C. 
 
NOTES 339 
 
 274. Actseon. An allusion to the Greek myth of how a hunter sur- 
 prised Diana at her bath, and of how he was changed into a stag by the 
 injured goddess, and pursued and killed by his own hounds. 
 
 276. Wast (Waste) Book. Day Book. The book was used by Ephraim 
 Jones during the year 1742. Thoreau describes at length in his Journal 
 many of the quaint entries which he found in this day book. Cf. Journal, 
 Vol. VI., pp. 77-80, 94-96. 
 
 276. 0-2-3. The figures indicate the price paid in pounds, shillings, pence. 
 
 278. Lepus, levipes. A fanciful etymology. 
 
 279. Nature puts no question. Cf. Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach. 
 279. Marmots. Woodchucks. 
 
 281. Trumpeted. The fish vender commonly blew a horn to call the 
 attention of his customers to his approach. 
 
 282. Two such Bottomless Ponds. White Pond and Tratt's Pond. 
 
 282. A fifty-six. A fifty-six pound weight. The half of the olden 
 "hundredweight." 
 
 283. William Gilpin. See note, p. 250. 
 
 283. So high as heaved, etc. Quoted from Milton's Paradise Lost, 
 Bk. vii, 288-290. 
 
 289. Hyperborean. Far northern. 
 
 289. New England Farmer. The New England Farmer and Gardener's 
 Journal, founded in 1821. 
 
 289. The Cultivator. See note, p. 99. 
 
 289. Sow a crop of winter rye. A little far fetched. Thoreau knew 
 that winter rye was planted in the fall of the year. 
 
 290. Tartarus. The lowest of the underworlds wherein were held the 
 fallen Titans. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 5, 6. 
 
 290. Cambridge. Fifteen miles east of Walden Pond, 
 
 291. Valhalla. See note, p. 206. 
 291. Estivate. Pass the summer. 
 
 291. Fresh Pond. Situated in the outskirts of Cambridge. 
 
 292. Bhagvat Geeta. See note, p. 76. 
 
 292. Brahma and Vishnu and Indra. Three important gods of Hinduism. 
 
 292. Atlantis. A mythical, fortunate island of the Blessed. See Plato's 
 Timaeus. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 52. 
 
 293. Hesperides. A mythical island in the Far West where were 
 guarded the Golden Apples. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths, p. 57. 
 
 293. The periplus of Hanno. His voyage along the west coast of Africa. 
 Cf. note, p. 43. 
 
 293. Ternate and Tidore. Islands of the Melanesian Archipelago. 
 
 296. Stunned by a blow on it. The reference is to the common practice 
 of stunning fish by striking the ice a hard blow immediately above them. 
 
 298. Methuselah. Lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old. 
 Cf. Genesis, v. 27. 
 
 300. Lobe. This passage is characteristic of Thoreau. He is ever fond 
 of speculating as to the origin of words. 
 
340 WALDEN 
 
 302. ChatnpolHon, Jean Francois. In 1822 by means of the Rosetta 
 Stone, he discovered the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
 
 303. Thor, In Scandinavian mythology, Thor is the God of Thunder. 
 Our Thursday is named for this God. 
 
 304. Et primitus orbitur, etc. "And for the first time the grass springs 
 up, called forth by the early rains." The quotation is from Varro. 
 Return Rusticarum, 2, 2, 14. 
 
 305. Leuciscus. Dace. 
 
 306. I mean he; I mean the twig. The individual robin; the particn 
 lar twig. 
 
 306. Turdus migratorius. The American Robin. Now classified as 
 Planesticus migratorius. 
 
 306. First spring night in the woods. March 26, 1846. 
 
 307. Eurus ad Auroram. The quotation is from Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 Bk. i, 61, 62, 78-81. 
 
 308. While such a sun, etc. The quotation is from Isaac Watts's Hymn 
 88, Book i, in Hymns and Spiritual Songs. 
 
 "And while the lamp holds out to burn. 
 The vilest sinner may return." 
 
 308. Entered into the joy of his Lord. The quotation is from Matthew 
 XXV, 21, 23. 
 
 309. The Golden Age, etc. Translated from Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 Bk. i, 89-96, 107, 108. 
 
 309. Sticks which boys play with their fingers. Clappers or "bones." 
 
 309. Merlin. In falconry, the sparrow-hawk. The bird which Thoreau 
 is describing is the marsh hawk, Thoreau said that the sight of this 
 bird in the Concord meadows was of more interest to him than the entry 
 of the allies into Paris. 
 
 310. Cupreous. Copper-colored. 
 
 310. O Death, where is thy sting? etc. The quotation is from 1 
 Corinthians, xv, 55. 
 310. We need the tonic of wildness. See note, p. 82. 
 
 312. Calidasa's drama of Sacontala. An ancient Sanskrit play. 
 
 313. Terra del Fuego. Literally, land of fire. So named by the dis- 
 coverer because he sighted Indian fires on the coast. 
 
 313. Picking oakum. Preparing old rope ends for use in calking the 
 seams of vessels. A good description of this work is found in Dana's 
 Two Years Before the Mast, Chap. iii. 
 
 313. Only great-circle sailing. We skim but the surface of things. 
 
 ■J14. Franklin, Sir John (1786-1847). Discoverer of the Northwest Pas- 
 sage. He was lost in the Arctic Ocean. Before definite news of his fate 
 had been received, as many as fifteen expeditions were sent out in search 
 of him. 
 
 314. Grinnell, Henry (1800-1874). An American merchant who fitted 
 out two diflferent relief expeditions to search for Franklin. 
 
NOTES 341 
 
 314. Mungo Park, A Scottish explorer who lost his life in 1806 whik 
 discoveriiJg the source of the Niger River. 
 
 314. Lewis and Clark made an exploring expedition through thr 
 Northwest to the mouth of the Columbia River in 1804-1806. 
 
 314. Frobisher, Sir Martin. An English explorer who tried to k>cati 
 the Northwest Passage in 1576. 
 
 314. South-Sea Exploring Expedition. An expedition fitted out by tht 
 United States Government in 1838. During the four years that followed, 
 this expedition explored the Pacific Ocean and its islands. 
 
 315. Erret, et extremes, etc. The quotation is from Claudian's, On c« 
 Old Man of Verona. 
 
 315. Symmes* Hole. This hole was alleged by Symmes to be found 
 at the North Pole. It was supposed to open into the concentric spheres 
 of which the earth was thought to be composed. 
 
 315. Explore thyself. "Know thyself." This is an old Greek maxim. 
 It has been the battle cry of humanism ever since the Renaissance. 
 See Babbitt's Literature and the American College, Chap. i. 
 
 315. Mirabeau, Gabriel Riquetti (1749-1791). The greatest orator of the 
 period of the French Revolution. 
 
 316. My experiment. See notes, pp. 83 and 100. 
 
 317. Bright. A common name for an ox. 
 
 317. Extra-vagant. Literally, "wandering beyond." 
 
 317. Translated. Literally, "carried across." 
 
 318. Kabir. A Hindoo religious reformer. He lived at Benares between 
 1488 and 1512, and attempted to construct a creed that would unite the 
 Hindoos and the Mussulmans. 
 
 319. Kalpa. A day of Brahma, equal to 4,320,000,000 of our years. 
 319. Brahma had awoke and slumbered. Many Kalpas had passed. 
 321. Creation widens. The quotation is from Blanco White's sonnet, 
 
 "Night and Death." 
 
 321. Crcesus. A King of Lydia in the sixth century B.C. He was so 
 wealthy that his name has passed into proverb. 
 
 321. In the repose ... a confused tintinnabulum. In this connection, 
 one should remember that Thoreau also wrote: "I would not run round 
 the corner to see the world blow up." However, when a powder-mill in 
 the next town did blow up, he heard it, ran downstairs, jumped into a 
 wagon, and drove post-haste to the scene of the disaster. 
 
 322. Mameluke bey. The reference is to the single bey or officer of the 
 warlike Mamelukes who escaped death by forcing his horse to leap the 
 parapet when Mohamet AH massacred his comrades. The event occurred 
 at Cairo, Egypt, in 1811, 
 
 323. China pride. Thoreau means to say that mankind in general is as 
 self-satisfied and as unprogressive t.s are the Chinese. 
 
 325. John or Jonathan. John Bull or Brother Jonathan; the English 
 or the American people. 
 
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